Value
The Most Expensive Tesla Ever Sold
The most expensive Tesla ever sold is a 2008 Roadster with 840 miles, at just over $250,000 in 2022. It is VIN013 — one of the first cars the company delivered. That figure is the lowest ceiling of any marque in this series, and the reason is arithmetic rather than quality. Ours is a Cybertruck.
| Car | Figure | What kind of number that is |
|---|---|---|
| Roadster, 2008 — VIN013 | over $250,000 | Gruber Motors, 2022. 840 miles. Exact figure never published. |
| Original Roadster | 2008–2012 | About 2,450 built worldwide. |
| Tesla Cybertruck | $899/day | What our Tesla costs. |
A quarter of a million dollars, and that is the ceiling
Every other marque in this series measures its record in millions. Tesla's is just over two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, for a car built in 2008 with eight hundred and forty miles on it.
The car is VIN013, one of the first the company delivered, and it sold through Gruber Motors in 2022. The exact price was never published: the listing moved to a make-offer format once bidding passed the asking figure, so what can honestly be said is over $250,000 and nothing more precise.
That is not a criticism of the car. It is a statement about time. The Mercedes at the top of this series is seventy years old and two were built. Tesla delivered its first car in 2008 and now builds more vehicles in a fortnight than Ferrari has built in its history.
Two rules, because they are where these lists break
An undisclosed sale is a floor, not a figure. “Over $250,000” is what the evidence supports. Every precise number circulating for this car is somebody filling in a blank the seller left deliberately.
Unusual is not scarce. A Cybertruck looks like nothing else on the road, and that has no bearing on whether it will be rare. Scarcity is a production number and a survival rate, and neither is decided by styling.
What actually makes an early Tesla valuable
It is the VIN, and that is a mechanism this series has met once before: the previous Range Rover record was the first Range Rover built. Being the beginning of a line is its own small category of value, separate from performance, rarity or competition history.
The original Roadster ran from 2008 to 2012 and about 2,450 were made, on a Lotus Elise chassis with a battery where the engine used to be, listed at $98,950 for the 2008 car. It was slow to charge, awkward to live with and genuinely fast, and its historical importance is not in doubt: it is the car that proved an electric sports car could be sold at all. What is in doubt is whether importance converts into money, and so far the answer is: a bit.
Why the ceiling is unlikely to move much
Three things create value at the top of this series and Tesla has none of them. There is no competition history that produces individual chassis with logbooks. There are no production runs in the dozens. And there is no attrition — the cars are twenty years old at most, and most of them still exist.
What Tesla does have is the same thing Corvette has: volume, which is what makes a car available rather than valuable. That is the trade, it is the honest one, and it is why nobody rents a 250 GTO and everybody can rent a Cybertruck.
The most expensive Tesla in Los Angeles
Ours is a Cybertruck at $899/day, and it occupies a category of one in this fleet.
Everything else here is booked for how it drives or for what it says about an occasion. The stainless body panels are the reason this one is different. The Cybertruck is booked because of what happens when it is stationary: people photograph it in car parks, ask about it at fuel stops and stop mid-conversation on the street. If that is what you want from a weekend, nothing else in the garage does it, including the cars that cost four times as much. If it is not what you want, this is emphatically the wrong car and the Range Rover Sport is the right one.
What it costs, and how it reaches you
The Cybertruck carries a $500 refundable deposit, back 5–7 business days after it returns. Charging is on you and Los Angeles is well covered for it; the practical constraint is not range but the width of the thing in an older parking structure, which is worth thinking about before booking a hotel with subterranean parking.
Collection from our lot on Robertson Boulevard is free and delivery to the partner hotels in Beverly Hills is complimentary. Airport delivery is priced per direction: $75 standard, where the car waits in the airport parking structure and you take the shuttle out to it, and $150 VIP, where it is at the terminal when you walk out. Anything past the mileage allowance is charged per mile at the rate written into your agreement. The rest is in the terms.
The short version
The most expensive Tesla ever sold is a 2008 Roadster, VIN013, at over $250,000 in 2022 — and the exact figure was never published, so that is a floor rather than a result.
It is the lowest ceiling in this series by a wide margin, because value at the top comes from competition history, tiny production runs and seventy years of attrition, and Tesla has none of the three. The most expensive Tesla in Los Angeles is a Cybertruck in our garage, and it is the only car here people photograph while it is parked.
5 photographs from this guide are free to use under CC BY 4.0 — download them →
Cars in this guide
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Frequently asked questions
What is the most expensive Tesla ever sold?
A 2008 Roadster, VIN013, with about 840 miles on it, which sold through Gruber Motors in 2022 for over $250,000. The exact final figure was never published: the listing was switched to a make-offer format once bidding passed the asking price, so the number above is a floor rather than a result.
Why is an early Tesla Roadster worth anything?
Because of its VIN. The original Roadster ran from 2008 and the earliest chassis are the first cars the company ever delivered, which makes them the beginning of a line in the same way the first Range Rover is. It is not performance and it is not rarity in the usual sense; it is being early.
Why is Tesla's ceiling so much lower than other marques?
Age and volume. The cars at the top of this series are sixty and seventy years old and were built in dozens. Tesla started delivering in 2008 and now builds in the millions. There has not been time for scarcity to develop, and the production numbers work against it ever doing so.
Will a Cybertruck ever be a collector's item?
Nobody can say, and anyone who does is guessing. The honest observation is that the mechanisms which create value in this series — competition history, tiny production runs, decades of attrition — do not obviously apply. Being unusual is not the same as being scarce.
Which Tesla can you rent in Los Angeles?
A Cybertruck, at $899/day against a $500 refundable deposit. It is the one car in the fleet that people book because of how it looks rather than how it drives, and it is worth knowing that about it before the weekend rather than after.