Typically when someone leases a car, there's an offer to buy it back at the end of the lease term. Up until recently, Tesla put in place a policy that prevented this. CEO Elon Musk said the automaker needed the lease turn-ins for a fleet of self-driving "Robotaxis." Instead, the company went on and sold them as used cars at higher prices.
Reuters reported last week of Tesla's practice, and that the automaker ended the policy last November. It started denying the option for lease buyouts with the Model 3 in 2019, and expanded the policy to all its cars in 2022.
Rather than sit on inventory of cars for "Robotaxi" fleet that, to date, hasn't materialized, it added software-based upgrades to the cars and sold them for a profit. One of the anonymous sources who revealed the practice to Reuters said it was an easy way to "jack up the prices" on the used market.
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