Obviously electric vehicles have become more popular, more in some places than others, sometimes depending on subsidies, availability, peers, needs or gas prices.
And older electric vehicles might have significant issues with the state or innate capability of the battery since they presumably have improved with further research and innovation. Though some people buy new vehicles every few years though they depreciate faster than many other goods.
Would you buy a used electric vehicle? What else might be different about that?
I typically buy late model used cars. So far they’ve always been ICE. There’s a decent chance my next one will be an EV.
I don’t yet know enough to be an informed purchaser of a used EV. But I sure don’t believe that buying a used one is pure foolhardiness per se. When the time comes I’ll be doing my due diligence for sure. Both on the particular vehicle I’m eyeballing, and on the generalities of used EVs in general and my model(s) of interest specifically.
From a supply / demand standpoint I anticipate that more used EVs will come on the market more quickly in the next 2-4 years than ordinary people, and especially the traditional used car buying community, will have become comfortable with buying used EVs.
I therefore expect a buyer’s market: lots of supply and relatively low demand. That’s code for stealing a good deal. Ka-Ching. I hope.
Do batteries lose their storage power as they age? That would be a big issue for me, especially since I live in a cold climate where even fully charged batteries apparently don’t have the same endurance as batteries charged in southern California.
3 months ago, we bought a 2013 Nissan Leaf. Its been great for what we need: cheap, local driving.
The range on a full charge is about 18 miles less than when it was new (about 57 now, 75 new), so theres some loss in performance, but we’ve been happy with it so far.
We bought a used Leaf about 7-8 years ago when we lived in Las Vegas and my wife had a five-mile commute. She loved it. It was about three years old when we bought it, IIRC, and was a later model that didn’t have some of the problems the first few years’ cars did.
We had a garage and charged it @120V every few days. We only drove it around town, and never charged it at a public charger, except once or twice at a casino that had free charging in spots close to the entrance.
I once drove it to the airport and back, a 52-mile round trip, and only just barely made it home. It was fortunate that the last couple of miles were almost entirely downhill.
We sold it after a couple of years, just before moving to Georgia. I don’t remember the delta between our our purchase and sale prices, but it wasn’t bad.
I’d be happy to buy a used EV, depending on which one. Because New Mexico is a large state where services can be thin on the ground, we bought a plug-in hybrid instead of an exclusively EV in order to hedge our bets, but if we could buy one that’s affordable enough, I’d be happy to get a little EV for in-town use.
The 75 mile range is definitely for early model EVs intended solely for the in-town commuter mission; nowadays pretty much anything coming off the assembly line will go ~500km.
To your earlier question, batteries don’t hold less charge and give less range due to age. The do lose capability due to cumulative use. An older lightly used and properly recharged EV should have very very close to factory original range. The same model driven heavily, but still recharged properly every time will have more loss of range.
Pretty sure that is not accurate, at least for the older models (maybe has changed): age alone leads to some battery degradation as well.
For an early Leaf that might make it drop below common daily commuter use for many. Most more recent vintage EVs will still have plenty enough for most consumers commuting needs even if used heavily.
My sister commutes 9 miles each way (about 20 minutes). She drives a 2018 Nissan Leaf and charges it twice a week, At five years and 50k miles she hasn’t noticed any reduction in range. 100 miles round trip is the limit she feels comfortable with and that requires an overnight charge.
She thought she’d need to get a 240v outlet, but she’s managed without it quite well. Seems like the lower range EVs have a lower time to full charge even on 120V
I don’t buy used vehicles generally. But if I did, I’d have no problem with an EV. No need to worry if the previous owner changed the oil on time, etc.
I’d want to check it out, like any used vehicle, but I don’t see a downside in principle.
Terribly, is the answer. First of all, once you put proper winter tires on the car expect your range to drop 10-20% right out of the gate.
This company in Seattle did ‘winter’ tests in temps from -1 to -7 C. Some cars lost as mich as 30% of their range. And of course, -7C is a balmy winter day here in Canada. At -25C, expect to lose more than half your range. If you have a heat pump, it will stop working at -25C or colder, from what I’ve heard. If you don’t and just have electrical resistance heaters, you’ll lose even more range.
At -25, the battery won’t take a charge very quickly. And if you don’t pre-heat the battery with the car plugged in, the car will have to heat the batteries and you lose more range. And the last thing you want to happen to you is for your car to run out of juice and brick itself on the road in -25C weather.
That’s why in Canada I won’t buy an electric car until I can find one that has more than twice the range of my longest regular trip.
Try looking up reviews from Norway, they have both cold weather and a lot of EVs.
I wonder whether the buyer has any way of knowing how the battery has been treated, as a battery mostly fast charged to max capacity (as in public chargers on the motorway) will degrade much more than a battery charged to only 80% with lower power (as in a private garage when you have all night).