Lifestyle
The Cost of Selling Your Tesla and Buying a Newer Model
With Tesla constantly releasing new updates, it’s inevitable that your newly purchased Tesla will one day feel outdated. A prime example would be the flood of RWD Model S’ that hit the second hand market after Tesla announced that it would release the dual motor “D” variant. And now with the Model X available, Model S owners are thinking about trading in their beloved electric sedan for the newest shiny Tesla with falcon wing doors. I would be one that falls into this category. Here’s my analysis on what it would cost to upgrade to a newer Tesla.
A short while ago I configured a Model X and a Model S to specifications that I would buy in present day. This came out to $103,200 and $88,450 respectively after available tax credits. For reference my current Model S cost me $92,443 after tax credits.
Understandably, Tesla does not offer a retrofit for the autopilot hardware though we calculated a hypothetical $67,000 cost to upgrade if it were available. Maybe one day Tesla will offer upgradeable hardware but for now having recurring firmware updates that refreshes functionality on the car isn’t so bad.
Trade Ins
If I were to use Tesla’s math to compute trade in value for my 21 month old Model S with 55,000 miles, it would theoretically have a value somewhere along these lines:
This math is clearly not accurate, and since I was seriously considering the Model X or a newer Model S, I asked Tesla for a true trade in value.
Tesla came back with a trade in value of $49,200. Their resale price as a CPO vehicle would be $55,100:
This is a heck of a lot better than the original formula, but I’ve still used 48% of the original value in less than 2 years. At this trade in value, the effective cost of trading up to new X or S would be $54,000 and $39,250, respectively.
CPO Comparisons
My trade in value made me curious on what other CPOs sold for so I hit up the excellent EV-CPO Consolidator which provides a great deal of information about Tesla CPO cars.
Browsing that site you’ll be hard pressed to find a 2014 Model S with anything close to my mileage. The closest I found was a 2014 Model S in Los Angeles with 48K miles listed for sale at $55,600, just a bit above the quote I got. I don’t know if that car is in as good a shape as mine (I’ve seen some really beat up CPO cars), but the pricing, age and configuration are at least consistent with my quote.
As you’d expect mileage and available features make the most difference in the CPO price. 2014 S85 model CPO prices can range from a low of $55,600 to $79,200 for a low mileage, late 2014 loaded Model S. Within New England the range is only from $56,200 to $67,400.
Kelly Blue Book
Next stop was Kelly Blue Book. Their trade in value came in between $49,305 and $57,740 with an average of $53,549. My Model S, before taxes, was $93,970. So the trade in price per Kelly Blue Book is 57% of the original price.
If you believe the KBB quote, Tesla is on the low end of the trade in values. This seems to be consistent with some posts I’ve seen on TMC and the Tesla forum. If you find your own dealer and trade directly with them you can potentially increase your trade in value by up to $5,000. If you sell privately you may be able to get up to $10,000 more over Tesla’s offer.
Selling privately however can bring its own set of problems, especially in states like Massachusetts where there are strong Lemon Aid Laws that allow individuals to buy a car, drive it for 7 days and then bring it back for a 100% refund if for some reason there’s an issue with state inspection. Selling privately also comes with a huge commitment to arrange for test drives and educate your driver on how to operate an EV. Here in New England EVs aren’t everywhere yet and the Tesla is still a rare car to see.
Competitive Comparisons
To see how other cars “in the same class” compare to the Model S in terms of trade in value, I picked the Porsche Panamera S. E-hybrid to benchmark against. The average trade in value for that car is $53,746 which is very comparable to my Model S. Configuring a Panamera will drive you crazy but it seems that a new one similarly configured would go for $95,270 before taxes. So the trade in price per Kelly Blue Book is 56.4% of the original price, which is about the same as the Model S.
According to EVObsession, the Mercedes S-Class was #1 in the Large Car Luxury Market in 2014, but the Model S blew past that in 2015. I came up with a new price of $91,328 and an average trade in value (same mileage/year as mine) of $57,782 or 63.2% of the original price — the Mercedes seems to retain a bit more value although they’re still in the same range.
Summary
That very first mile you put on your new car has a huge effective cost whether it’s on a Tesla or any other car from a different manufacturer. Trade in values for Model S’ are in line with other cars in its class, although Tesla’s trade in value tends to be on the lower end of the spectrum.
If you’re looking to get top dollar for your used Model S, consider trading it in to a company other than Tesla or selling your Model S privately. Both bring additional levels of hassle but that extra lift can be worth the additional value.
Even if I were to receive $5,000 over Tesla’s trade in value, I’d still be looking at an upgrade cost of over $30,000 to trade up from my Model S (which is less than 2 years old) to a new dual motor Model S with autopilot, upgraded seats, and all of the other improvements and tweaks Tesla made over the last couple years. Is it worth it?
If the gap was closer perhaps the decision would be a lot easier, but in this range for me, and with the recent news that Tesla will be adding more autopilot hardware in the future, I think keeping my Model S and enjoying it is the right way to go.
Besides, with more Model Xs hitting the streets every day, the all wheel drive “D” Model S will inevitably start appearing as CPO inventory. This will open up a whole new world of options. Wait and see is probably still the best choice for those looking to trade up from an earlier Model S.
Elon Musk escalated his monthslong feud with Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey this week, pledging that his own AI video tool will produce a competing version before the year is out. Responding to a fan-made, AI-generated clip of the ancient epic, Musk wrote on X, “Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer.”
In June, Musk quoted an xAI-shared trailer built entirely with Grok Imagine Video 1.5, a two-minute-plus reimagining of The Odyssey styled after a 1970s classical Hollywood epic, and predicted “full movies by the end of the year,” as Teslarati reported at the time. That trailer, built from 36 consistent shots by a single creator, was Musk’s proof of concept. This week’s pledge turns that prediction into a specific commitment, tied directly to Homer’s text rather than a generic demo.
Before this year ends, Grok Imagine will make a full-length movie of The Odyssey that is historically accurate and true to the art of Homer https://t.co/bVHzUmY9WN
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 22, 2026
When a fan separately proposed that Musk fund a live-action alternative, to “give Mel Gibson $100 million to film an Odyssey adaptation with painstakingly historically accurate ships, armour, weapons, and casting, with all dialogue taken straight from the original poem and delivered in Homeric Greek,” Musk replied with two words: “I’m down.”
The Grok Imagine pledge lands as the tool’s underlying infrastructure has changed hands. Grok is no longer a standalone product, it folded into SpaceXAI after SpaceX’s acquisition of xAI closed in February, meaning the compute behind any Odyssey production traces back to the same Colossus supercomputers now bundled into SpaceX’s pitch to investors. Musk has separately said SpaceX’s own engineering data is being fed into the next major Grok training run, a two trillion parameter model he’s called the “2T run.”
Whether Grok Imagine can sustain a feature length narrative, rather than a series of impressive individual shots, remains the open question.
Cybertruck
Tesla Mobile App gets a new feature that wrap fans are going to love
Tesla’s Summer Update removes the USB drive step from customizing your car’s digital wrap design.
Tesla’s latest 2026 Summer Update quietly closes out one of the more tedious steps in personalizing a Tesla’s digital appearance. Uploading a custom wrap design used to require a USB drive. Now it doesn’t.
The feature is listed in Tesla’s release notes as “Send Custom Wraps from Mobile App.” The company described it plainly: “Skip the USB drive and upload a custom wrap of your car from the mobile app. Instructions for creating a custom wrap here: github.com/teslamotors/custom-wraps.”
The digital wrap tool has been around since Tesla’s 2024 Holiday Update, when it launched for Cybertruck owners first, as Teslarati reported at the time. Getting a design onto the car meant formatting a USB drive, creating a folder named exactly “Wraps,” dropping in PNG files sized between 512×512 and 1024×1024 pixels and under 1 MB each, then plugging the drive in and applying the wrap through Toybox. Tesla expanded the tool to other models and renamed it from “Colorizer” to “Paint Shop” with the 2025 Holiday Update, while also adding license plate and window tint customization alongside the wraps.
Custom wraps via mobile app https://t.co/5OydZ26g9p pic.twitter.com/uexU0ZePxu
— Tesla (@Tesla) July 22, 2026
The latest Summer Update removes the USB step from that process. Owners will be able to pull a design from wherever they saved it, whether that’s a download from social media or something built from Tesla’s own GitHub templates, and push it to the car directly through the app.
Tesla reveals 2026 Summer Update with crazy fixes to Nav and more
It’s a small fix relative to the rest of this latest release, which also included expanded Grok voice commands, automatic navigation that learns regular routes, and self-driving stats inside the mobile app, all detailed in our rundown of the full Summer Update. The USB requirement was one of the more common complaints about Paint Shop since it launched. Tesla did not say when the wrap upload change would reach individual vehicles, only that the broader update is rolling out now in waves.
Elon Musk
Tesla Diner is throwing a birthday party with a Franz-signed special treat
Tesla Diner turns one on July 21 with Optimus, roller skates, and a Franz-signed hat.
Tesla is throwing its Hollywood Diner a first birthday party on July 21 and the celebration comes with a guest list of unique items, including a limited run of Tesla Diner birthday hats personally signed by Tesla Chief Designer Franz von Holzhausen for the first 50 customers who place an in-car order at midnight.
One year after lines wrapped around the block on Santa Monica Boulevard for a diner that most of the restaurant industry did not take seriously, Tesla is making the case that the concept was worth the years it took to build. The concept had been in Musk’s head since at least 2018, when he floated the idea of “an old school drive-in, roller skates and rock restaurant” on X, describing it years later as “‘Grease’ meets ‘The Jetsons’ with Supercharging.”
Tesla Optimus Gen 3 is coming to the Tesla Diner with new ambitions
What made the diner genuinely different from any restaurant that came before it was not the menu or the nostalgia. It was the ordering model. Tesla owners could place food orders directly from their vehicle’s touchscreen before arriving, a small feature that hints at something much larger on the horizon. As the Cybercab and unsupervised FSD expand across major cities, the diner model becomes a template for an entirely new kind of commerce. A robotaxi pulling in to charge does not need a human to walk up to a counter. The vehicle places the order, the food is ready on arrival, and the passenger never interrupts the experience of being driven somewhere else. It is the first glimpse of what drive-through commerce looks like when the car is doing the driving.
As Teslarati has reported, Musk signaled immediately after opening that the Hollywood location was only the beginning, posting that Tesla would expand the concept to major cities worldwide and along Supercharger corridors on long-distance routes if the first location proved successful. One year in, the birthday celebration on July 21 makes a strong case that it has. Tesla announced a full day of events including a Cybercab on display, a birthday menu, Optimus in attendance, face painting, a photo booth, roller skating servers, a light show, a Skypad DJ, and complimentary collectibles.
If Musk’s ambition holds, the Hollywood diner is year one of something much bigger. The birthday party is the proof of concept. The robotaxi fleet is the business model waiting behind it.
Tesla Diner is turning 1 on July 21st, so we’re throwing a party
Come swing by for a day full of fun:
– Cybercab on display
– Birthday menu
– @Tesla_Optimus
– Face painting for kids & adults
– Photo booth
– Servers on roller skates delivering your order
– Light show
– Skypad DJ… pic.twitter.com/TD8pOjihYs— Tesla North America (@tesla_na) July 18, 2026
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