China: Used Tesla Model Y Costs More Than New: Why?

High demand for the model and long estimated delivery times is causing price anomalies.

Tesla Model Y Performance (MIC) in China - November 2021

Mark Kane

By: Mark Kane

Feb 24, 2022 at 10:21am ET

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The Made-in-China (MIC) Tesla Model Y has achieved big success in China and it's in high demand, far exceeding the manufacturing capacity, which also has to be balanced with exports.

As we know, the prolonged delay of the Tesla Giga Berlin plant launch requires the export of thousands of cars to Europe.

According to the latest reports from China, due to the imbalance between demand and supply, the estimated delivery times of the new Model Y are long (some up to several months) and the prices of used Model Ys are relatively high. In many cases, higher than when the cars were initially sold as new. That's an anomaly.

CnEVPost explains that customers usually are not so interested in used New Energy Vehicles (NEV), but in the case of the Tesla Model Y (not so much with the Model 3), used cars are selling very well at basically all online used car trading platforms in the country.

In September 2021, the Model Y was offered at 276,000 CNY, while now more of the used cars are above 300,000 CNY.

"The vast majority of Tesla Model Y vehicles for sale on multiple online used car trading platforms in China are priced above RMB 300,000 ($47,000), higher than what their owners paid for them in the first place"

That would explain why the manufacturer is pushing hard to expand production at the Tesla Giga Shanghai plant.

What do you think?

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We must also note that there are other reasons why used cars are selling at a higher price than when new. Tesla has increased the prices of new cars, and the Model Y is no longer eligible for the subsidies. Subsidies themselves decreased.

Another thing is the general electric car boom in China. There are many manufacturers that very quickly are increasing production and sales. Tesla is simply at the epicenter of this move.