There’s a lot going on in the electric vehicle industry, especially with regard to used EVs. One of the things that determines whether there’s a market for a vehicle is what happens with used vehicles. Look with a new vehicle, there’s a lot of marketing and advertising and sales going into that vehicle. When you go into a dealership, they’re trying to sell you a certain vehicle. New cars have this skewed effect of the salesmanship and marketing of used vehicles or just by what the customer wants. They have demand for it. Up until about a year, ago less than half of the people who wanted to buy an electric vehicle would consider a used vehicle. According to this article from Auto Remarketing, used EVs have a higher interest. It was less than 50% but now nearly 80% are interested.
Let’s take a look at the numbers from Recurrence which is a major source of research on electric vehicles. The rise of used EVs in quarter three of last year. First of all new EVs are dominated by Tesla because they make most of the electric vehicles. New EV sales from other models are pretty small but look at used electric vehicles. They’re bigger than new EVs other than Tesla and are gaining ground. According to Recurrent, car buyer interest in used EVs is relatively new in the summer of 2021. The survey from recurrent found that about half of EV shoppers would be interested in purchasing a used electric car. While a year later in the summer of 22 this year, that number is 80%.
So 80% of people who are looking for an electric vehicle now would consider a used vehicle. That’s a huge deal. Well, why is that? Obviously, because new electric vehicles are hard to find. Any type of new vehicle right now is difficult to come up with because of chips and supply chain that kind of thing. But electric vehicles are harder. The prices that are happening for electric vehicles are going way up. Used EV prices continue to rise. Different models, they’re all going up. The Mach E is up to $70,000. Even the Chevrolet bolt over six months has gone up, you know roughly 15-20%. So these are used cars going up in value, which used cars almost always go down in value. What we’re going to find is as more electric vehicles come into the marketplace in the used car market and you see them more on dealership lots, it’ll become more normalized.
Make sure you get your electric vehicle battery tested before you buy one. Make sure you know which model you’re getting and that it matches your needs, but a used electric vehicle is now mainstream. 80% of EV buyers would now consider a used EV. A lot of times it has to do with not being able to buy a new one, but there’s more acceptability in the market because they’re more proven of an asset.