Tesla again threatens to sue Cybertruck buyers who try to resell the cars | Clause deleted from public version of terms is in the contract sent to buyers.::Clause deleted from public version of terms is in the contract sent to buyers.
You don’t own the thing you bought!
This is 100% a scare tactic to avoid letting un-vetted reviewers have access.
And that’s how you build long term customer trust, right?
right!?
Considering the musk fanboys still pretend that tesla were the saviors of automobiles (because they marketed hybrids to death and overinflated their range so that other companies couldn’t compete on paper until recently) and all the insanity and revisionist history regarding spacex (even self landing rockets wasn’t an innovation…): Yeah
Because at the time when people might not be fully tribalized? The only voices who can actually speak to a cybertruck are, at worse, people like MKBHD who will say “I had some concerns and it is still a bit weird, but overall I love it”.
So by the time critical outlets that don’t have to worry about keeping good terms with The Emerald Apartheid get a hold of it? Everyone will have already made up their minds and all other information is “fake news” or “people who are pissy they didn’t get a free truck”
and all the insanity and revisionist history regarding spacex (even self landing rockets wasn’t an innovation…)
Pretty sure the Falcon 9 made objectively true history due to being the first orbital rocket to successfully go thru re-entry and land. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_9_flight_20
I agree with all your other points, but no need to discount SpaceX’s accomplishments just because Musk is an incompetent man child. Plenty of highly talented scientists and engineers work there, they can’t help it that their boss sucks ass. It’s not like he’s the one designing and engineering the rockets (but he’s surely the one claiming credit for all the work).
The DC-X was a self landing rocket long before musk got pissed off that the russians wouldn’t sell him an ICBM
Like most things spacex (and blue origin): it is less about “innovation” as it is more about having a filter between government funding and public oversight. When NASA fucks up? We best do a full investigation and slash their budget and blah blah blah. When private space industry fucks up? Oh ha ha, can’t make an omelette without cracking a few eggs and it is great that these heroic billionaires are spending their own money because I have no concept of government research grants or contracts.
And plenty of those talented engineers were poached from existing infrastructure (NASA, JPL, Boeing, etc). Which, inarguably, slowed down government and government adjacent research and development drastically.
And just to comment on the three likely repsonses to this
- It isn’t a true orbital vehicle. It was specifically meant for suborbital flight! Not really. It was designed from the ground up to support missions involving orbits, but largely was intended to rely on additional boosters to handle most of the flight. Which… makes sense. No need to carry around the extra weight so long as you Check Yo Staging as it were. That said, scope creep is a mother fucker.
- It never truly succeeded: Yeah. Politics, safety concerns, and the funding issues I described above
- That is only the crewed(-ish) craft, not the boosters. Spacex lands the boosters: Yeah… there are a lot of arguments for why that is not important and they can be summed up as “remember the glorious shitshow that was the space shuttle?”. These, and the heat shields/tiles, are what take the most stress and need to be inspected and evaluated the most. And there are very much diminishing returns where you stop trying to retrofit to reuse and just recycle. And recovering (and re-using) boosters has been a thing since the Apollo program (I think. The various rockets blur a bit in my brain)
- It didn’t have a cock and balls painted on it: That is indeed a musk special, you got me there.
Huh? The DCX never made it off the drawing board. (They did build a smaller-scale demonstrator but it never made it to space.) Falcon 9 reusability is real and has been for almost a decade. And still, no one has built an orbital class rocket that can do the same.
If you want to argue that propulsive landing is nothing new, you’re right there. We’ve been doing it since the 60s, but on the Moon and Mars. A reusable, orbital-class rocket is a true innovation.
Tesla while not a lone savior of the EV market, did do a few things right, they showed that the EV concept could actually replace a car, and that you didn’t have to sacrifice styling or performance.
They also showed other manufacturers that there was a demand for EVs
Other manufacturers would have done the same in time, but Tesla did it first.
Space Karen’s contribution to Tesla’s success can obviously discussed…
I’m sorry, are you saying that Falcon 9 wasn’t the first orbital class landable booster? Because I must’ve missed something important in space history.
Unless you’re talking about the Space Shuttle orbiter, which yes, is an astonishing piece of technology (and not a booster). But it’s not economically viable (or safe for humans) like Falcon is.
Please don’t let your (completely reasonable) hate for Musk cloud reality - SpaceX has the absolutely best rocket in the world, at a mathematically provable level.
And if there’s one thing xitter has taught us, it’s that Elon owns the long game
There is no clause regarding lending it to just about anybody who’s asking, so reviewers will get their hands on one regardless.
Though the actually vetted reviewers like mkbhd who then fail to get amazed despite trying really hard actually paint a better picture for me than a known skeptic shittalking it.
Doesn’t sound like something someone who’s confident in their product would do. Either way, still doesn’t stop anyone from lending it out for reviewers.
Seems like a crap tactic though, someone could easily lend it or rent it out to another reviewer.
I’m torn.
On one hand, screw scalpers. On the other hand, screw the rich and screw Elon Musk.
On one hand, screw scalpers
This isn’t a 500$ PS5, it’s easy-ish for a lot of people to get a hold of 5k and buy a bunch of PS5s. If you have good credit you could probably find your way into a 10k limit credit card for example.
A CT is what, 50k? Very few would-be scalpers are going to have access to that kind of funding. Loans at that level are going to be tied to the vehicle/asset and no bank is going to loan you 100k to get 2 CTs at the same time unless you’re already rich
Tldr Any statement from Musk/Tesla about scalpers is a load of horse shit
These are $80-$100k right now, but they have low supply, are being built by hand in parts because they haven’t fully ramped, and most importantly, have low VINs.
People will totally pay extra for a rare Cybertruck, especially in a place like the Bay Area, where R1Ts, Lucids, and Cayennes are fucking everywhere. The wealth people burn is breathtaking.
Except PS5s were produced en masse. So if you buy just 1 and try to resell it for a profit, any would be buyer will just pay sticker price in a store. With the CT, people have had their name on the list for years. What’s more, is they will be produced slowly at first limiting the availability. So someone could ostensibly reserve dozens of them staggered. If you have the cash for the first one, you buy it and quickly turn it. Now you can easily buy the second when it comes available while turning a profit and so on.
Except PS5s were produced en masse. So if you buy just 1 and try to resell it for a profit, any would be buyer will just pay sticker price in a store.
Sounds right on paper, except that’s not what happens in reality, there were $700/$800/$1000+ PS5s and Series Xs all over eBay and they were selling
So someone could ostensibly reserve dozens of them staggered. If you have the cash for the first one, you buy it and quickly turn it. Now you can easily buy the second when it comes available while turning a profit and so on.
True, not saying there’s going to be 0 scalpers, but that’s a bit more complicated and risky to pull off compared to just a couple Gs and throwing stuff on eBay. I’m sure there will be a few, but not so many that it’s this huge problem
To scalp something though you’d have to have enough people want a thing that’s hard to get. I’m not sure that’s the case with the CT anymore
There are tons of people with more money than sense. It wouldn’t take more than a day to sell.
I don’t think scalpers are anything to worry about when it comes to cars. Anyone who pays over the list price for a whole ass car has too much money.
People will 100% try to scalp low vin Cybertrucks, or just any Cybertrucks they can get ahold of right now.
In a place like Silicon Valley, where you see $100k R1S Rivians casually rolling around on the reg ( I see multiple a day,) there is MORE than enough people willing to pay an additional $20-30k for a fast and rare EV.
There is a lot of dumb money flying around here, and tech bros love blowing it on luxury EVs.
And I don’t have any issue with people taking advantage of dumb money like that. These aren’t concert tickets (with a hard limit on supply) or GPUs (relatively cheap item where scalpers can screw up the whole market).
Very common tactic, unfortunately. “Rare” cars like highly sought new releases have always been hard to get a hold of, and people will manage to get the money together to make a quick buck.
when even Elon bootlickers don’t want to keep it …
Back in November, before the initial Cybertruck delivery event, Tesla modified its Motor Vehicle Purchase Agreement with a section that said “For Cybertruck Only.” This section basically included clauses that told Cybertruck owners that they are not allowed to re-sell their vehicle within the first year of ownership, and if they did, that Tesla would sue them to recoup whatever amount they received from the sale or $50k, whichever is greater.
Clauses like these are not unheard-of, though, particularly for low-production or high-cost vehicles. Similar clauses have been employed by Ferrari, Ford, Porsche and others.
https://electrek.co/2023/12/11/tesla-once-again-threatens-to-sue-cybertruck-scalpers-for-50k/
https://www.cybertruckownersclub.com/forum/threads/no-resale-provision-is-back.10397/
Illegal AF, at least in my country (and probably in the whole EU) - IANAL.
I mean, the actual car is illegal to begin with because it’s basically a guillotine on wheels.
Doesn’t this run afoul of the first sale doctrine?
Not a lawyer, but first sale doctrine seems to apply to copyrights, not goods. Is there another version?
Also, I am not defending the practice discussed in the article. I disagree with it completely, but I have a genuine interest in the law generally as a hobby.
Simply ridiculous.
That’s it! That’s the final straw. I’m not going to buy it after all.
Clause deleted from public version of terms is in the contract sent to buyers.
Uh oh. A good lawyer could probably jump on that and turn it into something real.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Tesla has revived a contract clause that says the electric carmaker could sue Cybertruck buyers for $50,000 or more if they resell during their first year of ownership.
As we reported a month ago, the Cybertruck-only clause was added to the public version of Tesla’s Motor Vehicle Order Agreement Terms & Conditions and then deleted after the lawsuit threat attracted some attention.
The clause says Cybertruck buyers must offer the car back to Tesla at a reduced price before any attempt to resell the vehicle within one year of delivery.
"You agree that in the event you breach this provision, or Tesla has reasonable belief that you are about to breach this provision, Tesla may seek injunctive relief to prevent the transfer of title of the Vehicle or demand liquidated damages from you in the amount of $50,000 or the value received as consideration for the sale or transfer, whichever is greater.
People who made early Cybertruck reservations received their invitations to order the limited-availability Foundation Series edition on Friday.
As an Electrek article notes, it’s unclear whether the clause applies only to the Foundation Series version of the Cybertruck.
The original article contains 545 words, the summary contains 190 words. Saved 65%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
