I'm not going to buy a Tesla

[machoneman]

37. Great story. Heard similar before in other industries. Yet....

...the car market is a tad different for sure. When one buys a shirt, suit, dress at say Macy's, no one expects to bring in their used clothes with the intent to trade them in for cash against the purchase price of the new duds, eh?

Used cars are the drag on pure on-line sales and a situation that's hard to fix. One fix reminds me of Japan IIRC in the late 50's and up until the late 70's or so. If you owned a car or light truck back then, after so many years (it was 5-9 years I think) the government mandated that you has to buy a new car and dispose of the old one on your own! Tens of thousands of cars were shipped by boat to neighboring countries to get rid of them and get their populations used to owning and using cars.

This ended up being a rather brilliant strategy: as planned, it propped up the post-WWII car industry and gave rise over the decades to now all-powerful Honda, Toyota, Mitsubishi, et al companies and all those parts suppliers. It also did plant the seed that germinated into the use of gas-driven cars & trucks in pan-Asia, China & India and put those bulls pulling oxcarts and the like back in the fields!

Btw, I had to look it up in an old Bloomberg article. The 'tests' at least long ago were how the government made it initially work: 10 years old and you had to junk it!

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/1998-06-14/why-the-japanese-dont-keep-their-cars-for-long-intl-edition