Comment by xp84 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by xp84 | Hacker News Reader

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Sub-Headline from this article: "Plummeting resale values are threatening to derail the world’s transition to electric transportation."

Alternative take: "EVs now easy to afford for the 80% of Americans who don't have $50-90k to spend on an EV!"

This year I bought a 2022 EV with 16k miles. A luxury brand. The sticker price when new was $79,000. I paid $35k. It was an off-lease vehicle so if anyone took a bath, it was the bank. I would never in a million years spend 80 grand on a car but now I have a great EV.

Battery life is not a huge concern. Any more than timing belts/chains, transmissions, etc. can be dauntingly costly repairs for cars with 150k miles or more.

I also have a gas car which I love (spouse drives the electric for a much greater commute) so I'm no EV absolutist. But this whole premise is stupid. EV adoption has had 2 main blockers: 1. only rich people had justification to buy them until recently, and 2. Charging space for people who don't have their own private garage.

Now #1 is no longer a factor. This is a GOOD thing.

Picked up a 10 year old Fiat 500e with 50k miles for $5k as my daughters first car. She and my wife love it. Way more power than the gas model, and a super fun drive.

Thank you "Plummeting Resale Values"!

Fun fact -- three years after the first 500e went on sale, they were going through auction off-lease at $4K (in the US, at least). Ouch! I remember this vividly because a coworker of mine's wife had purchased one brand new for over 30 grand.

For a few years (maybe ~2017-2019?) you could lease them for well under $100 / mo in CA with standard down payments & fees. Total lease cost was like $1k per year.

One has to wonder... What's the reason for so much discount?

"Compliance cars" are cars that manufacturers need to sell to activate subsidies or avoid financial penalties.

As deadlines get close you got really good lease deals on these cars.

I know a bit unrelated but I leased the top-of-the-line Mazda MX-5 for $350/month for 3 years. Lease prices can be amazing.

Such a fun car to drive.

Simply not much demand. Not enough buyers of used cards want them. Dealers will bid in auctions to price point where they can make reasonable profit. I would expect something like say two thousand and then some percentage on auction price to make retail price.

They are doing it weekly. They know what sells at what price and how fast. So price discovery can work pretty well and mostly correct.

Now more questions can be asked why there is no demand? Is the initial price maybe too high? Or is there some other factors.

It's just too small for most americans' tastes lol

For a two car house, having one electric and one ICE vehicle seems like a no brainer, assuming charging space at home

My partner bought a used nissan first gen Nissan leaf with 70% battery health for 5k a couple of years ago.

So far it has saved her approx 2k on petrol costs alone.

Then there is maintenance costs....No major issues. Less than 200 per year so far if you exclude the fresh set of tyres we put on it when she bought it.

99% of our journeys can be done in it. It's rare for either of us to need more than 80mi in a day.

It can get a full charge off a standard british plug socket over night too, so we dont have a fast charger installed or anything. Most days we only do 10mi, so it goes for an overnight charge once a week and thats fine.

The result? We have to remind ourselves to take the petrol car out for a spin every 2 weeks just to keep it healthy.

One of the sources cited in this article says that at 70% battery health EVs are useless and need replaced.

It seems to be a common misconception, maybe based on the limits set for warranty repairs and then a weird logical leap.

Even early EVs that didn't have great range to start with are still useful to someone when range is lower. To make a blanket statement that all 10 year old EVs are useless seems like motivated reasoning.

That is so stupid it hurts.

We took her 'useless' 80mi range for a 350mi day trip in the mountains this summer while the petrol car got repaired.

Sure it meant a few stops at fast chargers, +60mi in 15mins for quick stops.

We had 3 meals at places with chargers so it got 3 full charges while we ate.

It was still a great day out despite taking longer than it would in the petrol car.

> Sure it meant a few stops at fast chargers, +60mi in 15mins for quick stops.

IF those are available, that's great. For a lot of people that's just not an option.

I should note I'm all for EVs but they're not the "win" for everyone they could be until infrastructure catches up.

The point was they're not useless, even for longer journies, not that they fit every person and every use case.

My family bought a used EV this year, car #2 is a 15 year old F-150. It’s the best possible situation I could conceive of. My wife commutes 25+ miles in the EV, I work from home, and we take the truck when going camping or pulling a trailer or whatever.

I don't hear this blatantly obvious point made often enough. 100% EV penetration seems optimistic any time soon, but 30% seems like a slam dunk.

Seriously. Most families outside the urban core have one car per adult, and a lot have one car per adult plus one for a teen. Often one of those cars gets driven 60-100 miles a day for commute purposes, which makes it an obvious one to make electric. Even if they're a family that's addicted to the infamous 1000-mile road trips where the EV charging infra matters, they can just take the other car for that trip.

Instead people just post long-winded rants about how the highway EV charging shitshow made it too hard to roadtrip in their EV, or make strawman arguments suggesting that EV promoters are trying to force them to have only EVs.

My partner drove 900km up from Sydney to Brisbane. 3 stops to charge, no issues, easy cruising, relaxing breaks. Admittedly it was not during school holidays.

lol, I was looking at fun cars for my most recent purchase, and Audi E-Trons are available for 50% off if you buy them just a year old. Apparently they stabilize in price after that, but GOODNESS GRACIOUS that's a big dropoff in a single year. It was crazy to see Audi's newest top-of-the-line offering (not their RS offering, to be clear) for the same price as an entry-level BMW M.

I know this isn't black and white but if you're worried about depreciation you just shouldn't buy a new car.

A car you buy new and sell after a short amount of time or not many miles driven is going to cost you.

FUD about battery life and having to spend over $10k to replace one was a large factor in EV depreciation. Some people assumed car battery life was like that of a cell phone or a laptop, perhaps 3 years. There is increasing evidence that EV batteries with good battery management systems will last 15+ years (see https://www.geotab.com/blog/ev-battery-health/). Once the general population understands an EV will outlast a gas car and needs less maintenance, resale value should improve.

Up to very recently only Tesla had good battery management. Other manufacturers joked around with things like no active battery thermal management, Nissan Leaf finally got one this year lol.

Can you put a year to your „very recently“ claim?

Nissan Leaf: 2025.

Toyota Prius Prime: 2023

Scratch that Nissan date. They only released press notes this year about 2026 model finally using active thermal management next year, and this is precisely how clownish Japanese carmakers are

I knew the car situation was bad in the US, but I didn’t know you only have a choice between Tesla, Nissan and Toyota for EVs. I’m sorry for your loss.

The other day I randomly took a look at car sale listings and found a 2yo Tesla Model 3 long range with 43k km for less than half the MSRP.

There's about a dozen such offers on that one site that I checked and that's just Teslas.

On the other side, I am not going to buy a new EV if it depreciates too quickly. Part of the 'new ride' buyer's consideration is trade-in value when it's time for another one three years down the line.

But great for us who drive a car into the ground.

If you care about the money aspect, why are you ever buying a new car though? You can get a massive discount by buying a barely-used one.

Why buy a new car? Less TÜV trouble, less mechanical problems, and as stupid as it sounds: I work in an environment in which the age of the car is a factor in determining seriousness as a business partner.

But even if these were not factors: I'd rather no buy an used EV car, because I'd rather not have a vehicle that has its battery die immediately after me buying it with no manufacturer guarantee. An ICE vehicle doesn't do that after three years - I just fill up the gas tank, and off I go.

Yes. Polestar 2 owner here. According to KBB it has held almost all of the value since I bought it. Used. Before that it lost over half from the new MSRP. I bought it for $5K under KBB.

Will need tires but otherwise no maintenance... and no continuing depreciation because it still provides all the goodness it provided when new.

But I hear a lot of myths about EVs and used EVs that seem hard to shake from the mainstream groupthink. One person tried to argue with me that batteries are only good for 100K, and then you're in for a $20K repair. Others worry if you hit traffic, the battery will quickly drain to 0%.

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