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With Tesla constantly releasing new updates, it’s inevitable that your newly purchased Tesla will one day feel outdated.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
How to use Grok Bot to block spam calls and texts
Musk told users to ask Grok Bot to scrub their phone numbers from spam lists.
Elon Musk has a new use case for Grok Bot, and it is the spam call. On Thursday he replied to an X user named Arash with a short instruction: “Ask your @Grok @Bot to remove your phone number from spam call & text lists!” Arash had said he got tired of the calls, had an AI bot find his number on listing sites and file removal requests, and packaged the process as a free skill for others.
The skill is called Spam-Call Scrubber, which is described to find a phone number on people search sites and data brokers, submits the opt outs, completes the confirmation emails those sites send back, and rechecks on a schedule the user picks. Using it requires the Grok Bot app. The pitch is time saved, since most broker opt outs sit behind separate forms on separate sites.
Ask your @Grok @Bot to remove your phone number from spam call & text lists!
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) October 15, 2026
Musk said Grok Bot now gives each bot its own email address, and that it can detect scam emails. On Thursday he also said SpaceX would make users whole if the bot botches a purchase or leaks a card, then told users to shop away from Amazon after the retailer blocked the agent, as Teslarati reported. The terms of service we reviewed at the time put responsibility for what an agent does on the user.
For Tesla owners, Grok Bot is not just a phone app. Tesla brought Grok Bot into its vehicles on September 22, and we argued earlier this week that the Cybercab’s real advantage may be the errands it runs during a ride. Every Cybercab and the rest of the Model Y Robotaxi fleet has it enabled. The more routine tasks like this one become, the more a rider has reason to hand over something personal in the back seat.
The new Spam-Call Scrubber skill can be downloaded for free and works on sites that honor removal requests, while noting that listings can reappear, and illegal robocallers do not check any registry. Whether Spam-Call Scrubber cuts anyone’s call volume is something the first wave of users will find out, and Musk’s endorsement guarantees that wave is coming.
For a century, the car has asked the same thing of its owner, which is basically to pay attention. Even the best ride-hailing app like Uber or Lyft only moved the problem into someone else’s hands. You stopped driving, but you still sat in a stranger’s car, while half listening, and wondering whether to take a phone call in the car without being rude. The Cybercab has no wheel, no pedals and no driver. With Grok @bot now live inside it, it becomes something else entirely, and I think that matters more than the fleet count that everyone is tracking.
Grok @bot is an agent, not a voice assistant. A rider signs in once, and from then on can say what they need and watch it happen. Order dinner from a favorite restaurant. Fill the grocery cart. Move money, answer email, adjust a calendar, push a work project forward. Tesla engineer Yun-Ta Tsai confirmed it is enabled across every Cybercab and the rest of the Model Y fleet, and Tesla’s own pitch is that Full Self-Driving handles the commute while Grok handles the errands.
Think about what that does to a thirty minute ride. Uber sells you a trip, while Waymo sells you the same trip in a more private setting. Tesla is selling the thirty minutes themselves, returned to you with an assistant attached. Errands that used to eat a Saturday get done between pickup and drop off. The ride stops being dead time between two places and becomes a place of its own.
Tesla integrates Grok Bot into its vehicles for the ultimate personal assistant
Best of all, your Bots follow you into any Cybercab, and presumably your own Tesla, then logs you out automatically when you step out. Anyone can bolt a chatbot onto a screen, but much harder to own the vehicle, the autonomy stack and the assistant at once. It also quietly ties SpaceX’s Super Intelligence business to Tesla’s fleet, after Tesla converted its xAI stake into SpaceX equity. The relationship between those two companies is getting harder to describe as separate.
This is also where the hard questions start, because an agent that can spend your money in a vehicle other people also ride in needs some answers. How does it handle a voice it shouldn’t trust? What gets recorded, who can see it, and for how long? What happens when a rider leaves halfway through a task?
If Tesla gets those answers right, the scoreboard changes. We have been counting Cybercabs and wait times. The more telling number may be what riders accomplish per trip. That is data almost no one else will ever have, and it is the real reason to watch Grok @bot.
What do you think? Leave me a comment.
Lifestyle
Tesla’s mirrorless Cybercab will give riders a visibility upgrade
Tesla engineer confirms Cybercab update letting riders pull up rear and repeater cameras on demand.
Tesla is working on a Cybercab update that would let passengers pull up the vehicle’s rear and side cameras on demand, and the request came straight from a rider.
The exchange played out on X late Friday. Cybercab rider Dan Burkland shared photos of the two-seater’s cabin screen after an evening ride, praised the UI team’s work, and left one request: let riders open the rear and repeater cameras whenever they want, “especially for peace of mind.” Tesla UI software engineer Evan (@CarCoder) answered with two words: “In development.”
The Tesla UI team absolutely crushed it with the infotainment software. Nicely done @CarCoder!
One feature request: Allow folks to pull up the rear & repeater cameras on demand. This would be great especially for peace of mind. https://t.co/mNAOSLx6pE
— Dan Burkland (@DBurkland) October 10, 2026
The idea fits a pattern Teslarati has tracked since public rides began. Days after paid Cybercab service opened in Austin, Tesla sent riders a survey that asked them to rate the touchscreen, the app and the cabin, and to pick the features they wanted most. We reported on that survey in September, and a camera view is the kind of small software change Tesla can push quickly if riders keep asking.
It also speaks to something unique about the vehicle. With no steering wheel, no pedals and no driver, passengers have no mirror to check and no way to see behind them. The hardware is clearly built for camera awareness, from the repeater cameras to the rear camera. Letting a passenger look through those same cameras would give a nervous first time rider a way to confirm what is around the car.
The timing matters because the fleet is growing fast. Tesla’s Robotaxi account said on Saturday that more than 300 Cybercabs are now serving Austin, an eightfold increase in 30 days, and Tesla AI chief Ashok Elluswamy named Dallas as the next city. More cars and more cities mean more people riding in a driverless vehicle for the first time, which is exactly when small trust features carry weight.
For now, the feature is confirmed only as in development. If Tesla follows its usual pattern with Cybercab software, riders could see it appear in a point release without any announcement, and Teslarati will watch for it.
Tesla Q3 2026 Earnings results: in-line revenues, slight beat on EPS
Tesla reports Q3 Earnings today: here’s what to expect
