A car expert has explained why Teslas in particular seem to lose their value so quickly after a bloke who took his Model Y in for a valuation with WeBuyAnyCar was stunned to be offered only about half of what he paid for it.
The guy had only bought the car a year ago for £52,000 when WeBuyAnyCar told him they'd give him £27,132 for it, while he said he could get much more for it elsewhere.
WeBuyAnyCar explained that a car 'begins to lose value' pretty much as soon as it leaves the showroom, and that electric vehicles are often hit even harder by depreciation.
Stuart Masson, editor of The Car Expert, told LADbible exactly why this bloke got an offer lower that what he was hoping and why Teslas lose value once you've bought them.
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He explained that WeBuyAnyCar's business model was to sell the motors you flog them at an auction, so they're 'offering a convenience' which means you don't experience the 'hassle' of trying to sell it on privately and they can keep an eye on how much they'll get for it when they move it on to another buyer.
Why cars lose value so quickly
Pretty much every car is going to lose value when you buy it. WeBuyAnyCar said that near enough any car would lose 'typically up to 35 percent' of value in the first year, and Stuart explained that when you buy a brand new car you were paying for all sorts of things besides the car itself.
He said: "You're also paying for the dealers, costs of sale, of profits involved in sales, people, servicing people, the dealers overheads, the showroom.
"You're also paying VAT of 20 percent, you're paying the first registration fees. So there are a load of costs on top of the cost of the car itself."
When buying a car you're paying for a lot more than just the car, whereas if you drove it around the dealership once and tried to sell it back to them you'd expect to be quoted a much lower price.
'A victim of their own success'
Stuart explained that when it came to Tesla value dropping, once you buy it, 'a combination of factors' are in play.
He said that their Model 3 and Model Y cars were 'far and away the best selling electric cars on the market', which made the brand 'a victim of their own success' when it came to retaining value.
"Given that most owners tend to have their cars three or four years, it means that if you're looking for a two, three, four-year-old electric car there are far more Teslas on the market because there were far more of them to begin with," the man from The Car Expert said.
On top of that, he said the Tesla Model Y 'was the world's best selling car of any kind' for the past couple of years so lots were buying new ones and there would be a big supply of second-hand vehicles.
To compound the problem, the expert said that Tesla 'doesn't have a huge model range' which have 'been on sale for several years without visible changes' means you'd be driving pretty much the same car off the used lot as you would a new one.
Prices are coming down
On top of a Tesla losing value as soon as you've bought it, Stuart explained that 'Tesla has been steadily bringing the price of its new cars down' so that by extension is driving down the value of the used models.
He said they'd been 'thousands of pounds more expensive' when the Model 3 and Model Y first launched, so the amount someone would be willing to pay for it now would be lower anyway.
If you're trying to sell a used car then it doesn't help if the price of the new ones keep falling.
Much more competition
"The third reason, there's a lot more competition in the electric car market than there was when Tesla was really taking off five, six years ago," Stuart told LADbible.
"If you wanted to buy a new electric car in 2019, 2020, there weren't many options. From 2020 onwards, sales kind of took off.
“Other manufacturers are catching up to Tesla, getting into the market. Now, in 2025 there are something like 180 electric cars on the market."
So not only are electric cars getting cheaper, there are so many more options to look at beyond buying a used Tesla which makes aforementioned used Tesla a less appealing option.
Musk matters
To address the elephant in the room, Stuart mentioned that 'Elon Musk's personal popularity, or lack thereof' was causing Tesla problems in the 'short term' by making some people not want to buy Teslas.
The expert said 'people who have traditionally been enthusiastic adopters of electric cars' may be less likely to choose Tesla, should they want to get a new car.
However, he reckoned it was 'not really affecting depreciation quite so much' as he suspected that the sale of new cars was being hit more by Musk's unpopularity than used vehicles.
Joe Harker