A friend of mine was in the market for new(used) car and was shopping offers for his old car and Carvana was the highest by a significant margin while Carmax effectively told him "thanks but we've got used vehicles coming out our ears". This was also shortly after the whole Zillow/Opendoor debacle - we started talking about how ridiculous it was that they were offering so much for a depreciating asset, plus covering storage and transporation costs and all the other attendant overhead. He opened a short position and I think closed it after he made about 4x or 5x his initial investment (I think they were at like 70 dollars per share at the time).

Carvanas pricing was ridiculous. They would offer top dollar. Alue without ever really seeing the car. I think it was very heavily algorithm driven, and wasn't being watched enough by human eyes to looks for anomalies, or just to look at a car and realize that maybe they are offering too much. They have made some sellers very happy with the money they were offering for used cars, but I really think they have been overpaying for a good chunk of thier inventory.

I sold a car to them the other day that was 10 years old for 18k.

I dont think inventory is their issue, but rather the fact they are a lender more than a dealer. They just make a lot of questionable loans and repackage them for sale, sort of.

Seven months ago they were "thriving".

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28733634

Stock now down over 90% from high.

> I wonder if they could have suffered from the supply crunch. Last I checked, 5-year-old Corollas were pushing $20k, and a new base model is about the same price.

There are no new base models available at dealerships and they're not expected any time soon. The list price hasn't caught up to the market conditions so they don't ship any base trim models. The higher trim models are available but dealerships charge 5-10k on top of list price.

I got a new hybrid for around $23K in late 2020, when it looked like I might be commuting again in the near future, and car sales and gas prices were both in the toilet.

For some incomprehensible reason people were buying the nearly-identical non-hybrid model for essentially the same price. It makes me think of the Bloom County cartoon: "Louise, dump the milk! The cat drinks unleaded from now on!"

Now, cars like mine, with 12K miles are being advertised for $30K, sometimes more.

In the meantime, my employer has just eliminated the health-based accommodations that let some people telecommute full time, just as we've got a solid month or so of rising covid cases and the governor setting policies tested positive.