Secondhand EVs Are Starting to Look Like a Bargain
The energy transition will falter unless consumers feel more comfortable about buying a used battery-powered vehicle.
If you don’t have $100,000+ for this car, there’s always the second-hand market.
Photographer: Sjoerd van der Wal/Getty Images EuropeYou need at least £79,000 ($99,000) to buy a new electric Porsche Taycan in the UK; higher-specification versions of these sporty sedans cost tens of thousands more. However, three-year old Taycans are now available for less than £50,000. A used electric Jaguar iPace SUV – voted World Car of the Year in 2019 — can be yours for under £20,000, and BMW’s boxy i3 electric hatchback is often priced below £10,000 in the second-hand market.1
Cambridgeshire used car dealer Laurie Kempster of Auto Union Trading Co has sold 15 Porsche Taycans in the past six weeks – in some cases to overseas buyers, for less than half what the vehicle cost when new. “We noticed the price of these cars coming down significantly, and so bought a few and they sold straight away. So we’ve kept buying them,” he told me by phone. “There is demand for used EVs once prices become more reasonable.”