Tesla rental fleet that bought into Elon Musk’s self-driving lies goes bankrupt due to depreciation

Dutch leasing company Mistergreen, known for its “Tesla only” fleet and bold bets on a future of autonomous robotaxis, is reportedly facing bankruptcy. The company’s financial collapse highlights the danger of buying into Elon Musk’s claims that Tesla vehicles would become “appreciating assets”—a prediction that has faced a harsh reality check in the used EV market.

According to reports from Europe, the Dutch Tesla-only car rental firm Mistergreen has wiped out its bondholders and is selling off its operations.

Mistergreen had built its entire business model around the premise of operating a fleet of Tesla vehicles that would not only hold their value but eventually generate revenue as robotaxis.

Instead, the company has been forced to write down millions in fleet value as Tesla aggressively cut new car prices over the last two years, pulling the rug out from under used EV prices, and never delivered on its promise of consumer vehicles becoming robotaxis.

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Back in 2019, Elon Musk famously claimed that Tesla vehicles were now “appreciating assets” because of their Full Self-Driving (FSD) capability. He stated:

“I think the most profound thing is that if you buy a Tesla today, I believe you are buying an appreciating asset – not a depreciating asset.”

He even went so far as to suggest that a Tesla Model 3 could be worth $100,000 to $200,000 as a revenue-generating robotaxi. Mistergreen bought into that claim and was essentially a leveraged bet on this exact scenario.

They wrote their annual report in 2022:

Our focus is driven by the fact that Tesla’s electric vehicles are currently the highest quality electric vehicles on the market (in terms of battery quality, software updates, efficiency and range, charging network and speed), their hardware and software are prepared for future self-driving cars, and the quality and range of the Tesla (supercharger) charging network is superior. As a result, there is a significant market demand for Tesla’s and we anticipate that Tesla’s will have better residual value in the future due to the good quality of the Tesla’s currently on the market.

However, as we discussed in an article earlier this year about Elon Musk’s biggest lie, the reality has been the exact opposite. Tesla vehicles have depreciated faster than the industry average, exacerbated by Tesla’s own decision to slash prices to maintain demand and by the fact that it never delivered on its promise that software updates would make its consumer vehicles autonomous without supervision.

At its peak, Mistergreen had a fleet of over 4,000 Tesla vehicles, which is impressive, but it meant that it was hit even harder by the depreciation.

For buyers, a cheaper Tesla is great news. For owners or leasing companies holding thousands of them on their books, with high residual-value guarantees, it’s a death sentence.

Mistergreen had issued bonds to buy the Tesla vehicles, but it hasn’t been able to repay them since last year. It’s unclear how much of investors’ money has been wiped out by the bet, but it is in the tens of millions of dollars.

A couple of Dutch, Belgian, and German leasing companies will purchase the remaining fleet.

Electrek reached out to CEO Florian Minderop and co-founder Mark Schreurs for comments, but we didn’t hear back by the time of publishing.

Electrek’s Take

They believed Elon and they lost tens of millions of dollars worth of investors’ money for it.

We have been saying for years that while FSD is impressive, there’s no evidence that it can reach level 4 autonomy in consumer vehicles. Banking on it turning cars into appreciating robotaxis in the near term is financial suicide.

Musk has been promising “1 million robotaxis by the end of the year” since 2020. It’s now late 2025, and while we have seen progress, we only have a small pilot program in a geo-fenced area in Texas under constant supervision, and certainly don’t have a fleet of appreciating assets.

If you bought a Tesla for $50,000 in 2022 expecting it to be worth $100,000 today, you are likely disappointed. If you bought 4,000 of them with borrowed money, you are Mistergreen.