I & I Editorial Board“The electric things have their life too. Paltry as those lives are.” – Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?
Just as President Joe Biden starts showering hundreds of billions more of taxpayers’ money to “electrify” the nation’s fleet of automobiles, the bottom is falling out of the EV market.
The latest indication is the sharp drop in prices for used EVs.
A report from iSeeCars.com, a search engine for auto buyers, found that the average price for all cars declined 5% in 2023 compared with 2022.
But the resale price EVs plunged 33%.
While a used EV sold for an average of $52,821 in 2022, it went for less than $35,000 in 2023, which means they can be had for just slightly more than the average price for all cars.
Even with this dramatic decline in prices, it took 40% longer to sell an EV in 2023 than it did the year before. Used gas-powered cars, in contrast, sold 10% faster than they did in 2022.
“This combination of lower prices and slower sales suggests EVs have hit a market demand threshold that will be difficult to break through,” said Karl Brauer, iSeeCars executive analyst.
Why is the used EV market in trouble? Bloomberg speculates that “Buyers are shunning them due to a lack of subsidies, a desire to wait for better technology, and continued shortfalls in charging infrastructures.”
But it’s not just the used EV market that is cratering. iSeeCars found the same trends with new EV sales. The time it took to get an EV off a dealer’s lot more than doubled in 2023. It now takes roughly three times as long to see an EV than a conventional car, despite price cuts and Biden’s huge EV tax credit.
Nearly half of EV owners buy a gas-powered one for their next vehicle, according to a study from S&P Global, titled “Does the auto industry have an EV loyalty problem?”
The collapse in used EV prices is hurting the sale of new ones. Why plunk down big money for a car that will lose value faster and be harder to sell down the road?
Rental car companies are deciding not to. Hertz scaled back its plans to add more EVs to its rental fleet, citing high repair costs and declining resale value. German-based rental car company Sixt said it’s phasing out Tesla rentals from its fleets because of reduced resale value.
And that’s on top of the fact that EVs are more prone to need (more expensive) repairs, lose significant range in bad weather, and are a pain to recharge. The NBC affiliate in Philadelphia recently filed this story:
On a cold fall day, several electric vehicle drivers were waiting for a turn to plug into one of the public chargers at a strip mall parking lot in South Philly.
‘It’s like, man, you got to be here 40 minutes, 50 minutes, and then you got to spend another hour here to charge,’ said Kevin Taylor, an Uber driver who two months into using an electric vehicle was already considering switching back to gas.
So, let’s sum up: New EVs aren’t selling, despite massive government subsidies. Used EVs aren’t selling. People who own EVs often give up on them and switch back to gas-powered cars.
You’d think the Biden administration would respect the wants and needs of the car-buying public. Instead, it’s kowtowing to radical eco-leftists and is spending billions upon billions to build charging stations, massively subsidize the EV manufacturing business, and hand out lucrative tax credits to EV buyers.
Do leftists dream of electric cars? Yes. But for everyone else, the EV mania is turning into a costly nightmare.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
Using these vague “policy violations,” Google is now threatening to demonetize us. It’s part of Big Tech’s effort to silence conservative voices.
This comes as no surprise. Couple that with the fact that the batteries have a usage life like any other battery and people considering buying used know they’ll have to spend upward of $10K to replace it on a used EV. Who wants to get hit with that sometimes within a year of spending $35K on an already used vehicle? Also, buying a used EV as a first vehicle also means installing a charging station at home, finding them on the way to work, etc…no thank you, Biden. Once again, the cart before the horse.
There is also the question of battery replacements actually being available. One might wonder if newer models have redesigned battery compartments and/or battery configurations. Will the manufacturers stock all the needed batteries for older model designs when replacement time arrives? This and the expense and the inconvenience makes me balk at ever considering purchasing one.
The politics surrounding the manufacturing of EVs leaves me highly skeptical that the makers have any real hope of surviving. All that corporate investment may very well become a monstrous albatross.
Like computers, expect your 2023 EV systems to become obsolete in five years, provided the battery survives that long. Let’s compute: $60,000 divided by 5 = $12,000 per year. Does that look like a good deal–$1,000 a month plus upkeep.?
“One would think that the Biden administration would respect the wants and needs of the car-buying public.”
And why in the world would one think that ??
Facts have no role whatsoever in the minds of leftists, climate-crazies, and enviro-warriors. Only emotions matter. Add this to the massive tyrannical desires of most of the O’Biden administration and one has all the ingredients for economic policy stupidity at catastrophic levels.
It all started when US educationists decided teaching of critical thinking skills wasn’t necessary…..but that’s an entirely different soapbox to stand on.
Your Email came to me saying, “One would think that the Biden administration would respect the wants and needs of the car-buying public.”
The car buying public actually is also the public.
Since under Biden’s regime: Gas has gone up over around 120% (depending where you live); inflation has rocket fueled food and gas (including electricity and home gas) around 20%. Don’t let the tagline of Biden’s, “inflation has fallen” fool you.
The falling inflation rate is added-not subtracted from previous rates. This indeed has fallen recently-but it’s fallen from higher previous quarter inflation rates. Inflation, then, is not falling-it is rising at a slower pace. Add all the rises during the Biden Administration (inflation wasn’t a problem during Trump’s Administration) and you get an inflation rate of about 20%-and many food and gasoline prices are much more.
Foreign Affairs are much more dangerous under Biden (There were no wars-Trump was getting us out of wars that were extant which the US was involved in .
Our border is a sieve, letting in illegals, some of whom are terrorists. Since the Biden Administration has been incompetent on the border, we have no idea where these terrorists are.
The list goes on and on, like crime, the debt, the cities etc. The only thing good under Biden is probably Biden’s bank account.
If-as I&I says- Biden had any respect for the car-buying public, he, in my opinion, would resign immediately, or he might abdicate since Executive Power is now an excuse for engaging in anti-democratic action.
Unfortunately, I don’t know if that would be a good thing since Kamala would then be President.
It’s an old California saying: “Life’s a beach”, and it is too, assuming the appropriate “i” is put in and the “e and a” are taken out.
Except that they’re trying to mandate EV vehicles by 2030-35 depending on which state you live in. There is no free market solution to this as far as the government is concernted.
This is what happens when science and math are not taught in the broken education system. The public will swallow any dreamy utopian idea.
What was not mentioned that I saw was on top of the price of a used EV, you’ll soon have to replace the battery which will add another 10 to 15 thousand dollars to the purchase price you paid. Until Elon Musk finds something other than LIthium Ion batteries to operate his cars his business will end with a whimper as no one wants to contend with that type of battery that might just explode or catch fire for apparently no reason. And to say nothing of the insurance of owning an EV.
It takes a diesel powered machine 12 hours and 900 gallons of fuel
to excavated the 500,000 pounds of ore used to make ONE lithium
battery for an EV. In what world is this in any way “green”?
We are being scammed by the “Climate Change” hoaxers.
There is no man caused global warming. There is no scientific
evidence of man caused global warming.
Wake up, folks.
Here’s my real life EV experience.
In 2016, I bought a 2013 Chevy Volt that had 35,000 miles on it being returned from a corporate lease. I paid $13,600.
The Volt is a plug-in battery/hybrid. This means that you can charge the small 10 kWh battery overnight on a regular plug at 8 amps which is like what a hairdryer set on “hot” draws.
When I bought the car it cost 12 cents per kWh to charge the car so $1.20 for the night. The car will go about 37 to 38 ish miles on that charge then the engine will come on to recharge the battery as you drive so there’s no range anxiety.
The car gets almost 4 miles per kWh which is 3 cents per miles. It also gets 35 mpg when running on gas using its generator.
I’ve had the car now 7 years and have driven it 95,000 miles.
The lifetime mpg is 107. So only 35 of the 107 are on gas or one-third. The rest come from charging the battery. So although the car has 130k miles, the engine only has 43k miles.
The car still has its original brakes since the regen system is used to slow the car and put that energy back into the battery so the actual brakes are only used to hold the car from moving and in extreme braking situations.
The Volt has a battery climate manager that heats and cools the battery so the battery does not degrade in range. It works. The car has not lost any range and its 10 years old.
I’m hoping that by the time I need to replace the battery, I’ll get twice the range from the same battery space. That would mean even less use of the engine.
I did have to get a used radio console when mine went out but I was able to handle the replacement for about $400. If I had gone through the dealer they would have laced-me up for $1,400 but I dodged that bullet.
Other than oil changes, tires, alignment once, floor mats, air filter and wiper blades, I haven’t spent anything on it.
I just looked it up on cars.com and it’s still worth $11k. Great car.
If you get one, go to the eco display and look for the lifetime mpg number; the higher the better.
I think it’s pretty funny actually. I think these car makers deserve all the misery they receive over a glut of cars nobody wants or needs. That’s what happens when you let the government tell you how to run your business. You lose!
I was at a car repair shop in California and the tech was on the phone to a hybrid Prius owner. He told him that it threw a code for a bad battery and it would cost $6800 to replace it. The car would run degraded on its gas pony engine but the car wouldn’t be able to pass smog with a code thrown. So fix it or park it when tags are due.
Nobody wants to buy a used ev with a battery that will cost $20,000-30,000 to replace and they are only good for about 5 years on average before the battery is less than 50% of original capacity. These vehicles are costly one and done disposables.
The only charger in Gardnerville, NV has been out of order for months. Good job Biden.
The democrats can ignore reality, but they can’t ignore the consequences. The reality is that current battery technology has hit its limits and it is woefully inadequate for reliable transportation. Sometimes when you dream, it turns into a nightmare.
The following quotation is from Thomas Edison in The Electrician (London) Feb. 17, 1883, p. 329,
“The storage battery is, in my opinion, a catchpenny, a sensation, a mechanism for swindling the public by stock companies. The storage battery is one of those peculiar things which appeals to the imagination, and no more perfect thing could be desired by stock swindlers than that very selfsame thing. … Just as soon as a man gets working on the secondary battery it brings out his latent capacity for lying.”
You can add “government” to the list of swindlers.
Electric powered vehicles do not become electric until they’re charged. Without fossil fuels EV’s are worthless. That’s reality. But I get a kick watching liberals waste a half hour to charge their EV, pretending they’re solving a make-believe crisis!
The Chevy Volt, one of the better electric hybrids similar to the Prius, was a money loser for GM and was discontinued after 2019.
More needs to be written on what I believe is the main drawback to used EVs: the astronomical cost to replace its battery, which is the entire guts of the vehicle. It costs nearly the price of a new EV (or more!) to replace the battery in a used one; who in his right mind would go for that?
It will soon be conventional wisdom that the only way to rid oneself of a used EV is to pay someone to haul it to the junkyard.
FJB
I have owned a 2020 Chevy Bolt since it was new and now have over 40000 miles on it. We bought the car because we were trying to insulate ourselves from Joe Biden’s ability to create a gas crisis. It is a great commuter car for my 23 mile drive to work (each way). It has enough range that I am not worried about an extra trip after work. However, I am blessed to be in a position of having a car that is only good for commuting. This car is not an answer for the vast majority of people who need a car capable of making longer trips, and longer is only 150 miles before you are looking for a charger. We also have a regular gas powered car for any trips we make.
I think another factor in the slump of EV car sales is the Biden economy. These cars are a luxury compared to the dependable standard gas powered car. I keep telling my wife that we need to sell it before the value drops too much. It may already be too late. Bad economy–>Bad job security–>No money for specialty cars like EV’s.
You can order a brand new gas tank for your Model T and have it delivered for under $1000. Who thinks batteries for 2020 cars will be available in 2120?
I would not have an EV if it were free you would be better off with a bicycle another example of how the gov screws up everything.
I wonder who would buy a used EV, i believe the cost of a replacement battery which is more likely being used is so expensive that it does not make economic sense……..
Here, take the clot shot. It’s safe and effective. (eye roll)
Here, buy an EV. It only needs a new $20K battery every 5 years. (eye roll)