Making a quick buck selling barely used Tesla Cybertrucks to eager Elon Musk fanboys may not be the go-to side hustle of 2024. Tesla appears to be cracking down on Cybertruck flippers. Or at least one of them, anyway.
“Be careful selling your Cybertruck!,” a user claiming to be a Cybertruck owner said on a Cybertruck owners’ forum on Sunday. “Tesla found sale listings, cancelled [sic] my other reservations and I may be blacklisted.”
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Tesla vs Cybertruck flippers
Tesla tried to keep a lid on opportunistic Cybertruck resellers by threatening to fine flippers $50,000. Tesla may be following through.
The poster said they had listed their Cybertruck on multiple sites to “feel things out.” They said a Tesla employee contacted them informing them that their two additional Cybertruck reservations had been canceled and refunded. Moreover, according to the post, Tesla warned the poster against making any more reservations, saying they won’t get the $100 reservation or $250 order fee back.
The user said it wasn’t clear whether that applied only to future Cybertruck purchases or to Tesla purchases overall. We reached out to Tesla to learn more but haven’t heard back.
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Buyers of Tesla’s outrageous pickup truck sign away their right to resell their vehicles within a year after purchasing one. That practice isn’t uncommon when automakers release vehicles in limited quantities. Ford did the same with the second-generation GT supercar.
Tesla specifies that it must get the right of first refusal if a buyer wants to sell their truck. Breaking the rules could lead to a $50,000 penalty and a ban from buying Teslas in the future, the automaker says.
So far, a few basically new Cybertrucks have changed hands for astronomical prices. That makes sense given how much buzz the truck has generated and how few of them have been sold so far. As Tesla slowly works through its lengthy order bank, it’s no surprise that some individuals and car dealers are willing to spend gobs of cash to skip the line.
One Cybertruck sold at a wholesale auction for $244,000, only to be listed by the Porsche dealership that bought it for $290,000. A Cybertruck Foundation Series like the one that sold would have cost just over $100,000 when new.
Prices seem to be falling, though. Cybertrucks sold for $195,500 and $189,000 in a recent Manheim auction. Another failed to sell at a Mecum auction when the high bid of $200,000 failed to meet the seller’s reserve, according to Carscoops.
Though Tesla only started shipping Cybertrucks in November, the heyday of Cybertruck reselling may already be behind us.
Got any info about Cybertruck flipping? Contact the author: tim.levin@insideevs.com
