Sometimes I wonder if the much-ballyhooed short-sellers actually work in the Tesla marketing department :-)
I know that companies get a lot of flak for saying hedged things. But Tesla could really benefit from some hedging. This pronouncement in absolute terms that there will be no lease-end buyout is ridiculous. It depends entirely on future factors unknown today (to us or Tesla), whether they will give customers the option of buying out when the lease and actually arrives, and they know it.
So why not just say so? How about: “Tesla leases do not guarantee the right to buy-out at lease end, because we hope to use some of the after-lease cars for a future ride hailing network.”
Sure, it's a few more words to parse. But it would be one less thing for people to complain about. And it would be true and forthright. It is very good to be seen as true and forthright when asking customers to spend tens of thousands of dollars on something.
The buy-out price at the end of the lease is set by the lessor. If they don't want to sell, they could just set the price very high. No need to announce that now - in fact, doing so will simply reduce sales.
Pretty much no other industry uses old hardware for rentals.
Go and try to rent a 10 year old car... Can't find any? Turns out while individuals are perfectly happy to drive a 10 year old car, companies prefer no more than 1-2 year old fleets. As well as being more reliable, the service users don't want to find a cassette player in the car, nor years of grime on every surface.
I know that companies get a lot of flak for saying hedged things. But Tesla could really benefit from some hedging. This pronouncement in absolute terms that there will be no lease-end buyout is ridiculous. It depends entirely on future factors unknown today (to us or Tesla), whether they will give customers the option of buying out when the lease and actually arrives, and they know it.
So why not just say so? How about: “Tesla leases do not guarantee the right to buy-out at lease end, because we hope to use some of the after-lease cars for a future ride hailing network.”
Sure, it's a few more words to parse. But it would be one less thing for people to complain about. And it would be true and forthright. It is very good to be seen as true and forthright when asking customers to spend tens of thousands of dollars on something.