I guess I hit it lucky. Volvo was prepared to drop a second engine into my 2012 car. I didn’t think that was what I wanted to do.
As the first post on this thread said…I was sort of looking for a new car anyway. This sort of forced the issue. We talked to our Subaru guy, and he said to take what Volvo was offering. If I want to trade the car for something else in a year or so, he thinks I will get just about what I put out for it…because it will be VERY low mileage. I don’t drive that much.
But in the meantime…I’m enjoying the car.
Re: the thread…as the OP, I think the reasons people do and don’t like certain car types can help form a decision or at least questions about my next car purchase. That will be my husband, and he will likely get a hybrid or EV.
High EV depreciation could have to do with EVs being relatively new and in the steep part of their depreciation curve. In comparison, a 17 year old any vehicle probably has little room to depreciate more.
Of course, that depreciation can make used ones attractive to buyers.
The rule of thumb used to be that a brand new car’s trade in value would drop by 1/4 to 1/3 of paid price as soon as it is driven off the dealer’s lot.
Didn’t someone upthread mention something about the stainless steel exterior on the new Cybertruck? Now who could that have been?
Maybe this is a very special metal, but deciding to not take care of the bare stainless steel exterior sounds to me like a major disaster waiting to happen.
If you look at the articles posted above, the comparisons were made between similarly aged EV, ICE and hybrid vehicles that were just a few years old. All of the vehicles would have been in a similar “depreciation zone”. The reality seems to be that EVs are depreciating much faster.
“ISeeCars claims to have analyzed over 2.3 million new and 1- to 5-year-old used cars to understand the market, and it found a “substantial weakness” in demand for EVs compared to hybrids and gas vehicles. The most substantial of these findings: used EV prices were down 33.7 percent in October 2023, compared to October 2022. Last October, the average used EV price was $52,821. This October, it was $34,994.”
Probably because Tesla Model Y and 3 were the biggest selling EVs at the time, and 10/2022 was the car shortage time when new ones cost $62-69k and $47-63k. In 10/2023, prices were $44-53k and $39-51k. So no surprise that used EVs with a heavy Tesla weighting dropped when new prices dropped.
The new prices of EVs also dropped more for many buyers in 2023 due to the $7,500 tax credits, further putting downward pressure on used EVs, although the latter did get a smaller tax credit under some circumstances.
For most non-Tesla brands of cars, new car price changes are less visible to data analysis, since some of the changes are due to dealer markups or discounts from MSRP. But people who bought any new cars in late 2022 probably are not happy with resale value if they sell now, although the difference is probably not as big as for a Model Y.
I leased my EV 2.5 years ago because the technology is moving so fast. Interest rates/lease factors were incredibly cheap then. My lease on our ICE car is also coming up and looking at the prepaid lease rate of that vehicle vs a comparably equipped and priced new vehicle was shocking. We’ll probably either buy a new ICE car or just buy the current leased vehicle. The fact that leases are now so expensive could affect our decision when the EV lease gets to term.
We have one 13-year old hybrid car, still running strong, probably the best car we’ve ever owned, driven to/from work many miles over the years and never needed a repair. We recently bought a new hybrid small pick up truck. My car is a gasoline car but getting up there in age so will likely buy another hybrid or plug in hybrid when it dies (we drive them 'til they are no longer reliable or financially feasible to repair). We will consider an electric vehicle as soon as the price and distance issues work out…I don’t see that anytime soon though. But, love our hybrids!
I don’t find many of the EV depreciation articles I see to be very helpful to consumers.
Certainly, Tesla’s actions over the past year have had an effect on resale value on Teslas and probably other EVs.
But no good faith analysis would choose as a starting point a period when gas prices were quite high, EVs were appreciating month to month, and supply chains for EVs in particular were facing significant challenges. (I have friends who flipped several month old EVs at a profit during this period). Not to mention ignoring the effect of significant changes in sample composition.
I find it more useful to look at particular models. Let’s take the VW ID.4, which was just becoming available prior to oil price spikes.
ID.4 2021 models retailed for ~41-46k (usually were available a bit below msrp at that point, in fact).
Currently, used 2021s are retailing in the 25-30k range depending on model.
Seems like quite a drop. But these cars carried a federal tax credit of $7500. Most states offered incentives at the time in the thousands of dollars. Probably safe to say that after federal and state incentives, most drivers knocked ~$10k off the price in the form of tax credits.
So, net cost for most was more like 31-36k.
That would be net depreciation of ~6k over ~3 years IF one ignored savings on gas and maintenance (probably safe to assume ~$1k/year savings on average, but that can vary a lot by region).
So really, even now when used EV prices have supposedly dropped so much, the ID.4 owner isn’t in such a bad spot vs having purchased a comparable ICE such as a Rav 4 or CRV.
I think you can’t have a blanket statement on depreciation on ICE cars. It depends on the car. Some cars are out of the ordinary like @GKUnion FJCruiser. My oldest drives a 2001 Land Cruiser and she is told often that her car is worth a good amount. We also have a newer Land Cruiser which I’d assume also has a good value compared to what we paid. On the other hand my BMW which was an amazing driving car depreciated at a much higher rate compared to a Toyota or Honda. We have a family friend who drives high end Porsche vehicles that he replaces at around 65,000 miles. What he gets for them isn’t even close to what he paid for them. He knows going into it he will get a higher driving experience and the cost is worth it to him. He doesn’t want to deal with big repairs so sells and replaces.
My daughter bought a Honda HRV ath the same time her friend bought a Ford Fusion. When my daughter sold her car she got almost what she paid for it even though she had high mileage(granted this was during the shortage of used cars). Her friend told her the fusion resell wasn’t great.
In my area people are buying EV enough that in my 11 minute drive home today I passed so many Tesla vehicles that I lost count. One my last stretch of road home I passed three Rivian suv.
We are in CA and driving one of our s’s EV’s (not the Tesla). Am much more aware of the shorter range (maybe about 200 mi compared to our EV). We are 15 min from their home with 40 mi range left. We will make it and will charge when we get to their house, but is still unsettling.
After you stretch once or twice, and get comfortable that the computer estimation is pretty good, the unsettling goes away.
I used to drive quarterly (Tesla LR) from SoCal to the Bay Area and I had a regular stopping/rest point just past mid-way. (breakfast, potty). One winter, temps were down to the low 30’s in the Grapevine and I had a headwind to boot. Kept on to my regular stopping point, arriving with 6 miles of range left. In the meantime, once I got below 20 miles, the car started to shut down ‘unneeded’ features which sucked electrons: heater, radio, etc. Sure, I passed up a few Superchargers on the way, but I was on a quest to get to my regular stopping point on the single charge. It was fun.
In slower driving, an EV is likely to get better than the rated range, unless it is slower than about 10-15mph (depending on how much HVAC you use). So 15 miles in city-like driving should not give you range anxiety with 40 miles of range left, unless it is exceptionally slow and your HVAC use drains the battery quickly.
The Tesla navigation system that can show you how much you will have when you get to your destination and automatically adds Supercharger stops if needed does makes range anxiety less of an issue than in EVs where the navigation system does not have these features.
