Comment by CraigJPerry | Hacker News Reader

Comment by CraigJPerry | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

All 2nd hand cars in the UK are currently depressed. Battery 2nd hand have been depressed even during autumn 2022 when 1 year waiting lists for new models (combustion or ev) weren’t unheard of.

For example, a 3 year old Nissan leaf with higher mileage could be had for £15k during that time. A 3 year old higher mileage goes for £7.5k today. The model in question was circa £30k new.

If you’re in the market for an EV in the UK, today your money goes quite a bit further 2nd hand than you might expect. Low mileage Porsche Taycan Performance Pro’s (the 100+ kWh pack) are hovering around 50k at 2-3 years old. More than 60% depreciation.

Mercedes EQC market has been flooded for some reason, you can get a new lease (personal) for under £300/mo on a 3 month upfront/8k miles. Second hand these are trading similarly down like the Taycan.

You’d have to be mad to buy any of these new. A realistically priced lease would be the way to go if you want new but 2nd hand nearly new seems the better choice if you’re willing to wear the risk that these cars don’t have a floor (seems unlikely, even in basket-case-onomics uk 2nd hand car market)

> You’d have to be mad to buy any of these new.

I think the opposite. I've always bought 2nd hand ICE cars in the UK, as the vast majority of people do. Each one between 8 and 20 years old, each perfectly usable reliable cars.

I've looked at the prospect of 2nd hand EVs here and you see most stuff around the 10 year mark the range is in the toilet and a non starter as a main car. Even though the battery tech has improved, it's still on a clock... so even when eyeballing EVs in the ~5 year old bracket, they may be slightly better, but you still have to consider that in another 5 years it's basically going to be unusable and unsellable.

If new EVs get cheap enough (and I mean real cheap to compete with what we are used to in the old and entirely functional 2nd hand ICE market), only then does make any financial sense to most people, they are still not ready for the masses. Either the battery technology has to vastly improve in longevity or some reclaimability of value, or the cost of new one's needs to plummet.

>> You’d have to be mad to buy any of these new. A realistically priced lease would be the way to go if you want new

> EVs in the ~5 year old bracket, they may be slightly better, but you still have to consider that in another 5 years it's basically going to be unusable and unsellable.

I'm just talking about the cost of ownership. If you want to own from new, it's more expensive to buy these models then sell at X years old than it is to lease from new.

E.g. VW ID Buzz - circa £5-£15k cheaper lease than purchase on a £66k EV, good treatment here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdHlZLcGquk

We've seen similar with ICE too though, it's a peculiarity of the current UK market that it can be cheaper to lease a brand new Nissan Qashqai for 3 years than it is to buy a used 3 year old one and sell it at 6 years. That just should not compute but the market is skewed.

Yeah I think we are talking about different price ranges. I'm in the 90% who buys dirt cheap cars <5k which as a result are often very old already, but with ICE that can still result in a completely usable primary car, even with more expensive ICE maintenance it works out way cheaper. With ICE that strategy seems to result in a car with an impractical range, and no alternative at the same price bracket (even for total ownership).

>> I'm in the 90% who buys dirt cheap cars <5k

I know you're saying that as a turn of phrase, not meaning it literally but just because it's fun thing to speculate on...

Just how big is that market?

If there were 35m cars on the road in 2022 (according to UK gov) and there were 1.6million new cars sold in 2022 vs 7 million used car transactions in 2022 (according to SMMT https://www.smmt.co.uk/category/vehicle-data/used-car-sales-... )

I can't find details about the sources for those used transactions - is it only SMMT members so that would mean excluding all private sales?

You'd have to imagine there are plenty private sales for <5k cars. Or is it relying on change of owner data from DVLA? Maybe - on their data sales pages they talk about sourcing data from DVLA then enriching it.

Assuming for now that it doesn't include private sales, that dataset is already claiming that 20% of the 35m cars changed hands. How many more changed hands outside of that dataset? It's not that half my street changes their cars each year so there aren't that many private sales on top of this i think.

So my best guess is that 90% market is probably max 20% but more likely 5-10%?

1.6m was a severely down year but that's still a heck of a lot of new cars for a country with only 35m cars on the road!

Fun thing to explore.

> another 5 years it's basically going to be unusable

If you don’t have evidence to back this up, stop saying it. Some people are stupid enough to believe it at face value.

This isn't some crackpot theory you have the burden of debunking, it's well known that EV batteries do not last. Browse autotrader.co.uk for EVs and you will see almost everything around 10yr has a severely deflated range and limited future, that's why some end up being sold at absurdly low prices - because without an entire new battery it's effectively become a milk float.

I'm not saying that is inevitable, but the evidence from simply browsing the second hand market for EVs show that's it's current state. I want to get on the EV bandwagon, but it's not economical enough yet, I understand that's probably not true for most of the HN crowd.

> it's well known that EV batteries do not last.

Sure, some people say this and others spread it.

I’m sure there are a bunch of older leafs and Zoes on Autotrader with no thermal management.

Meanwhile, let’s look at what happens when you do batteries properly:

> By ten years of age, cars were down to 82.5% of the original capacity.

https://www.nimblefins.co.uk/study-real-life-tesla-battery-d...

And they will be on NMC batteries. LFP batteries will last longer:

> A key advantage of LFP is its longer life cycle, resulting in less degradation concerns. LFP packs are capable of more than 3000 full recharge cycle counts compared to NMC at around 1000 to 2000 cycles.

https://zecar.com/resources/what-are-lfp-nmc-nca-batteries-i...

Which is fine but it doesn't change the fact that: https://www.autotrader.co.uk/car-details/202401185680084 exists.

That's a clean condition 12 year old, 2 owner car with only 37k miles on the clock. Listed for only £3500. The downside is it has a 100% to 0% range of 50 miles and in real world usage more like 35-ish in good weather. A quick google suggests 15 mile range is not unrealistic in cold weather with heater turned OFF.

What use is that car to the general public? This isn't a fast charging car, after you do your grocery shop you need to plug that back in for 10+ hours.

Nissan are notorious for bad battery management. As I already said, you will find an abundance of Leafs and Zoes on autotrader with poor ranges.

But, did they have poor ranges to begin with? The model you picked has a 24kWh battery which is pretty small. Let’s look at what it was originally:

https://ev-database.org/uk/car/1019/Nissan-Leaf-24-kWh

> Real Range: between 55 - 125 mi

Let’s call that 90. So not great to begin with. I would never have bought a Zoe or Leaf and I still wouldn’t. But my coworker had one exactly like this as a runaround. He recently traded it in… for another leaf. So clearly ok for some people.

With that capacity it will charge in less than 2 hours. It plenty enough for a secondary runaround car. Can save you tons of money depending your pattern of use.

8h on 7kw wall box (car limited to using up to 3.3kw), 11h on 3 pin uk plug.

There is a chademo fast charger socket on some models but not clear if this is present on these 24kwh models?

Ok 3.3kw is wild. I assumed OP was claiming some wild battery degradation. 50% is not uncommon on these early leafs so at 12 kWh it would take 4 hrs.

> Meanwhile, let’s look at what happens when you do batteries properly:

> > By ten years of age, cars were down to 82.5% of the original capacity.

> https://www.nimblefins.co.uk/study-real-life-tesla-battery-d...

Yeah, a Tesla... I can only have one if I'm fiscally irresponsible or rich. Everything can be "done right" for enough money, but not done for everyone, EVs need to be for everyone. A Tesla can't compete with the economy of a 3k 2004 ICE car where you don't even have to think about range.

> A Tesla can't compete with the economy of a 3k 2004 ICE car where you don't even have to think about range.

I used to think about the range of my diesel regularly since eventually I would need to visit a petrol station. My EV is fully charged every morning and does every journey I’d need to do in a normal day. I think about its range less than my old diesel. As for fiscal responsibility, the EV costs 3p/mile to run.

The Corsa-e/e208 is also a shockingly good deal - you can pick a 2 year old one up with <20k miles for 10-12k.

I think that same powertrain is being used across many vehicles - even a full size van. Maybe that will mean cheaper battery replacement in future if there's such a common market for these?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com