Man gets surprise after taking $70,000 Tesla to WeBuyAnyCar to see how much he'd be offered

This Tesla owner in the UK took his one-year-old Tesla Model Y to WeBuyAnyCar for an experiment.

His Tesla Model Y cost him around $70,000, and he was curious to find out how much it was worth now with depreciation.

The offer he received shocked him.

However, there was something else that made him worry, too.

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Why WeBuyAnyCar made him such a wild offer

Harley Perkins, YouTuber and Tesla owner in the UK, bought a Tesla Model Y for a little over $70,000 about a year ago.

It’s a lot of money for a Model Y, but Teslas are more expensive outside of North America, and he bought the Long Range model with all the bells and whistles.

But that’s beside the point, because the point is his Tesla has now lost around 50 percent of its value.

He took it to WeBuyAnyCar to have it appraised and the offer he received shocked him.

“The car is now worth £27,132 ($36,800+), it’s a Grade 2 vehicle,” the inspector noted.

The fact his Tesla was now only worth about half what he paid for it after a year was mind-blowing, and there was something else that also worried him.

Apparently, this vehicle is rated as Grade 2.

For reference, ‘Grade 1’ means that a vehicle has no chips or blemishes on it whatsoever, which Harley’s Tesla didn’t, but it was still not enough.

Ouch.

Do EVs depreciate faster than internal combustion cars?

EVs have been around for long enough and there’s enough of a track record to determine whether electric cars depreciate faster than internal combustion cars.

The short answer is, ‘probably’.

A while back, we covered the story of a guy who bought a brand-new Ford Mustang Mach-E for $72,590 but was then worth just $31,000 two years later.

Then there’s the Porsche Taycan.

First launched in 2019, the Taycan experienced a ‘honeymoon phase’ where everything was perfect.

The EV was flying off the shelves and everyone loved it.

After all, this was the first electric car to star in a climactic Hollywood car chase in Den of Thieves 2, and it set different records around the Nürburgring.

However, between 2024 and 2025, things changed when used Taycans began flooding the market because depreciation became a nightmare.

The silver lining is that people are now buying secondhand Porsche cars for peanuts.