[Clubber]

A colleague of mine bought a Tesla. He was looking to trade it up for a newer model after a couple of years and it depreciated probably $30K (nearly half) if I recall correctly. He absolutely loves the car, but nobody wants to take on that type of depreciation hit.

[Dylan16807]

That's something worth nothing, but most of that is unrelated to the battery, and I don't see how it has anything to do with the rest of this comment thread.

[Clubber]

I suspect a lot of that depreciation has to do with the battery life and replacement cost. For the current used market it's pretty drastic. I'm not sure if it's just a flooded market, a fad ending, people just don't like EV's after owning them, Tesla cutting prices, or what. Perhaps some of all of that.

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/05/poor-resale-values-of-evs-ar...

Edit:

A recent study from iSeeCars.com showed the average price of a 1- to 5-year-old used EV in the U.S. fell 31.8% over the past 12 months, equating to a value loss of $14,418. In comparison, the average price for a comparably aged internal combustion engine vehicle fell just 3.6%.

https://spectrumnews1.com/ca/la-west/transportation/2023/11/...

The Tesla Model S topped the list of EVs that depreciated most over five years; it lost 55.5% of its value, according to the analysis. Rounding out the top five were the Chevrolet Bolt EV (-51.1%), the Nissan Leaf (-50.8%), Tesla Model X (-49.9%) and Tesla Model 3 (-42.9%).

Overall, the average vehicle lost 38.8% of its value after five years, according to the analysis. Trucks retained the most value (depreciating 34.8% over five years), followed by hybrids and SUVs, which depreciated 37.4% and 41.2% respectively.

Environmental guilt only goes so far in terms of sales. For large adoption, the depreciation problem needs to be solved. Wealthy people (1st buyer) can afford to throw money at EVs over and over again and usually keep their vehicle only 2-3 years. Middle class (2nd buyer) need a dependable car that costs less per month (cost minus sell value) and lower class people (3rd buyer) need a vehicle that will last forever. The current state of EV's only satisfies the first and maybe some of the second buyer market while an ICE satisfies all three.

EV's sure are cool though.

[Dylan16807]

Well apparently the average car loses 42% of its value after three years, so if that Tesla lost an extra 10% that wouldn't be a huge difference.

5-year depreciation can be anywhere from 20 to 60 percent depending on model, and that's just looking at gas cars.

Edit: Oh you added a lot more. The wall of all EV prices falling will happen less and less as the tech matures. And even with that factor, they're still not at the bottom of car depreciation lists after 5 years.

[freeopinion]

It is not clear to me if you are deliberately mixing in a bunch of non-equivalent math.

You say that the average price of a used EV fell more than the average price of a used ICE as if that was a bad thing. But you do not tell us the corresponding statistic for prices of new vehicles. What if the average price of new EVs fell 50% but the average price of used EVs fell 31.8% while the average price of new ICEs rose 25% and the average price of used ICEs fell 3.6%?

In general I would consider lower EV prices to be a positive development. Your barage of numbers seems aimed at confusing the issue. Can you provide more clarity?