New Street Research analyst Pierre Ferragu, a long-time Tesla bull, recently purchased a Model 3 in November 2020. Like many owners, he purchased the Full Self-Driving (FSD) upgrade.
Fast-forward a few months and now he wants to move up to the Model Y. Much to his surprise when he tried to trade-in his Model 3, he was apparently told by a Tesla employee the automaker does not value the software upgrade in their trade-in offers.
Not very happy that he would be forced to pay full-price for FSD again, he took to Twitter to share his frustration with CEO Elon Musk. Always one to take customer feedback directly, Musk responded to agree that FSD should be valued, and that he will look into it.
Looking into this. No question that FSD should be viewed as reasonably valuable when doing a trade-in.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) January 18, 2021
In November last year we requested a trade-in estimate for our 2019 Model 3, also equipped with FSD. We received an offer of $42,700. Since the trade-in request form did not have any fields asking if the vehicle had FSD, we followed up to see if this was taken into account with our estimate.
A Sales Advisor replied, saying even though the form didn’t ask for it, they are able to tell whether it has FSD or not. He confirmed the trade-in value included FSD.
It will be interesting to see what comes of this. An even better option would be to allow owners to transfer FSD to their new car. This was suggested on an earnings call last year, but Musk was non-committal at the time, but also said he would consider it.
