Tesla again threatens to sue Cybertruck buyers who try to resell the cars | Ars Technica - eviltoast

Oh musky boy…

  • IHeartBadCode@kbin.social
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    11 months ago

    Okay, but this is not an unusual practice with car makers and specialty cars. Now is it legal? That’s a whole other can of worms. But the biggest instance of this whole kind of thing that I can remember is when John Cena was sued by Ford for selling his Ford GT.

    So you don’t really own the truck then

    Well yes and no. Yes you may transfer the property like you own it, you just cannot resell it, which sounds silly but there’s a technical difference. But in the utmost strictest sense, nah, if you cannot turn it as a profit “ownership” is seriously lacking.

    There are plenty of reasons why someone may need to sell

    Not to defend any of this, but usually those kinds of people aren’t buying specialty cars, which the Cybertruck would met all the requirements for a Court to treat it as a limited run.

    Having Tesla forcing them to only accept $50k buyback for a $122k vehicle sounds on par with Musk’s shitty personality.

    Oh yeah, absolutely. All of the restricted resell of specialty vehicles is bull. But it’s not just Musk’s shitty personality here, it’s an ugly side of specialty cars in general.

    All of that said, A court did actually rule against Ford once but it was on a super technical term in that the owner sent the car to an auction house, which sold the car, thus technically not the “owner” selling the car. Ford has since updated their anti-flipping contracts to include this provision.

    There’s all kinds of reasons car makers employ anti-flipping and resale restriction. Another one is the Ford A-plan stuff. People who buy cars on Ford’s AXZ-Plan have these kinds of restrictions for six months and, if they’re caught it could cost them their job as well as a fee.

    And I know I feel like I’m picking on Ford, they’re like the Nintendo of the car industry, they will heavily litigate you to death. But all the car companies do this stuff. Ford is just especially inclined to retrieve their stuff or due payment. And if you enjoyed that, imagine how fun it is to have one of these restricted resale vehicles and it gets repossessed, those are real fun situations.