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Comment by mdavid626 | Hacker News Reader

Don’t forget, that EV-s can depreciate faster than ICE-s (mainly because of innovation and price cuts). So you can loose more money on EV-s than you think.

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I was originally worried about depreciation when I bought my EV six years ago, because I feared 5 years later all the cars on offer would have 500mi range and charge in half the time.

I realized I generally hold my vehicles for life, (because it's the most cost effective thing you can do), and it really doesn't make any difference what happens as long as I'm happy with the features at the point I bought them. If you don't want to hold onto a vehicle for life, you should strongly be considering used or lease.

Another thing to note is that EV depreciation is being wildly exaggerated. The resale value of my EV is right in line with other comparable ICEs (actually better, depending on the comparison). Most of the misleading reporting uses data from the COVID era where vehicle pricing was wildly whack. At that time I could sell my 3 year old car for more than I paid new - something I had never seen in my lifetime and suspect I will never see again.

I'm referring more to the risks involved here. It happened not so long ago, when Tesla decided to cut prices of their vehicles, which resulted in huge price dropping of other EV-s (you could loose few thousand Euros here in Europa). Of course, this doesn't happen every day, but events like this can happen. Especially in the EV market, as lots of innovation is happening at the moment, e.g. solid state batteries will be ready for every day use. What would happen to the current EV-s on the market? Their price will drop significantly. If this is fine for you, no problem. But it's better to know about it, than to act like such things will never happen.

Right, my point is that "holding for life" means you never "lose" anything, regardless of how the market performs. This isn't hypothetical for me. I've never sold or traded-in a functioning vehicle (only gifted). You can also purchase used or lease to similarly mute market effects.

News flash: buying new cars and getting rid of them early comes with market risks.

I suspect innovation on EVs will also cause a lot of ICEs to depreciate. When the market is flooded with 5 year old teslas that will also drive down the cost of second hand corollas

For context, there are a bit under 300 million IVE vehicles on the road in the US, compared to a bit over 3 million EV's.

I'm sure the eventually there will be a shift, but I doubt it's going to be soon, and it certainly won't be a flood of 5 year old Teslas.

In the future, we're going to hit a point where most new cars sold will be EV's.

At that point, most of the used cars available for sale will be ICE's. Do you think it's likely that the majority of new car drivers will prefer EV's but the majority of used car drivers will prefer ICE's? I don't. That effect should drive up the relative cost of a used EV relative to a used ICE.

I agree that it's in the future, but the key is how far in the future? Because if it's 5 years in the future then it's very relevant to people buying cars today, but it's 20 years in the future... not so much.

And as a purely academic point freed from the constraints of *when*, it's not interesting at all.

The predictions for hitting the 80% EV mark range from 2028 - 2035.

Well I think intuitively it should be obvious that we aren't getting from 3.3 million EV's in the US to 228 million EV's in 3 years, so that really makes me question where you're coming from. Doubly so when ICE vehicles are still being sold at quite a pace, with 20 million more expected by 2030.

Given all of that you'd need to see sales of EV's leap into the range of 23 million per year, every year from now until 2035 to reach 80% of what's on the road.

If you just mean "x% of vehicles sold will be EV" then... it's a bit less absurd, but also much less meaningful in terms of the original discussion.

I said "At that point, most of the used cars available for sale will be ICE's."

So it should be obvious that I'm talking about the "X% of new vehicles sold will be EV" point.

It's a less unlikely result, but you're still talking about going from around 7% of the market to 80% in as little as 3 years. That doesn't feel tethered to reality IMO. It seems to be a "line going up must continue along roughly the same slope" situation, which I don't think holds true in most cases.

Not in the US, no. But worldwide EV market share of annual sales is already over 20%. The rest of the world is much more cost sensitive than the US, so once EV's are cheaper than ICE I expect a rapid transition. It'll follow an S curve, and we haven't hit the second knee of the S curve.

I doubt it'll be 3 years, but that seems a reasonable lower bounds to me.

I'm not sure about this. At least not here in Europe. Once new ICE cars are banned in 2035, prices for used ICE cars could go up.

It’s funny to see how people jump on comments like this. Say something which goes against their religion-like beliefs and they have to proove that they are still right and the commenter wrong. —— Of course in the long run this depreciation trend might change. Plus it’s good for you if you buy an used EV. But still applies and should be said.

Used EV can be a decent risk gambling if the battery is out of warranty. But if you are lucky, it can be great.

That indeed, is the biggest factor that hinders EV adoption today. People who bought electric cars 5 years ago, are massive bagholders today. And that could repeat with those buying today.

Not a problem per se - it indicates a good thing: EVs are getting better and cheaper, quickly. But still doesn't help how badly it hits the owners' pockets.

The value drop is huge and makes EVs pretty much never better economically. There are some edge cases but then those cars don't have range. Or don't survive in winter.

Of course the flip side is that nearly-new low-mileage EVs can very good value economically.

> makes EVs pretty much never better economically

Then buy one of these “huge” depreciated ones and end up massively better economically? Why is this even an argument?

Because the car is worthless after the battery dies.

Just as an ICE is “worthless” when the engine dies, I’m not sure where the argument is here unless you are going to claim they fail quickly in which case I’d be asking for data to back this up. Note that the data will have to show them lasting more than 8 years / 100,000 miles since that is a standard warranty these days.

Engine lasts usually longer than many other parts in the car.

100 000 miles is like 4 years of driving for anyone who drives a bit more. This is about 70% battery capacity in most cases. Your car is already useless in winter.

With reduced capacity the cold hits even harder. And only way to fix it is to buy a new battery for a one-third price of the new car.

> 100 000 miles is like 4 years of driving for anyone who drives a bit more. This is about 70% battery capacity in most cases.

Are you just making stuff up?

https://insideevs.com/news/723734/tesla-model-3y-battery-cap...

> According to Tesla's 2023 Impact Report, the average battery capacity loss of the Model 3 and Model Y Long Range versions after 200,000 miles is 15%.

And this isn’t even LFP, which will get 2-3x the number of cycles.

> Your car is already useless in winter.

Yep, hate my scheduled pre-heated, defrosted car that’s fully charged every morning at 1/5th of the price per mile and does all the journeys I need. Wish I was spending 5x to stand at a pump once a week. Totally useless.

> With reduced capacity the cold hits even harder. And only way to fix it is to buy a new battery for a one-third price of the new car.

Battery prices are falling every year. You will not pay today’s prices when you might need to replace it after 200k miles.

Sorry, the 70% generic capacity was information from bad sources. But currently I personally still consider the battery as too high risk for an used EV vehicle that does not have warranty left. 85%-90% seems to be closer to reality among all brands.

The issue is that we don't have actually that much data available to say anything for sure for the newest cars. Variance is too high for battery failures: https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/how-long-do-ev-batter...

> Yep, hate my scheduled pre-heated, defrosted car that’s fully charged every morning at 1/5th of the price per mile and does all the journeys I need. Wish I was spending 5x to stand at a pump once a week. Totally useless.

This is kinda too big generalization. Not everyone has access to heated garage nor charging station with personal electric plan.

EVs bring out the strangest comments. People who normally buy 3 y/o cars and keep for 3 are worried about 8 year old cars. People who normally couldn’t care less about anyone else start to worry about others people garages, or people who live in flats, despite themselves having a viable charging option. Not saying you fit this personally but I’ve seen this countless times. People find reasons that don’t apply to them as reasons not to like them.

Anyway, I don’t have a heated garage and I couldn’t see evidence of a “high variance” in battery failures in the article.

as adoption of EV rises in society, there will be a time point, after that time, ICEs depreciate faster than EV

the rapidly iterating EV market will severely impact the used car market

Funnily something odd happened in mid Covid and my diesel has lost only around 15% of its value over past 5 years. Now ten years old.

Something odd being gas prices didn't rise with inflation, work equipment tax breaks + tariffs added to a materials / chips supply chain shortage, mortgage + student loan deferment + COVID stimulus + ppp loans boosted spending power.

Led to increased demand of used cars.

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