In recent months, Ken Harvey has been cultivating a parallel Business business for his Honda and Mazda dealers in Northern California: Teslas sale used.
A few times a month, Mr. Harvey collects some teslas used in a local cars auction and offers them for sale, often at surprisingly affordable prices, thanks to a federal tax credit of $ 4,000 that customers get to buy used electric vehicles at a price of less than $ 25,000. Some consumers that qualify for state incentives, he said, end with sedans model 3 used for less than $ 20,000, less than half of the cost of a new one.
“We sold three in the last week, maybe 20 since the beginning of the year,” said Harvey, whose family has four Honda dealers and two Mazda franchises in Alameda County, a suburb of San Francisco where Tesla has a car plant.
“We have three in stock now, and two are on their way,” he added. “They will not stay more than a few days.”
Welcome to the other face of the reaction against Elon Musk, the executive director of Tesla and one of the closest confidants of President Trump, a prosperous trade in Teslas used.
Tesla’s used business had been growing for years before Musk and Trump turned, but his bonhomie has turbocked it.
After emerging during the pandemic, the growth of new sales of electric vehicles was slowed in recent years. That caused Tesla, the leading seller of such cars, cutting prices, which drives the value of the models used.
Then, after Musk joined the Trump administration, many Tesla owners throughout the country began selling their vehicles as a form of protest or simply because they no longer wanted to be associated with the company.
That movement has accelerated in the last two months, since Musk has taken charge of what he and Trump call the government efficiency department. While it is not a government department, this federal office has been empowered by the president to fire government employees and dismantle agencies. Some of Mr. Musk’s statements and actions, including a gesture of hands with rigid weapons that many people interpreted as Nazi greeting, have angered Tesla owners and others who once admired the car manufacturer.
Dr. Jerome Winegarden de Ann Arbor, Michigan, said goodbye to his Tesla, a model 3. Although he had driven only 35,000 miles, he changed it last month for a Ford F-150 Lightning electric truck. The car obtained $ 18,000 as an exchange, well below the original sale price of around $ 40,000.
“I got more and more concerned about Elon Musk and what I was doing, and Nazi greeting was the turning point,” said Dr. Winegarden, 54. “The symbolism was too much. I felt shame just driving the car.”
Tesla did not respond to a request for comments.
In recent weeks, the protests have caught fire in the Tesla exhibition rooms, and in some cases the Tesla vehicles, the cargo stations and the buildings have fired or shattered. A group called Tesla Takedown has been urging Tesla owners to sell their cars and investors to sell Tesla shares. In the last month, the group has organized dozens of protests in the Tesla exhibition halls and other places in the United States, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.
Abroad, the rejection of Mr. Musk’s policy and his association with Trump have had a pronounced impact on the Tesla business. Its sales in 25 European nations fell around 45 percent in the first two months of the year, according to Jato Dynamics, a market researcher.
While automobile analysts believe that Mr. Musk’s political activities play a role in Tesla’s sales trends in the United States, the exact impact is difficult to specify, partly because Tesla does not break their US sales. European sales totals are easier to compile because new car registration data is published monthly by government agencies.
It is clear that the number of teslas used for sale in the United States is increasing. AutoTrader.com listed around 11,700 teslas used for sale by distributors and private vendors at the end of March. That was approximately 8,000 at the beginning of the year.
According to another car data provider, Edmunds, more teslas are exchanged to distributors. In March, Teslas of the 2017 or newer model year represented 1.4 percent of the vehicles that were negotiated by new or used cars and trucks bought in dealers, compared to 0.4 percent a year ago.
Stephanie Valdez Streaty, industry information director at Cox Automotive, a company that owns AutoTrader.com and the Manheim car auction business, said that Tesla’s sales rose significantly in 2020 after it introduced the model Y. and those higher sales could be a reason why the most used vehicles are now being sold and operated.
She said she believed that Mr. Musk’s policy was harming the Tesla brand, “but we still don’t have enough data to identify exactly what” is the impact.
Enzo Costa, sales director of Patrick Distirer Group, a family business that has eight dealers in the Chicago area, said many customers operated in Teslas, including 10 last week.
Unlike Mr. Harvey, the California dealership, Mr. Costa generally sends negotiated teslas to wholesale auctions instead of selling them to people. That is mainly because Tesla prices have been very volatile. In the last month, said Mr. Costa, has seen the value that Teslas used to fall from 10 to 15 percent.
“The Tesla market changes so often that I’m not going to risk,” he said. “I am sending them to an auction to obtain the superior value of them before they really begin to fall.”
In California, Harvey said that the demand for affordable teslas was solid despite Mr. Musk’s political efforts. Automobiles attract many customers who cannot pay new electric vehicles but want to buy one to avoid high gasoline prices in California.
“We see many shared travel drivers, and younger and first buyers in the former who would not buy a Tesla,” he said. “At the moment, at least, this has become a great opportunity for our dealers and the client.”
Robert Chiarito and Anusha Bayya Contributed reports.
