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Comment by behnamoh | Hacker News Reader

You should never purchase EVs, only lease them. That's what I did. This saves you from the terrible depreciation they have.

The only time it makes sense to buy an EV is if it's used.

Edit: He bought used.

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> Mistake #1: He bought an EV.

> You should never purchase EVs, only lease them. That's what I did. This saves you from the terrible depreciation they have.

> The only time it makes sense to buy an EV is if it's used.

Coming in too hot, friend! The headline, and opening line, is that it is a used EV.

Also, leasing does not prevent you from paying for the depreciation. It's just included in the fee.

With these things, it is helpful to place oneself on the other end of the transaction and think how you would price things. When you think about it critically, you notice that it can get pretty sophisticated.

This is true, except that the manufacturers frequently choose to eat the loss by setting the residual unnaturally high. Even Tesla has been doing this lately.

How does leasing save you from depreciation? Surely the company leasing you the car has a good idea of what the depreciation will be, and they want to make money.

That depends on what real depreciation is. Sometimes those experts get it wrong. This can be for or against you though.

the artile is a guy who drives his cars 'into the ground' - he wouldn't care about value he cares about how long it will run.

Some of the manufacturers put a high residual on the lease because it moves vehicles. They'll presumably be losing money on the deal, eventually. But the nice thing about leasing is that you decide in advance what the depreciation is going to be, so you get to make it a certainty and base your decision on that.

From a purely economic point of view, buying a new car is always a bad idea, regardless of the drivetrain technology.

Exception being those buying new cars, leaving them in storage for a decade or two, and then selling them at auction for 10x.

I'm curious how much you can get for a brand new 2005 Corolla. And don't forget to add storage costs.

They're not doing it with Corollas. They're doing it with Porsches and other sports cars.

Exactly what Tesla first did. Well, they a first did not have an existing ICE vehicle and based the styling off a Lotus Elise sports car.

They didn't based the styling only. They were using gliders[1] built by Lotus.

[1] chassis+body+suspension basically a car without powertrain and interior trim

Over a decade, that storage space will 10x more reliably than the car

Even then, it is rarely a good economic decision. Its hard to predict which cars will rise in value that much (unless you're spending $800K+ on some invite-only limited-run hypercar). The storage and insurance add up. It'll invariably need repairs after that time, which can cost a fortune on a limited run car. The opportunity cost will be investing that money in the stock market, which is much more likely to 10x your money.

People who buy new cars don't do it for economic reasons, they do it so they can configure them exactly the way they want.

Even then, most individuals don't buy new cars. Most of the cars on the used market come from company cars, rentals, leasing...

He bought a used EV. The cost of depreciation is borne by the previous owner.

He paid 17k and it's still a long way to zero.

$15k after adjusting for extra $2k added to trade-in (my offer was $15k, but they bumped the trade-in value of my Camry up $2k to compensate since that was better for them then adjusting the price down $2k), and at the end of the year I should qualify for the $4k used EV tax rebate (I have the paperwork), so ideally it's an $11k purchase.

I'm happy with that.

I still agree with OP in that purchasing an EV, used or not, is brutal with depreciation.

You can lease a used Tesla Model 3 for $5k/24mo. Say the used Leaf was $15k, it would need to be worth at least $10k in 2027.

Datapoint: once in a century pandemic event where car prices spiked and crashed back 2 years later

Regarding your last sentence, it seems like he did buy a used EV.

but it was used?

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