EVs are depreciating faster than gas-powered cars

https://restofworld.org/2025/ev-depreciation-blusmart-collapse/

by belter • 9 months ago

431 939 9 months ago

bell-cot• 9 months ago

You know you're old when - the headline instantly reminds you how fast those newfangled "desktop computers" depreciated, compared to the adding machines and typewriters that they were trying to replace.

gladiatr723• 9 months ago

Well, sure. EV'S are smart phones on wheels. Are you going to grab your Samsung 5s in 2030, power it back up and use it to store your most sensitive personal data? Even the lowest-end varieties are always-on, internet-conected devices. Their safety and function is on the same tier as today's phone models. Expensive today, junk in 5 years.

Thanks, but I'm hanging in to my old Subaru.

electric_muse2• 9 months ago

I think the most accurate part of your analogy is how fast the technology changes and renders yesterday’s product obsolete.

Just saw the Audi etron gt has amazing deals on used cars. Then I saw a new model coming out with better battery, more power, better range, and more features. Suddenly last year’s model is way less compelling.

jgalt2122• 9 months ago

True. At this point in time I'd only lease an EV. That being said, given that 100% of cars on the road won't be EV by 2030 as some have tried to convince us, I suspect the rate of innovation in EV land to slow as EV investment is greatly curtailed by the car companies.

gladiatr723• 9 months ago

Heh. Obsolete? More like Deprecated.

mindslight• 9 months ago

As someone who is half in the market for a new vehicle, this is exactly where my thoughts went to. If I buy a car, I'm expecting that to be a 10-20 year purchase. Whereas the surveillance industry's churn culture considers five years of software support for a cell phone as some kind of amazing thing. And since more of an EV has been newly designed around software control (including the chief wear part, the battery), I would expect them to be much more wed to that disposability culture overall. Am I going to be able to get a new battery for a 20 year old EV at a market-competitive (with other cell packs) price?

rootusrootus34• 9 months ago

Most non-Tesla EVs aren't notably different from a software/surveillance perspective than the comparable ICE car.

rootusrootus34• 9 months ago

Trying to compare an EV to a smartphone is self-serving, you wanted to convince yourself that your already-made decision was the right one. Reality wouldn't be so kind.

gladiatr723• 9 months ago

No, it isn't. It doesn't have to be this way. The original Volt comes to mind. Electric-hybrid, somewhat affordable with the bonus that it wasn't remotely hackable. The non-electric bit was a 1-cylender motor that only kicked in when the battery was low. Oh, and don't forget its use of buttons and switches vs a dash-bolted touchscreen.

And, you know, there were these flip phones that worked pretty much everywhere that held a useful charge up to a couple weeks that you could use to call AAA in a pinch. They stood in quite handily in place of the integrated spyware present today.

To quote Corey Doctrow: Investors love the sound of a “software-based car” because they understand that a gadget that is connected to the cloud is ripe for rent-extraction, because with software comes a bundle of “IP rights” that let the company control its customers, critics and competitors:

A “software-based car” gets to mobilize the state to enforce its “IP,” which allows it to force its customers to use authorized mechanics (who can, in turn, be price-gouged for licensing and diagnostic tools). “IP” can be used to shut down manufacturers of third party parts. “IP” allows manufacturers to revoke features that came with your car and charge you a monthly subscription fee for them.

and then there are situations like: https://insideevs.com/news/723669/fisker-inc-bankruptcy-chap...

or the recent fiasco with e-Jeeps disabled by the side of the road by a freaking entertainment system update.

YeahThisIsMe• 9 months ago

Weird that this is presented as a problem for some reason.

They're objects that lose value when you use them. That's normal.

high_na_euv• 9 months ago

Dafuck? No.

It says that it deprecates faster than other type of cars which should be worse in this particular criteria

electric_muse2• 9 months ago

Hey, did you read the article? The newsworthy point is that the EVs depreciate faster than gas counterparts.

But hey, that just means better used EV prices for the rest of us. You can get some high end gently used ones for a great price.

—

“ For Tesla owners in the U.S., their 2023 Model Ys are worth 42% less than what they paid two years ago, while a Ford F-150 truck bought the same year depreciated just 20%. Older EV models depreciate even faster than newer ones. ”

2OEH8eoCRo0• 9 months ago

Better used EV prices for buyers just means that EV sellers get ripped off

Why buy a car that depreciates hella fast?

linsomniac2• 9 months ago

I'm not sure I'd call an F-150 a "counterpart" to a Tesla Model Y, especially when the F-150 Lightning exists. I assume that it is because F-150 vs F-150 Lightning disproves the premise of this article.

dabbledash• 9 months ago

Because people prefer their objects to lose value more slowly?

Not sure why this would be hard to understand.

rjdj377dhabsn5• 9 months ago

If they're losing value primarily because better options are becoming available rather than their own functionality decreasing, that's not necessarily a bad thing.

lotsofpulp4• 9 months ago

Tesla lowered the prices dramatically in Jan 2023:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1F5IQOynIawoXiJPV...

It does not seem remarkable that a new product takes some time to find its market price, and COGS goes down as supply chain improvements are made.

And there was a $7,500 tax credit at time of purchase introduced in Jan 2023. At least the graph comparing Model Y to Ford F150 seems expected.

rpigab• 9 months ago

Wierd that we're presenting SpaceX rockets that explode shortly after takeoff as a problem.

They're objects that disintegrate in the atmosphere at some point when you use them. That's normal, it even has a name: rapid unscheduled disassembly.

gregoriol2• 9 months ago

If something looses value faster than something else it can be compared to, then it's considered as worse, meaning fewer people are going to buy it, meaning if you have one, you'll be able to afford less than others in a few years.

rjdj377dhabsn5• 9 months ago

Something's ability to store value is only one factor, and probably not the most important, when you're not buying it as an investment.

A bar of gold will hold value a lot better than a car, but that doesn't mean a car is a worse purchase.

p1dda7• 9 months ago

Trying hard to rationalise your EV purchase I see

1272• 9 months ago

Easier way to change the battery would decrease the cost of ownership by a ton and decrease the profits of EV companies also a ton. Which I guess is why it doesn't happen.

cr125rider• 9 months ago

Do you have a source that the labor is more significant than the materials of a new battery?

1272• 9 months ago

I don't claim that. I claim that the process could be improved by a significant margin if there was incentive to do that.

nomel2• 9 months ago

decrease the profits of EV companies also a ton

Nobody profits from EV sales except Tesla (and 1/7 Chinese companies) [1].

[1] https://www.carscoops.com/2025/03/only-four-ev-brands-are-pr...

pm90• 9 months ago

Well, that just means that secondhand evs might cater to people who could not or don’t want to shell out a lot of money for new EVs.

As the battery tech and service infrastructure matures we probably will see less of this though.

christkv• 9 months ago

We are not at the top of curve where we get getting small incremental upgrades between models. Until the curve flattens out depreciation will be high.

a3w• 9 months ago

gas-powered cars will become much more expensive to operate. Perhaps not in the US and A, but everywhere the Climate treaty of Paris has any value.

In Germany, you can buy used luxury cars at high discount due to being fuel inefficient for years now, and that is with barely a price increase for gas and barely 1 l/100km to through 3 l/100km cars taking up more market share.

wil4212• 9 months ago

Beside fuel efficiency and the long charge time for EVs, many EVs seem more like non-repairable iPhones than their ICE counterparts. Tesla’s look very safe but seems like you can not replace body parts. Same with Rivian. I saw a guy dent a rear quarter panel and the quote was $45k. Only because the crazy way they manufactured things.

Is BYD any different?

rcMgD2BwE72F• 9 months ago

Tesla’s look very safe but seems like you can not replace body parts

What?

https://parts.tesla.com/en-US/landingpage

https://epc.tesla.com/en-US/catalogs/dab210aa-2a7d-43b3-9e9b...

Anyone can by them directly from Tesla.

kreetx2• 9 months ago

Just what I've heard, but an Uber driver told me how he upgraded his older Model 3 suspension to a newer variant because they attach the same way. So at least this part you can swap if you want.

xnx2• 9 months ago

I saw a guy dent a rear quarter panel and the quote was $45k.

The expected repair cost was ~1/10 that: https://www.thedrive.com/news/41000-rivian-fender-bender-act...

hypeatei• 9 months ago

Basically, we don't understand batteries and their lifespans that well while we understand wear and tear on an engine quite well. Sure, these concerns are valid, but it seems like you could voice the same concerns over any "early" technology.

Retric• 9 months ago

EVs range degrades in a meaningful fashion with time and new EVs are improving faster than ICE cars, thus faster depreciation.

The flip side of this is a general over correction as the new car tax break ends used EVs are really compelling today. A slightly used Long Range Model 3 is a far better option than their new Base Model 3.

Eventually ICE cars were designed for their resale value so people buying a new car every 3 or 5 years could afford to spend more money. That’s coming for EVs as the technology improves battery degradation means the range sweet spot will be chosen to keep the used market happy not just new buyers etc.

interstice3• 9 months ago

EVs are improving faster than ICE cars, thus faster depreciation. This, it’s a bit like comparing the depreciation of gpus in peak innovation years to now. They do similar things but they are in completely different contexts

IAmBroom9• 9 months ago

It's relevant to current resale issues.

silexia• 9 months ago

Why does anyone accept the government enforced massive downgrade that is switching from gas to electric?

IAmBroom9• 9 months ago

What country are you in? What government enforcement are you on about? And why a massive downgrade? And why don't you change the channel off of Fox occasionally?

Flamingoat8• 9 months ago

What government enforcement are you on about?

UK and EU are defacto making Petrol/Diesel cars production uneconomical / illegal. California IIRC are also has a deadline for Petrol/Diesel cars IIRC.

And why a massive downgrade?

The biggest ones for me are:

1) Range. I have a 700 mile range on my car. My old car before that could do 600 miles. I can travel from one end of the UK to another with 1/2 fuel stops. I have family I see regularly on the other side of the country. I can do the trip in 4 providing good traffic In an Electric vehicle that time is 5-7 hours due to the extra stops required. I know this because my mother and step father recently came to visit me and they have an electric vehicle. If you regularly do longer trips even 30 minutes off the road is a long time. I don't stop for anything other than a bathroom break when I do a long journey.

2) Charging time. I live in an apartment. I would need to charge the car away from home. That is a massive PITA IMO. I spend maybe 5 minutes in a petrol station, compared to 30 minutes at a charger.

3) Almost every modern vehicle car has a bunch of annoyances in the vehicle. The electric cars I have seen have this dialled up to 11.

4) Cost. Electric vehicles are really expensive IMO. I can get a cheap second hand diesel for a few thousand in reasonable condition.

And why don't you change the channel off of Fox occasionally?

Snarky responses like this is why people become resentful. Just because people have a different view point to yours doesn't mean they have been brainwashed by someone.

A lot of us are happy with the vehicles we already have. I simply do not have an interest in ever owning an electric vehicle. I also prefer older vehicles and bikes because they are simpler and I prefer the way they operate.

A lot of these themes btw was explored by Demolition Man with Sly Stallone. The "resistance" figures to the "regime" are eating meat and driving a v8 muscle car.

I suggest you watch that, it is a fun movie and Sandra Bullock looks gorgeous in it.

rightbyte• 9 months ago

I don't think the comparison is fair.

The electricity and ICE fuel costs should be included if the battery is included. The battery is some sort of upfront fuel cost in a way the gas tank isn't.

Since mileage wear is proportional to fuel use anyway.

IAmBroom9• 9 months ago

If we were talking cost of ownership, sure.

But we're discussing resale value specifically, and it doesn't matter if you spent $25 or $50 "filling it up" last week when you sell it.

potato37328429• 9 months ago

I prefer to think of a battery as a transmission since rebuild/replacement costs and inconvenience are comparable.

FabCH4• 9 months ago

The article is making a huge mistake though, comparing apples to oranges.

Resale value of EVs doesn't depend on mileage nowhere near as much as ICE cars. EVs are just much simpler machines and electric motors can do a million miles with no maintenance, and the only maintenance you have is the oil in the differential, which is often simpler because it is single-speed. Compare that to thousand different mechanical parts that all wear out in a ICE engine. Which is why ICE cars resale value is determined by the odometer.

What drives EV resale value is the health of the battery, which is influenced more by recharge cycles and straight up passage of time.

And the anecdotal evidence of a commercial fleet going bankrupt and not getting much for their EVs... Well yeah, would you buy from such a source? I wouldn't. They usually don't follow longevity advice for battery charging, because they have to optimize for time-in-use.

As an anecdote, I bought all my ICE cars second hand, and would usually sell them 3-4 years later just before major maintenance was needed. My EV is now 8 years old, runs like the day I got it and had 1 repair, when the motor that drives the window up and down broke and battery capacity is still the same, or if it changed it's such a small change I didn't notice. I don't expect to sell any time soon, if ever. I expect I will just do a battery swap in 5-10 years.

natbobc• 9 months ago

The article is comparing 2 scenarios that have other explanations: a fire sale of a large fleet and Tesla which has an image problem because of its leadership.

I’m not saying the article is wrong I’d just like to see broader representation (Chevy bolt, lucid air, etc).

mortoc• 9 months ago

Worse than that, the main vehicle it compares everything to is the Model Y. There may have been one or two things related to Tesla this year, and not other EVs, that might have hurt resale values for some reason...

interstice3• 9 months ago

Not sure I understand the part about differentials being single speed, aren’t they unrelated?

IAmBroom9• 9 months ago

My take was: the only lube-requiring, wear-out-fast part was the differential, and on EVs they are much simpler, with less to wear out.

ICEs have MANY wear-out-fast parts (where "fast" is relative) requiring lube, and lube itself suggests the risk of frictional degradation.

klaff2• 9 months ago

I think the phrasing was imprecise and they were referring to the transmission and differential. Most EVs use a single-speed gear reduction system - one gear mesh from motor shaft to a compound gear, another mesh from that gear to the ring gear of the differential. In contrast with ICE drivetrains, there is no clutch or torque converter (the electric motor can operate from a standstill), no reverse gearing (the electric motor can operate both CW and CCW), and no synchronizers and dog-clutches (as in manual transmissions), no hydraulic logic and clutches of automatic transmissions, nor the hydraulically operated sheaves found in CVTs. We've been hobbing gears to operate at those power levels for roughly a century.

I think Porsche has done a 2-speed EV transmission and Lucid moved the differential inside the motor and has two-reduction gear sets on either side, but those are both unusual designs.

cogman107• 9 months ago

My battery is starting to get to unacceptable degradation; I have a 7 year old EV and my top battery percentage is 78% of the purchase.

I inquired about a battery swap and it's around $10->12k. I'm seriously considering it in the next couple of years as I see that as buying another 9->10 years of life for my car.

I might grab a used EV instead, though, as the one thing my car lacks is a heat pump, which kinda sucks in the winter.

rickydroll• 9 months ago

Your warranty should cover the battery swap. I know my Chevy Volt's warranty is 150,000 miles or 10 years. It may only be 100,000. The length of the warranty depends on whether you live in a CARB state.

If a dealer charges you between $10K to $12K for a swap out, that's the "fuck you for not buying a car that makes the dealership more money" price. Several third-party vendors refurbish and sell EV batteries for much less.

I know what you mean by not having a heat pump sucking. The Volt has resistive heating for wintertime, and it definitely drains the battery. I dress warm and use the seat heaters when I'm driving by myself.

sowbug• 9 months ago

Lithium-ion batteries have fallen in price at least 40% since you bought your car in 2018 (https://elements.visualcapitalist.com/charted-lithium-ion-ba...). Assuming there's some correlation between that decline and the replacement price you're facing, which is unfortunately not a given, it would be worth it to hold out as long as you can.

We can only dream of a day when battery packs are a standardized commodity, and as easy to change as motor oil. But modern industry is far too extractive.

guerby• 9 months ago

Just like for ICE buyers will learn about the important things about EV choice and ownership.

An EV maker that sells parts at inflated prices including the battery will get less and less customers.

As those customers look at catalog prices for important parts including the battery before buying an EV.

Random web page on the topic:

https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/costs-ev-battery-repl...

Another listing price:

https://evshop.eu/en/13-batteries

Note the used LFP 55 kWh tesla pack at $4140 so ... $75/kWh.

thegreatpeter2• 9 months ago

if its a tesla you can probably get it replaced under warranty. i think its 8 years

Joker_vD• 9 months ago

comparing apples to oranges.

In a situation when we're being told to completely give up on apples (ICE cars) and switch entirely to oranges (EVs), I am afraid we'd have to make exactly the comparison you find so distasteful for some strange reason. They are both vehicles, sorry, fruits, after all.

FabCH4• 9 months ago

You do not need to use age on the X-axis.

It's fine to compare ICE and EV.

It's not fine to be shoddy with data.

TechRemarker• 9 months ago

"which is influenced more by recharge cycles and straight up passage of time" would seem similar to "mileage" since both increase in general the passage of time and driving. But yes, driving two cars equal amount of time presumably the ICE will wear down far more than the equivalent EV so the title is quite misleading to those looking at a glance.

FabCH4• 9 months ago

Not really in practice.

A lot of charging is influenced by convenience and lifestyle rather than miles, for example:

People charge at work from 68% to 75% because is convenient.

People always draining the battery because they don't have charging at home.

Commercial EVs being charged based on loading/unloading schedules etc.

...

cyanydeez• 9 months ago

So likely the resale value is more percieved tham actual.

Another market failure to adequately assist us in making the best choice.

rasz12• 9 months ago

the only maintenance

Suspension and tires are the biggest items for EVs. The twist is cheap owner can neglect those and keep driving past service window with ripped bushings and clapped out tires until hitting that magic 3 year goal, then you buy used EV in need of 4 of everything.

rootusrootus34• 9 months ago

You can see the tires, at least, so that will just come off the value. And if you turn in a lease at three years with clapped out tires they'll make you pay for new ones.

iancmceachern• 9 months ago

For me, a lot of the mileage on a car is wear and tear and general "niceness" of the interior.

In my previous vehicle I replaced the transition, engine, brakes, etc. but I sold it once the interior wasn't "nice" anymore.

This aspect does track between EVs and conventional vehicles.

seanmcdirmid4• 9 months ago

In the future, it might be worth it to have the interior of an EV refurbished and updated. What I'm really nervous about is the infotainment system, eventually it is out of date but unless you are maybe driving a Tesla, only the original model will work in your car! It would be nice if some of the electronics could be easily upgraded after 10 years. That isn't even counting failure (mine failed and had to be replaced in the first six months, but hopefully that was a product defect that usually hits quickly rather than slowly over time).

If solid state batteries actually come out, they probably won't be retrofitted into existing EVs. That's a bummer, but I guess by the time I'm ready to change cars self driving will be a real thing (the Waymo kind, not the Tesla kind).

mikkupikku• 9 months ago

As an anecdote, I bought all my ICE cars second hand, and would usually sell them 3-4 years later just before major maintenance was needed. My EV is now 8 years old

I mean, that sounds quite poor on both counts TBQH. I bought a used 2002 Honda Accord in 2004 and drove it until last year with little more than regular oil changes. I expect to get the same kind of life out of the Mazda 3 I replaced it with. Anything less than 10 years out of a car sounds like something went terribly wrong to me.

rootusrootus34• 9 months ago

Yeah I expect to drive my Lightning for at least 10 years. Probably a lot longer since it's a pretty simple body-on-frame truck. I'm secretly hoping that since the battery just hangs between the frame rails, someone will come along in a few years and offer upgrades.

slavik81• 9 months ago

What drives EV resale value is the health of the battery, which is influenced more by recharge cycles and straight up passage of time.

The resale value drops much faster than the battery health. Hyundai has been tracking the degregation rates of the batteries in their Ioniq 5 vehicles and they've been holding up surprisingly well. Most of them have >90% battery capacity at over 100k miles. Their data was sparse for 250k miles, but half of them were still over 90% capacity.

I had trouble finding the original video, but the data is included in this summary: https://youtu.be/s3DMd0e4loQ?t=17s

FabCH4• 9 months ago

Well ok, the perception of battery health :)

solsane• 9 months ago

In that case, I’ll to cash in on this for my next car! I figured the degradation problem was much worse. My frame of reference is lithium laptop/phone batteries which definitely aren’t doing so hot 5 years in.

RRRA• 9 months ago

My EV is 3 years old, but I have no hope of being able to swap the battery every, at least not in any reasonable way. That said, it'll be fine for my use case for at least 15 years, so whatever :)

Marsymars12• 9 months ago

I recently sold my 14 year-old ICE car, and like 2/3 of the maintenance costs were for things that still would have been present if it had been an EV.

yardie• 9 months ago

Tires, brakes, and windshield washer fluid are the only regularly replaceable parts on an EV. My last ICE car, also that age, required oil, tires, coolant flush (100k miles), transmission (100k miles), water pump, thermostat, timing belt, and tensioners. And lots and lots of filters.

So, either you were really lucky with ICE or extremely unlucky with EVs.

dilyevsky2• 9 months ago

Belts, brakes, coolant system hoses, spark plugs, spark coils, various turbine valves if you have turbine, eventually turbine itself, gearbox fluid, oil + filters, fuel filters - shitload of things that need regular maintenance on ICE vs EV

themafia3• 9 months ago

I expect I will just do a battery swap in 5-10 years.

Do you expect it will be an OEM part or a remanufactured battery?

pedalpete• 9 months ago

I was hoping you would have said that the issue is that article is comparing a $50k SUV to a $30k work truck, and then turning the price drop into percentage drop.

I'd like to see them compare two similarly priced SUVs.

I am sure the ICE vehicle will still depreciate slower, but perhaps not as drastically different.

The buyers of these two vehicles used in the example are very different.

PeterStuer• 9 months ago

So much of this, but not all, could be mitigated with a guaranteed battery "refurbishing" program. Large part of an EV's value is tied up in the battery, which is a (longer term) consumable. So when an EV hits the second hand market, and there is no battery guarantee (or clear and trusted state and history reporting), the estimates on battery value will have to be on the low side, and the overall car value depreciated accordingly.

Traditional gas cars also have wear and tear with parts on the "consumables" spectrum, but these are considered more open to state inspection by a semi knowledgeable amateur, and the car's value is less tied to one specific black-box item.

interstice3• 9 months ago

I think modular and replaceable battery regulations are desperately needed. The sheer volume of waste from used ev batteries even through non battery issues like insurance write offs is likely to be staggering otherwise

thijson• 9 months ago

That requires a standards body and government mandate. It might not happen for a while.

bryanlarsen7• 9 months ago

Initial studies show that EV batteries typically last longer than the car. Making a car 10% heavier so the battery can be replaceable will put a lot of strain on our roads, our grid and our wallet for little benefit.

https://www.p3-group.com/en/p3-updates/battery-aging-in-prac...

energy123• 9 months ago

10% figure can be substantiated?

theideaofcoffee2• 9 months ago

10% heavier so the battery can be replaceable will put a lot of strain on our roads

No it won't. Road wear scales as the fourth power [0] in relationship to axle load, so even a modest increase in weight is still hugely outweighed by the damage done by a fully-loaded semi tractor-trailer (80k lbs). Cars, even EVs, are negligible in terms of road wear.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law

wat100002• 9 months ago

Are they not replaceable already? Older Teslas could literally change the battery in a few minutes. Newer ones aren’t quite so easy, but it’s a fairly quick matter of lifting up seat cushions, undoing some bolts and connectors, and connecting the new one. If your battery dies under warranty, they’re replacing the battery, not giving you a whole new car.

The issue isn’t that the batteries can’t be replaced, it’s that a new battery is quite expensive. Substantially more than a new motor for a typical ICE car.

Etheryte• 9 months ago

An average mid-size EV weighs somewhere in the ballpark of 2000kg. Surely making the battery replaceable would not add 200kg, that claim makes no sense.

general1465• 9 months ago

That could be done if manufacturers went with some "standard battery factor" like on PCs is 3,5" slot and you can put there HDD, SSD, or whatever fits.

Now you could just exchange battery as a module and replace NCA for Solid State in the future like HDD in the computer and car would be driving just fine.

kube-system9• 9 months ago

We're at the laserdisc part of the evolution of EVs. It's too early to standardize now, and besides, there are a lot of real performance advantages that can be gained from customizing battery packaging to the vehicle chassis.

loueed• 9 months ago

Computers get old and EV tech is constantly improving. ICE has been stable for decades. Tesla believes they can increase the market value of older EV's eventually by pushing autonomous driving.

I like the direction of https://slate.auto. Module, bring-your-own-computer. We'll see if they allow affordable trade-in's for upgrading battery/motors.

They could also work with CommaAI for autonomy.

tcbawo• 9 months ago

Is it really true that ICE has been stable? Cars seem to have been getting many innovations, especially with power, torque, and reliability. We probably don't hear much about it because it is low profile stuff and a mature product.

trashb5• 9 months ago

Actually ICE has improved significantly in the last 20 years, even though progress was held back by emission and safety regulations. In the year 2000 a sports car would have around 200/250hp while these days any sports car that wants to boast power has around 500hp or more.

Perhaps you're not into cars much but if you compare top cars on track days etc. you will know there have definitely been huge changes. Though during the last 20 years repairability and reliability also took a hit.

tim3332• 9 months ago

I'm not sure they've improved that much. Comparing my 1990 miata/mx5 with modern cars I prefer not having electronic screens and bleeping things all over the place. The only thing I'd chose to modernise is engine efficiency which is maybe a bit better now.

everdrive3• 9 months ago

and reliability.

The newest vehicle reliability advances are _less_ reliability via:

- cylinder deactivation

- ubiquitous turbos

- gasoline direction injection

- more computers

- generally higher cost of repairs (eg: if a car from 2023 needed a headlight it would cost much more than a car from 1998 needing a headlight, and even if they both had the same failure rate the reliability of the new car would be worse from cost alone)

anovikov• 9 months ago

Aren't they deprecating mainly because new EVs are better? In this case, it is not "derailing" but simply the actual replacement happening. And this effect will become smaller as the industry matures and EV prices stabilise.

At least that's what happened in 2022-2023 when prices of EVs and ICE cars quickly converged. No surprise existing EVs on the road deprecated rapidly.

diego_moita• 9 months ago

The upside of this story might be a change of culture in EVs in North America. Everywhere else in the world, EVs are cheap cars to urbanites. In the U.S./Canada they're muscle/status cars for rich people. This cheaper second hand market might help popularize them.

I live in Canada where the distances are long and the weather is freaking cold. These are 2 circumstances very adverse to EVs.

But, still, I love my Kia Niro EV. It is the best car I've ever had. The driving experience is so good that it made me enjoy driving; I always hated driving before this car.

EVs run much smoother, are more stable and more powerful. Besides, if you charge them at home, they're far cheaper; even if you don't have solar panels (I do have them, too).

IAmBroom9• 9 months ago

I have never heard of them described as "muscle cars". In the US, they seem like "green" virtue-signalling tech toys for the middle and upper-middle class, to me.

I'd happily buy one if I were a bit more comfortable with their use, but I'm a tech "dawdler".

mytailorisrich2• 9 months ago

In the UK I think most EVs are leased, especially through "salary sacrifice" schemes from employers (which saves the whole income tax on payments). Is it the same in the US?

In such case I suspect the impact is mostly on leasing companies with issues on viability and leasing costs (for consumers).

In UK/Europe this might also explain why depreciation after 3 years is so high: Leasing companies trying to dump EVs returned at end of leases.

JohnFen• 9 months ago

According to Experian, a bit over half of EVs are leased in the US (https://www.experianplc.com/newsroom/press-releases/2025/con...)

through "salary sacrifice" schemes from employers (which saves the whole income tax on payments)

I don't know if such a thing exists in the US. I'm not aware of it, but it could easily have escaped my notice.

mytailorisrich2• 9 months ago

Interesting! My take is that this is partly caused by people not trusting their long term value and reliability, and at the same time it contributes to their depreciation because it means the EVs are dumped on the used car market after 2-5 years (I think 3 years is popular for leases in the UK).

nicoburns• 9 months ago

EVs are simply immature products. The first truly mainstream models (car manufacturers making EVs their flagship model) outside of Tesla were released this year, or maybe last.

The first few generations of smartphones didn't last very long either (1-2 years). But now they last much longer (5-7 years). EV lifespans will expand in the same way as they mature as a product.

epistasis3• 9 months ago

I don't know where this idea comes from. I had a Fiat 500e when it first came out, about a decade ago, and it was fantastic even though unloved by the manufacturer, and it had to go in for a recall for two days once which was a hassle. Still better than the BMW that I bought when the 500e lease expired, because the BMW was in the shop for a whole week for some sort of tail light recall. I only bought the BMW because I was waiting for the Model 3 to come out, and switched to that eventually, and it is far far more mature than any other car of the era.

I bought a minivan when I had kids, and it's such a huuuuuuge step backwards on every front from the Model 3. There's so much ridiculous maintenance for a gas car, it really really sucks. And Toyota's build quality is absolute shit compared to Tesla, which supposedly gets dinged for build quality. All the plastic in the Toyota is falling out, the window seals are terrible, the whole thing is terrible in comparison to Tesla's supposedly bad build quality.

I've taken EVs on thousand mile road trips with an infant, and it was fantastic.

My EV is going to outlast my ICE by a long long time. The amount of fake FUD around EVs is mystifying to me. I can not understand why anyone would want a gas car wheee you have so much maintenance and always have to stop to fill up. So much wasted time and money on that BS.

eldaisfish3• 9 months ago

you know what they say, the plural of anecdotes is not data. The poor quality of Tesla's cars is well known. The high quality of Toyotas is well known as well.

instagib• 9 months ago

I’ve noticed hybrids are filling up dealers lots as well. They can’t sell them or won’t take a big loss on them. “Too heavy, expensive, less cargo space, and not enough benefits.” per sales.

There aren’t many EV’s on the lots either as the configuration team doesn’t see a need to order them from manufacturers if people aren’t buying them.

bryanlarsen7• 9 months ago

A hybrid has a smaller battery, so it goes through more cycles for the same milage than a pure EV. An EV might get 250,000 miles from a battery, a hybrid only half that.

wood_spirit• 9 months ago

This story doesn’t really gel with my understanding as an EV owner in Europe.

The post says that Tesla hold their value better than Chinese newcomers but that absolutely isn’t the prices I’m seeing in Europe.

In Europe Tesla resale value has plummeted due to brand destruction. Tesla was super popular when they launched as the first realistic EV to hit the main time. But they quickly got a poor reputation for build quality and never delivering on self-driving, and that was before the political damage the owner did which seems never recoverable in at least a generation.

Meanwhile comparable Chinese entrants are so new they aren’t yet at the 3 year mark where fleets sell off to second hand market.

Another interesting thing about non-Tesla EVs is that there aren’t a lot being resold; if you got one, you likely hang onto it. Personally I’ve just not yet let go of my Kia EV6 even though it sailed past the normal trade in point recently.

trashb5• 9 months ago

Tesla mostly focused on the American market anyway. In my understanding there are a lot of facilities for Tesla's that we don't have in Europe like the program where you can buy a refurbished Tesla from Tesla.

Additionally there is a political drive to not trust Chinese manufactured products so those EV's are probably harder to maintain, get support for and in general it is socially considered less status to have a Chinese EV instead of a Tesla. Where in Europe this cultural drive is not as present in Tesla vs Chinese . In my experience in the EU the drive is more about is it EV and the Chinese EV's often offer more features/value for less money.

tonyedgecombe• 9 months ago

Tesla mostly focused on the American market anyway.

There a lot of them in the UK (although I haven't seen so many newly registered ones lately).

hylaride2• 9 months ago

Tesla mostly focused on the American market anyway.

Not true at all. In 2023, before the brand became toxic, they sold more cars outside the US than internally. They were a huge percentage of the market in parts of Europe, especially Scandinavia. There was a lot of noise about the manufacturing centres in Germany as Tesla fought around labour laws and traditions, too.

They also bet big on China where they almost got to the point where they were selling as many cars as in the USA. Elon fell hook, line, and sinker for the classic Chinese government move to invite them into the market and then steal the tech and flood the market with domestic brands (this is not to say that they haven't improved on it, though).

RickJWagner• 9 months ago

I’d love to have an EV. I’m not even too frightened about the battery.

It’s just that the cars are aging like iPhones. Last years hardware package, hardware compatibility with latest software, etc are all people seem to talk about on Reddit. I think that’s a factor in the steep depreciation.

I just bought a new Corolla hybrid, it gets 60 miles per gallon and should last a good while. Maybe next purchase.

linuxftw2• 9 months ago

I'm currently leasing an EV for 24 months 7.5kMi/yr. The residual price is over $20k lower than MSRP. Without subsidy and steep discounts, nobody would buy these things. And IMO, the residual is about $5k higher than it will be worth based on low-mileage used vehicles of the same model for sale. That finally gets us to the price, almost 50% lower than the MSRP, which I personally value this car new with 0 miles.

These EVs should be much cheaper. Either batteries are so outlandishly expensive that this will never be economically viable for the vast majority of the world outside of cities, or companies are playing accounting games.

In any case, when purchasing a used EV, you're essentially risking the entire purchase price if you get a battery lemon. Buying a Bolt or what have you for $15-$20k, and having to replace the battery at 60%+ of your purchase price, that's too much risk. Whereas if you bought a used ICE vehichle for $15-20k, and your engine fails, you might might need to spend $1500-5k for a repair, it's not all or nothing. And with a moderate amount of research, you can determine which makes or models are prone to early large repairs.

If EV manufacturers would sell a no-questions-asked insurance policy that guarantees the life of the battery to 250k miles, there would be no issue.

megaman821• 9 months ago

Manufactures could offer battery inspections and extended warranties. Maybe with more data, I assume at 15-20 years old no one really knows what the failure modes of these batteries will be.

linuxftw2• 9 months ago

Well, a warranty would be a cost to the manufacturer. An insurance policy would be risk-adjusted recurring revenue.

trashb5• 9 months ago

I think there are other factor's beside the battery and EV's being dumped in the market that may affect the resale value that are not mentioned in the article.

First of all I believe that the car manufactures (especially for electric cars) these days use planned obsolescence tactics to limit a car's lifespan at one side, while also promising the buyers that the car could last for far longer compared to their old ICE cars. However this promise often doesn't seem to hold up in the real world which will decrease confidence once the cars start breaking earlier. This is especially problematic when you are running an business calculating in the promised lifespan instead of the actual lifespan, once a business finds out (and does the math) often it will make economical sense to dump the fleet.

On top of that I think a big problem with certain cars on the second hand market is big onetime investments. You can see that already in certain internal combustion engine cars that are know to require a costly fix after x amount of miles. This is quite important in the second hand market since you often have to expect to do the "big maintenance" once you purchase a second hand vehicle as people like to sell slightly before this maintenance is due (and often not tell you).

Where EV's may run for a long time without problems they require costly repairs once they do break. Most EV's are build in a mostly non repairable way, like many modern vehicles, and you have to pray that the parts will be available after 10 years. Also a lot of maintenance on EV's can not easily be done by an enthusiast in a shed as it requires special equipment, certification and skills. Where with an ICE engine you may run into smaller maintenance earlier you are paying these fixes incrementally, and may be able to do a lot of the maintenance yourself.

On top of that I think there is a certain saturation in the electric car market where people that care about buying an EV increasingly have a EV and the people that don't care (or prefer ICE) don't want to invest the additional premium, or uncertainty to buy an EV. For example I don't buy an EV because it's very impractical to charge it where I live and I like the added flexibility (miles) that an economy ICE car can provide.

bryanlarsen7• 9 months ago

A $25,000 used EV with 80,000 miles is not a good deal if you're going to have to spend $20,000 to replace the battery.

If you can get another 150,000 miles out of it with almost no maintenance or repair costs, it's a screaming good deal.

The latter is far more likely than the former, but people don't realize it yet.

https://www.p3-group.com/en/p3-updates/battery-aging-in-prac...

P. S. I will likely be buying a used EV soon.

Uvix2• 9 months ago

But why spend $45,000 on a used EV when you can get a new one for the same price or less?

bryanlarsen7• 9 months ago

I'm not, I'm going to spend ~$20,000 and I expect to save many thousands over the next 10 years in reduced maintenance compared to my ICE vehicle.

Edit: Oh I see the confusion. I should have been more explicit in my original comment that the second case involved not ever replacing the battery.

jillesvangurp2• 9 months ago

A $25,000 used EV with 80,000 miles is not a good deal if you're going to have to spend $20,000 to replace the battery.

What makes you think that you would have to do that?

1) that car would still be under warranty until it is older than eight years or drives more than 100K miles. So if it needs a replacement at 80K miles, you might get it for free because it's not supposed to fail.

2) There's a lot of data that suggests batteries last a lot longer than their warranty period both in miles and years. There are plenty of EVs with 150K or more miles on them that are still fine. And define fine, is it such a bad deal when the battery has 75% of its original capacity instead of 85%?

3) It's hard to get numbers on when they actually do fail on average for the simple reason that the overwhelmingly large majority of EVs ever made are still driving around with the original battery they left the factory with. They've only been on the market for about 15 years. And the majority of them is much younger than the eight years of battery warranty they left the factory with. Most of the EVs on the road have been sold in the last few years only.

bryanlarsen7• 9 months ago

Sorry, my original post was originally formatted correctly. Some readers are reading the inverse what I was trying to say. The link shows that EV's are lasting up to 300,000 kilometers on a single battery.

I'm going to buy a used EV, and I don't expect to replace the battery.

jasonthorsness• 9 months ago

It’s clear a lot of good fundamental innovation is still happening in the EV space (as opposed to IMO negative innovation in digital features in ICE cars). This is why I leased my electric car; my family’s pattern is to keep a car forever (ICE car is circa 2009) and I don’t want to be stuck with something. I think resale value partially captures this problem.

specialist2• 9 months ago

Agreed. The OC conflates a lot of unrelated & outdated issues, yet doesn't get near the most likely cause: Leasing.

Many of the EV influencer/reviewers (that I binge watch) do advise leasing over purchasing. Misc reasons (at least in the US):

Continued high rate of improvement. So for EV enthusiasts (early adopters), who are likely to upgrade, leasing avoids eating the entire depreciation in value.

Manufacturer incentives for new purchases drive down used car prices.

Many of the models are simply too expensive. (Esp with the current overstock.) Their resale value will normalize once new EVs reach price parity with comparable ICEs.

With so many leases expiring, there's more supply than demand (for used EVs).

Anecdatally, I held off buying (or leasing) a new Kia EV9 this year. It's just too expensive; implicitly reflected in their generous incentives. Kia's software is still immature. Knowing I don't intend to keep the vehicle, with their turrible resale value, I wasn't able to stomach the depreciation.

FWIW, My future perfect vehicle is a Toyota Sienna EV, over 350mi range, fast charging, and equiv to Tesla's software.

I predict, based totally on vibes, that sales of city cars (eg Kia Kona, Nissan Leaf) will be just fine once their price is 1:1 with ICE. Ditto roadtrippers (eg VW ID.Buzz) once their range is over 300mi.

xp847• 9 months ago

leasing avoids eating the entire depreciation in value

Assuming the bank's predictions are correct, that's not true. The lease agreement simply predicts a specific residual value and you pay the difference between that and the purchase price (in other words, the full predicted depreciation amount) in your payments. Of course, the less you drive the leased car compared to your mileage allowance, the worse you do, since the residual value prediction assumes you used all 10k miles a year or whatever.

Not saying leasing is bad, just that the opportunity for them to be a better deal strictly financially depends mostly on whether the bank overestimates the residual value (as I suspect happened with my off-lease used EV, which cost me less than half the sticker price, with 16k miles, at 3 years old).

specialist2• 9 months ago

Also, OC wrote:

Battery-as-a-service models are emerging as a potential lifeline...

Not for consumers. Maybe for fleet vehicles.

The rate of innovation has to slow down before that kind of standardization can take hold. And battery tech, from the chemistry to the packs, shows no sign of slowing down in the immediate future.

smoovb2• 9 months ago

I was doing the math on leasing an EV and really seems to work. With the EV deprecation, you are actually coming out ahead of buying in many cases. A friend did this with a Kia a few years ago and looks like its a valid option.

rootusrootus34• 9 months ago

It works because the manufacturers are willing to defer the hit and eat the depreciation themselves in three years. If the leases were honest and the residuals accurate, it would be a wash with buying.

TheChaplain• 9 months ago

Well, I don't entirely agree.

But where we live there is a huuge fanbase of veteran cars like Chevrolet, people are nuts about them and arrange day long cruising around the city a few times a year.

Considering the complexity and rapid technology changes of electric cars, I doubt we'll see many working VW ID.5 in 70 years cruising the streets.

senectus1• 9 months ago

My MG4 was bought exactly 1 year ago. for 31k on Carsales.com.au *older models are still selling for 28k....

I dont think all EV's are dropping equally.

Zambyte• 9 months ago

Human scale electric vehicles (e-bikes, e-scooters, etc) do not seem to suffer from this problem as much.

constantcrying• 9 months ago

Because there is no major secondary market. Obviously.

horsawlarway• 9 months ago

At least for my e-bikes - all the batteries are easily removed and replaceable (whether the vendor is still manufacturing it is a different question).

mlsu• 9 months ago

And like cars, replacement ebike batteries are absurdly expensive. $500-600 for a few 18650 and a BMS.

Part of it is that a battery pack is legitimately dangerous at that scale (so lots of testing/safety certifications etc). But those are one-time design costs that should be amortized.

I would really like to see some standardization around battery packs for both cars and bikes, so that it could become a commodity market for packs.

kube-system9• 9 months ago

They don't? I usually see them marked down 1/2 off or more if they're used even with negligible use.

kylehotchkiss2• 9 months ago

I dunno, they all are going to have wheelie crash damage the way these teenagers ride them down the streets. I don't know why we can't federally require ebike electric motors to disengage when the front wheel goes off the ground

dghlsakjg7• 9 months ago

Legal e-bikes are not really capable of wheelie-ing using their power alone since they are limited to 750 watts.

These bikes are already illegal, so lets not introduce another silly regulation that adds expense and a point of failure just because teenagers do wheelies.

Also, teenagers doing wheelies on bicycles is not illegal, nor should it be. Let people have some fun!

epistasis3• 9 months ago

Man, I wish this were true, because I would love to buy a cheap second hand EV right now.

Looking across fhe used car sites and KBB, I'm probably going to buy new instead.

There's a concerted PR effort to slander EVs out there, take all articles with a huge grain of salt.

throwway120385• 9 months ago

One nitpick on the article is comparing a passenger sedan or passenger SUV to a light truck like the F150 when you're discussing depreciation is a bad comparison. Light trucks hold their value better generally for a variety of reasons including because the parts that get used are heavier and are more designed to be maintained with lubrication schedules and such. SUVs are not light trucks and have more in common with a minivan or a sedan. A better comparison would be to compare the depreciation of say a Tesla SUV to like a Ford Escape.

gtowey2• 9 months ago

I don't disagree with you, but man is it crazy to hear that a "light" truck these days includes a 5 liter V8 that gets 16 mpg.

mrits• 9 months ago

That is city mpg for the less common V8. What is crazy is that is that is what the Toyota 4Runner has gotten for over a decade.

jaggederest3• 9 months ago

Wait until you find out about the proper trucks that use a 7 to 15 liter turbocharged i6 and get 5-8 mpg.

usefulcat• 9 months ago

Agreed. If the F150 is Ford's "light" truck, what does that make the significantly smaller Maverick?

engineer_224• 9 months ago

Heavy trucks are industrial/commecial. In comparison to those vehicles, a 5 liter v8 is indeed "light".

bityard• 9 months ago

"Light truck" is slightly more formal way of saying "pickup truck." And is meant to differentiate the class from commercial trucks like moving vans, dump trucks, and semis.

Smaller pickups like the Ford Ranger and Chevy S-10 are in the "compact pickup" class. (And unfortunately these are not sold in the US anymore. For those with genuine need, we either have to resurrect some old heap headed for the scrapyard or import them on the gray market from Asian countries.)

bob10292• 9 months ago

The F150 achieves its maximum available payload capacity (over a ton) in the trim level with a 3.5L turbocharged V6.

o10449366• 9 months ago

That's not true from a mechanical perspective. Most SUVs use the same frame and parts as trucks by the same manufacturer (which is why they handle so poorly compared to sedans - it isn't just center of gravity)

potato37328429• 9 months ago

By weight (gotta over-count those chevy suburbans, lol) that could be possible.

By number the median SUV is some sort of crossover or compact SUV built on a platform the OEM also builds sedans on.

neogodless2• 9 months ago

If you define SUV as body-on-frame, sure. But most people think of crossovers as SUVs, and most are unibody. It's a big umbrella and how it's made isn't how mainstream thinks about buying.

xeromal• 9 months ago

You're confusing SUVs with Crossovers. Most sales are crossovers and they are a taller sedan or minivan but SUVs like the land cruiser, 4runner, escalade, or armada are body on frame and built like a truck including being able to tow several tons.

linsomniac2• 9 months ago

Note: This article compares the depreciation of a Tesla Model Y to a Ford F-150. Seems like not an apples to apples comparison, and it'd be more interesting to have a more similar comparison.

Mistletoe• 9 months ago

I think they should take into account the fact that a Tesla is a steaming pile of FascistMobile now to many like myself that would buy them otherwise. How about other EVs?

nostrademons7• 9 months ago

Causality could be reversed here. In markets where technology advances quickly and prices drop, there is very little market for used goods, because why would you buy a 4-year-old whatever when you can get a new one that's twice as good for half the price? You see this in computers, smartphones, TVs, and solar panels (outside of the U.S, where prices are kept artificially high by tariffs). People almost never buy used because there's no reason to. You can just buy new, for the same or lower price, and get something way better.

Instead of threatening to derail the EV transition, lack of resale value might be evidence of the EV transition, particularly when coupled with quickly growing overall sales of EVs globally.

zvitiate• 9 months ago

Might is doing a lot of heavy lifting in your last sentence. I’m genuinely curious, what odds is this evidence of transition versus not?

the__alchemist2• 9 months ago

Consequently, why are used sellers so out of touch, for cars or anything else? I love the idea of buying and selling used, but people ask too much relative to the new price.

kemayo2• 9 months ago

It's difficult to decouple your knowledge of how much you paid for something. Even if you intellectually know the fair market value of something is now 0.1x what you paid for it, it can still feel like you're just losing all that money by accepting that price.

rootusrootus34• 9 months ago

If they are out of touch, then the cars aren't selling, right? Because if they are selling for that price, then by definition you are out of touch and the sellers know what the market will bear.

kube-system9• 9 months ago

Sellers might be out of touch with your sensibilities but they are not out of touch with their own market. Used sellers ask that much because buyers are willing to pay that much.

potato37328429• 9 months ago

why are used sellers so out of touch

Math.

You don't see what sells because it's no longer on the market.

A vehicle that sells in 1mo is on the market 30x longer, seen by 30x more people, etc, etc, than one that sells in 1d and only takes 1/30th as many of them on the market to fill up your FBMP feed.

Now, not a lot of cars are priced to sell in 1d, but also 30d is a comically low upper bound as well. Adjust the numbers as you see fit.

nyrikki• 9 months ago

There are multiple reasons.

1) A large segment of people make purchase decisions based on payment schedules rather than the total cost of driving or even residual value.

2) Today 2/3 of car loans are are 72 months, meaning that even for lower depreciation rate cars, private sellers are often under water, and may not have the resources to pay off the gap with current market value. [0]

3) Banks have responded with 1/5 new-vehicle loans being 84 months or longer, adding to the problem

4) For around the ~40 years I have been paying attention, private sellers almost always think they should get the dealer price and not the private party price.

There are other reasons, but we are in a situation where it would be amazing of we avoid another 2009 like crash in the market.

[0] https://www.edmunds.com/industry/press/underwater-and-sinkin...

jimt1234• 9 months ago

Exactly ^^^ This situation reminds me of the 90s with the PC market, where PCs were changing so fast, and getting cheaper every day - I think Weird Al put it best: "My new computer's got the clocks, it rocks / But it was obsolete before I opened the box".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpMvS1Q1sos

thenobsta2• 9 months ago

What a reference. Thanks for taking me back to the 90s. I have fond memories of memorizing Running with Scissors :)

Yeah, tech for this stuff is moving super fast. It's hard to know what will endure, what will be upgradeable, and what will be cast aside.

I recently bought a low mileage used EV for relatively cheap. I'm hoping I'll be able to drive the battery into the ground. Then I'm betting that, in 6-8(10?)yrs when I need a new one, there will be better battery chemistries so I can extend the car's life even further.

goalieca2• 9 months ago

Old cell phones and computers are fine from a performance and features point of view. The lack of support, repairability, and durability affect the resale value more than anything.

Tires, summer and winter, are also very expensive. ICE weighs a lot less and generally have much cheaper tires.

lazide• 9 months ago

Most people just see ‘old, meh’.

oceanplexian• 9 months ago

It's 100% a reparability issue. When it breaks it will become a brick, that's why.

There are close to zero shops that will work on the powertrain of an EV. The only exceptions are enthusiasts like Rich Rebuilds, etc.

beambot• 9 months ago

This entire argument relies on new EV prices declining like other technologies, but this doesn't seem to be the case. E.g. the Nissan Leaf is ~$30,000 and has been for almost a decade. (Guess you could make a case with inflation... but nowhere near the technology price curves.)

dangus3• 9 months ago

No, you completely missed the point. The new model is still ~$30,000 but it has better range/charges faster/drives better.

That doesn’t really happen as dramatically with gasoline cars. The powertrain and driving experience of a 5 year old gas car isn’t noticeably different than a current one.

If you buy a 5 year old EV you might get one that charges slow, doesn’t have a heat pump, has worse battery chemistry, battery health management, and the list goes on.

Heck, the Leaf is a perfect example because you’re stuck with chademo fast charging charging instead of CCS or NACS. I wouldn’t touch one with a 9 foot pole unless I planned to exclusively charge at home.

Also, don’t take my comment to mean that I think used EVs are a bad choice, many of them can work very well for many years and use cases as long as you are properly informed.

nostrademons7• 9 months ago

It is the case globally. BYD sells EVs starting at $7800 [1][2], and Toyota sells an EV for $15,000 in China [3].

This may also be why Teslas are holding their value better than any other EV. Teslas are usually bought by U.S. consumers, who are forbidden from buying any of the cheaper global EVs by import restrictions. For fleets that buy models that are sold globally, they compete in the global market and are subject to global price declines.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs5h6R2jLUQ

[2] https://insideevs.com/reviews/769113/byd-seagull-good-video-...

[3] https://motorillustrated.com/toyota-launches-15000-bz3x-its-...

kasey_junk• 9 months ago

What are the ranges across that decade. If the inflation adjusted price is lowering and the main technical limit is improving, it’s exactly what you’d expect from a technology improvement.

Car prices are tough too because how much subsidies, tariffs etc play into it.

But theoretically if you used a US made car you could limit some of that bias.

khuey• 9 months ago

MSRP of an internal-combustion-powered Civic or Corolla is up 30ish percent in the same time period. The 2025 Nissan Leaf is a lot better than the 2015 model too. Range has nearly doubled for one.

jeffbee• 9 months ago

I don't think that's a realistic transaction price for the Nissan Leaf. For most of that decade they were all but giving them away on leases as low as $79/mo. There are probably streaming video channels that cost more than a Nissan Leaf.

adgjlsfhk1• 9 months ago

The 2012 Nisan leaf had a 73 mile range. The 2025 leaf has a 300 mile range. 4x range at the same price (~30% less with inflation) is a pretty good improvement.

dchftcs2• 9 months ago

The only reason US doesn't have an EV cheaper than that is a >100% tariff on Chinese EVs.

Eisenstein• 9 months ago

If that were true than the market would value used goods as essentially free, so there wouldn't be a reason to buy anything new. The reason there is not a huge used market for technology is because they are no longer supported or are deprecated on purpose by the producer.

Aloisius2• 9 months ago

Is a new EV twice as good as a four year old one?

Does it go twice as fast? Does it have twice the range? Is it twice as comfortable? Is it twice as safe?

thegreatpeter2• 9 months ago

The new Model Y surely is safer, more comfortable and has a longer range and a better battery.

halfnormalform• 9 months ago

My data point: old Kona Electric vs new Ioniq 6. Acceleration is faster, but not twice as fast. It does charge 40-50% faster though, and that is life-changing. Not twice the range but 360 mi vs 220 mi is a huge improvement. More than twice as comfortable, and that’s switching from the top of the line to the base model. Mostly due to better climate controls and a huge amount of legroom. Both have 5 star Euro NCAP scores. But now the lane keep assist now works at any speed and there are more warnings about cars and other obstacles, so there’s a safety improvement. And it’s not twice the price: the MSRP was cheaper!

1970-01-013• 9 months ago

The value isn't there to justify double the price, but yes a new EV is gooder than an older EV in every single category.

bunderbunder2• 9 months ago

You can just buy new, for the same or lower price

But, like the article says, new EVs are selling for about twice as much as a 2-year-old used vehicle of the same make and model. That's a very very far cry from "same or lower price".

BoredPositron• 9 months ago

My dad had to make the same decision and he was too vary because of the battery. He talked about his phone and that it doesn't last a day anymore while at 84% health after three years and translated it 1to1 to the car. Its hard to argue with people if they have a reference point but don't understand the differences. I guess most people just want that initial warranty for now. Are there any manufactures that give long warranties on the battery yet?

potatolicious3• 9 months ago

and get something way better.

The last part of OP's statement is the key. In a field that's rapidly advancing technologically, used prices are depressed because the new product is that much better than the used product.

Think back to the early smartphone days - every year phones multiplied in performance, in screen resolution, etc. In that environment a used item is less attractive because you feel like you're missing out on features/capability. This keeps used prices down. Nowadays used smartphones are more competitive because the rate of advancement (that buyers care about at least) has slowed.

For example there's another post later in this thread that points out that the Nissan Leaf has been the same price forever - except the current-gen Leaf has literally double the range of the last one. Effects like this depress used prices.

ceejayoz• 9 months ago

new EVs are selling for about twice as much as a 2-year-old used vehicle of the same make and model

There's a saying that a new car loses 50% when you leave the lot. It's presumably still true for EVs.

array_key_first3• 9 months ago

Its a matter of perspective.

EV are progressing fast so they lose value quick, like a laptop of the late 90s. Not quite as bad, but in those times, your computer was worth next to nothing in less than a year.

ICE are stagnant. They retain their value because they're not improving at all.

nick49488171• 9 months ago

This has always been the case for Maseratis.

Fergusonb• 9 months ago

Agree with everything here.

Anecdote:

I purchased an EV this year, my highest priority was range per dollar, and the vehicle I selected happened to be new because of current market conditions. (Equinox EV for under 25k otd after incentives)

Spooky23• 9 months ago

I think it’s hard to draw any conclusions about the auto market. The cost escalations of cars and the bizarro economy have changed the market fundamentally.

The weird gaps of supply in model years because of the pandemic and prices are just nuts. The value of my 2016 SUV has gone up $4000 since last year. EVs are super volatile — my brother has netted profit from trading them. My girlfriend sold her 14 month old Subaru for $1000 under her cost - the pretax value appreciated.

jdeibele• 9 months ago

Hard agree. A drunk driver hit our parked 2015 Mazda CX-5. We paid about $27,000 for it in 2016. The car was totaled and we received about $17,000. That figured out to just about $1100 in depreciation per year for 9 years.

aiauthoritydev• 9 months ago

Instead of threatening to derail the EV transition, lack of resale value might be evidence of the EV transition

People buying new EVs might be bad for environment though.

organsnyder• 9 months ago

It's not like those used EVs are getting thrown away—they're just going further down-market than they otherwise would.

jerlam• 9 months ago

Hopefully EVs are being purchased to replace existing ICE cars, in which case the falling price is a good thing since it makes them more available at lower price points. Replacing a car with one that is cheaper to run and produces less emissions is usually a good thing.

If people are buying (and storing, and fueling) EVs in addition to their collection of ICE cars, that's probably a separate issue about overconsumption.

jacquesm2• 9 months ago

You see this in computers, smartphones, TVs, and solar panels

3D printers!

PunchyHamster2• 9 months ago

I think a lot of that is economies of scale. The parts needed are not cheap in small quantities, but we finally got to the point that they are popular enough that they are made en masse.

Yeah at the top end there is still a ton of progress, but on bottom end it just recently turned into commodity, to the point they are sold in more general stores.

mikepurvis• 9 months ago

I'm an upper middle class person who could buy everything new if I wanted, but I still choose to acquire many things used. I have a new TV but my AVR and most of the speakers are second hand. I bought a four year old car. My CPU and RAM are new, but the motherboard and GPU are from FB marketplace. My monitors are new but my desk and office lights are cobbled together. My laser printer is almost twenty years old. I buy a lot of my clothes and almost all of my sporting gear second hand.

I partly don't own an EV because even used they still cost a lot upfront and I'd rather maintain the personal incentive to take mass transit or ride my bike, but when I do eventually go electric, it'll almost certainly be preowned, assuming I can get a reasonable discount off of new.

dendrite9• 9 months ago

Depending on how far back you want to look at electric cars you can find them for pretty cheap. Sub $5k versions from 10 years ago were tempting recently when my partner needed a repair on the current (ICE) car. It looked like sub $15k there were many options. For use around the city it would be a good fit, but I ditched the ideas since we're in the process of dealing with partial house rewiring. That might be an update for later.

strangattractor• 9 months ago

The EV car market is rapidly evolving which tends to make people skittish about purchases and tend to the latest innovations. I decided to lease my first EV because I figured it would be outdated pretty quickly.

I was wrong. In reality the main innovation driver is the battery. The car is great and EVs are much less maintenance. I think used sales would be better if there were better aftermarket options for batteries.

c-linkage• 9 months ago

That would make leasing the better option because at the end of the lease the leaser has to take them card back....no worry about selling something on one wants to buy.

quantumcotton• 9 months ago

I'm pretty sure it's a mixture between this and the fact that EVS don't really break down. You have the same amount of them for sale a few years later. Versus gas cars. You have half of them around being parted out. So they do go up in value oddly.

They've pretty much just saturated their own market. Everyone needs a car. Not everyone needs an EV. If you have a garage then yes it makes perfect sense to have an EV. But if you don't and you live in an apartment or you live in a shared house. It's not really going to work for you. People who have their own house don't want old cars. So they basically just have a bunch of older car sitting around that nobody really wants even though they technically do have better value. A $30,000 Tesla and a $30,000 BMW? You'd have to be biased to think that it makes logical sense for the BMW. Sure! It's 40. It's fun but the cost of maintenance. The reliability.... It's not really a family car in the same way. It appeals to more people, but it's not more logical. However, you don't need a garage to charge your BMW. I don't care how fast the car charges. I don't want to go to a charger. I've had my car for 4 years and I've only been to a supercharger twice.

But I fully understand why not everyone has them. Every time I pass by a mechanic shop an oil change place like gas station. I just think of how much wasted time that people use on their cars thinking that it's more convenient.

But but for them in fact it may actually be. Imagine sitting at a charger for 20 mins 2x a week if you drive a lot and use sentry.

nradov3• 9 months ago

Actually EVs break down a lot, more so than ICE or hybrid cars. It turns out that having fewer moving parts doesn't compensate for incompetent engineering and shoddy manufacturing.

https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2025-us-vehi...

emmelaich• 9 months ago

You are spot on. New car EV prices are dropping and tech is advancing.

EVs inherently depreciate less; they're simpler, few moving parts. The motor is sealed. Batteries are lasting longer than expected.

So 'depreciate' in the title is misleading. It may be technically true in that they lose resale value, but they are definitely not less road-worthy than a similarly aged combustion vehicle.

I would absolutely buy a second hand Tesla, they're great value. Probably other EVs too.

pmontra• 9 months ago

Maybe $30k or $40k are nothing for the average car owner in the USA but that's 3 or 4 times what a small car used to cost here in Europe, even 5 times. Small cars are going extinct or their price doubled because they are transitioning to electric too. The result is that they are selling few EVs and a lot of used combustion engine cars. The EV transition is derailing here because of price, not because of second hand market value.

shinycode2• 9 months ago

Exactly. There is such a gap between brand new EV and regular cars that for someone doing 10000km per year it needs on average 8 years before breaking even to account for the price gap. It’s too expensive right now it does makes sense to invest in an EV, except if money isn’t a problem

bluescrn2• 9 months ago

There's also a whole lot of people without the option of charging at home, especially here in the UK (relying on on-street parking or living in flats)

Green tech is great if you're upper-middle class with a nice big detached home, plenty of space to install solar, a heat pump, and EV charger. But a large percentage of people just don't have a 'compatible home' even if they had the cash available to invest in such tech.

fair_enough• 9 months ago

You're right, but it still sucks that my car now depreciates as fast as my Macbook. I don't think batteries will ever hold their value though, and those things constitute at least $10k of an EV's sticker price.

Hopefully as EVs become less ugly-looking, the body and interior hold their value, even if the value of the battery depreciates rapidly.

If somebody made an EV that looked like a 1980s Rolls Royce Corniche- something tasteful- I would buy an EV.

jgilias2• 9 months ago

But _why_ would the battery depreciate so much? My 4 year old EV can drive the same distance as it could when it was new. The data we have on EVs just doesn’t support the idea that their range drops a cliff at some point. And if they do, you’re mostly able to have it fixed by swapping the faulty cell module. Which more and more places are able to do. And even when it reaches the end of life, it’s still good for grid applications.

So the way I see it, the EV resale value is really due to two factors. One being that, yes, the typical EV buyer is able to buy new. And the other being knee jerk reaction to used EVs that’s mostly emotion-based.

I expect the resale value become better in some years. And I fully expect end of life EVs costing more than end of life ICE cars, because the battery will definitely be more valuable than a scrap pile.

themafia3• 9 months ago

when you can get a new one that's twice as good for half the price?

That's the premise. Is that the actual reality?

onlyrealcuzzo• 9 months ago

Or it could be the simple explanation:

That current EVs just depreciate faster than ICE cars (in the US).

The article's chart is about used ICE vs EV prices in the US...

New EVs are definitely not 2x as good as a few years ago at half the price. Not sure if you've seen the price of new EVs in the US without subsidies.

ICE cars don't have a ~20% range depreciation after 5 years. EVs do. One would expect them to depreciate faster, until there's a solution for that.

That's not really a problem if they depreciate faster if the total operation cost is lower - which it almost certainly is for the Chinese EVs (relevant to most of the world).

bobthepanda• 9 months ago

The data in the article is kind of all over the place. But also at least one big distortion is that

* these are rental cars, which are used much more intensely than normal used cars

* a big chunk of the (US) stats are Hertz dumping Teslas, specifically. It had to dump 30,000 of them (which is a huge amount of Teslas to just flood the market with all at once); and Tesla specifically has people trying to sell their cars due to the brand of their CEO.

Rebelgecko2• 9 months ago

What EVs have 20% range depreciation after 5 years? That seems atypical for any car with modern battery temp management.

Mine is 2 years old, battery still reads 99% health and I regularly exceed the EPA range estimate. I've seen ones with hundreds of thousands of (fast charging!) miles that still only have 10% degradation.

intexpress• 9 months ago

I buy used all the time. It is way cheaper and new things are usually not much better (sometimes new things are worse).

For example a lot of new TVs are worse than old TVs, because new TVs have ads in their UIs, and increasingly new TVs don't even come with remotes anymore.

fyrn_• 9 months ago

I think it's also in large part due to the demographics of ev buyers today. Still a lot of wealthy early tech adopters who specifically want the newest thing. Not yet driven by utility value ( not that cars ever really are, lower end but ICE vehicles are much closer to that)

This isn't car specific, it's new technology specific.

exasperaited2• 9 months ago

I agree (just made an analogy to DSLRs in another comment)

ulrikrasmussen• 9 months ago

I don't think this is true for smartphones anymore, new models bring only marginal improvements to the last ones, and buying a used model in almost new condition allows you to save around 50%.

DanielHB• 9 months ago

I keep saying that in a few years cars will not be that much expensive than a big refrigerator...

It is scary that if cars get this cheap what it will mean environmentally (they physically can't last that long) and socially (everybody will be able to afford cars, flooding communities who are not built for it)

woodpanel2• 9 months ago

Instead of threatening to derail the EV transition

Looks like the wish is your thought’s father.

Currently the transition of EVs is a transition of cars from long lasting, repairable items into throwaway e-waste (like TVs, computers and smartphones).

And somehow this is more eco-friendly of course.

ethagknight2• 9 months ago

Wait solar panels?? No one is buying used solar panels. They degrade rapidly and the cost of the panel is a small piece of the overall install

malfist• 9 months ago

That's just not true. Lots of people buy used solar panels to do cheaper DIY installs.

Solar panels do degrade, but its not anywhere near "rapid". Go look at the lengths of warranties on panels these days

al_borland• 9 months ago

I don’t think it’s that EVs are getting that much better year-over-year. I think it’s more that people are scared to buy a used EV, because they don’t know how long batteries will hold up and what to look for. To anyone who hasn’t done a bunch of research (most people) it seems much more risky.

skeeter20204• 9 months ago

I don't get your angle; EVs cost more than the comparable car new, cost way more to repair and depreciate faster. More electrical waste, but not cheap to begin with? Cars (in my mind at least) should last 15, 20 or more years; that doesn't seem to be happening here.

varjag2• 9 months ago

EV maintenance costs are way lower. There's hardly non-recycleable electrical waste in EVs. And they absolutely can last 15 years: depreciation doesn't mean they fall apart.

rafamvc• 9 months ago

Also, tax incentives on new EVs push the used market lower, creating a false sense of depreciation.

I expect the market to reconcile the difference now that EVs subsidizes are ending.

Another possible alternative is that the consumer has to be educated that buying used EVs is not like buying a used cellphone, and that EV batteries do last 10+ years.

riehwvfbk• 9 months ago

They dont seem to actually last 10 years though. Sure, in an old Prius you only care about the battery not being completely shorted out, and the price of battery degradation is slightly worse fuel economy.

However, every time I look at renting a Tesla on Turo, each and every example has reviews with stories about not making 100 miles to the next stop on their trip. These are cars that are only 3-4 years old, not 10.

SergeAx• 9 months ago

smartphones

Smartphones aren't getting cheaper and generally aren't getting better for the last 3-5 years. In fact, I hated replacing my 4-year-old perfectly functioning smartphone just because its battery degraded and the charging socket wore out.

The replacement was about 15% more expensive, inflation-adjusted, BTW.

ekhaliul• 9 months ago

Its probably more to do with demographics for EVs. Currently EVs and infrastructure around it cover mostly higher income brackets that do not want to bother too much with used cars, so the market around used cars is fairly small compared to ICE that cover both high and and lower end incomes. If you are in a bottom 50% and need a family car EV is still a significant financial risk. Once EVs cover lower income brackets we will see a much healthier used car market.

laughing_man• 9 months ago

This really doesn't make sense. Cars have intrinsic value - they can take you from point A to point B. If that's not why people buy them then they're a luxury good, like a Prada bag, so it's kind of silly to talk about resale value.

It's more likely EVs have poor resale value because the batter is the car, from a value perspective. Once the car reaches a certain age, if the battery needs to be replaced the car is essentially worthless. This is also true of ICE cars, but not to the same extent.

rootusrootus34• 9 months ago

How much is due to the tax credits, at least in the US? Last time I looked, a big chunk of the expected first year depreciation on my F150 Lightning could be explained by the credit. The expected depreciation in the years following tracked very similarly to ICE F150s.

The EV market is just weird, anyway. Manufacturers have to price to what the market will bear, which may have little resemblance to MSRP. So a good evaluation of deprecation has to figure out how to account for that. My Lightning had an MSRP of 72K but I got it for 51K, which was a very normal price that anyone could get. If I evaluate resale based on the MSRP, it looks pretty bad. If I use my out-the-door cost for comparison, it does not look bad at all (compared to any other new car purchase, of course, which are never going to be the most cost-effective choice for an individual).

wat100002• 9 months ago

Exactly what I came here to post. I bet if you subtracted $7,500 from the “new” price then the numbers would be a lot more similar.

In any case, individual buyers shouldn’t worry about it too much. The most financially prudent decision is to keep the car for a long time anyway. My 10 year old Tesla still drives just fine. Its value at the two-year mark wasn’t relevant.

floxy6• 9 months ago

Yes, you can safely ignore any article about the U.S. EV depreciation where it doesn't mention subsidies, etc.. I recently purchased a 2025 Nissan Leaf and got 42% off the MSRP. So the first 42% depreciation doesn't have an effect for me, the buyer.

spicybbq• 9 months ago

Anyone who has comparison shopped new and used Teslas over the last few years can tell you that the price of <1 year old, low mileage Teslas runs very close to the new price minus $7500.

cameronh90• 9 months ago

Not a surprise when the tech is improving so quickly still.

Why would I pay a significant fraction of the original price for a 2020 EV if a same tier 2025 EV has better batteries and drivetrain that'll probably have a longer lifetime, almost double the range, heat pump and faster charging? That doesn't mean the 2020 is bad, but it's only worth it if you can get it at an enormous discount over the current model.

Meanwhile, a 2020 ICE is pretty much the same as a 2025 ICE aside from the wear and tear.

Once the tech stabilises, so will the resale market.

rootusrootus34• 9 months ago

Is this born out by real life examples? Is a 2025 Model 3, for example, significantly different technologically from a 2020? Definitely does not have double the range, and the technology has evolved only slightly in that time. The heat pump was introduced in late 2020. (and to be honest, heat pumps have turned out to be less of a slam-dunk than we hoped, they have a minor effect on range for most people)

jillesvangurp2• 9 months ago

Not double the range. But you could get one with an LFP battery now that probably has about double the life time in terms of cycles. Closer to 3K cycles rather than 1200-1500 cycles for the NMC batteries common in 2020.

Fun fact, the 2020 model 3 would still have its battery under warranty. That's true for most model 3s with the exception of those that did more than 100K miles or the ones that were sold in 2017. Those would have just started coming out of the eight year warranty. But most of the second hand model 3s are still covered by warranty for their drive trains.

Mostly, second hand buyers can get some decent deals on their cars now and don't have to worry that much about their cars depreciating massively when they sell them on five years later. With EVs most of the depreciation happens in the first few years.

jjangkke2• 9 months ago

The resale market isn't shaped by technology but market demand which you frame it narrowly to what you place value on.

Otherwise there is no reason for old Porsches and 90s Japanese cars to demand the sticker price they do now.

The people who are willing to pay more for a used car down the road aren't interested in EVs or mass produced ICE cars, if unique enough will continue to be in demand over EVs

ex) New porsche EVs losing value against ICE cars

mlrtime• 9 months ago

FWIW: Porsche depreciates just like any other car EXCEPT the 911 (and other GT variants) which is a rare outlier. But your point stands.

LgWoodenBadger• 9 months ago

"Meanwhile, a 2020 ICE is pretty much the same as a 2025 ICE aside from the wear and tear."

One would think and hope so, however numerous ICE manufacturers, even long-term reliability experts like Honda, have been adopting "wet belt" timing belts.

These run submerged/immersed in engine oil, which tends to degrade the belt, often resulting in clogged oil pickups, galleys, etc.

Buyer beware, unfortunately.

wffurr• 9 months ago

2025 EVs aren’t double the range of 2020 EVs. The batteries and power electronics are on a learning curve but it’s 2-3% per year, not 10-15% like microprocessors.

NoPicklez2• 9 months ago

I have wondered that too particularly when buying brand new.

I don't want to buy a new EV, only to find that in 2 years the technology makes a giant leap. I have that comfort when buying an ICE, but not an EV.

I guess you just need to bite the bullet.

samsullivan• 9 months ago

The battery uncertainty is real, but I think the bigger issue is information asymmetry.

Looking at actual market data, the spread on used EVs is wild - a 2022 Tesla Model S ranges from $57 to $112k depending on trim/condition (https://cardog.app/tools/valuation/tesla/model_s/2022). That's a $60k spread on the same year vehicle. Compare that to ICE vehicles where the range is typically much tighter.

When buyers can't confidently price an asset, they discount heavily. The depreciation problem might actually be a data problem - we just don't have the standardized battery health reporting and historical comps that exist for ICE vehicles yet.

kulahan2• 9 months ago

This is including the Model S Long Range (decent performance, more focused on efficiency) with the Model S Plaid (fastest accelerating street-legal car in the world?). It's really not realistic. The median is $68k, which is probably much closer to the typical price you'd pay.

MostlyStable• 9 months ago

Obviously we don't have ICE levels of data, but as far as available data that we do have, that battery uncertainty is probably unwarranted. Battery life seems to be dropping much slowly than early estimates predicted (and this is including vehicles with >100,000 miles, and >10 years of driving history). Risk acceptance is not a thing that has one right answer, so I won't try and say that people are wrong for how they are assessing this risk, but I know that I personally had zero compunctions at all when I recently bought a used EV, and just appreciated the price I was getting.

Now is probably the golden age for buying used EVs, because eventually this notion that the batteries are untrustworthy is going to go away (you can argue about whether this will occur because the technology improves vs. people will better realize where it already is, but it will happen).

crowcroft2• 9 months ago

Not even just the battery (although that probably is the biggest one), but maintenance in general.

If I buy a 5 year old Corolla with 50k miles on the clock, I have a pretty good idea of what maintenance is going to like for the next decade, and I know a mechanic who can do the work.

I have no idea at all what will happen with a comparable Tesla over 10 years.

iAMkenough• 9 months ago

Everyone likes to focus on the battery, but in my experience with Ford, Honda and Nissan, there's more frequent expensive surprises in gas engine sedans.

Replacing the passenger occupant detection sensor for the airbag system in my 2007 Ford Fusion cost $2K. After a series of other issues with things like the transmission and fuel injector, I ultimately traded it in for $500.

I got a used Nissan Leaf with low mileage for $18K a few years ago and haven't taken it in for anything yet. Battery health is still at 90%, and I could get that replaced for around $6K if I needed to.

I feel a palpable sense of relief that the surprise maintenance bills have stopped.

MagicMoonlight2• 9 months ago

Nothing, because electric cars have basically nothing to service. They don't use oil, they don't have timing belts. It's a battery and wheels.

kemayo2• 9 months ago

For Tesla owners in the U.S., their 2023 Model Ys are worth 42% less than what they paid two years ago

I want to suggest that there are recent reasons why Tesla, as a brand, has specifically gotten a bit less popular that are unrelated to the entire EV category. (It's Elon. He's the reason.)

That said, to the extent the result holds true for the entire category, I'd suspect it's because EVs are still fairly immature. It's like "resale value of desktop PCs falling rapidly" back in the 90s, when the field was advancing quickly enough that buying used was genuinely a bad idea.

rootusrootus34• 9 months ago

There are other factors, too. As an owner of a 2023 Model 3, I am acutely aware of them. It's not just image, but prices. The 2023 Model 3 & Y were expensive, and Tesla started slashing the prices in 2024. This absolutely destroyed the resale value for people who paid near the high point.

I suspect people don't really notice this as much because if you are familiar with regular manufacturers you are used to the price (well, the MSRP at least) staying rock steady for a year at a time. Tesla moves their prices around quite a lot by comparison, which can be very detrimental to the used market when it drops quickly.

thenobsta2• 9 months ago

This got me curious about tesla prices over time. Turns out someone has a nice spreadsheet of this. I don't know about the accuracy, but it's a cool spreadsheet.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1F5IQOynIawoXiJPVarLD...

lotsofpulp4• 9 months ago

and Tesla started slashing the prices in 2024

Jan 2023 was when prices were slashed, and the $7,500 tax credit came in.

xp847• 9 months ago

This absolutely destroyed the resale value for people who paid near the high point

This is definitely true, but it's funny how much hand-wringing is being done about those people, who already bought EVs and really don't need to replace them like 3-4 years into ownership (they might want to for vanity, but if so they're either rich or love wasting money).

"Destroyed resale value" is just another word for "provided amazing prices to a great used market." These "destroyed value" cars are great almost-new cars available at prices competitive with gas cars. In California with horrific electric rates, if I charge my used EV at the "non-peak" time it's like buying gas for my old car at 2.50/gal. In places with much better rates it's more like $1 a gallon. And these are cars that are now available for the same price as a comparable gas car. I'd say this is a huge win for everyone.

streptomycin• 9 months ago

Yeah, this article says the 2023 price of a new Model Y was $48k, and then in 2024 it was worth only $33k used.

But in 2024 I bought a brand new Model Y for about $33k, after factoring in all the incentives/rebates. So if anything that $33k used price sounds high.

Reality is, prices came down a lot, and also depending on how incentives/rebates are factored in, the "sale price" might be fiction.

Same with other brands too. Back then you saw some companies like Hyundai claiming their EVs were really worth like $60k MSRP, and then turning around and leasing them for $300/month with $0 down. In some states people were leasing brand new EVs for $100/month with $0 down, or less.

Now with the federal rebate gone and states removing at least some of their incentives, the numbers might start to look a little more normal.

wagwang• 9 months ago

The article literally says that tesla depreciates the least among evs.

jacobolus• 9 months ago

It doesn't present any such data. Only this one vague quotation from the manager of Polish vehicle history report website autodna.pl:

"Premium brands consistently retain higher resale value than mass-market brands, for both ICE vehicles and EVs. No one knows what entirely new Chinese marques will cost in the secondary market – for instance, what a 5-year-old Omoda will fetch"

Everything concrete in the article is about how Teslas, specifically, have precipitously declined in value, except for one paragraph about how nobody wanted to buy used vehicles from BluSmart (an Indian company that "collapsed in April amid financial fraud allegations").

tonymet2• 9 months ago

Not in my neighborhood. I’ve seen strong sales of the new models and tons more used Teslas on the road. The competitive used prices have helped expand their audience tremendously.

has TSLAQ ever been right? Maybe short term but never long term.

rootusrootus34• 9 months ago

has TSLAQ ever been right? Maybe short term but never long term.

Any rational view of TSLA's business and future prospects suggests that TSLAQ is right, but that the timeline for proving it out may be extended (and there's a saying about that, right? Something about the market staying irrational longer than you can remain solvent). TSLA is a meme stock at this point. I wish it were not part of the S&P500, because I hate to be exposed to that volatility.

But I'm often wrong, so maybe this is yet another example.

callc• 9 months ago

I’m in this boat. I’m voting with my wallet.

All the power to the people who love their Teslas, you do you.

rootusrootus34• 9 months ago

I completely support voting with your wallet. Where the anti-Tesla people lost me was when they decided that anybody who owned a Tesla was nazi/fascist/whatever by extension, and it would be totally okay to abuse them or their car.

Fortunately that has subsided a bit, I haven't heard as much chatter about it in the last few months. And anecdotally, there are still quite a lot of "just got my new Tesla" threads on the Model 3 subreddit -- I think sales totals have still been a disappointment, but they haven't tanked.

nradov3• 9 months ago

The other reason is that Hertz was dumping most of their large inventory of Teslas on the used market. No one wanted those cars as rentals and they cost too much to maintain.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/06/ev-sales-slump-hertz-dump-ta...

danielodievich• 9 months ago

A friend of mine sold their Model S recently because a)Elon and b)their neighborhood where Elon is not popular. They got a Lexus hybrid instead. They were bummed out because they loved the car. They don't tickle me at all - I like his Lexus better - but hey to each is own.

moomoo112• 9 months ago

That’s a really L take on their part. Like, I’d probably respect them less if I knew them if they caved like that, and would tell them so to their face.

moomoo112• 9 months ago

I bought my 2018 Tesla P3D for about 68k (back then FSD was only $2k).

I’m so glad I managed to sell mine during Covid frenzy for $74k lol, in 2021

I’ll never buy a Tesla again. Only Ferrari and Mazda for me.

MagicMoonlight2• 9 months ago

Nobody cares about Elon. It's like saying Coca Cola's share price is being determined by children at american universities. It's just delusional.

The reason they are getting killed, is because their products are now worse than the competition. They had a huge lead on everyone for years, then everyone caught up. Now you can get a car with the same range, with a HUD, with massaging chairs, with swivelling 360 seats... or you can get the same tesla car they've been making for 10 years.

jrmg2• 9 months ago

While I don’t disagree with your point on lineup and quality (and they’ve cancelled a new car model to work on humanoid robotics‽), I think you’re underestimating the Elon effect.

Basically everyone I am close with is in the demographic Tesla targeted pre-rightening-of-Elon. All of them would’ve considered a Tesla at that point in time.

Now, none would. And of those with Teslas - very satisfied with their cars - none are replacing them with Teslas.

I just bought an Honda Pologue and didn’t even test drive a Model Y or X. We recently got solar installed in our house (also the right demographic for that…) and didn’t even look at quotes for Tesla systems.

Sure, I live in a left wing bubble, but it’s that same bubble that was (enthusiastically) Tesla’s prime demographic ten years ago.

jrmg2• 9 months ago

Yeah, I’d like to see F150 Lightnings compared with F150s. Model Y vs F150 is such a weird comparison to choose.

Don’t forget to also deduct tax incentives from the original retail price. It’s not surprising that the used market would require that the used price be below the net original price.

dmix2• 9 months ago

Further in the article it says:

A U.K.-based study found 3-year-old EVs lost more than half of their value compared with 39% for gas cars.

so the difference isn't so stark as the F150 comparison

fridder• 9 months ago

This is why I lease not buy now. I am watching the development of solid-state batteries as that has the promise of greatly reducing battery health issues

AlexandrB• 9 months ago

The EV transition sadly coincides with auto manufacturers giving up on making their cars repairable. ICE cars are getting harder to repair as well, but have some "momentum" since they often reuse parts that have been around for years. Meanwhile EVs are a clean break where manufacturers feel comfortable taking a hostile posture to the 3rd party repair market.

ruined• 9 months ago

sounds like retail price needs to drop

robomartin6• 9 months ago

I am going to declare my wife to be the authority on this topic.

We were well on a path to purchase a couple of EV's (Teslas, new) and even installed a large solar array to support them.

A couple of years later she learned about the cost of replacing the battery. And, just like that, the dream was over. No interest whatsoever.

Anyone who is married fully understands you cannot argue with wife logic. She has no interest in having to spend $20K to $30K ever on any vehicle, of any type, electric or not, a few years after you paid off the loan.

She would not even touch a used EV if it was almost free. In that case you are almost guaranteed to have to spend tens of thousands of dollars for a new battery at a random moment in time in the future. No deal.

Her logic is cemented in a reality of life that we have lived: There are good times and bad times. And, as things go sometimes, you often find yourself in bad times with no money. Vehicles being necessary for mobility and work, if you have an EV, hit bad times and need to spend tens of thousands of dollars to swap the battery, you are absolutely screwed.

So, I asked her: What would make you change your mind?

The answer: A battery swap should be $5,000 or less.

potato37328429• 9 months ago

Anyone who is married fully understands you cannot argue with wife logic.

This is the job the 4dr Wrangler was built to solve.

"see honey, it's got a back seat for the kids".

"don't worry, we can get a hard top if it's too loud."

"there's a hybrid option available"

It's the world's worst 4dr SUV for kids and car seats and the like and it's still loud with a hard top and gets shit milage for a hybrid but you'll never figure it out until after you've bought the thing and the honeymoon period is over.

It's an absolutely brilliant exercise in checkbox engineering (and preventing couples from arguing in the dealership).

dalyons10• 9 months ago

It’s not a random moment, they degrade predictably over time and at a very slow rate. They have less “random” big expensive failures than ice cars. How much is an ice whole engine replacement in a semi modern car? Not cheap and happens more often than an ev battery dropping dead.

So I mean I’m sorry your wife is irrational about it, but I don’t think that’s indicative of the market as a whole.

Flamingoat8• 9 months ago

It’s not a random moment, they degrade predictably over time and at a very slow rate.

So do traditional vehicles. You need to have them serviced regularly, but otherwise they work fine for literally decades. My uncle has a Volvo 240 GL that car is 50+ year old.

How much is an ice whole engine replacement in a semi modern car? Not cheap and happens more often than an ev battery dropping dead.

Engine failure is extremely rare. My 1997 Landrover Defender 300TDI is getting upto 300,000 miles and lets just say it hasn't had the easiest life (it was on a farm before I got it). Landrover's aren't known for their reliability.

My old Astra is still on the road (according to the DVLA) and that had well over 150,000 on the clock when I sold it.

So I mean I’m sorry your wife is irrational about it, but I don’t think that’s indicative of the market as a whole.

His wife isn't irrational. I can get a mid-2000s Diesel that will have decent mileage for less than £4000 in the UK. I see people saying "I only paid $30,000 for this EV". I have never paid more than £10,000 for a car and they last for years and years as long as I get them serviced

robomartin6• 9 months ago

So I mean I’m sorry your wife is irrational about it

No, quite to the contrary. She is being far more rational than most fan boys.

I have driven IC cars 300K miles. The cost of maintenance over that period of time was in the <$5K range. Modern vehicles last a very long time without problems with very moderate maintenance. I can also swap out an entire engine and transmission for a few thousand dollars if necessary (which is never). I have personally rebuilt engines, transmissions, clutches and brakes for very little money.

She manages the family finances, and has exactly zero interest in taking a risk that nobody on this thread making an argument for EV's is willing to underwrite for my family. And that extends to the manufacturer as well.

So, while it might feel right to call someone irrational for not aligning with what I consider your fantasy, unless you are willing to issue my family a guarantee that the battery swap will not cost us more than $5K per vehicle you are taking advantage of being able to criticize someone while not putting your money where your mouth is going.

Yet another take: $50K invested in a good ETF (like VGT) will probably double in five years to $100K and over $200K in ten years. That's a shitload of money to waste on batteries. No, I think she is very far from being irrational.

floxy6• 9 months ago

In 15 years / 300,000 miles when the battery might need replacement, the pack (not cell) price for batteries will probably be around $50/kWh, or $5,000 for 100 kWh.

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/average-battery-cell-pric...

robomartin6• 9 months ago

You must not be married. That argument would last approximately two city blocks and then I'd have to shut up. She is not unintelligent, BTW, she is a doctor, not an engineer. The EV car industry has probably done a horrible job in mitigating this fear.

I get the "batteries will get cheaper" argument. If you read my comment, I said that that a guaranteed $5K battery replacement would likely convince loads of people, including my wife. Today, nobody will issue that guarantee. Today it is a lottery with a $25K hit if you have a losing ticket.

Nobody wants to buy a vehicle for tens of thousands of dollars and have a $25K surprise a couple of years later. With an conventional vehicle you would have to to launch it off a cliff to have to spend $25K in repairs. That's the problem.

bentt2• 9 months ago

Let's do a thought experiment.

Say the govt wanted everyone to buy more Rubik's Cubes (cause they help you become smarter).

Their plan to do this is not to pay the Rubik's company to make them cheaper, but instead to give everyone $5 spendable on Rubik's Cubes only. The cost of a cube prior to this was $8.

The day that decide that, the Rubik's company ups the price of a Cube to account for this incoming onslaught of buyers and get more profit. They can safely up the price without losing sales because A) everyone wants to get smart and B) The overall cost of a cube is still cheaper than before. You can get a $10 cube for $5, which is less than $8.

More cubes are sold than ever before.

Now the market is flooded with cubes.

Now the govt says "Great! Everyone has cubes. Let the intelligence revolution commence!" So they remove the subsidy.

$10 Cubes are now QUITE expensive, so the Rubik's company reduces the price back to the $8 it was before. But wait a second, now the market is flooded and people are used to paying effectively $5 for a cube.

This is what's happened with EVs.

mckeed• 9 months ago

I think you're right that contributed, but at least the federal EV subsidy was trying to mitigate that effect by also subsidizing used EV purchases. I just bought a used PHEV and got a subsidy right before the cutoff. So the effect might get worse now that the program has ended, though I suppose new EV prices should come down too.

bentt2• 9 months ago

Yeah interestingly, Hyundai recently cut prices on their EVs in anticipation of this. To me, it was confirmation that they had inflated prices in recent years.

themafia3• 9 months ago

cause they help you become smarter

Solving them is a question of knowing the algorithm and applying it. It makes you better at pattern matching.

everyone wants to get smart

In most social situations people want to have fun. They'll intentionally consume substances which reduce their "smarts" in an effort to achieve this more easily. They will lie to your face about this because _appearing_ smart is all they actually care about.

Now the market is flooded with cubes.

That are lower quality than what was being made prior to the subsidy.

This is what's happened with EVs.

Inflation also halved the value of money. The story seems simple but it's obviously more complex than a simple analysis would allow for.

ibejoeb• 9 months ago

Isn't that to be expected? First, battery technology continues to improve, and being battery-constrained ought to reduce the value of the older technology. Second, the battery degrades faster than an ICE.

Aunche• 9 months ago

One factor that I don't see getting discussed is that more price conscious consumers are also more likely to have to live in apartments or park on the street. Even if they have a garage, their commutes may be too long to rely on level 1 charging and can't afford to upgrade. As a result, demand for used EVs is significantly lower than a comparable ICE.

xp847• 9 months ago

You're correct with that concern being the biggest holding-back factor now. However, I think that the removal of the price barrier that we've seen here with used EVs becoming competitive with gas cars is still a vital prerequisite to adoption. Even if you gifted an apartment dweller a free charger in their carport, in 2021 when most electric SUVs were about $65k at the cheapest compared to $40k for a comparable gas car, it would be hard to convince them to buy electric.

gnarlouse• 9 months ago

Currently: $36,000 buys you a used 2020 Tesla Model X with FSD and a 35,000 mile odometer, maybe 5-10% battery degradation.

Traster• 9 months ago

In the UK, there are massive incentives for "tax efficient" purchasing of vehicles. ie, there was a point where everyone who could was driving around in a Porsche Taycan because the tax implications of buying it were comically positive. Of course, those benefits don't translate to the secondary market, so of course there's a glut of 3 year old electric vehicles. No one wants them. Oh, and you can't buy a petrol car because the car companies are under the hammer to sell EVs.

caycep• 9 months ago

I'm kind of hoping for more plug and play components like the old days of coach building if EV technology really is more mechanically simple than gas cars. Would love to put the latest/greatest drive train and battery tech into a BMW i3 carbon monocoque chassis and just have everything plug and play like plugging in USB connectors or something.

AfterHIA• 9 months ago

As pointed out by Scotty Kilmer on YouTube we currently lack the infrastructure both in terms of mechanics trained to work on EVs and the necessary electricity infrastructure to make a full transition possible. The answer isn't, "new types of cars" it's building the, "you don't necessarily need a car" society the Europeans and the Japanese enjoy.

Yes we're doomed is what I mean.

p1dda7• 9 months ago

People are fed up with being forced into buying a technology they don't want or need. It's idiotic throwing away the mature tech in petrol and diesel cars in favour of electric. And yes, I still drive petrol and I love it!

hbarka• 9 months ago

Happy owner of a 2017 Tesla Model 3. I couldn’t care less about resale value. I’m driving it, that’s my value, and will do so until it can’t. I’m just glad my garage doesn’t smell like gasoline, I never have to do an oil change, and I never have to go to the gas station. Eight years of no gas stations, it fills up overnight every week in my garage. Stop reselling your car and you won’t have to worry about resale value.

kylehotchkiss2• 9 months ago

I have a 18mph petrol fueled SUV. My garage does not smell like gasoline. All your other points are fair though :)

Marsymars12• 9 months ago

Stop reselling your car and you won’t have to worry about resale value.

I mostly agree, but not-at-fault collisions throw a real wrinkle into this.

There's a non-trivial chance that even if you were planning on keeping your car for 15 years, you get rear-ended after 5 years, your car gets written off, and you receive a low value from your insurer.

All of the extra care and maintenance that you put into your car to make it a car that would be nice to drive far 15 years also becomes wasted as your insurance won't compensate you for that.

1970-01-013• 9 months ago

It is only wasted if you accept their valuation and don't keep the vehicle. Insurance companies allow you to buy back your totaled vehicle, which can then be resold as-is, parted out, or used as a donor parts vehicle when shopping for the same make and model.

dghlsakjg7• 9 months ago

If you get rear-ended, the liability is on the other driver, your insurer need not be involved, and will never be the one paying out, barring an underinsured motorist claim. The legal obligation to property is that you are made whole, that you have what you had before the crash (which is a used car). The party at fault/their insurance have to give you the amount of money that it would take to buy a comparable car (year, condition, options). You are legally entitled to the amount of money that will get you back into a practically identical car.

The extra care and maintenance is something that can get factored into condition. If you disagree with a valuation, they typically will entertain an argument for a higher valuation, if it is grounded in reality and especially if you have comparables. They know that it is better to pay more when it is fair, than to get dragged into court, and be told to pay more and told to pay for lawyers, etc.

stackedinserter8• 9 months ago

I would happily prefer eight years of a gas station 2-3 times a month over having 10 apps with different accounts that allow me to charge my car in merely 45 minutes (if I find one that works and not occupied)

MontyCarloHall3• 9 months ago

How much of this is due to a high level of pre-purchase excitement followed by buyer's remorse? Anecdotally, I know several people who were gung ho about getting an EV, fully willing to pay its cost premium, who initially loved their EVs but sold them within a year or two after encountering issues that only become apparent with semi-long-term ownership:

— In the US, charging infrastructure is still quite poor, with a high amount of disabled or damaged chargers that aren't apparent on maps. Nothing worse than planning a route around the only charger within a few dozen miles and arriving to find it broken. The overall overhead of having to plan driving/parking around chargers is also too onerous for some people.

— Similarly, people underestimate how much harder long road trips are on EVs, especially when fast chargers are damaged and don't actually supply anywhere close to the advertised amount of current.

— People underestimate how much range degrades in cold weather. One person I know bought their EV in the spring, loved it until winter came around, and then promptly sold it the next spring. In a similar vein, people don't realize how poor and battery-hungry climate control can be in an EV, especially in models without a heat pump.

It would be interesting to rigorously study this, examining whether people buying EVs are more likely to sell them within the first couple years of ownership versus people buying comparably priced ICE cars.

xethos2• 9 months ago

especially in models without a heat pump.

Oh for- who the fuck is putting resistive heating in an EV?! What brain-dead PM greenlit that pants-on-head jackassery? Was it GM? I can see an American OEM getting that close to the goal line only to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Really though, that's just disappointing; I had earnestly assumed every EV that made it to market (in North America at least) would be using a heat pump.

MontyCarloHall3• 9 months ago

I believe most new EVs have heat pumps [0], but this wasn't common until a couple years ago.

[0] https://www.recurrentauto.com/questions/which-electric-vehic...

stetrain3• 9 months ago

who the fuck is putting resistive heating in an EV

Tesla before 2021.

bluesquared• 9 months ago

Yes it was GM. My 2017 Bolt has resistive heating.

dghlsakjg7• 9 months ago

Tesla, Honda, Nissan, Chevy, Fiat and Volkswagen have all produced cars with resistive heat in the past decade (not an exhaustive list, just a list that I could find on the first page of search results). So no, not an exclusively American thing.

Heat pumps are expensive, complex, prone to warranty claims, and subject to additional regulatory control (refrigerants). Resistive heating is cheap and simple.

I'm guessing that the development costs for a heat pump that is good enough for automotive use is well into 8 figures, and would probably take at least a year to fully test.

Given all those constraints, it makes a tremendous amount of sense that many cars were built with resistive heating.

jansper393• 9 months ago

Heat pumps aren't free to run, they still require a decent amount of energy and and on shorter trips resistive heating (which is required for other reasons anyway) is quicker.

stetrain3• 9 months ago

From personal experience over ~6 years of EV roadtrips, the first two really aren't much of a problem with a Tesla or a vehicle that can access Tesla's network.

Other chargers can definitely be a bit more hit-and-miss although they are improving.

These days if you stick to the big networks (Tesla, Electrify America, Rivian, IONNA, etc.) you're going to have a pretty good time. The one-off chargers in municipal parking garages are a different story, I don't really on those unless there is a recent PlugShare review showing that it actually works.

MontyCarloHall3• 9 months ago

I agree that Tesla's network is universally pretty reliable. For the other networks, I've found it can be quite location-dependent, likely proportional to the density of EV drivers. Bay Area or LA? Pretty solid. Orlando? Not so much.

thatfrenchguy2• 9 months ago

charging infrastructure is still quite poor

Now that basically every car can access Tesla Superchargers and vice versa for Teslas, this is really not a problem anymore. We’re at the « sometimes I’m grumpy the best stop for my car does not have the exact amenities I want » stage now.

I guess is worse than the « the stop with the exact amnenities I want is not the provider with the cheapest electricity that I wanted » stage that we are in say, France.

xp847• 9 months ago

Sub-Headline from this article: "Plummeting resale values are threatening to derail the world’s transition to electric transportation."

Alternative take: "EVs now easy to afford for the 80% of Americans who don't have $50-90k to spend on an EV!"

This year I bought a 2022 EV with 16k miles. A luxury brand. The sticker price when new was $79,000. I paid $35k. It was an off-lease vehicle so if anyone took a bath, it was the bank. I would never in a million years spend 80 grand on a car but now I have a great EV.

Battery life is not a huge concern. Any more than timing belts/chains, transmissions, etc. can be dauntingly costly repairs for cars with 150k miles or more.

I also have a gas car which I love (spouse drives the electric for a much greater commute) so I'm no EV absolutist. But this whole premise is stupid. EV adoption has had 2 main blockers: 1. only rich people had justification to buy them until recently, and 2. Charging space for people who don't have their own private garage.

Now #1 is no longer a factor. This is a GOOD thing.

smoovb2• 9 months ago

Picked up a 10 year old Fiat 500e with 50k miles for $5k as my daughters first car. She and my wife love it. Way more power than the gas model, and a super fun drive.

Thank you "Plummeting Resale Values"!

rootusrootus34• 9 months ago

Fun fact -- three years after the first 500e went on sale, they were going through auction off-lease at $4K (in the US, at least). Ouch! I remember this vividly because a coworker of mine's wife had purchased one brand new for over 30 grand.

kulahan2• 9 months ago

lol, I was looking at fun cars for my most recent purchase, and Audi E-Trons are available for 50% off if you buy them just a year old. Apparently they stabilize in price after that, but GOODNESS GRACIOUS that's a big dropoff in a single year. It was crazy to see Audi's newest top-of-the-line offering (not their RS offering, to be clear) for the same price as an entry-level BMW M.

hvb23• 9 months ago

I know this isn't black and white but if you're worried about depreciation you just shouldn't buy a new car.

A car you buy new and sell after a short amount of time or not many miles driven is going to cost you.

Tade0• 9 months ago

The other day I randomly took a look at car sale listings and found a 2yo Tesla Model 3 long range with 43k km for less than half the MSRP.

There's about a dozen such offers on that one site that I checked and that's just Teslas.

jjfoooo4• 9 months ago

For a two car house, having one electric and one ICE vehicle seems like a no brainer, assuming charging space at home

pwarner• 9 months ago

I don't hear this blatantly obvious point made often enough. 100% EV penetration seems optimistic any time soon, but 30% seems like a slam dunk.

Xss33• 9 months ago

My partner bought a used nissan first gen Nissan leaf with 70% battery health for 5k a couple of years ago.

So far it has saved her approx 2k on petrol costs alone.

Then there is maintenance costs....No major issues. Less than 200 per year so far if you exclude the fresh set of tyres we put on it when she bought it.

99% of our journeys can be done in it. It's rare for either of us to need more than 80mi in a day.

It can get a full charge off a standard british plug socket over night too, so we dont have a fast charger installed or anything. Most days we only do 10mi, so it goes for an overnight charge once a week and thats fine.

The result? We have to remind ourselves to take the petrol car out for a spin every 2 weeks just to keep it healthy.

theoreticalmal• 9 months ago

My family bought a used EV this year, car #2 is a 15 year old F-150. It’s the best possible situation I could conceive of. My wife commutes 25+ miles in the EV, I work from home, and we take the truck when going camping or pulling a trailer or whatever.

while_true_• 9 months ago

FUD about battery life and having to spend over $10k to replace one was a large factor in EV depreciation. Some people assumed car battery life was like that of a cell phone or a laptop, perhaps 3 years. There is increasing evidence that EV batteries with good battery management systems will last 15+ years (see https://www.geotab.com/blog/ev-battery-health/). Once the general population understands an EV will outlast a gas car and needs less maintenance, resale value should improve.

rasz12• 9 months ago

Up to very recently only Tesla had good battery management. Other manufacturers joked around with things like no active battery thermal management, Nissan Leaf finally got one this year lol.

DocTomoe2• 9 months ago

On the other side, I am not going to buy a new EV if it depreciates too quickly. Part of the 'new ride' buyer's consideration is trade-in value when it's time for another one three years down the line.

jkestner• 9 months ago

But great for us who drive a car into the ground.

jobs_throwaway2• 9 months ago

If you care about the money aspect, why are you ever buying a new car though? You can get a massive discount by buying a barely-used one.

neogodless2• 9 months ago

Yes. Polestar 2 owner here. According to KBB it has held almost all of the value since I bought it. Used. Before that it lost over half from the new MSRP. I bought it for $5K under KBB.

Will need tires but otherwise no maintenance... and no continuing depreciation because it still provides all the goodness it provided when new.

But I hear a lot of myths about EVs and used EVs that seem hard to shake from the mainstream groupthink. One person tried to argue with me that batteries are only good for 100K, and then you're in for a $20K repair. Others worry if you hit traffic, the battery will quickly drain to 0%.

whatever1• 9 months ago

It is a combination of technology moving fast (aka nobody wants an old ev that does not have the latest advances in capacity and speed of charging) and also the real fear of battery replacement costs.

For the second one insurance companies could help alleviate the uncertainty, but I don’t see major vendors offering packages.

People don’t have 20k in a single shot to fix a battery failure. (Maybe cumulatively for a gas car one has to pay more, but it will be in small installments)

CivBase• 9 months ago

I know I personally would not buy a used EV because I've heard so many horror stories about battery replacements. If EV batteries were commonly designed to be repairable (replace by cell or in smaller banks of cells), I'd be less hesitant.

I also suspect there simply aren't many used EVs I'd want right now. I generally "techie" cars with tons of software features, big ol' touch screens, and half-baked self-driving features. I'm still not even comfortable with keyless start on my current vehicle and I hate the adaptive cruise, which I am unable to turn off. For better or worse, EVs seem to always be at the bleeding edge of these kinds of technologies.

more_corn• 9 months ago

Control for: Companies that make it impossible to source parts for repairs (Tesla) Companies with absurdity expensive repairs for minor cosmetic damage (Tesla again) Companies whose CEO threw up a Nazi salute on national tv (also Tesla, seeing a trend here?) And the science might tell a different story.

kube-system9• 9 months ago

It's the charging.

You have to remember that the market for new cars skews heavily toward wealthier households. These households are generally the ones that can afford a place to charge a car at home.

The market for a used EV is much smaller than for a used gas powered vehicle. People buying used vehicles are much more likely to have housing situations where they can't charge a vehicle.

This factor doesn't apply to gasoline vehicles because everyone, rich or poor, fills up at a gas station.

klaff2• 9 months ago

I think this is spot on. I bought a new EV 6 months ago. I brag about paying less than $0.03/mile even with a large EV, but it's completely dependent on charging in my garage and being on a plan that reduces my night-time electricity cost down to $0.07/kWh. At cheaper DCFC stations ($0.39/kWh) it's about breakeven with a similarly-sized ICE vehicle and at higher cost stations ($0.59/kWh) it's more expensive per mile than the ICE vehicle.

kube-system9• 9 months ago

I don't think most people are caught up on the cost per mile, but the inconvenience factor. If you can't charge at home, you going to have to go exclusively to a public charger, which is already pretty inconvenient for a lot of people, and for people of average or lower incomes, they might not even have one in their neighborhood.

We'll probably see a lot more adoption once infrastructure is equitably available to everyone.

supertrope• 9 months ago

This is analogous to why houses listed for sale are so bland. Realtors and sellers stage the property to appeal to as wide an audience as possible. Even if you could elicit a stronger response from a niche of buyers who love a certain amenity it's a surer bet to appeal to the lowest common denominator.

stetrain3• 9 months ago

Why would I pay $35k for a used EV when I can buy a new one for $42k with a $7500 tax credit taken off at purchase?

This article doesn't seem to mention those credits, but they are likely a large factor in the difference between the nominal sale price of a new EV and the used market price.

If you don't factor in those credits, it looks like someone paid $42k for an EV that a couple of years later was only worth $30k. When in reality they paid $35k for that new EV as a net purchase cost.

declan_roberts• 9 months ago

What makes it a bad deal to own an EV is also coincidentally a great reason to buy one: they're getting cheap, fast.

I bought a used 2023 Model Y for about $36k (only 15k miles) it even came with upgrades like acceleration boost and an extra (unusable) back seat. This particular model was about $52k new in 2023.

I can't believe how much car I bought for my money. Autosteer is fantastic (FSD needs work). Early morning drive to the airport and the car was driving itself while I ate my breakfast and drank my coffee.

nextworddev• 9 months ago

No shit.. you have gas cars that drives for 20+ years. Let's see if EVs can do that without costing a fortune.

1970-01-013• 9 months ago

The nuance here is there is a much higher floor for EVs when they finally bottom-out in value. A 300,000km EV will be degraded to ~80% it's range, while a 300,000km ICE will need its powertrain and sensors rebuilt and replaced (timing belt, spark plugs, alternator, water pump, PCV, O2 sensors, etc. and very likely will be dripping motor oil all over the ground).

wiradikusuma• 9 months ago

You may not realize it, but barring price, EVs (esp. Chinese EVs) are like smartphones. When you buy one, in 3 months there's another model with better tech and cheaper (ceterus paribus). Not ideal for buyers, but I like it this way.

Let's say (Chinese) EVs never appear in the world. Why do car prices keep increasing while only marginally better?

didip• 9 months ago

Or you can look at it from the opposite side.

There are plenty of deals to be had from a used EV market.

ben7799• 9 months ago

Another reason that this matters (which is artificial) is that at least in the US so many car owners are on "permanent car payments".

They never pay off their cars and trade them in on another one and just keep making payments without really ever owning a car outright. And increasingly as prices have gone up they are trading cars in that they are underwater on, rolling old debt into the next loan!

If you're in this category of insane financial ignorance trying to appear rich but actually being "car poor" of course this resale is a huge problem. But for anyone who buys a car outright or pays off their loan and then drives the car for many years it's not a problem at all whether you bought new or took advantage of the massive depreciation and bought a lightly used one for a great price.

physicsguy• 9 months ago

In my country (UK) it’s entirely caused by a policy that means people in well paid jobs can pay for a lease agreement direct from their salary and save tax. It also can be used if you’re a high earner to bring you back under a threshold that gives you a subsidy for childcare. So if you earn more than £100k and have kids under 5 you are almost stupid not to take a lease for an EV if you have the need for a car anyway.

As a result of the above, EVs that are ~three years old are flooding the used car market and you can pick up a Tesla for < £20k

SubiculumCode• 9 months ago

Perception of failing battery risk is vastly overstated, creating real opportunity for savvy consumers to pick up a good used EV, so long as it isn't the very first EV's (e.g. those old Leafs) which had terrible battery health management.

dpierce9• 9 months ago

I wonder if the terminal value of an EV will be higher than ICE. This seems possible if there are secondary users for batteries, motors, or if the mineral content is more valuable (e.g., obviously rare Earth and lithium but also the frames tend to have more aluminum).

elnerd• 9 months ago

It is strange how EVs are measured by how far they can go full charge when this is a metric I never have seen for fossile cars. It tells a story how inconvenient EVs or the charging network really is

lotsofpulp4• 9 months ago

It also tells the story that the energy price per mile is insignificant. Vehicles that use gas advertise miles per gallon because it significantly affects costs. They also advertise range (or maybe fuel tank capacity), but not as prominently.

An electric car's miles per energy is not as relevant, because current electricity prices are sufficiently low such that people won't really care whether it's 3 miles per kWh or 5 miles per kWh. They will care about how far they can go on a single charge, hence range is a metric that is often advertised.

kogasa240p• 9 months ago

IMO the biggest issue is the lack of aftermarket cheap battery replacements, and the fault of that lies on car manufacturers.

mring33621• 9 months ago

Batteries degrade over time. And the perfect-conditions range of many EVs isn't great to begin with.

Also, have you seen the out-of-warranty maintenance/repair costs for many EVs?

I assert that these 2 things contribute heavily to the rapid depreciation of EVs.

grigio• 9 months ago

Finally the battery car scam is over

k__• 9 months ago

Seems like we need electric houses.

j45• 9 months ago

Might be a great time to buy EV.

And/or maybe it should have been the time of the PHEV first.

wcunning• 9 months ago

This is mostly a function of the markets for used EVs and used ICE vehicles being the same and the used EV purchaser is not a target market for EVs in general.

Not that many people can afford a new car now at all, and of those who can, they're getting luxury end cars, generally. Luxury vehicles depreciate faster than non-luxury vehicles, generally. People who want used cars are frequently people who can't afford new cars, thus they want something that works in their area in their situation with their stuff as it stands. Many of these people live in places with poor charging networks or rent and cannot install a charger. Used EVs don't come with a free charger like new ones often do. EVs were also being priced and purchased based on the tax credit for quite a while, which meant that price was a little... soft? On top of that, many EVs that fit into this data are selling for less for real reasons, like the uninsurability of Cybertrucks and the range loss on the Bolt EV. This all drives demand down or shifts the curves and lowers prices. It's just a small market for now.

kristianp• 9 months ago

Not that many people can afford a new car now at all, and of those who can, they're getting luxury end cars, generally

That doesn't really make sense. Cheaper new cars are more popular than new luxury cars. Plenty of people finance their new car buys.

softwaredoug• 9 months ago

Wouldn’t you expect a field with rapid technological growth to depreciate faster?

ICEs are a stable technology. There’s little learning curve. Next years EV could be a step change up from last years at the same cost.

How is this a bad thing?

stackedinserter8• 9 months ago

You can't dismiss the fact that EV dies faster and more expensive than ICE.

thebruce87m4• 9 months ago

Without evidence you can. I dismissed your comment without a second thought.

stronglikedan• 9 months ago

As someone who made the mistake of switching to EV recently, I can see why, battery issues aside. They have a higher cost of ownership, and provide zero benefits beyond smoother acceleration. They are such a pain in the ass to keep charged, and I have to borrow a car for road trips unless I want to make it a very long road trip for no good reason.

Most people just don't want another after their first one. So there is not much demand. Dealerships are practically giving them away right now, which is how they snagged me.

Luckily, I can get out of this lease in a couple of years. Unluckily, I will have to spend more on a very quick ICE car now that I've experienced EV acceleration. Luckily, it'll still probably be cheaper than an EV.

xutopia• 9 months ago

You're seriously the exception. Everyone I have spoken to who switched to EV don't want to go back to ICE.

ICE cars have way more things that break down and less reliable for the most part. As for always having to charge... most people driving an EV recharge every night at home and rarely require a charging station. Road trips are a different story but most people don't have regular road trips.

p1dda7• 9 months ago

Everyone I spoke to hates their EV and want to go back to petrol

AtlasBarfed2• 9 months ago

Get a PHEV dude.

I wish the market had a wide selection of 40-50 miles electric range PHEVs ... but a 20 mile EV mode range PHEV will still electrify 80% of your city driving in lots of situations.

jwr2• 9 months ago

I am impressed by the efforts of the fossil fuel industry (and I think many car manufacturers) to discredit EVs. Their campaign has been sneaky and devious and very, very effective.

To spread good FUD, there has to be truth in it, so that debunking it gets very difficult. Over the years I've seen so much FUD it's not even funny (see for example https://interactive.carbonbrief.org/factcheck/electric-vehic...).

This news story shows that the FUD has worked well (especially in the US), hats off to the fossil fuel industry. It's also a double-whammy: this story will spread, so people will be even more suspicious of EVs, which will cause their popularity to fall, which will cause their resale prices to fall…

It's quite sad, but also impressive.

p1dda7• 9 months ago

It's also impressive how far you will go to defend your own choices by disregarding reality

jwr2• 9 months ago

I'm confused: which of my choices do you specifically mean? I didn't mention any choices I made.

giantg22• 9 months ago

Of course they depreciate faster - battery life declines much faster than engine life (at least by age) and battery replacement (as well as other maintenance) is significantly more expensive.

rootusrootus34• 9 months ago

Battery replacement is on par with engine replacement, and might be cheaper depending on which engine we're talking about. Batteries are also just getting cheaper every year.

Plus, batteries will mostly last twice as long as the typical car is on the road before it gets scrapped for unrelated reasons.

The depreciation is mostly explained by market distortions caused by subsidies.

giantg22• 9 months ago

You might need to do some more research. Battery replacement generally runs $15k-$20k. Engine replacement generally runs $5k-$10k. Batteries are estimated to last 10-20 years while the average age of cars in the US is about 14 years - close to the middle of the battery life range. While subsidies do play a role, the other points you provide are unsupported by the facts.

RatchetWerks• 9 months ago

I’m here to take advantage of it. I bought a 2022 Model Y performance. New price was 75k, used price 31k. Love the car. I plan on driving the wheels off it.

torginus• 9 months ago

The chart shows the fallacy in the argument - EVs don't depreciate, but instead are subsidized by various public and private schemes - meaning their new asking price as paid by consumers is not the same as the sticker prices.

The first hit of 'depreciation' is when this contradiction appears in the used price, after that they depreciate like normal.

jjangkke2• 9 months ago

that makes no sense. an EV that cost $50k with or without subsidy that now costs half that is depreciation.

What's more interesting from reading the discussion here is that the depreciation of EV goes beyond the battery and thermal/geographic tax its that there is nothing special from the car market point of view that suggests a mass produced EV should hold its value against some truly sought after ICE cars that offer a unique novelty.

Even the Porsche EVs have not held their value very well compared to their ICE cars. There is simply no appeal to taste when you have to generate ICE sounds via speaker and signals EVs aren't very fun to drive or offer much novelty beyond the fact that its an EV compared to ICE cars where each engine is unique to the maker and has ton of parts all synchronized into a controlled chaos.

dzhiurgis3• 9 months ago

Is the price before dealer markup or MSRP?

Tesla dropped their prices a lot after covid boom, that completely distorted the market.

eagerpace• 9 months ago

My 2023 Model Y depreciated quickly, sure fine. My 2019 Model 3, that I bought new, I made money on when I sold it used in 2021. With inflation and tax breaks the last few years the data for this means nothing.

yieldcrv• 9 months ago

Finally read the article

This issue is for fleet operators overextending themselves buying too many cars, and probably collateralizing debt off of them

Additionally, resale market demand and price discovery is one thing, but it really sounds more like the primary market is overvalued

And this aspect just made me lol

3-year-old EVs lost more than half of their value compared with 39% for gas cars.

so around 50% as opposed to around 40%. wow. stop the presses.

m463• 9 months ago

Plummeting resale values are threatening to derail the world’s transition to electric transportation

Used cars are usually sold to someone who can't afford a new car. It can also be cheaper to drive an EV than a gas car.

So I think the opposite - Used EVs will create an opportunity for normal people to switch away from gas cars.

As to low resale value - I think tesla was VERY aware of this problem and artificially propped up their used market when they were starting out by offering a buyback program.

mattmaroon• 9 months ago

“ Older EV models depreciate even faster than newer ones.”

So the problem is already in the process of solving itself? Seems like standard first mover technology stuff.

This article seems not worth the pixels it’s printed on.

mbgerring• 9 months ago

This is another way of saying "EVs are getting cheaper," so it's hard to understand why this is framed negatively.

Moreover, EV batteries are recyclable. The main thing holding back lithium recycling has been the supply chain of used batteries, because the batteries are quite durable.

If the resale value of EVs is falling, that makes it easier to extract the batteries and use the raw material to build better batteries.

p1dda7• 9 months ago

I heard that VHS players are also getting real cheap, maybe you should buy one!

gortok• 9 months ago

Why has Tesla depreciated so much since 2023? Could any of the depreciation be due to the character that is Elon Musk and his antics?

As someone who bought a 2023 Model Y 7 seat Long Range, I can tell you my desire to sell the car was 100% because of the negative brand value caused by Musk.

I’m not able to sell it because I’m currently $17,000 underwater on it and can’t afford to dump it, but I would if I had $17,000 to lose. I have a friend who did just that.

I love my Tesla (for the most part, it has some basic annoyances that remind me that building and testing a car for California is not the same as building it for everywhere), but as someone who tracked the depreciation of my own Tesla, it started plummeting when Musk decided to buy Twitter and spend his time exonerating the alt-right, and culminated with his foray into public policy.

vondur• 9 months ago

I don't think that's the case. I was looking at some used Chevy Bolt models, and they can be found for quite cheap. I found a nearby 2022 model with only 20,000 miles on it listed for $19,000. I'm pretty sure I can negotiate the price down a bit, too.

rootusrootus34• 9 months ago

When my wife got a 2020 Bolt (brand new), the out-the-door price was $24K. 19K is what we could sell it for in three years, coincidentally. 20% depreciation in three years is pretty good.

rootusrootus34• 9 months ago

Why has Tesla depreciated so much since 2023?

Prices were high, then the credit came back and Tesla slashed prices. Those of us who bought a 2023 got hosed pretty hard.

kjeldsendk• 9 months ago

EVs are in the first phase of the mobile phones.

Within very few years they will be like modern phones that you only update because they're worn down.

AtlasBarfed2• 9 months ago

The article is basically talking about Tesla.

Buyers of new Teslas are basically the TSLA cult.

Used buyers... aren't.

Hm, what might have happened that might have destroyed the overall brand with sensible, probably-liberal buyers of used EVs? I vaguely recall some salute thing. Don't really remember the specifics. I just remember there was a bit of a hubbub.

m101• 9 months ago

There are many comments on here trying to justify why EVs lose value quickly. Why is it simply not the case that the price falls quickly because the market only clears at lower prices? Perhaps the demand curve just isn't there for EVs as it is for ICE vehicles?

In which case: no it's not that they're amazing - it's that they are less desirable than ICE vehicles.

(I used to own a Tesla now I'm back on a hybrid, and delighted about it)

alistairSH• 9 months ago

A few thoughts...

They compare the Model Y to an F150, but don't indicate if the 0-day prices are MSRP or actual sales (because F150s are usually discounted from list price and EVs have various subsidies). While each is best-selling by some measure, they're also different products - a truck VS a near-luxury wagon/crossover. I wouldn't expect them to depreciate at the same rate - they should have included a near-luxury gas-powered wagon/crossover as well (Lexus NX, maybe).

Their argument relies heavily on data from India, where a bankrupt ride-share service flooded the market. If Enterprise went out of business and flooded the US market with Toyota Camrys, I'd expect some pricing irregularity for that model.

Similarly, the US EV market (and probably some others?) is heavily impacted by federal and local rebates and tax benefits. Those surely skew the used car values as well - nobody actually paid $50,000 for a new Tesla (or whatever), they paid $50,000 - some subsidy (and that amount varied based on model, price, and the income of the initial buyer - my neighbor could by the exact same car as me for $7500 less than I could). Some of these subsidies also incentivized leasing vs buying, which then means more of those cars go on the market in 2-3 years (vs a typical ~8 year ownership for a new car).

Long story short, EVs are a nascent market, there's bound to be pricing issues. I'm not convinced we can extrapolate long-term used market values based on the last ~5 years of data.

Robdel12• 9 months ago

Depreciation off of the initial price, absolutely. EVs have always been grossly overpriced tech machines. They’re not traditional cars.

Look at Nissan leafs. They “traditionally” depreciate.

gwbas1c• 9 months ago

While an electric vehicle is ideal for shorter trips in urban areas with moderate temperatures, they aren’t as effective as traditional cars for long-distance travel or when the temperature is very high or very low

On long trips, I plug in at bathroom breaks about once every 2-3 hours. I don't wait for a full charge because (surprise surprise), I'm going to need to pee before I deplete the battery.

Now that I've adjusted, I actually prefer it to gas, because I can just plug in and walk away instead of needing to babysit the car at the pump.

Ken_At_EM• 9 months ago

Where's my Robo Taxi that's worth $250k because it drives people around while I work?

sublimefire• 9 months ago

Another angle to look at it is that cars cost a lot, petrol and electric alike. The only way to reduce depreciation is for the folks to be able to buy used cars for a lot which means financing.

A U.K.-based study found 3-year-old EVs lost more than half of their value compared with 39% for gas cars.

40-50% depreciation is crazy, there is little reason why this should happen as cars do not change that much in such a short time. I bet they would not depreciate that hard if a new car was sold at 30k.

rootusrootus34• 9 months ago

40-50% depreciation is crazy

It's most likely a lie, they probably based the numbers on the original MSRP rather than the original out-the-door price.

rasz12• 9 months ago

UK ZEV mandate led to absolutely insane EV incentives for businesses distorting the market towards huge expensive but crap German EVs like Audi e-trons. Those EVs depreciate like crazy. Mercedes EQS must be a record holder at 50% in a year.

standardUser• 9 months ago

The difference is only around $4k. And there's an upside to have an affordable EV resale market. Plus, if you're planning to own a new car for 5 years or more, you have to wonder what the resale market for gas cars will look like in the 2030's.

exasperaited2• 9 months ago

Of course they are. It’s the same process as applied to DSLRs, which depreciated much more quickly than film bodies did only a few years prior.

Film bodies found their post-digital price floor quite quickly. DSLRs and mirrorless have only found secondhand price stability in the last three or four years and while a big part of it is the quality plateau at the end of the megapixel race (which might have some sort of analogue in the electric car industry, though I don’t know what it is —- range, perhaps), part of that was driven by pandemic component scarcity and inflation holding up the new camera market prices.

In short I think this depreciation will last for another decade until manufacturers feel confident they will sell enough volume to make cheaper cars.

EasyMark• 9 months ago

bad for new car buyers, great for us used car people, so there is a silver-green lining to this whole affair.

shellkr• 9 months ago

Comparing with Tesla is bad as there is a political aspect why people, especially in EU, do not want to buy it after 2024. Which means the statistics might falter. Also when I look at other sources the data say different. I mean if I look at data from the biggest reseller in Sweden KVD you have EV's that has ~80% of the original worth after three years.

Ylpertnodi• 9 months ago

...Tesla is bad as there is a political aspect why people, especially in EU, do not want to buy it after 2024.

Political? I'd say it's very, very personal.

_heimdall• 9 months ago

The Volt I bought a few years ago is worth a small fraction of what we paid for it, 30% maybe?

Its also turned into a mountain of problems recently. It was great until about a year ago, then the battery started acting up. With 10 miles of charge left it will drop to 0, go into limp mode, and require dealership software to disable the thrown code and restart the car. Now it has a phantom battery drain going on, killing the 12v battery after being parked for a few days.

I really liked the car until these issues cropped up. Now I wish I hadn't saved the ~$2,800 in gas while the car depreciated by 4x that amount.

aurizon• 9 months ago

Bad market analysis and production. I believe a case can be made for a well designed, rectangular vehicle with motorised wheels - 2 or 4 wheel drive. With a cube van or window van. Forget the chatter about un-sprung weight, this is not a high performance vehicle. Brakes, suspension as well as a front compression zone. Battery = 3 choices - 150/300/450 mile range. Battery flat in 3 segments arranged to balance as needed. Many people are OK with 150, some want 300 and 450 for the longer range. Some car makers in Asia have fast change stands where an old battery can be dropped and a new one picked up in under 5 minutes - perhaps fast charging will eliminate this - however fast charging has IR losses as well as degradation issues - need to be solved before ready for prime time. Tesla has plateaued due to price and the yearly design steady state ranks old/new cars as same old same. Far less in the way of e-bling = smaller screens etc, fewer assists/features. I would be quite happy at 0-60 under 10 seconds and a max of 85-90.

jeffnappi• 9 months ago

These data points are based on 2023 inflated pricing as the entry point. Not much to see here.

In 2023 the car market was wildly overpriced due to the low interest rates and covid money combined with supply chain problems.

For Tesla owners in the U.S., their 2023 Model Ys are worth 42% less than what they paid two years ago

bigums• 9 months ago

How did they find F150’s selling for $35k new in 2023? If they’re comparing fleet model F150s either roll up windows to model Ys, that’s an incredibly unfair comparison. You would need to compare similar trim levels with comparable features to a model Y. An F150 with a higher trim has depreciation values similar to an electric vehicle.

Kristopher1337• 9 months ago

I have a 2018 Model 3 dual motor long range that I bought new right before the first tax credit expired. I never considered another manufacturer because they didn’t have NACS for supercharger access. Only just this year has that started to change. I never considered another Tesla because 1. I didn’t want to repay for FSD and 2. I would lose on the depreciation while there has not been a killer feature that separates my current car from the new ones. Now I wouldn’t even consider a Tesla.

Since owning my car I’ve had to service it only twice. My battery depreciation has been at least to me completely unnoticeable. I basically only charged on superchargers till late 2023 till I got a charger in my garage. I’m sure my battery has lost some small amount of range but honestly I would have to do the calculations to know what it is. It can’t be much.

I will say only this year have I even considered for even just a moment of getting something new. I’m pretty interested in the Lexus steer by wire technology that will come as an upgraded feature on the new RZ. I know that car is not on anyone’s radar and I can understand someone being very hesitant of steer by wire technology. I genuinely believe it’s an interesting feature though and could be a noticeable enhancement to every day driving. It actually makes a yoke style wheel make sense.

huntertwo• 9 months ago

This was a headline a year ago - Patrick Boyle has multiple videos on this topic.

Supply glut/low demand causes prices to go down.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zjuj1xB_Ze8

alexnewman• 9 months ago

Gas powered cars are getting worse. Everything is being recalled. Even Toyota

thelastgallon• 9 months ago

Gas cars also depreciated faster than horses initially. We’ve only just started mass producing EVs. The scale advantages haven’t kicked in yet and EVs are already at cost parity.

People bought Model Ys during Covid close to 70k, of course it will show up as massive depreciation if manufacturer is selling the same shit for nearly half the price.

Also, all new cars have too much electronics and sensors, they all depreciate faster.

asdefghyk2• 9 months ago

There is also a point where evs need new battery. Will it be possible to get a replacement battery at a reasonable price.??? How many 100,000 kilometers does a ev do before needing new battery? My current car at 269,000 km and car and motor are in good condition

asdefghyk2• 9 months ago

Replacement battery cost would bd one reason. Decreasing range as battery ages would be another readon

aftbit3• 9 months ago

This is why I leased my EV rather than bought it. EVs are more expensive than gas cars (at least here in USA) and the last few years have brought an incredible amount of technological change. When I bought my last (ICE) car, I considered the purchase on a 10 year time scale. With how quickly EVs are improving right now, I would hate to lock in to 10 years.

That's before you even consider battery degradation. So much of the value of these cars is in the battery, to the point I almost wonder if they are making money, even selling them at these prices. I had to have my IONIQ 5 battery replaced under warranty within a month of buying the car, and the price that Hyundai charged themselves for the battery was more than the cost of the car brand new off the lot, even before incentives. Yes, that's the right hand charging the left, and they'll refurbish my failed pack (a single weak cell) and recoup most of the cost... but it was still a shock to see that.

est• 9 months ago

the story happened in China in 2015-2023 or something

Yes EVs are "depreciating faster"

But then EVs hold 40% of the market, ICE cars were obselete.

You can by brand new B-segment sedans in China for 10k.

awaymazdacx5• 9 months ago

Electric voltage for the photon effect and development of valence bands in the 17th century is the origin for contemporary fuel conversion. This dynamic whereby the photon is subject to the container, whether a selenium element or cystalline silicon accounts for AC to DC electric semiconduction.

bradley13• 9 months ago

Just to add: For people like my family, who drive cars until they die, resale value is pretty irrelevant.

teo_zero• 9 months ago

Apart from being 2 years late, the article missed the number-1 cause of depreciation: fast progress in battery tech means that in 2 years your battery, even if its health doesn't deteriorate, will be much less performant than then-new ones.

MilnerRoute• 9 months ago

Kelley Blue Book says "On average, new cars depreciate about 30% over the first 2 years, and continue to depreciate 8-12% each year after that."

https://www.kbb.com/car-depreciation/

When you factor that in, the difference between EVs and internal combustion engines looks like it's just a few thousand dollars...

tonyhart7• 9 months ago

EV is more like a electronic than a "car"

what is unique to electronic???? improving fast (more than peers), but sometimes in the future where innovation is "maxed out" like phone, we could see an "cheaper" EV depreciate not as fast

daanlo• 9 months ago

Comparing re-sale price of Tesla to Ford is absurd. Elon Musk alienated most of Tesla‘s potential customers. I would assume more of the price drop comes from that than from anything inherent about EVs.

holysantamaria• 9 months ago

If only people had better alternatives to car ownership, such as reliable, fast public transport, e-bikes, nearby shops, working from home etc… I would bet that car ownership would not be necessary for 80% of the current car-owners population. And maybe depreciation would not be that of a concern?

crims0n• 9 months ago

This take is a bit delusional, at least in the US. Not everyone is childless and living downtown.

woodpanel2• 9 months ago

No news for me here (Used Porsches and EQSs are really good price-to-value propositions).

The question is rather whether this depreciation curve is going to normalize into that of Combustion Engine powered cars or if the „EV transition“ just means „transitioning cars into the E-waste category of smartphones and TVs“

jgalt2122• 9 months ago

For years, certain administrations force fed us EVs, and now the force feeding is over.

spacedcowboy2• 9 months ago

My previous car was a Mitsubishi Spyder Eclipse convertible. I loved the bones of that car but moving continent was too far a bridge to cross. It was 17 years old when I gave it to a neighbour as a thank-you for helping me pack the house up.

My current car is a Kia EV6 AWD GT-Line S, pretty much the top-of-the-range car. It has 340 miles range (plenty when the longest trip I'll do is 220 once or twice per year) and although a lot bulkier than the old car, has enough oomph off the line that I don't care. I do miss the top-down experience, but here in the UK that's less of an issue due to weather, and at least there's a large sun-roof :)

Tesla would have been an option a few years ago. Glad I dodged that bullet.

I fully expect to get another 15 years or so out of the car, at which point I'll be in my dotage and be having other people drive me around, possibly in a golf-cart.. So depreciation really isn't a big deal for me.

jw887c• 9 months ago

You are the poster child for depreciation. You might have received more utility than the price you paid but at the end of the day, that dollar value once you gave it away was $0

spacedcowboy2• 9 months ago

Depreciation only matters if you expect to get money back for the car. I don’t. I expect to run it into the ground and get my use from it that way.

catketch• 9 months ago

Different take: depreciated EVs mean they are more affordable on the used market, making them accessible to more people that can't make a $50-80K+ new vehicle work for their budgets. First adopters and EV enthusiast will continue to push the new market, but the tent opens up for more drivers. The next hurdle will be solving disparity of convenience between those that can have home chargers and those that live in apartments or with street parking.

At least in the 4-5 years ago, there was not much of a used market, not much vehicle choice beyond Tesla that was good price/performance, and tough going on charging infrastructure (again outside of Tesla)

That landscape has not completely changed, but it is much different. There's a lot of actual vehicle choice (even if most are still some type of SUV/CUV), and charging situation is reasonable, especially with opening up of NACS

There's a big component of political action against EVs, solar, etc but I think it will just slow, not stop the momentum in the US. With 2 BEVs and a PHEV, I don't see our family going back to ICE vehicles. I miss manual transmissions, that's about it

esskay• 9 months ago

This is a fairly meaningless, and very much expected stage of EV adoption. EV costs had to come down, that's just a given. They were priced at a premium over ICE vehicles. As production costs lowered and more manufacturers started making the move to EV's, the prices naturally dropped. Meaning an EV that previously cost $100k and now costs $80k would understandably mean the resale value of those $100k earlier models is going to be poor.

We're still way too early in the shift to EV's to have a reliable metric of long term resale values, but theres basically nothing to suggest they would be lower than ICE vehicles once people stop believing the utter nonsense being pushed about EV's longevity by a select few.

mock-possum• 9 months ago

If you’re buying cars as an investment then you’re doing it wrong.

If you’re picking a car betting on being able to recoup some of the price later on resale value then you’re doing it wrong.

alessandru2• 9 months ago

wow 800 comments about an immature ev market complaining of depreciation values.

if more of the electorate knew they could use these ev batteries in second life applications to power their homes businesses or otherwise be recycled into functional power providing devices, perhaps the percieved value wouldn't be so low. but right now everyone is convinced that the batteries are expiring at a fast rate when in reality they maintain usability into the 100s of k-miles.

but again, this article is about india, which is about 10 years behind the west in electrifying anything. so ... why are we asking the new kids on the block about depreciation?

why don't you ask the norwegians (95% ev this year) about depreciation? their market is much more mature with many more advanced consumers that can appraise the depreciated batteries much better. but you don't ask them because you want to muck-rake EV.

don't go to the premier ev market for this information go to the most under-developed one.

why don't you go ask south africans what they think about depreciating batteries?

ugh. 400 points for this drivel. you people are literally inane.

sjducb• 9 months ago

This article is not making a good comparison.

Most EVs are luxury vehicles. Luxury vehicles depreciate much faster than regular cars. Luxury car buyers care if the car is new or not.

Tesla should be compared to BMW not Ford. Teslas depreciate at similar rates to BMWs.

EVs like the leaf are depreciating fast because their technology is becoming obsolete.

I think it is too early to be sure that EVs depreciate quickly.

NoPicklez2• 9 months ago

I been thinking about this too as I am looking to buy my first EV.

With a ICE you look at the odometer when purchasing, outside of that you don't actually know whether that reading and the state of the engine gives you less range, less power or an indicator of parts failing.

With an EV, similar to other electronic devices, you get an actual number that tells you the life of the battery which allows you to infer anything you like in terms of what that would mean for the life of the vehicle.

It will take time for people to know the true life of an EV in the second hand market. The general public are skeptical of EV's, so it makes sense they would be all the more skeptical of them second hand.

techthatananya• 9 months ago

Hi, I'm the author of this piece.

It is very heartening to see everyone engaging on topics like IP, production capabilities, trade dynamics, charging anxiety, safety and more. I love that the discussion isn't one-dimensional, and that rapid tech advancements in EVs are being seen as a sign of progress and volatility both. In the same vein, ICE vehicles being stagnant is not simply being written off as them being outdated but instead being considered good enough. One commentator is on the ball in suggesting that the depreciation problem might actually be a data problem. I've often found in my reporting that assessing EVs in general pose data challenges given how new the tech and market is.

As many of you pointed out, there are several factors that influence the price of used EVs and given how nascent the market is, it may be too soon to tell if the initial prices were inflated, or if the used pricing will settle in the near future, and so on. Battery anxiety, though, seems to be a big point of contention. EV users in the comments seem to be quite happy and confident about their battery, but several people still point to battery life uncertainty and the information asymmetry around it as deterrents.

Experts suggest that battery-as-a-service models are a potential lifeline, but someone here said standardisation for individual buyers is far off because "battery tech, from the chemistry to the packs, shows no sign of slowing down in the immediate future." Another person said they're looking forward to solid-state batteries.

I'd love to know more from you about how battery tech is evolving/should evolve where you are and whether battery swapping or leasing or any other financial models would make EV adoption (used or new) more enticing? If you have any specific examples, please do share

EVs are depreciating faster than gas-powered cars

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