Exclusive: #Musk took leased cars back so #Tesla could use them as "robotaxis." Instead, Tesla sold them
Tesla last November ended an unusual policy that prohibited US leasing customers from buying their cars at lease-end.
The policy started in 2019, when Tesla announced that customers could lease its mass-market Model 3 sedans but would have to return them, at the end of the lease, for use in Tesla's planned "robotaxi" network.
"You don't have the option of buying," Chief Executive #ElonMusk said at an investor gathering in California in April 2019. "We want them back."
"Next year, for sure," he added, "we'll have over 1 million robotaxis on the road."
None of that would prove true. Despite repeated promises, the #robotaxis never came. #Tesla instead found an unusually lucrative way to make money by flipping many of the off-lease cars to new buyers, according to four people familiar with Tesla's retail operations.