Unsold electric vehicles are piling up – people like the idea but are not buying

That number for ICE sales seems suprisingly low. Are they using the second hand price?

> Data from Edmunds shows the average price of a used car purchase in December at $29,533, down nearly $1,600 from the record high of $31,095 reached in April 2022.

https://edition.cnn.com/2023/01/16/business/used-car-prices/...

> The average selling price for a new non-luxury car in December was a record $45,578, up almost $1,000 over November. The average selling price of a new pickup was even greater, at over $59,000, and was even higher if we look at Ford's best-selling F-series. In December, Ford sold more than 75,000 F-series trucks at an average sales price of $66,451, KBB reports.

> New luxury cars reversed this trend a bit, with prices dropping by $216 from November to December, when the average sales price of a new luxury vehicle was $66,660, with many selling below MSRP. But looking at the year as a whole, strong luxury vehicle sales are responsible for much of the average sales price increases seen last year.

> Electric vehicles remain expensive, with an average sale price of $61,448. However, EV prices actually fell by almost $3,600 between November and December 2022. This was in large part due to heavy discounts offered by Tesla—which accounts for 65 percent of US EV sales—as it tried but failed to meet growth targets.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2023/01/the-average-new-car-pri...

I did some rough math for Europe, assuming 1.43 EUR / L (current price in Slovenia), and 7L / 100km (an IMO sensible ballpark for "mixed" driving in a modern-ish car). Turns out that makes for almost exactly 10EUR / 100km (=0.1 EUR / km), or 10km / EUR.

I used a ballpark of 30000 EUR of a difference (which is also very close to the current exchange rate!), and the result: 300 000 km.

Note that this doesn't mean that you have to drive for at least 300 000km, because electricity isn't necessarily free. Therefore, the number is likely to be higher. Also, realistically, one will likely need at least 1 battery replacement (~6000 EUR, as far as I'm aware) during this time.

THAT SAID, as fuel prices go up, the required "break-even" distance is going to decrease, as `km / EUR` you get with fossil fuels decreases.

>Seems a weird choice.

Sure, but at least it has some (loose, outdated) connection to the text of the article and they were kind enough to specify in the caption that it was taken on another continent some 4 years ago.

Compare with the image in this very similar Axios article:

https://www.axios.com/2023/07/10/unsold-electric-cars-are-pi...

Seemingly, for whatever reasons to publish an article on any news outlet some images are needed and they are often picked at random.