Tesla Model 3s are popping up for rent with some pretty ‘premium’ prices

Model 3s are finally getting delivered to non-employees – we got ours last week – which means an end to the NDAs and no-reselling agreements Tesla made employees agree to in order to get priority delivery of the car.

As a result, now that owners have their cars and can do what they want with them, some of them are trying to make a little side cash on Turo, a website where owners can rent their cars out for a daily fee.

The prices we’ve seen range from a premium $196/day here in Orange County CA where Teslas are quite popular, to a silly $990/day in the SF Bay Area where Teslas are even more popular.  There’s even one listed in Washington, DC, despite deliveries only having started in California thus far.

We reported before that the average Tesla owner renting on Turo makes $923 per month, which is a nice chunk to help pay for the car.

Electrek’s Take

Some of these numbers seem a little ridiculous, but considering this is one of the most hotly-anticipated vehicles in recent memory and deliveries only just started a couple weeks ago, it stands to reason that we would see a few owners testing the market to see what they can get.

There are several Model S and X listed on Turo for $100-$200 per day, but those cars have been out for a while now and are readily available, and prospective owners can get test drives directly from Tesla.  Not so with the Model 3, where Tesla is still not giving test drives to the public nor do they have cars in showrooms yet, and are expecting early reservation holders to purchase the car sight unseen.

So in the absence of Tesla test drives, or for those who are interested in spending more than a few minutes with the car before plunging in to a $49,000+ purchase, a few hundred dollars seems slightly more reasonable.

And for those owners who did plunge in two-feet first, reserving more than a year and a half ago and then purchasing the car without a test drive, maybe this will function as a nice little reward for their faith in the car.  It’s no Tesla Network, but it’s a start.

*Disclosure: I have not rented my Model 3 or any other car on Turo and don’t intend to do so (even though that $990/day price does look attractive…)