Quote:
Originally Posted by pylon
...
Unless you have a major boner for an EV, I wouldn't buy a used one right now. The bloom is off that rose, and the used market on them has absolutely collapsed. Used EV's are almost unsellable. I dabbled in a few, thought I stole these things at the auction, and priced them first the cheapest in the city, then the province, then... the country. No bites. At one point I had the cheapest E-tron in Canada by $10,000 and it didn't get a sniff until I discounted it another $10k. Used Teslas just rot away until you auction them to Eastern or BC dealers. The only EV I'd buy would be a new one, and only if I lived in a province that had a rebate to buy one. They depreciate like nothing I've ever seen...
|
I think this will pose a real problem for increased EV adoption going forward.
I remember not that long ago where a Model S depreciated much more slowly than the quivalent German sedan, which in a way proved to be another sort of subsidy for early adopters - they get a rebate from the government, lower depreciation, lower running costs (vs paying for gas and normal service costs)... Low cost of ownership became
the wholistic incentive.
But now, the TCO over even 12 months is so far out of whack, you could buy almost anything else and be ahead of an EV, which means only the die hards will still make that commitment.
I remember reading an article (or maybe it was a podcast) out of the US, where a major US wholesaler was still trying to wrap his head around what to even do with EVs. The example he used at the time was the then-new Mercedes EQS... These things were going for >$120k new and within 6 months and a few thousand miles, he was selling them in the $60s, 'cause that's all they'd bring.
No amount of fuel savings or "good feels" is going to make up for 50% depreciation in under a year. People will simply not do it... You can imagine how hard it was to feign enthusiasm when a friend dropped a kid off earlier this week in his new EQS... "Oh, yeah, nice... Glad you're liking it"