It’s been years since I’ve checked the used electric market, but I’m seeing cars like the Hyundai Ionic 6 or Polestar 2 for low 30s, where as they were in the high 40s or mid 50s new a year ago.
My suspicion is that:
- Normal car depreciation when driven off the lot
- General fear of batteries wearing down prematurely, even if the car has ~10k miles
- Any applicable federal rebates or otherwise have already been claimed and can’t be claimed on used vehicles(?)
Is there any other reason why these drop so quickly? Would buying one be considered foolish in anyway?
Another point people aren’t bringing up is the fear of how soon a battery goes out. There are still a lot of fear mongering articles out there and no one wants to pay 30k for a car if they have to pay another 15k in three years. Until the lifetime of batteries becomes common knowledge people will only look for new EVs where the warranty is just starting for them.
Yeah, I’ve heard that’s a concern. I also heard that there hasn’t been enough failures to know when you should expect batteries to fail. I’ve heard numbers like 300k-500k miles, since the cells inside the batteries are rated for thousands and thousands of cycles. I guess one way to hedge your bets would be to buy one that has modular battery replacements, so you only pay 4k vs 20k