China shows us an unpleasant unexpected effect for electric car owners …

31 January 20222 years ago babelfish

China is one of the evolved world markets with the largest number of electric and hybrid cars registered, as a percentage of the total, and for this reason it is an optimal case study to understand how this market behaves in the case of used cars.

In fact, a new survey by Geek NEV shows that new cars sold for 100,000 yuan (14,000 euros) or less in China hold on average 67.8% of their value after the first year, while cars that run with the old internal combustion engine they keep 74.3% of their value after three years on the road “. So electric cars lose value much faster than those with heat engines. A factor that buyers will need to take into account.

Electric vehicles are struggling to maintain their value due to the unpredictable deterioration of their batteries and the way Chinese subsidies for electric vehicles have led to higher prices for vehicles that normally would never have reached that value.

Caixin notes that "there are no readily accessible data or commonly accepted standards for assessing the quality of used batteries." Additionally, batteries have evolved faster than car manufacturers can keep up. The report states that "the average range an electric vehicle can travel on a single charge has increased from 212 kilometers (131.7 miles) in 2017 to 391 kilometers in 2020".

The subsidies that began in 2010 and which will be phased out over the next year offered up to 70,000 (about 10 thousand euros) yuan to car manufacturers. Those numbers jumped to "100,000 yuan for a car that could travel 150 kilometers to 250 kilometers on a single charge and 120,000 yuan for a car with a range of over 250 kilometers." This has led to an improvement in the performance of new cars, therefore to a devaluation of used ones.

: Wuling Mini EV and Tesla Model 3, the two best-selling electric vehicles on the Chinese market since 2020, have managed to keep the price of used cars at the same level after a year as conventional vehicles, according to data released by the CADA in November.

So when buying an electric vehicle you must also consider the fact that its obsolescence can be much faster than that of an internal combustion vehicle, whose technology evolves much more slowly. So you may find yourself holding an expensive new vehicle, but of little value to use

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