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I wrote a few days ago about the vehicle models Tesla owners were most likely to trade their cars in for when they traded their cars in at auto dealerships. As I noted, those stats don’t catch the Tesla owners who trade their cars into Tesla for another Tesla. However, some news outlets put out headlines like “Most Tesla Owners Trade In For Gas Cars.” That’s completely incorrect and misleading, for the reason I just pointed out.
However, let’s tackle it separately and get more specific. Someone directed me to this Facebook post from Auto Buyers Guide revealing the actual numbers and explaining the misinformation.
The key point is that 70% of Tesla owners and lessees who trade their cars in do so for another Tesla. So, a correct headline would be: “Tesla Owners Mostly Trade In For Teslas.” Oh, yeah, that’s what I wrote.
This is based on data from S&P Global Mobility, which collects state-by-state registration data. It’s not based on surveys at auto dealerships. It’s for the period January 1, 2023 to February 29, 2024, and indicates that 60,022 Teslas were released by their owners in that time in the US.
Another 11% of trade-ins are for full-electric cars and trucks. So, that means 81% of trade-ins are for completely battery-electric vehicles. Another 2% got a plugin hybrid, and another 4% beyond that got a conventional hybrid (full hybrid or mild hybrid). Just 13% of owners switched to a pure gasoline-powered vehicles, and 1% a diesel-powered vehicle.
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To repeat: no, most Tesla owners aren’t trading in their cars for gas cars, not even close.
Also note that 9.8% of the Tesla sellers moved to a Rivian. Again, that wasn’t captured in the Edmunds data I referenced a few days ago, since the Edmunds data was based on auto dealer data, and Rivian sells directly to customers, not through auto dealers. I was actually surprised this figure was so high, though. It seems Rivian is on to something.
Feel free to use this post to shut down the misinformation if you see it popping up on your favorite social media site.
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