At least two German car dealers are currently offering an interesting model: If you buy a new Model Y, you can agree in advance to sell it to them after six months for 5000 euros below the new price – the same amount you get the German electric car purchase premium , so that half the year with Tesla was free in this respect. At one of these dealers, Autozentrum Schmitz in Mönchengladbach, this offer was also available for the Model 3 Long Range. But after the first of two price increases at Tesla this March, owner Sascha Schmitz stopped it. And in his opinion, the higher prices for the Model 3 are also bringing to a standstill a lucrative business that private individuals have discovered with it.
Customers don’t want to give up Model 3 after all
First in the second week of March and then again this week, Tesla increased its prices worldwide, some of them drastically. The hardest hit were the premium electric cars Model S and Model X, which are only available in North America so far. But also for the Model 3 in Germany, the price rose in two steps by up to 6000 euros to now 56,990 euros for the Long Range version and 61,990 euros for the Performance version. Only the basic model remained unchanged at 42,990 euros both times. With the Model Y, nothing changed in Germany.
The dealer Schmitz took the Model 3 LR out of his calculated free offer after the first price step, as he reported to teslamag.de on Friday. Because the increase at Tesla also increases his purchase price, and he no longer felt confident enough to be able to achieve more when selling. He himself sells briefly used Model 3 LR for 51,000 euros, which is now less than the new price minus the electric car subsidy, he said. According to Schmitz, he does not believe that the used prices will follow suit, because there are many used examples of this Tesla on the market and more are on the way.
However, Schmitz himself no longer gets as many Model 3s as was actually contractually agreed, as he further reported: Several customers recently decided that they would rather pay the contractual penalty of 4,000 euros than give up their Tesla. Because before the price increases, they would still have had the opportunity to buy a new Tesla with the buyback money from Schmitz plus a new environmental bonus at no cost to themselves. That is no longer possible, and some customers would now prefer to keep their Model 3 longer.
Tesla fulfills government’s wish
The business with young Model 3 had previously not only been discovered by professionals. Some Tesla customers did it on their own account: as soon as the six-month minimum holding period for the 6,000 euro subsidy had expired, they sold the car, happily to Denmark, where lower taxes on cars at least six months old are the perfect complement to the rules in Germany Offer an electric car premium. how an author from teslamag.de experienced it himself with his Model 3 LR (see photo above).it has so far been possible to achieve prices close to or even above the new price before premium deduction, i.e. ultimately making a good four-digit profit.
But that’s the end of it for now, says dealer Schmitz. If demand for a used vehicle continues to be high, you can probably still get more money than you paid for a Model 3, taking into account the premium, but you shouldn’t plan on around 6000 euros as an almost certain profit. He “never thought” that Tesla would go so far with the prices so quickly, said the dealer.
After all, the company has now indirectly fulfilled the federal government’s wish to prevent the quick sales of electric cars made possible by their high subsidy at a profit, Schmitz explained. Recently it became known that with this goal from 2023 a longer minimum holding period for the environmental bonus should come. At least for the Model 3 LR, that no longer seems necessary, but of course Tesla new prices could drop again at some point.