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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 y

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 1y 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__alchemist 1y 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.
- kemayo 1y 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.
  - nostrademons 1y ago
    Yeah. This is called "anchoring" in behavioral economics research. People can't let go of the price they last paid for the good as the "correct" price, and so are reluctant to drop to the true market-clearing price. This is also why cereal makers rely on shrinkflation to raise prices, and why home prices are sticky downwards, and why companies resort to layoffs rather than wage cuts. In an individual consumer's mind, prices should stay the same.
  - saltcured 1y ago
    I think this is also a baby step away from one basis for hoarding behavior. The hoarder cannot see the many cases where the loss of value has already happened whether you retain the item or discard it. They think the full loss is realized the moment it is discarded.
- rootusrootus 1y 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.
  - the__alchemist 1y ago
    Have you bought or sold used recently? You can find a fair price, but it's a big time commitment, and stressful.
    - brokencode 1y ago
      Plenty of people must find this worthwhile, otherwise sellers wouldn’t be able to find buyers and they’d be forced to reduce price if they want to sell. Plus, the listed price is often aspirational. Savvy buyers will typically negotiate the price down. I have to admit that I’m not a savvy buyer and always buy new though. But I know people who do this very successfully.
    - Marsymars 1y ago
      I felt like my new factory order car buy recently was a big time commitment and stressful to get a fair price.
    - fluoridation 1y ago
      That's how it goes in my experience with the used market, for anything, really. People go online, browse around the listings to get a feel of the prices, and post a price based on that. That's a mistake. The prices that are easy to find and most common are for the items that aren't moving. When someone finally posts an item at a price that buyers are willing to pay it usually gets sold in a few days, if it's something in demand. I've only ever found good deals on used stuff by pure chance or by watching the market over weeks. It takes both patience and decisiveness, otherwise someone else swoops in before you.
      - rootusrootus 1y ago
        All of this is just a way of saying that the market does not agree with someone's personal opinion on value. "That's a mistake" sounds right but if the market is willing to pay, then was it really a mistake? > I've only ever found good deals on used stuff by pure chance or by watching the market over weeks. It takes both patience and decisiveness, otherwise someone else swoops in before you. That sounds like it is exactly how things are supposed to work. If the average price were a good deal, it would by definition not be a good deal. It should take some work or some waiting, if you want that price.
- kube-system 1y 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.
- potato3732842 1y 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 1y 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-sinking-deeper-the-average-amount-owed-on-upside-down-auto-loans-climbed-to-an-all-time-high-of-6905-according-to-edmunds.html https://www.edmunds.com/industry/press/underwater-and-sinkin...
jimt1234 1y 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpMvS1Q1sos
- thenobsta 1y 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.
goalieca 1y 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 1y ago
  Most people just see ‘old, meh’.
- oceanplexian 1y 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.
  - kube-system 1y ago
    Rich runs a youtube channel not a repair shop. There are independent EV repair shops, but you are right that there are not many.
  - jonbiggums22 1y ago
    I actually think that the used market for EVs just is going to have more apartment dwellers (who lack home charging infrastructure) and people who only have access to one car (and thus more strongly prefer something that can easily do long trips without much planning). New EVs are new cars which are expensive as hell and primarily going to be purchased by well off people that have houses. And as you said, these people probably aren't getting much work done at the dealership even if we assume the dealership services EVs. I've noticed in discussions about EVs a lot of people feel range anxiety if overblown, which is probably true. But the "I have nowhere to charge it at night because I don't own a house" problem is usually just ignored even though it seems like a much bigger problem to me.
    - shinycode 1y ago
deleted 1y ago
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beambot 1y 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.)
- dangus 1y 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.
  - edbaskerville 1y ago
    This argument seems right to me. Old ICE cars are basically the same as new ones. EVs are getting better quickly, so fast depreciation makes sense. I avoided a used Leaf for exactly the reason you cited...2.5 years ago, and have been very happy with a last-of-its-generation 2023 Chevy Bolt (~ $22K new after tax credit). But if you don't care about new features, e.g., really fast charging, a used Bolt (55kW max) is a great option!
    - idiotsecant 1y ago
      >>Old ICE cars are basically the same as new ones. I'm not sure that's totally true. The rate of change might be lower, but new ICE vehicles have higher efficiency (directly correlating to longer EV range) and are safer, more comfortable, and quieter. I am definitely on the pro-EV side, nearly an evangelist I suppose, but ICE vehicles do improve.
Eisenstein 1y 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.
Aloisius 1y 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?
- thegreatpeter 1y ago
  The new Model Y surely is safer, more comfortable and has a longer range and a better battery.
- halfnormalform 1y 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!
- 1970-01-01 1y 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.
bunderbunder 1y 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 1y 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?
  - TGower 1y ago
    Yeah, pretty much all of them have long battery warranties. Tesla for example garuntees >=70% capacity for 8 years or 100k miles.
    - BeetleB 1y ago
      > Tesla for example garuntees >=70% capacity for 8 years or 100k miles. If you're used to buying used vehicles - that's not sufficient. For context, all the cars I've bought in the last 20+ years have been at least 8 years old when I bought them. I can get an 8 year old Toyota/Honda and know I'm good for the next 5-7 years.[1] Buying an 8 year old used Tesla with only 75% capacity? No way. [1] Likely a lot longer. I'm right now driving a 22 year old vehicle that only started showing issues a year ago.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - mulmen 1y ago
        The warranty doesn’t suggest the battery will be at 70.00001% on the first day of year 9. It says if it goes below 70% it will get replaced. That 8 year old Toyota you bought came with a 6 year/60k mile warranty. If you are comfortable driving that to 2.5x the initial warranty then a used Tesla should be good to 250k and 20 years.
Fergusonb 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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 1y ago
  It's not like those used EVs are getting thrown away—they're just going further down-market than they otherwise would.
  - xp84 1y ago
    yup. and there are a lot more people in America who can buy a 2-3-year-old $20,000 EV than the insane prices those cars were fetching when new!
- jerlam 1y 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.
  - nradov 1y ago
    A significant fraction of consumers are going to purchase ICE cars (including hybrids) to replace EVs. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/07/25/ev-owners-want-to-buy-gas-cars-again.html https://www.cnbc.com/2024/07/25/ev-owners-want-to-buy-gas-ca...
jacquesm 1y ago
> You see this in computers, smartphones, TVs, and solar panels 3D printers!
- PunchyHamster 1y 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.
  - jacquesm 1y ago
    The bottom end are still incredibly impressive. For $200 you can buy something that just five years ago would have made for good science fiction.
mikepurvis 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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.
- nradov 1y 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-vehicle-dependability-study-vds https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2025-us-vehi...
  - rswail 1y ago
    PHEVs break down more than full electric BEV or normal ICE vehicles. Hybrids (ie not plug in) have the least defects, but basically equal to normal ICE vehicles. But BEV is improving YoY relative to ICE.
emmelaich 1y 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 1y 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.
- shinycode 1y 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
- bluescrn 1y 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 1y 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.
- jgilias 1y 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.
themafia 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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.
- Rebelgecko 1y 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 1y 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_ 1y 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.
- exasperaited 1y ago
  I agree (just made an analogy to DSLRs in another comment)
ulrikrasmussen 1y 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 1y 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)
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
woodpanel 1y 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.
ethagknight 1y 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 1y 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
  - ethagknight 1y ago
    Sorry- yes there’s a used market, but the pricing is essentially handling and refurb cost. used panels are sold by the pallet for the price of a new single panel. Vastly different from a used car industry. That being said… I might buy a pallet
al_borland 1y 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.
skeeter2020 1y 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.
- varjag 1y 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.
  - ekidd 1y ago
    I am concerned about EV maintenance outside of warranty. My family has routinely gotten even American cars above 200,000 miles, or at least kept them going for 15 years or more. This has gotten harder over the years. Cars from 2010 rust a lot less than cars from 1985. But they have more computers, and the computers die. These computers are often hard to replace. Even good mechanics tend to recommend going to the dealer. It's rarely less than a $1500 replacement. And EV cars? They often have an extra half-dozen critical computers beyond what's in a gas car. So I worry that well-maintained Honda and Toyota EVs will fail sooner than their conventional models. Perhaps this worry is misplaced. We'll see.
    - varjag 1y ago
      Our Leaf is still going fine after 12 years. But a 2013 budget EV is hilariously low spec by today standards. So yeah if you're looking for family heirloom qualities in a car it's a wrong choice. Most people don't drive old cars for sentimental value though.
rafamvc 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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.

zvitiate 1y 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__alchemist 1y 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.

kemayo 1y 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.
- nostrademons 1y ago
  Yeah. This is called "anchoring" in behavioral economics research. People can't let go of the price they last paid for the good as the "correct" price, and so are reluctant to drop to the true market-clearing price. This is also why cereal makers rely on shrinkflation to raise prices, and why home prices are sticky downwards, and why companies resort to layoffs rather than wage cuts. In an individual consumer's mind, prices should stay the same.
- saltcured 1y ago
  I think this is also a baby step away from one basis for hoarding behavior. The hoarder cannot see the many cases where the loss of value has already happened whether you retain the item or discard it. They think the full loss is realized the moment it is discarded.
rootusrootus 1y 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.
- the__alchemist 1y ago
  Have you bought or sold used recently? You can find a fair price, but it's a big time commitment, and stressful.
  - brokencode 1y ago
    Plenty of people must find this worthwhile, otherwise sellers wouldn’t be able to find buyers and they’d be forced to reduce price if they want to sell. Plus, the listed price is often aspirational. Savvy buyers will typically negotiate the price down. I have to admit that I’m not a savvy buyer and always buy new though. But I know people who do this very successfully.
  - Marsymars 1y ago
    I felt like my new factory order car buy recently was a big time commitment and stressful to get a fair price.
  - fluoridation 1y ago
    That's how it goes in my experience with the used market, for anything, really. People go online, browse around the listings to get a feel of the prices, and post a price based on that. That's a mistake. The prices that are easy to find and most common are for the items that aren't moving. When someone finally posts an item at a price that buyers are willing to pay it usually gets sold in a few days, if it's something in demand. I've only ever found good deals on used stuff by pure chance or by watching the market over weeks. It takes both patience and decisiveness, otherwise someone else swoops in before you.
    - rootusrootus 1y ago
      All of this is just a way of saying that the market does not agree with someone's personal opinion on value. "That's a mistake" sounds right but if the market is willing to pay, then was it really a mistake? > I've only ever found good deals on used stuff by pure chance or by watching the market over weeks. It takes both patience and decisiveness, otherwise someone else swoops in before you. That sounds like it is exactly how things are supposed to work. If the average price were a good deal, it would by definition not be a good deal. It should take some work or some waiting, if you want that price.
kube-system 1y 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.
potato3732842 1y 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 1y 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-sinking-deeper-the-average-amount-owed-on-upside-down-auto-loans-climbed-to-an-all-time-high-of-6905-according-to-edmunds.html https://www.edmunds.com/industry/press/underwater-and-sinkin...

jimt1234 1y 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 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpMvS1Q1sos

thenobsta 1y 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.

goalieca 1y 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 1y ago
Most people just see ‘old, meh’.
oceanplexian 1y 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.
- kube-system 1y ago
  Rich runs a youtube channel not a repair shop. There are independent EV repair shops, but you are right that there are not many.
- jonbiggums22 1y ago
  I actually think that the used market for EVs just is going to have more apartment dwellers (who lack home charging infrastructure) and people who only have access to one car (and thus more strongly prefer something that can easily do long trips without much planning). New EVs are new cars which are expensive as hell and primarily going to be purchased by well off people that have houses. And as you said, these people probably aren't getting much work done at the dealership even if we assume the dealership services EVs. I've noticed in discussions about EVs a lot of people feel range anxiety if overblown, which is probably true. But the "I have nowhere to charge it at night because I don't own a house" problem is usually just ignored even though it seems like a much bigger problem to me.
  - shinycode 1y ago

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beambot 1y 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.)

dangus 1y 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.
- edbaskerville 1y ago
  This argument seems right to me. Old ICE cars are basically the same as new ones. EVs are getting better quickly, so fast depreciation makes sense. I avoided a used Leaf for exactly the reason you cited...2.5 years ago, and have been very happy with a last-of-its-generation 2023 Chevy Bolt (~ $22K new after tax credit). But if you don't care about new features, e.g., really fast charging, a used Bolt (55kW max) is a great option!
  - idiotsecant 1y ago
    >>Old ICE cars are basically the same as new ones. I'm not sure that's totally true. The rate of change might be lower, but new ICE vehicles have higher efficiency (directly correlating to longer EV range) and are safer, more comfortable, and quieter. I am definitely on the pro-EV side, nearly an evangelist I suppose, but ICE vehicles do improve.

Eisenstein 1y 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.

Aloisius 1y 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?

thegreatpeter 1y ago
The new Model Y surely is safer, more comfortable and has a longer range and a better battery.
halfnormalform 1y 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!
1970-01-01 1y 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.

bunderbunder 1y 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 1y 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?
- TGower 1y ago
  Yeah, pretty much all of them have long battery warranties. Tesla for example garuntees >=70% capacity for 8 years or 100k miles.
  - BeetleB 1y ago
    > Tesla for example garuntees >=70% capacity for 8 years or 100k miles. If you're used to buying used vehicles - that's not sufficient. For context, all the cars I've bought in the last 20+ years have been at least 8 years old when I bought them. I can get an 8 year old Toyota/Honda and know I'm good for the next 5-7 years.[1] Buying an 8 year old used Tesla with only 75% capacity? No way. [1] Likely a lot longer. I'm right now driving a 22 year old vehicle that only started showing issues a year ago.
    - deleted 1y ago
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    - mulmen 1y ago
      The warranty doesn’t suggest the battery will be at 70.00001% on the first day of year 9. It says if it goes below 70% it will get replaced. That 8 year old Toyota you bought came with a 6 year/60k mile warranty. If you are comfortable driving that to 2.5x the initial warranty then a used Tesla should be good to 250k and 20 years.

Fergusonb 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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 1y ago
It's not like those used EVs are getting thrown away—they're just going further down-market than they otherwise would.
- xp84 1y ago
  yup. and there are a lot more people in America who can buy a 2-3-year-old $20,000 EV than the insane prices those cars were fetching when new!
jerlam 1y 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.
- nradov 1y ago
  A significant fraction of consumers are going to purchase ICE cars (including hybrids) to replace EVs. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/07/25/ev-owners-want-to-buy-gas-cars-again.html https://www.cnbc.com/2024/07/25/ev-owners-want-to-buy-gas-ca...

jacquesm 1y ago

> You see this in computers, smartphones, TVs, and solar panels 3D printers!

PunchyHamster 1y 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.
- jacquesm 1y ago
  The bottom end are still incredibly impressive. For $200 you can buy something that just five years ago would have made for good science fiction.

mikepurvis 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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.

nradov 1y 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-vehicle-dependability-study-vds https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2025-us-vehi...
- rswail 1y ago
  PHEVs break down more than full electric BEV or normal ICE vehicles. Hybrids (ie not plug in) have the least defects, but basically equal to normal ICE vehicles. But BEV is improving YoY relative to ICE.

emmelaich 1y 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 1y 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.

shinycode 1y 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
bluescrn 1y 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 1y 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.

jgilias 1y 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.

themafia 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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.
Rebelgecko 1y 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 1y 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_ 1y 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.

exasperaited 1y ago
I agree (just made an analogy to DSLRs in another comment)

ulrikrasmussen 1y 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 1y 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)

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woodpanel 1y 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.

ethagknight 1y 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 1y 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
- ethagknight 1y ago
  Sorry- yes there’s a used market, but the pricing is essentially handling and refurb cost. used panels are sold by the pallet for the price of a new single panel. Vastly different from a used car industry. That being said… I might buy a pallet

al_borland 1y 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.

skeeter2020 1y 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.

varjag 1y 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.
- ekidd 1y ago
  I am concerned about EV maintenance outside of warranty. My family has routinely gotten even American cars above 200,000 miles, or at least kept them going for 15 years or more. This has gotten harder over the years. Cars from 2010 rust a lot less than cars from 1985. But they have more computers, and the computers die. These computers are often hard to replace. Even good mechanics tend to recommend going to the dealer. It's rarely less than a $1500 replacement. And EV cars? They often have an extra half-dozen critical computers beyond what's in a gas car. So I worry that well-maintained Honda and Toyota EVs will fail sooner than their conventional models. Perhaps this worry is misplaced. We'll see.
  - varjag 1y ago
    Our Leaf is still going fine after 12 years. But a 2013 budget EV is hilariously low spec by today standards. So yeah if you're looking for family heirloom qualities in a car it's a wrong choice. Most people don't drive old cars for sentimental value though.

rafamvc 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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 1y 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.