No it is not a good time to buy an EV.
If your current car is on the way out and you think an electric replacement is too expensive, think again. Three-year-old Tesla Model 3s and Kia e-Niros that will do 250-300 miles on a single charge can now be bought for as little as £14,000.
In the last year, forecourt prices for used electric cars have tumbled to the extent that previously unaffordable models are now within the reach of many families for the first time.
Values have fallen so much that two weeks ago Auto Trader said they had reached near-parity with petrol cars. The average price of a three- to five-year-old EV in July was £18,964, compared with £18,076 for petrol models of the same age, it said.
There’s a reason for that. The batteries have a limited lifespan and once gone, that’s it, the car is junk. Dealers can’t shift them and buyers are resisting them, hence the plummeting values. What this article is doing is desperately trying to get us to buy lemons. Well, thanks, but I’ll stick to my petrol car.
Wow.
250-300 miles on a single charge?
My pickup does 500 on a single tank.
I’ve done family weekend trips away recently where I filled up at the start and still had fuel left for the week’s commute.
An electric milk float would have needed at least one charge while away.
They’re rubbish. I’ll be keeping hold of my truck. Good power, load capacity, comfortable, and good off road for green laning.
Not a chance I’ll be swapping for an electric one, that could quite easily leave me stranded on the lanes because there’s nowhere to charge it.
Buying a used, really used, not (a sitting in a huge manufacturer’s car park for 3 years at best getting the battery charger up every week or so. Batteries self discharge.) “used” EV, would be like buying a Schrödinger’s Savannah cat. In its unopened box. Do you know how many discharges to near completely flat it has had? What about really fast, high ampereage, charges? Little bumps? Will the seller let you test drive it from fully charged to dead flat just to see how many miles it really takes you?
No rechargeable battery manufacturer will give you a warranty. Lead acid, nickel cadmium, lithium whatevers. AAA up to biggest you can get. Shipping containers size?
Might be a reason why dealers can’t sell them. Now let me just think for a moment.
Oh yeah, l’ve got it………….
They’re crap, and useless for most people – at any price.
Good excuse for Rachel Thieves to rob you blind over your ‘antisocial’ ic car though
In Florida during hurricane season it is usual to see bumper to bumper traffic on the two main highways out of Dodge: the Turnpike and the I-95. The last couple of years the EVs were a concern, but there really weren’t all that many of them. Imagine what it would be like with the majority of the vehicles being electric and running out of juice all over the place.
My S_I_L was persuaded to buy one when the ice car she drove happily was totalled and she hates it. After about six months, she said to B_I_L “it’s got to go” so off they toddled to the spiv main Toyota dealer they bought it from. They had paid £23k for it, mint and carefully used. The spiv offered them £18k as a partex, confirming my view that they’re desperate to get rid of them and don’t want them back.
Actually it’s a good time to buy an ICE car. With successive governments trying to force us all to get EVs, the number of available second hand ICE cars is going to go down and the price will go up. Get yours while you can – although it sounds as if the market has already started to react.
I once drove a 1.9 naturally aspirated diesel Peugeot 206 from East Yorkshire to Hale in Cornwall without filling up. I had a Saab 9.3 turbo diesel that would do 600 miles on a tank. I wouldn’t want a second hand EV at any price, not even if they were free.
I sadly gave up my diesel Landy Freelander last year for a Hyundai that would be able to swerve Khan’s ULEZ extension and I’m wondering now if a raising of the exemption levels isn’t on the cards. Still won’t buy an EV though.
There are people who could happily run an EV and not worry about range. I could do so but since I am a low mileage user I’d never get my ‘investment’ back.
However – as a thought experiment multiply the number of fuel (petrol and diesel) pumps by the time taken to fuel and pay and this will give a ‘refuelling’ productivity. Now take the much lower number of chargers available and the time to charge and I expect this will give a much lower ‘refuelling’ productivity.
Thr ‘productivity’ of the UK is famously poor… do we want to make it any worse?
Not in the least interested in one, our Landcruiser is 19 years old and i’ll more than likely kick the bucket before it does.
We all know the poxy current govt will raise massively the cost of defying them (just like the bastard Tories before them), car and fuel choice won’t be exempt from their demands, when they finally tax us off the roads they’ll get the square root of bugger all from me because we’ll do without a car altogether, i’ll be retired by then anyway so the only tax they’ll get is what they steal from my meagre pension and from the little we spend.
Unfortunately, getting you off the road is all part of what they want. You will be imprisoned in a 15 minute city.
Funny thing is, they keep trying to build new roads in my area, and are dualling others. Who is going to use them? The great and the good I guess?