Thread by @PlainSite

The ink is still wet on the papers Leopold Visser signed on behalf of Tesla Finance LLC—"Captive finance arm of Tesla in the US"—and TALT Holdings LLC, with TALT being the Tesla Auto Lease Trust. Kudos to @TSLAchooo for making the clear and direct connection to $CVNA.

@TSLAchooo Inquiring minds want to know. $TSLA $CVNA

@TSLAchooo The collaboration documented by @montana_skeptic on the $TSLA / $CVNA relationship is the authoritative text on the topic, but one more detail that might be of interest: even though most of these Tesla listings seem to be *perpetually* being purchased by another customer...

@TSLAchooo @montana_skeptic ...the Carvana website only reserves a "pending" purchase for 40 minutes from the time of account creation, whether or not the first step of the checkout wizard is even complete. So either people are re-checking out every 40 minutes, or this is a "special project" at $CVNA.

Carvana is either creating fake accounts on its own site to hold these vehicles in a state of perpetual near-purchase, or it has hard-coded a different time limit in its database for certain vehicles and is using a "special" internal account. The latter is easier and more likely.

And just to be sure, starting to purchase the one non-pending sale 2019 Tesla Model 3 listed frees up the status for the Volvo (in another browser to simulate a random visitor), and puts 40 minutes on the clock for the Tesla.

One way to alter the time limit, even without hard-coding, is to put the countdown clock on pause. Carvana's API version 1.0 provides at least two methods to pause the timer, with associated functions.

The API also shows that there is an object attribute called "vehicleLock", in addition to the ability to pause the timer. vehicleLock is the likely culprit: a hard-coded mechanism likely tied to a database field to make the car perpetually locked, or unavailable to others.

Digging a little further reveals that one Model 3 pending purchase is set to become available at 6:38 A.M. GMT on May 14th, or 4 minutes after the screenshot was taken at 11:34 P.M. PDT on May 13th. 4 minutes later, it did become available.

More perplexing and consistent with the behavior documented by @montana_skeptic: Carvana vehicle ID 1395291 (carvana.com/vehicle/1395291), scheduled to become available at 5:30 P.M. GMT on May 14th, or almost 12 hours from when this screenshot was taken at 11:45 P.M. PDT on May 13th.

The default timer for typical $CVNA customers is 40 minutes. So how is this $TSLA vehicle locked up for almost 12 hours, with the release timestamp (vehicleUnlockDateTime) pre-recorded in the database?

View the direct API response for vehicle "availability" with the below URL, substituting the vehicle ID from Carvana's website. Here the vehicle ID is 1395291. Note the "vehicleUnlockDateTime" result.

apim.carvana.io/vehicle-detail…

$CVNA also wants us to think that purchases are pending for vehicles that aren't even there yet ("RESERVE NOW! COMING SOON"). You'll have to wait until December 31 in the year 9999 to get them. lockType: WIP. (Work in progress?)

Several Carvana $TSLA Model 3 vehicle IDs are set to become "available" in the year 9999: 1413360, 1422650, 1430592, and 1435006. These vehicles are all overpriced, over $42,000 used.

Overpriced $CVNA Vehicles -> Inflated $TSLA RVG -> Inflated $TSLA Up-Front Revenue Recognition -> Inflated $TSLA "Profit" -> Inflated $TSLA Stock Price.

Party like it's 9999.

$CVNA isn't willing to "lock" car listings until December 31, 9999 for normal customers. But about 10% of cars on the site are, including many $TSLA vehicle listings.

The conversation with Trina at $CVNA doesn't explain the situation. And it's 40 minutes, not 30.

Here is how a 2016 blog post explains Carvana On-Demand. Even if the two "COMING SOON" listings are On-Demand listings, two are not and they are still reserved until December 31, 9999 by a mystery buyer at artificially elevated prices. carvana.com/research/2016/…