These Vehicles are WORTHLESS NOW: Desperation Mode ACTIVATED | Episode 1016

You know that wellness goal you set at the start of the year?

It's not too late to stick with it and make your future self proud, especially with the

all-in-one nutrition shake from Kuchaba.

With 25 grams of protein, 6 grams of fiber, greens, adaptogens, and more.

No fillers, no nonsense, just the highest quality ingredients.

Stick with your wellness goals, go to kuchaba.com and use code NEWS for 15% off.

That's K-A-C-H-A-V-A dot com, code NEWS.

It's noon here in Ventner City, New Jersey, and our nation's capital, Washington, D.C.,

and this is Car Edge Live for Feisty Friday, February 20th with your host,

me, the Feisty One in Ventner City, and Zach, sitting there nice and relaxed.

In Washington, D.C., how are you today, handsome?

What is going on in D.C. or hell must be breaking loose?

These vehicles are worthless now.

Desperate for mode activated for the auto industry.

Man, do we have some interesting stories to cover today.

Before we do, Dad, happy Friday, February 20th.

Everyone, today's show is brought to you by caredge.com.

For those of you, yeah, they're like my dad and you've got a little edge, a little face.

Do you want to get that?

Yeah, take it out.

You know, you just go to car edge.

That was bad, man.

Anyway, just go to caredge.com.

We're running a promo right now.

$200 off our car buying service, 20% off Car Edge Pro.

Last for another day or two.

Here, as a friendly reminder, y'all, we're in the business of providing you a car buying service.

Dealer outreach, negotiation, contacting dealers, comparing real offers,

helping you get the best deal.

That's what we do back at caredge.com.

Now, Dad, the big story that I wanted to start with this morning.

Vehicles that are worthless, well, you know how they become worthless?

They end up getting their price cut significantly.

And here we go, Dad.

Cheaper Tesla Cybertruck arrives while CyberBeast gets a $15,000 price cut.

We've now seen, Dad, and I feel very, very, very bad.

For those who over the past few years bought new electric vehicles and in particular new

electric pickup trucks, you have Tesla cutting the CyberBeast price by $15,000.

That means, obviously, those previously sold ones are worth a heck of a lot less

than those owners thought.

And you had Ford completely get rid of the F-150 Lightning.

So unless they're going to become a collector's item, which I think Barrett Jackson might be

doing auctions on them in 15, 20, 30 years, these people, Dad, bought vehicles that are

going to be quickly becoming worthless because the desperation of automakers,

they realized people aren't buying them.

What do you make of this Tesla news, Dad, to slash prices here of the CyberBeast?

The CyberBeast, according to those in the know, at the time it was coming out,

was going to be the greatest thing since sliced bread.

And everybody, and I mean everybody, was going to have one.

Yeah.

And as it has turned out, it has been one of the slowest selling greatest things

since sliced bread that has ever been manufactured.

The initial excitement for the Cyber Truck and the CyberBeast was unbelievable.

And then like the 3,000 people that wanted one got one.

Okay.

And then this concept that everybody, this is going to change pickup trucks forever,

it didn't and it hasn't and it won't.

And it is by cutting the CyberBeast down to $99,950, that $15,000 price cut.

The truth of the matter is, if you can afford $100,000, you can afford $115,000.

So I don't know that it's going to spur sales of the CyberBeast.

The fact that they are now going to offer a Cyber Truck at under $60,000, well that, I don't know.

Is there a story here, Dad, about these vehicles becoming like depreciation load anchors?

Like that's what it has to be for prior purchasers.

You know, I think you suggested that they'll be showing up at Barrett Jackson in 20 to 30 years.

I think it could be next week.

You know, I don't think it's going to take all that long for people who have Cyber Trucks

to say, okay, enough is enough.

I don't want it anymore.

I don't know what the hell I'm going to do with it.

Yeah, it was a way for Tesla to admit that perhaps they made a mistake.

Well, what do you think, because it's not just Tesla, Dad?

What about Ford with the F-150 Lightning?

If I bought a brand new F-150 Lightning two years ago and I'm sitting on that now,

I mean, I'm upside down significantly on what I owe on that vehicle versus what it's worth.

Those things have depreciated like crazy as well.

There are many vehicles that these manufacturers have gotten desperate on,

whether it be reducing the MSRP's of them or purely getting rid of them from the market

that are now worthless to a degree.

I mean, worth significantly less.

Maybe that's the right way to say it.

They're not worth less.

They're worth significantly less than they originally were.

It seems to me that for the most part, everybody has pretty much played their hand incorrectly

when it came to what they hoped would be the popularity of battery electric pickup trucks.

You know, if you're in a four-wheel drive pickup truck and you like to go off-roading

and go out into the wilderness, you can carry extra cans of gasoline with you.

It's hard to carry that generator that's going to recharge an electric vehicle

if it runs out of electricity in the middle of nowhere.

Very sure, but you know many of the people that are buying these things

aren't actually even doing that with their full-size pickup trucks.

My point is that it doesn't really serve the purpose it was marketed to serve.

Yes, if you want a giant-ass off-roader like a cyber beast or something like that,

and your idea of it going off-road is, well, when you pull it into your driveway,

you accidentally touch the lawn, then it's perfect. If your idea is to use it as a

four-wheel drive pickup truck out in the wilderness, it was never going to be perfect.

It's not perfect. The majority of the American population has spoken that at this particular

point in time, they're not interested A, in electric pickup trucks and B,

really, in electric vehicles in mass numbers. That could be different in Europe.

I want to focus on that because the title of today's show are These Vehicles Are Worthless

Now. I'm going to pull up a list of its continued electric vehicles because that's

essentially what Tesla started to indicate here. They haven't made the cyber beast or

cyber truck discontinued. Far from it, they just decreased the price of it by $15,000. That could

be a leading indicator to what they did on the S and the X, which they did discontinue.

There's a laundry list of vehicles that have been paused or discontinued heading into the 2026

model year, accurate with the ZDX for all of these debt. I want you to think, are you the person

who bought this at MSRP a year or two years ago, what that means for it sitting in your

driveway? Accurate ZDX discontinued, Ford F-150, planned for replacement, but that's been

discontinued, the F-150 Lightning, GM with the bright drop electric vents discontinued, Genesis

with the electrified G80 discontinued, Nissan with the Aria discontinued, the Ram 1500 Rev,

they didn't even bring it out. Tesla got rid of the Model S and Model X, and the ID Buzz has

been discontinued in the United States. Other vehicles, the Dodge Charger Daytona, the SRT

Banshee, the Jeep Gladiator 4xE, Renegade EV, and various other Mercedes EQ models have all

been discontinued, and we also have some manufacturers who have gone under as well.

Biskar and Lordstown kind of being the most notable names there. Those vehicles, I want to be

very clear, are worthless. The Tesla story today, I think, indicates for many people,

we've got a lot of comments in the chat too, those Cybertrons are worth a heck of a lot less

than they previously were. Yeah, I mean, if you bought one of those vehicles and the bet was

that you bought it and that it wasn't going to depreciate as quickly as other vehicles,

it was a bad bet on the buyer's part. Ultimately, the vast majority of buyers spoke,

and they spoke in terms of not buying these vehicles, and the manufacturers have backtracked,

so those who own them are left holding the bag. Yeah, I mean, if you bought a lightning,

the market for a pre-owned lightning is a lot smaller today at a lot lower price point today

than you would have suspected. We have seen for the last two or three years that some of the

fastest depreciating vehicles out there were battery electric vehicles. Those were, nothing

was depreciating faster, losing more of its original value quicker than, excuse me, than EVs.

This is just going to make that decline, it's going to speed it up even more. If you bought

a Cybertruck or a lightning, and you've had it for three years, and after three years,

maybe it holds 30% of its value, I guess the good news is it doesn't have much less to lose,

it doesn't have that much more, it can possibly lose. If I was your broker, and I said to you,

hey, give me $100,000 today, I'll show you how to turn that into $30,000 in three years,

buy this vehicle, you'd fire me as your broker. You might fire Tesla as your brand of choice,

you might fire Ford as your brand of choice. You might applaud Ram for having enough sense

to say, we're not even going to build the damn REV anymore, because we realize there's no market

for whatever our sunk costs are, there are sunk costs, but we ain't putting any more money into

it. So, yeah, those people that bought some of these, yeah, they're holding the bag.

I think the alternative headline for today's show is, these vehicles are depreciation bargains

on the used car market. That's the alternative is, if you've been waiting around trying to get a

cyber beast, don't go buy a new one, even with the $15,000 price decrease, the one that was sold a

year ago, the owner who's holding onto that, that thing's upside down, that thing's worth a heck of

a lot less because of these decisions on the new ones. So, these are the vehicles that are

depreciation champions that you can ultimately get a big discount on. If you are one of the few

people that actually want a battery electric pickup truck, a Ford Lightning, a cyber truck,

whatever it is, if you can buy it at 30% of its original value, well, that's a hell of a deal for

you because all you can possibly lose is the additional 30%. So, if you're buying a $100,000

pickup truck for $30,000, the most you can lose is $30,000. The original owner lost $70,000. So,

if you want to experiment with one of these vehicles, pre-owns the way to go. You're protected

because there's only a limited amount of loss left to have. When I used to appraise vehicles,

you know, sometimes I'd look at a vehicle and I'd go, my God, it's really a piece of crap. But,

you know, if I put $1,500 in it and I'm wrong, what's the worst that I can lose is $1,500.

Yeah. So, if you factor in the worst case scenario that it just absolutely positively

collapses onto itself, if you buy one of these for $20,000, $30,000, even if you only keep it

three or four years, if you bought it for $20,000 and you keep it for four years, it

costs you $5,000 a year, that's pretty cheap. All right. So, that's the alternative headline here,

is these vehicles are worthless. Now, go get a used car and parking. And to be clear here, Dad,

if you go to like New York City, there's Fisker Oceans everywhere, everywhere. Like every rideshare

driver drives a Fisker Ocean. And it's obvious why, because they were dirt cheap to get their hands

on when Fisker went out of business. You know, is that necessarily what you want to be driving

around? And that's a decision for you to make. But if you're looking for a bargain, especially

relative to its original MSRP, the indication obviously here from Tesla with a $15,000 price

decline is, hey, we overprice these things. Ford pulling vehicles out of the market, the whole

laundry list of discontinued EVs that we went through a moment ago. Go find yourself an Acura

ZDX steel. That might not be for everyone. That might not be everyone's cup of tea. But for the

person who's it is, that thing is worth a heck of a lot less today than it was when they originally

brought it to market. All these vehicles on this list are. And you know what? To a decree, that's

good news for those who are interested in these cars. Oh, absolutely. I mean, you look at the

list and you realize that all these manufacturers played their hands poorly. It's that simple.

You know, they went all in when they thought they had a winning hand. And what it turned out to be

was a bluff. The losers here, dad, are the automakers, obviously, and the unfortunate autumn.

And the poor. The people who lease them, fine, because they're just going to turn their lease

in at the end of the lease term. But the people that bought these and financed them, that's

what I think they're not here. Here's the next really interesting thing in regards to this.

All the people who did lease these battery electric vehicles and their three year leases,

and those leases are coming too. And the residuals, the value of the vehicles is nowhere near the

residual value. What do these leasing companies do with these things? If the residual value was

based at 50% depreciation in three years, and it turns out it was 75% depreciation in three years,

it appears to me that the leasing companies on the hook for that 25%. This could get really,

really ugly for all those leases, because ain't nobody going to buy out their lease at the end

when it's worth 25% or 50% less than its residual value. You might want to buy your lease out if

it's worth 20 to 25% more than the residual, but you're not buying it when it's worth 25 or 30%

less than its residual. So what are they going to do with those? Realistically,

every one of those should be sold at a yacht lot. I can't think of a better way to utilize them.

From space, I'm not buying out my Ioniq lease. What's the incentive to do that? It's obviously

worth less than what the leasing company thought it was going to be worth. These leasing companies,

dad, who lease these EVs are going to be holding the bag big time on a bunch of vehicles that they

have scribed a certain value to at the beginning of the lease contract that are now GM Hummer EVs that

sold MSRP when they came out at over $200,000 or now under $75,000 at auction. This class,

this subset of vehicles, are worthless. They really are relative to where they had them.

Relative to their original value that was placed on them. For whatever reason,

I actually went to fill up my gas tank the other day. I had to stop at the gas station for the

first time in six weeks. What drove past me as I was driving to the gas station was a Hummer.

I was thinking to myself, A, why do you need anything that big and that heavy?

B, how important is it that every time I've seen a commercial for those things,

they're always showing off the fact that it can crab walk? I keep thinking to myself,

I can't remember the last time I was ever in a vehicle and I said to myself, damn,

I wish I could go sideways for a minute. You look at some of this stuff and you think about

how they were marketed and how they were sold. It's like, what kind of bill of goods were people

paying and buying? It is almost as if you can convince Americans to fall for any.

Well, you can. I think it was a PT Barnum. PT Barnum said they're a sucker born every minute.

I mean, when you look at some of this stuff, it is painfully obvious that, yeah, it is.

Johnny Dubbs says, I didn't know Car Edge was the EV haters club. It's not the EV haters club.

It's the reality of the situation here in the United States. You can either accept the fact

that the vast majority of the American buying public said, we don't want them at any price

or you can believe that it is the way to go. And it very well might be the way to go. And in Europe

and in other smaller countries, it seems to have worked out better than it has here. But if I had

a place to charge one, maybe I would own one if it was cheap enough. And obviously, if I were to own

one, it would be a used one that somebody bit the board on and they took the giant ass loss,

not me. I'll be good now. Hey, man, I get you. I got it. Unfortunately, we're in the business

of just reporting the data. What's going on out there? Let's pull this up here, dad, from Daniel

because it also has a good corner point for this. Thank you for this, Daniel. Isn't the market always

shifting? Years ago, V8 pickups and SUV values crashed and all we wanted were fuel economy cars.

Shortly later, all wanted big V8s. Again, you've talked about this ad nauseam.

Yeah, speak to your experience in Arizona selling cars and what happened during that time.

That happens every time gas prices go up. Okay. When gas is cheap, people buy big pickup trucks

and SUVs with the big V8s that get 12 and 14 miles in a gallon. And when gas goes up to five,

$6 a gallon, those people suddenly say, oh, this costed me $300 a month just in gas to drive. I

went out of it. And they take huge losses to suddenly go into something that is more fuel

efficient rather than just riding out the high prices for the time being. I mean, I can't tell

you how many times people would come in with a big pickup truck and take a huge loss to get into

something that was more fuel efficient. When I was at the mini store and there was a gas crisis,

oh my God, if we couldn't absolutely positively steal the trade because we had no idea what the

bottom was going to be for those things, we wouldn't take it in because the likelihood is that whatever

value we ascribed to it was higher than ultimately it was going to be. And so, yeah, I've seen,

I've lived through these cycles so many times. And then when the people that traded in their big

gas trucks for minis, when gas got cheap again, they traded in their minis at a loss for big

gas trucks again. It is, we as a society are the easiest society to put a ring through our

collective nose and just pull us along. You know, we just forget to think sometimes and we fall

prey to all these marketing gimmicks. I want to show you another comment here, Dad, from

AirToolMan. Least in Alfa Romeo Tonale, my buyout was $42,000. The dealer bought it from

Ally for $21,000. Okay, sounds like Ally took a hell of a loss. Boom, this is not an EV to be

clear, but this is a vehicle that's worthless now. Yes, well, it was worthless before it was...

Well, it's not like Alfa Romeo was... It wasn't when their comeback, they've ever been big and

really sold in volume. It is an alleged aspirational Italian vehicle. And truth of the matter is,

if you want an aspirational Italian vehicle, I believe it would be a Ferrari or a Lamborghini,

but not an Alpha. Let's come here for those of you that aspirationally want to get a good deal

on your next car. A friendly reminder that today's show is brought to you by CarEdge.com.

We have a promotion running right now, $200 off our car buying service, 20% off CarEdge Pro.

Again, for those of you that are unfamiliar, we offer car buying services at CarEdge.com.

Dealer outreach, negotiation, contact dealers, compare offers help you get the best deal. We've

helped hundreds of thousands of people over the last six years. What a humbling proposition it is

to be in the position that we are. So thank you to everyone that supports us. Let's switch gears, dad.

And literally, let's switch gears. Nissan recalls $318,000 ROG SUVs with

self-destructing throttle bodies. The broken throttle body can keep the road from moving

forward or backward. Shocker, that increases the chance of a crash. Well, it only increases the

chance of a crash if it moved forward or backward. But if it doesn't move forward or backward,

the likelihood of a crash has been greatly diminished in my mind. If it can't go anywhere,

the likelihood of you getting in an accident is pretty remote.

You know, it's concerning about this, dad. Obviously, the recall itself, but the fact that

it is for 2024 and 2025 model year vehicles, Nissan estimates 100% of the recall population

to be affected by the issue. Yeah, they've already had, I think, 3,100 or 3,300 warranty claims.

Yeah, it is a situation where when the vehicle starts up and it goes through some software

things at the beginning, some of the gears within this throttle body can,

well, weaken and crack and break. And that's not a good thing.

You know, and it's not a good thing for Nissan when their cash strap to begin with,

and there's 318,781 ROGs that they have to come up with a fix for.

Yeah, last time I checked that, that comes out of air pockets, not the customer,

not the dealer. That's from Nissan corporate, correct?

Oh, absolutely. The dealer is going to love it unless the warranty pay on it is much below normal.

But yeah, it's going to cost them millions upon millions of dollars

to correct all this. So it's unfortunate that's what happens when you use cheaper and weaker parts.

Seriously, well, here's another example, Dad. Let's bring this up from the Automotive Retired

Guy. Thanks for the kind contribution, David. We appreciate it. Yes.

Happy 55 birthday. Congratulations. Happy birthday to you.

Happy birthday. Love that. On my second lemon law, repurchase 2025 Volkswagen ID4 Pro S Plus.

No more VW Group vehicles, period. Whoa. I had no clue that David had another buyback

of his ID4s. This is like the perfect storm here. The ID4s are the worst selling vehicle in the

United States of America right now. EVs are crashing in value compared to everything else.

And in this case, definitely some sort of mechanical or vehicle issue causing it to be

a lemon law buyback for the second time. Yeah, they brought it in for service and

Volkswagen don't even replace parts or anything. We don't really know what the issue is.

And if we did know what the issue is, we certainly don't have a,

we don't have a fix for that issue yet. So don't be replacing any parts. It's unfortunate.

We have seen, at least in my 40 some years of this, we have seen a decline in the quality

of vehicles and the quality of the parts and the, in many cases, its software today,

because these are nothing but rolling computers. And oftentimes, they don't have a fix it.

I don't know how many stop sales I've lived through at many. I remember we had a new vehicle

coming out and the stop sale came before they even got shipped to the dealer.

Okay, they realized after all their extensive testing and after they put them on the boats,

oh, there's a problem here. It is the quality of all the vehicles seems to have gone down

dramatically. And I just, I personally believe that a lot of it has to do with the beam counters

and all those that are tasked with trying to figure out ways to save a dollar here and a dollar

there. And we have seen so many of the manufacturers, especially the ones that made the big bet on EVs

that have gone backwards, that they're all looking to figure out ways to save money, okay, between

having to absorb some of the tariff costs and how it's impacting their profits, then they

figure, okay, well, to help with that, we need to lower our costs. Well, if the quality of the

parts that you're buying now is a lower quality than what you used to, what the hell do you think

the quality is going to be when you ask every one of your suppliers to cut their costs? So it

would seem to me, moving forward, that it's only going to get worse and not better. Because every

time you're looking for ways to save, I don't know, billions of dollars, the quality of what

you're building and the quality of the parts and the supplies that you're buying are going to go down.

So it's almost counterintuitive because we've already proven over the last 20 years

that the quality of many of these parts has declined dramatically.

Now let's wrap today's show with a big story that unfortunately, or fortunately, doesn't have that

much of an impact on the auto industry, but it's worth mentioning, the U.S. Supreme Court struck

down some of the current administration Trump tariffs. Auto duties remain in place. So me and

my dad got to do more research on this, get caught up to speed, but wanted to flag this at the end of

today's show. We'll talk about this more on Monday if it does have implications for the auto industry,

but the Supreme Court dad making a ruling today striking down some of Trump tariffs,

auto duties remain in place. So something to see, it's a developing story that we'll keep our eyes on.

Yes, I don't have enough information at this point to comment on it. I'm looking forward to

reading as much as I can between now and Monday so that I can sound quasi-intelligent,

which is the way I try to approach life anyway. I want people after they watch these shows to go,

my God, he sounds quasi-intelligent. That man is quasi-intelligent.

All right, folks, so that's another episode of Car Edge Live. We're back on Monday with more. We

appreciate everyone tuning in. Again, if we can help out caredge.com. Otherwise,

everyone enjoy your weekend, be safe, be merry, be happy.

How much snow are you supposed to get in Washington?

It's unclear yet. We'll see. There's some things that say we're going to get 30 inches. There's

other stuff that says we're going to get nothing. So I don't know, man. I don't know.

Yeah, they're trying to figure it out here as well. I thought winter was over, or at least I

was hopeful that winter was over. But we shall see if on Monday we come to you live at noon from

snow-packed Washington DC and snow-packed Ventner City.

We'll see you then. Love you, Dad. Enjoy the weekend.

Love you too, handsome. Thank you, everybody.

You

These Vehicles are WORTHLESS NOW: Desperation Mode ACTIVATED | Episode 1016

About this episode

Request an Explanation

Want to learn more?

Help improve this episode

More from CarEdge Live