Yes, There Is a Best Time of Year to Buy a New Car
Here are the weeks to mark on your calendar if you’re car shopping with a discount in mind
3 min
You can save thousands of dollars on a new car by buying at the right time of year.
Typically, the best time to shop for a new car is when the new version of that same vehicle is about to go on sale, so dealerships will want to clear space for the new models. The closer you get to the new model’s arrival date, the more you can save on older models, said Lori Wittman, president of retail solutions for Cox Automotive.
“Savvy buyers who time their purchases around redesign releases, year-end clearances, tax season or other demand shifts can secure substantial savings,” said Zach Klempf, chief executive of Selly Automotive, a San Francisco-based software company.
This guide explains which weeks to mark on your calendar if you’re shopping for discounts on a car, and why these strategies hold true year after year.
- What are the best months to start car shopping?
- When are the best times of year to get a deal on a car?
- What are the best months for buying electric vehicles (EV)?
- If there is one best day of the year to buy a car…
What are the best months to start car shopping?
If buying the latest model or a specific color or trim isn’t a top concern, start car shopping in August.
Car buying is not unlike buying an iPhone: When new iPhones are released, old models will drop in price. Cars take up a lot more space than an iPhone, though, so dealerships tend to start discounting in the summer—a few months before new models arrive—to clear out inventory.
“Traditionally, automakers retool their factories for the new models in the summer, so that makes August, September and October a good time to shop for an earlier model,” said Wittman.
Look for cash-back programs and other incentives as manufacturers start clearing out their inventory, said Klempf.
“We’re currently seeing incentives return with strong interest rates and deep discounts on 2023 inventory,” said Wittman.
Start paying attention in the fall, from September to December. New models are typically released in the fall of the preceding year, with 2024 models announced in the fall 2023 and start arriving in October. For new car models released in the fall, dealerships will typically have units on-hand for same-day delivery.
When are the best times of year to get a deal on a car?
Big holiday “sales” at dealerships—think Memorial Day and Labor Day—are more of a marketing gimmick than an actual chance for deep discounts, according to Nathan MacAlpine, the founder of CarMate, a Los Angeles-based car brokership.
For used cars, MacAlpine said tax season, from early April to early May, is a sweet spot for buyers. When people get their tax refund back in the spring, a lot of them go car shopping. Dealerships compete for customers by offering deals.
“Just after tax time, I always find it’s busy on my end of selling cars, which means there are more discounts,” said MacAlpine.
What are the best months for buying electric vehicles (EV)?
EV sales are seasonal, too. The months leading up to the end of the year tend to be a popular time for EV buyers who want to take advantage of tax benefits before they expire, said Klempf.
Next year, this will be less of a problem: EV buyers will get up to $7,500 off the purchase right at the dealership, rather than wait months until filing their tax return to get the credit.
If there is one best day of the year to buy a car…
To time your car purchase for maximum savings, Cox Automotive’s Wittman recommends marking some dates on your calendar.
“The end of the month, the end of a quarter or the end of the year are also good times to find deals on both new and used cars,” said Wittman. Salespeople are under pressure to hit sales quotas at those times to earn bonuses for high sales volume, and they’re more likely to offer discounts to get deals done.
“My personal favorite time to buy a car is on the last day of a calendar year, in the evening,” said Klempf of Selly Automotive.
He personally helped family members secure end-of-year deals on Toyota vehicles, such as a gold-colored Camry, a hue that wasn’t in high demand. “We managed to negotiate a discount of nearly 20% on the car,” he said of the purchase, which was made near close of business in December. The dealership explicitly told them that they were striving to hit their sales quota.
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From making unpopular decisions to learning when to listen, leaders from five businesses reveal what nobody prepared them for — and how running a company has challenged their expectations.
Technology and semiconductor shares fell sharply as investors questioned the debt financing the AI infrastructure boom and confronted higher rates and Chinese competition.
Elon Musk is exploring a potential merger between Tesla and SpaceX, a deal that could reshape the future of AI, robotics, autonomous vehicles and space technology. With a combined valuation potentially reaching $3.5 trillion, the move could bring Musk’s vision of an interconnected technology ecosystem closer to reality, although a deal remains uncertain.
5 min
Elon Musk has engineered ties between Tesla TSLA 3.41%increase; up pointing triangle and SpaceX SPCX 7.79%increase; up pointing triangle that are hard to break, and now he wants to fuse them together permanently.
Musk has run both Tesla and SpaceX concurrently over the past two decades, using a schedule that dictated which days he spent focused on each business.
The companies have often shared resources and personnel, signaling their close ties. Last year, SpaceX looked into creating a spacesuit for Tesla’s humanoid robot Optimus, a person familiar with the matter said. Tesla last week showed off its new Roadster, a vehicle featuring SpaceX rocket thrusters that it hopes to soon bring to market.
And in recent months, Musk has repositioned both companies by expanding beyond their core operations toward a shared mission centered on artificial intelligence.
The world’s richest man on Tuesday signaled his interest in tying up SpaceX and Tesla, marking what would be the biggest corporate merger of all time. Because he serves as chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla, Musk said committees of independent directors at both companies are evaluating a possible deal, adding that a transaction might not come to fruition.
The committees will likely evaluate, with lawyers and bankers, how each company would fare in a potential deal and how a deal might best be structured. They then present their conclusions to their respective boards, who typically vote on whether to proceed.
“It’s an odd Kabuki dance where two groups of people are talking and I can’t be in the conversation,” Musk told SpaceX investors on Tuesday in response to an analyst’s question about a potential deal.
For Musk, the merger supports his vision of a world full of autonomous cars, humanoid robots and weekly rocket launches, as well as the data centers and satellites required to keep the whole thing running.
Some investors and analysts said they expect a transaction would be structured as an all-stock deal, with SpaceX potentially paying a modest premium for Tesla shares.
SpaceX, which has a market value of about $2 trillion, said it is seeing sharp growth in revenue across its businesses, which include operating data centers, launching rockets and operating satellite networks such as the internet service Starlink. Tesla is valued at about $1.5 trillion and is expanding its operations beyond its automotive and energy business. Shares in both companies traded higher following the news Tuesday.
Musk’s substantial ownership stakes in both companies, along with voting control at SpaceX, has enabled him to set the deal in motion. Analysts and investors said the deal will probably face regulatory scrutiny internationally, though some see Musk’s close relationship with the Trump administration as an asset to getting approval.
Blurred lines
The companies haven’t said which directors are on the special committees evaluating a potential deal. Several SpaceX and Tesla board members have either personal or business ties to Musk. And like Musk, venture capitalist Ira Ehrenpreis sits on both boards.
In a filing this week, Tesla outlined millions of dollars in business agreements with SpaceX and its subsidiaries last year, including $143 million in car sales to SpaceX, $3.3 million in advertising that it bought on the social-media platform X and $430 million in revenue from the sale of Megapack batteries for SpaceX’s data centers.
The companies also split the cost of resources including the use of Musk’s SpaceX jet and the bill for his personal security, which he runs through a private company.
Employees at both companies routinely move between companies to work on special projects, and some executives have dual roles, including Charles Kuehmann, vice president of materials engineering at both SpaceX and Tesla, and Ashok Elluswamy, the vice president of AI software at Tesla who runs a joint venture with SpaceX called Digital Optimus.
Over the years, Musk has launched new startups within his empire, including brain-implant company Neuralink, underground-tunnel developer the Boring Company and xAI, the AI startup that merged with SpaceX in February.
It is that AI business that Musk thinks can serve a market worth tens of trillions of dollars, justifying the need for a merger.
The business case goes like this: Tesla is developing robotaxis and robots, which it calls “physical AI.” SpaceX is working on the back end of physical AI: the data-center capacity and internet connection required for those robotaxis and robots to operate continuously.
“I don’t see what the value of Tesla is if it’s not merged with SpaceX,” said investment adviser Ross Gerber, a former Tesla bull turned critic invested in both companies. “If they don’t merge, the brains of everything that runs Tesla is owned by another company.”
On top of it all, both companies face constraints on the supply chains they need to make this world a reality, particularly when it comes to chips. To address this, Musk earlier this year announced a joint venture between Tesla, SpaceX and Intel to design and manufacture chips in Texas. “The most epic chip-building exercise by far,” he has said.
Musk at the wheel
For Musk, a merger would also solve two problems: demands on his attention and his lack of control at Tesla.
Tesla for years was Musk’s only public company, a status that came with greater scrutiny. There, Musk reports to a public board, as well as individual investors who make up around 30% of Tesla’s voting power, according to FactSet.
The question of Musk’s attention became a particular focus for investors and the board in recent years after he acquired Twitter in 2022 and launched xAI in 2023, and again in 2025 as he spent time in Washington, D.C., running the Department of Government Efficiency in the early months of President Trump’s second term.
As Tesla’s car business suffered in 2025, Musk threatened to take his AI ambitions outside the company if he wasn’t granted 25% voting control. Last November, Tesla shareholders approved a new pay package for Musk, which created a path for him to vastly expand his stake.
As of Sept. 30, Musk owned a roughly 20% stake in Tesla, according to the company’s proxy filing.
The SpaceX IPO gave Musk a different path. When SpaceX went public in June, the deal’s structure enabled him to have more than 80% voting power at the company—so much that he can’t be fired and decisions can’t be made without his support.
If SpaceX acquires Tesla, he will likely stay in control.
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