Germany Data Shows Tesla Is A Keeper vs Other Brands

The Germans do not want to sell their Tesla, even the old ones, which are 4-6 years old. At the same time, a number of other EV cars, especially Mercedes EQC, all Porsche Taycan models, and all Audi e-tron models, have higher numbers of 2nd hand vehicles available on the market.

Alex/Twitter via Elektroauto-News published an article analyzing his research on the number of 2nd hand vehicles available on the German market. To do this, he analyzed the Mobile.de online platform, which is intended for private customers and car dealers and allows you to buy and sell new and used cars in Germany. The website is the most visited German online vehicle market. Mobile.de offers the largest assortment of cars, commercial vehicles and motorcycles in Germany. All registration data are taken from the official website of KBA.de and include all cars of this brand and model that have ever been sold in Germany for many years.

Owners sell their cars for various reasons. Some of them just want to always have the newest and most fashionable car, but most sell it for a more reasonable reason. The cost of a new car, according to experts, falls the fastest in the first 3 years of ownership, most of all losing it in the first year of ownership. But this statement does not apply to Tesla.

Tesla strives to make their cars as perfect as possible, and because of this, the residual value of their cars always remains high. A study conducted in China and the United States proves this.

In December, several organizations, including the China Association of Car Dealers, estimated the residual value of a number of cars over 3 years of ownership in China. Based on the results of these estimates, Tesla Model X received the largest residual value, which is 63.9%.

In February, I See Cars conducted a study in which new and used sales data from 6 million vehicles in the US were used to compare the new cost of cars against their resale value one year on. According to the results of this study, Tesla Model 3 topped the list of cars that hold their value. It should be noted that the study included not only the assessment of EV, but also the assessment of cars with an internal combustion engine.

This is exactly what is reflected in the study that Alex conducted. He compared all used cars sold at the beginning of March 2020 on the Mobile.de platform with all the vehicles of this particular model that were ever sold. The subject of research was several popular cars: Audi e-tron, Porsche Taycan, Jaguar I-PACE, Mercedes EQC, Tesla Model S, X and 3, Hyundai Kona, BMW i3, Opel Ampera, Renault Zoe and Hyundai Ionic.

Alex emphasizes that there are also many vehicles on dealership that are offered by dealers, which, of course, increases the offer, but only shows that no matter what their mileage, they are currently offered and have not yet found a buyer. Unlike Tesla, which at the time of data collection offered very few used cars on the Mobile.de.

“If you are selling your car that you just bought a few months ago, you probably have good reason. If you are not selling a car bought 5 years ago, you will also have a good reason for that. In the last few years, I have been conducting real data collection over and over again and have been able to demonstrate a clear trend over time, as can be seen in the following graph."

Source: Alex/Elektroauto-News

Germans loyalty to car brands of German manufacturers is high, which suggests that this will force them to keep their German car brands longer if they have no good reason to sell them.

"The surprising results are that 51% of all Daimler EQCs, 33% of all Porsche Taycan models and 17% of all Audi e-tron models in Germany are sold used during the survey, but only 0.9% of all Tesla Model 3, 3% of all Model X and 4.4% of all Model S were ever sold in Germany."

Alex emphasizes that the Tesla Model S and X have been delivered to Germany since 2014 (Model S) and 2016 (Model X), so Tesla models are sometimes up to 4-6 years old, which is usually a good reason for resale; while EQC, e-tron and Taycan have only been on the market for several months and are brand new, which is why people should have kept them for at least six months or a year, but the data shows that this is not so. These data show that consumers are dissatisfied with their cars, which is why they are eager to sell them.

Tesla is a car with a high resale value. The main reasons for this are high customer satisfaction, high-tech vehicles, long range and battery life, good service experience, low maintenance costs and continuous improvements thanks to OTA software updates. And this is exactly what Tesla's competitors are not able to provide to their customers.