EVs... no one wants them!
Discussion
TheRainMaker said:
I'm the same; I picked up an as-new three-year-old i3S from a BMW dealer for 40% of its RRP.
I'm not sure why, but the prices at the dealers seem to have gone up again with i3s . I might have been lucky.
What's the relevance of the price you paid to the historic RRP number though?I'm not sure why, but the prices at the dealers seem to have gone up again with i3s . I might have been lucky.
I3s are tremendous value but the RRP has absolutely no relevance at all other than as a means to inflate values at the expense of the consumer. It's like saying a biscuit is £1 but that's somehow good value because a teapot is £10.
The value in the i3 is that it's a shell that won't rot, everything on it is replaceable making it a near perfect Trigger's Broom and it is compliant to modern legislation without the loss of personal freedom that all newer cars have due to their electronic surveillance and controls. The fact that it is one of the best fun hatchbacks to drive since the early 90s is an added bonus.
SWoll said:
The fact that so few people apparently want a used EV, which as far as I can tell is driven in the most part by fear of change and the fact that they are aligned with ridiculous net-zero guff, just stop oil dips
ts etc. is brilliant for anyone who can get past all of that crap and judge them purely on their own merits.
It's currently possible to pick up a premium, 3 year old, 400+ HP vehicle like a Polestar 2 for < £20k, giving access to the best drivetrain I've ever experienced in a daily car and running costs of around 2p per mile.
My thanks to all the haters, it's much appreciated,
True, they are cheap, but it’s the equivalent of saying a SsangYong Rexton is an investment because it’s cheap. You’ll still lose practically all its value because nobody will want it after you.ts etc. is brilliant for anyone who can get past all of that crap and judge them purely on their own merits.It's currently possible to pick up a premium, 3 year old, 400+ HP vehicle like a Polestar 2 for < £20k, giving access to the best drivetrain I've ever experienced in a daily car and running costs of around 2p per mile.
My thanks to all the haters, it's much appreciated,
KingGary said:
True, they are cheap, but it’s the equivalent of saying a SsangYong Rexton is an investment because it’s cheap. You’ll still lose practically all its value because nobody will want it after you.
Why not?What will make this perfectly useable car lose “practically all its value”?
It may not hold its value as well as something else, but the same is true of all cars.
TheRainMaker said:
DonkeyApple said:
What's the relevance of the price you paid to the historic RRP number though?
It makes me feel like I got a bargain 
That's the problem. It works brilliantly, even when you know the trick. I paid £20k for a car that was once vaguely associated with a random number that was greater than 50,000. And as 740 points out, top level man maths allows me to link it to a number higher than 80,000 which makes me even more special.
KingGary said:
True, they are cheap, but it’s the equivalent of saying a SsangYong Rexton is an investment because it’s cheap. You’ll still lose practically all its value because nobody will want it after you.
Only matters if you need to get a newer car a few years later though. If you're going to keep a car until it's ready for the bin then resale doesn't matter. It's simply the market price divided by the number of months. For simplicity's sake just apply ten years or 240 months to a freshly used prices of an EV or an ICE, assume a terminal value of zero, then apply a guesstimate for the monthly fuel spend and maintenance and you start to get some fair comparison data.
But if you can't actually use an EV then you'd be a bit daft to even spend the time on the basic calculation.
People really ought to be asking why used ICE are so much more expensive rather than why used EVs are so cheap, given that they aren't.
Muzzer79 said:
KingGary said:
True, they are cheap, but it’s the equivalent of saying a SsangYong Rexton is an investment because it’s cheap. You’ll still lose practically all its value because nobody will want it after you.
Why not?What will make this perfectly useable car lose “practically all its value”?
It may not hold its value as well as something else, but the same is true of all cars.
A500leroy said:
2 simple questions.
Is it time to buy a used one for around 10k (leaf/zoe/golf etc)?
How many years will the battery really last before an expensive failure?
Data to date is showing 10-15 years easily but you need to account for an EV's range starting to decline in the latter stages but that's a usability calculation rather than a cost one. Is it time to buy a used one for around 10k (leaf/zoe/golf etc)?
How many years will the battery really last before an expensive failure?
Leaf's are a poor example as the earlier ones didn't have competent battery management so cell degradation was very rapid. Conversely, early Tesla's despite using some quite varied cell qualities have lasted very well due to have good BMS systems from the outset.
M4cruiser said:
On that note, I'm still wondering what the used car dealers do with battery leases (like older Zoes, and the Chinese Nio).
Do they still have to pay the monthly battery lease charge whilst it's stuck on their forecourt?
If so that's a real pain.
They steer clear in my experience. Couldn't get anyone to take my zoe with a battery lease. So I paid it off in the end. Didn't do the sums but the net residual value was okish.Do they still have to pay the monthly battery lease charge whilst it's stuck on their forecourt?
If so that's a real pain.
BertBert said:
M4cruiser said:
On that note, I'm still wondering what the used car dealers do with battery leases (like older Zoes, and the Chinese Nio).
Do they still have to pay the monthly battery lease charge whilst it's stuck on their forecourt?
If so that's a real pain.
They steer clear in my experience. Couldn't get anyone to take my zoe with a battery lease. So I paid it off in the end. Didn't do the sums but the net residual value was okish.Do they still have to pay the monthly battery lease charge whilst it's stuck on their forecourt?
If so that's a real pain.
We won't buy a battery rental ZOE if someone is looking to sell it, I'm pretty sure no dealer will, I had a customer of mine contact me as he was selling his 22kW ZOE to a dealer, it was all in place until they realised it was a rental one and they pulled out. We will take one in as a part ex but we will value it very low.
You know that famous car buying service who advertise that they will buy any car, they won't buy a battery rental ZOE.
KingGary said:
A used Polestar may compare favourably alongside another used EV nobody wants, but the thought of spending 20k of my own money that’ll be almost worthless in 5 or so years doesn’t appeal. Look at the facts, manufacturers cannot shift the things and anyone who does their homework can see that.
Are you saying that nobody will want an 8 year old Polestar 2, even at, say, £2k? Is that a fact?
KingGary said:
A used Polestar may compare favourably alongside another used EV nobody wants, but the thought of spending 20k of my own money that’ll be almost worthless in 5 or so years doesn’t appeal. Look at the facts, manufacturers cannot shift the things and anyone who does their homework can see that.
You've just got the wrong timeframe requirements for it to work for you though. The value of goods could go to zero at the point of purchase but all that matters is when one plans to dispose of those goods. If it's the next day then that is quite a large expenditure but if it is in 3650 days time then it could be the bargain of a lifetime. Plus, it's not that 'nobody wants used EVs', that's very obviously wrong and just a hyperbolic statement. The reality is that people do want used EVs, hence why they're selling but that the consumer segment that does want them is not the normal debt and spend chappie but the lessor spotted 'I'll pay what it's worth for me' chappie and what that smaller consumer segment is telling manufacturers is that they got their 3 year debt funding algo badly wrong by assuming they'd be able to artificially manipulate used values upwards as they've been able to with ICE since the change in consumer lending regs of the 90s.
Plus, people just keep comparing used values to RRP numbers for some very baffling reason.
DonkeyApple said:
M4cruiser said:
Sheepshanks said:
I had an ID.3 on demo for a few days and I don’t recall thinking ‘wow’ at any point, apart from how much it was.
Yes, but that's because your Skoda is set up like the ID.3, for reasons I can't understand. The Golf isn't "faulty" as far as I can make out, I've Googled and asked, and get similar responses. It's painful to drive.
The prices are another thing! The same ID.3 can be £42K for a new "Pro" to £28K for the same thing pre-reg with 10 miles on the clock. Nissan Leafs are doing similar, with £39K new being sold as £20K pre-reg.
While new v used EV pricing is a lovely insight for consumer punters addicted to the priapismic shopper's life into the difference between command economics in the hands of corporate entities and free market pricing where the actual consumer determines the price it is important that no one is so daft as to use the made up RRP number as some form of valid price for comparisons.
And of course logically, not that shopping contains an ounce of logic, why would you pay your neighbours tax bill?
One could argue that in recent decades the consumer has ceased to comprehend the concept of value or pricing as a result of the desperation of consumers to acquire objects and the enormous ease of facilitation of lending to the point that almost anyone can borrow from their future earnings and impoverish themselves voluntarily and that what you're seeing with used EVs is the absence of these apex consumers and their pricing being set by a much smaller segment of the consumer economy, people who still price goods based on actual value.
People who understand that the product was never £39k and that the actual cost new has to account for the multiple tax savings as well as things like VAT. People who are more inclined to appreciate that RRP isn't a price but a tool to support captive finance mechanisms.
But far more importantly is the used value of EVs in that they're true values. They are actually prices being defined by user demand, the consumer unlike used ICE where the first used price and all too often the second is set artificially higher by the manufacturer as the higher used values are the more profitable the lending in new. Likewise, the more control you have over the stability of the prediction of the value in three years time the more profitable the lending is.
I hate to break it to everyone who thinks used EV pricing is wrong or bad that the true reality is that used ICE pricing has been being and still is, artificially inflated by the manufacturers and their finance partners for the last couple of decades.
It's not used EV prices that are wrong. They obviously can't be wrong as they're being defined by the consumer presently. It is very clearly used ICE prices that are too high and have been for years. EVs are revealing to consumers just how much manufacturers have been ripping them off via both RRP manipulation and the rigging of used values three years out.
How has this happened? Because the used EV market just doesn't consist of that enormous global consumer army of shopping addicted dimwits who act without thinking. It has plenty of them but not enough to dominate.
nickfrog said:
Are you saying that nobody will want an 8 year old Polestar 2, even at, say, £2k?
Is that a fact?
Of course not as I don’t have access to time travel. However, if a 3 year old, £60k Polestar 2 is currently worth £17k (29%), compared to the 50% a ICE would be worth, it doesn’t look great for residuals. Is that a fact?
KingGary said:
nickfrog said:
Are you saying that nobody will want an 8 year old Polestar 2, even at, say, £2k?
Is that a fact?
Of course not as I don’t have access to time travel. However, if a 3 year old, £60k Polestar 2 is currently worth £17k (29%), compared to the 50% a ICE would be worth, it doesn’t look great for residuals. Is that a fact?
. To know the actual price paid you need to know a little bit more than the RRP number. And you also need to consider the reality as to which of the two used values is the one that is skewed, one can't just assume that it is the EV value that is being skewed downwards, especially when the way that new car finance works is to control the yr 3 end of term value where the higher you can make that the more profitable the finance is. KingGary said:
nickfrog said:
Are you saying that nobody will want an 8 year old Polestar 2, even at, say, £2k?
Is that a fact?
Of course not as I don’t have access to time travel. However, if a 3 year old, £60k Polestar 2 is currently worth £17k (29%), compared to the 50% a ICE would be worth, it doesn’t look great for residuals. Is that a fact?
Edit to add the performance models retail for around 50% of list anyway!
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