Buying a fully electric used car

[MikeJhn]

For the past seventeen years (retirement) bought my and OH cars secondhand and automatic, and never had a problem with either's drivetrain, all of my peers seem to have the same experience, pub talk being mostly about our cars and how many punctures we have had.

 

[Spectric]

I've heard that in some areas, people struggle to find a car mechanic for their EV or the price is not reasonable

You need to factor in main dealer repair / servicing prices, but if going down this route then just buy new and replace it every two or three years so it is always under warranty. Round here main dealers just seem to ship them out to bigger main dealers whilst giving the customer an ICE courtesey vehicle and the local smaller garages just do not touch them. The problem for the smaller garages is that the training courses are several days long and expensive, plus they are for only one brand and as a non francished garage they tend to work on any brand. Then factor in the age of a lot of these guys and they have the attitude that there will be enough EV work around to keep them going until retirement so not bothering with EV's and there is a shortage of any motor technicians as well.

 

[Yorkieguy]

Current reports indicate that battery degradation is typically ~2% pa, and rarely, unless seriously abused, do they suffer major failures.

Most other EV components are simpler (motor) than ICE or very similar - long term reliability may be rather better, offset by the relative immaturity of EV control and power components.

Severe EV battery degradation is generally warranted for 7-10 years - I would suggest you understand with any EV you buy (a) how much warranty remains, (b) that the intended purchase is still covered, and (c) what you need to do in the future (eg: annual inspections).

Ability to charge at home and maybe access cheap overnight rates may be important.

I have just upgraded my car and chose petrol, despite fully supporting EV as the medium or long term future. The reasons relate to an accumulation of small issues, not one large one:

• range would be an issue a few times a year - a relatively long range large battery model would challenge affordability
• we do the occasional European trip - charging issues and prices are a bit of an unknown
• current low EV sales and rapidly evolving technology could leave model specific spares hard to source in a few years time (if needed)
• evolving technology (eg: battery chemistry) could impact model obsolescence making s/h value vulnerable if ever sold
• risks associated with ICE are limited - spares back up, trained technicians, fuel stations etc etc will be common for at least the next 10 years. Their decline will then set in!

Costs rely upon government policy. Current preferential treatment of EVs, and cheap charging is unlikely to last indefinitely - possibly only until the transition to RV is effectively unstoppable. Road charging is a likely revenue raising method to replace fuel duties on ICE as they decline.

Re ability to charge at home at off peak rates requires not just a Smart Meter, but a Smart Meter that works, which many millions don't. It took me two years and two referrals to the Ombudsman before mine would work, which happily, it now does. The meter has a 'hub' adjacent to it, powered from the mains. The hub has to send signals to the the energy supplier and that communications link too often doesn't work.

https://blog.moneysavingexpert.com/2024/09/martin-lewis--letter-to-the-energy-secretary-on-smart-meters/#:~:text=The%20Government's%20estimate%20of%20how,not%20working%20is%20around%2010%25

If you have a gas Smart Meter (not relevant to charging an electric car of course), the 'smart' facility is powered by an internal long life LiOn battery and has to send radio signals to the hub adjacent to the electric meter. If the two meters are at some distance from each other, though the gas meter registers consumption correctly, you have to read the meter and submit readings, or your bills will simply be estimated.

This is assuming that consumers are receptive to Smart meters in the first instance, which many are not.

 

[Terrytpot]

I took the plunge a while back with a brand new Skoda Enyaq and can heartily recommend the EV experience. We were that impressed at the savings to be had that we then did exactly what you propose for my wife’s transport. She has now had her second hand low mileage Nissan leaf for just over a year and loves it. For servicing neither of us would entertain main “stealers” and always seek out independent service agents (the wife used cleevelys recently who will come to you and service your vehicle wherever you want like at home or work etc). When buying secondhand you should get a battery condition report that will tell you what degradation has occurred as part of the sales pack.
Unfortunately there are lots of people with very vocal opinions to the detriment of EV’s and as such it can be hard to establish for yourself whether it’s a risk you’re prepared to take , particularly when so many of those opinions are based on no genuine knowledge or experience and are quite often far from the truth.

 

[deema]

We’ve recently looked at an EV, after researching it I came up with the following summary for myself.
1. EVs are in the main well built cars and as reliable as their ICE equivalent from the same manufacturer, probably more reliable.
2. If you can’t charge it at home, forget it.
3. Pick the range requirement based on your 90% of range requirements, accept that the longer journeys are likely to require planning and a possibly a six hour wait (queue at peek time / time to charge) Or plan on hiring a ICE car.
4. If your in an urban environment not too many worries about mice getting into the car. But if you’re in the country consider how much of an issue this is. Gnawed wiring in an EV is a very big deal. We suffered at the last house for instance with mice every winter getting into the engine bays.
5. Select a car which came with a 10 year warranty on the battery. Plan on replacing it when it reaches 6 years or run it into the scrap yard.
6. Plan for your vehicle being written off, unlike ICE the cost of repair is a lot higher and can result in it being written off with far less damage than its equivalent ICE.
7. The big unknown battery technology is moving forward very fast, every year new battery technology is coming forward. Spares outside the warranty period may be difficult to find or expensive.

 

[Fitzroy]

We’ve recently looked at an EV, after researching it I came up with the following summary for myself.
1. EVs are in the main well built cars and as reliable as their ICE equivalent from the same manufacturer, probably more reliable.
2. If you can’t charge it at home, forget it.
3. Pick the range requirement based on your 90% of range requirements, accept that the longer journeys are likely to require planning and a possibly a six hour wait (queue at peek time / time to charge) Or plan on hiring a ICE car.
4. If your in an urban environment not too many worries about mice getting into the car. But if you’re in the country consider how much of an issue this is. Gnawed wiring in an EV is a very big deal. We suffered at the last house for instance with mice every winter getting into the engine bays.
5. Select a car which came with a 10 year warranty on the battery. Plan on replacing it when it reaches 6 years or run it into the scrap yard.
6. Plan for your vehicle being written off, unlike ICE the cost of repair is a lot higher and can result in it being written off with far less damage than its equivalent ICE.
7. The big unknown battery technology is moving forward very fast, every year new battery technology is coming forward. Spares outside the warranty period may be difficult to find or expensive.

A balanced view on the internet who would have thought it existed........

With points 6 and 7 being very impactful to an individual consumer there will always be stories involving these issues that circulate around. The person this happened to will be rightly upset and likely very vocal. However you need to look to the statistical averages that most people will experience, point 1. But this is head over heart and that can be hard.

Interesting about EV insurance being higher, a bit of research confirmed this to be the case, 10-20% on average, however some brands can result in very high insurance costs, Tesla seems to be one of these which I find interesting.

F.

 

[ThornOfCamorr]

A balanced view on the internet who would have thought it existed........

With points 6 and 7 being very impactful to an individual consumer there will always be stories involving these issues that circulate around. The person this happened to will be rightly upset and likely very vocal. However you need to look to the statistical averages that most people will experience, point 1. But this is head over heart and that can be hard.

Interesting about EV insurance being higher, a bit of research confirmed this to be the case, 10-20% on average, however some brands can result in very high insurance costs, Tesla seems to be one of these which I find interesting.

F.

Higher insurance on EVs is due to them being way more powerful, so fall into a different category - and due to parts shortages, possible longer wait in cases you need a repair. Those shortages should become better now though, this was mainly a problem due to the COVID/war aftermath.

 

[ThornOfCamorr]

I looked into this a couple of months ago but even with benifits as a high rate tax payer the net was higher than I could get direct from a main dealership

I'm very surprised to hear that - my calculations showed the opposite. Yes, the leasing rate is higher than what I'd get from a dealer, but the leasing rate also includes insurance, which you wouldn't get from the dealer. The insurance price is fixed for the lease period, so no nasty hikes every year. Also insurance is a fleet insurance, so the premium is not influenced by your personal circumstances/insurance record.

There are also ton of extras Octopus adds, like free charger install, 100 pounds electroverse credit, 10% octopus intelligent.

With octopus intelligent we have 6h of cheap electricity per night (6p/kwh atm) which we not only use for EV charging, but also run the energy heavy household appliances and charge a 7kWh battery I use to power the house during the day.

 

[ThornOfCamorr]

Which? did some research on battery degradation, you can read it here
https://www.which.co.uk/news/article/the-truth-about-electric-car-battery-degradation-apYqu1y6IYnr

Keep in mind that the data from the older cars refers to older style batteries.

Battery life is very much influenced by the thermal management of the battery. It's one of the most complex part of an EV. Depending on how well the manufacturer designed this aspect, degradation will be higher or lower.

Personally, I would only consider a few manufacturers to buy an EV from. Designing and developing an EV is a very different task than building an ICE. There are some which took that task serious (Tesla, Hyundai, etc), others who just did it because the market required it (e.g. VW group, Toyota). There is a lot of innovation required, which traditional companies struggle with. There is plenty of resources out there, so best make up your own mind. But ask questions like: Is the car a dedicated EV platform, how (long/reliable) do software updates work, what's the battery warranty, charging speed both A/C and D/C. I find https://ev-database.org a good data driven approach to narrow down the choice.

 

[paulrbarnard]

I'm very surprised to hear that - my calculations showed the opposite. Yes, the leasing rate is higher than what I'd get from a dealer, but the leasing rate also includes insurance, which you wouldn't get from the dealer. The insurance price is fixed for the lease period, so no nasty hikes every year. Also insurance is a fleet insurance, so the premium is not influenced by your personal circumstances/insurance record.

There are also ton of extras Octopus adds, like free charger install, 100 pounds electroverse credit, 10% octopus intelligent.

With octopus intelligent we have 6h of cheap electricity per night (6p/kwh atm) which we not only use for EV charging, but also run the energy heavy household appliances and charge a 7kWh battery I use to power the house during the day.

I didn’t factor in the “freebies” so that might have tipped the balance in Octopus favour. That said though we are in the cheap insurance band, we’re already on Octopus for electric but have now had an Ohme charger installed so would have saved £900 for that.

In the end my wife bought a plug in hybrid rather than full EV due to range anxiety. Ironically she is finding that an EV would have been just fine and, while it was warmer, was actually making it from Shepton Mallet to Cardiff on electric alone (she baby sits the grandson two days a week). There is a public charger, with free parking, only a few hundred steps from our daughter’s house so she can charge for the return trip. She has done the full electric round trip a few times but usually uses petrol for the return. All her local trips are fully electric. I tried hard to convince her a full EV would get her there and back with no need to charge away from home but range anxiety is a big blocker…

 

[Croolis]

I live Notts, but am from London, so have 5-6 trips a year down there. Also do 5-6 trips to Wales or east coast with light trailer a year. 30 mile round trip commute to work. Range anxiety, even with these activities, not a thing, just a bit of planning. I'd be looking at plugging in with a 3 pin plug and very occasionally juist paying higher rates at public charguing stations. Meh.

The ironical thing I think is that a lot of the EV fleet are company cars where range anxiety is going to be more of a real thing where presumably mileage is going to be higher. Dunno. I've no real world experience of any of this so maybe I'm just wrong.

I'm not going to bother I think. I can only afford the EV with my disposable income if it never really breaks down. My running costs on my old Focus include breakdown cost estimates. The EV, not. Too much of a risk.

Looked into the leasing options, nothing within my budget with included maintenance, and I'm buggered if I'm ever leasing a car that I have to repair but not own. Rather do bangernomics than any of that nonsense.

The thing that's triggered all this is, I've done £300 this year already on my 2006 Focus on suspension repair following MOT. It's on 90k miles and I need to decide if I'm going to drop £450 on cam belt change, plus the battery seems to be on its way out, getting weaker. Fuel consumption is a bit ropey, I seem to be averaging ~33mpg. But it's got big boot for boat stuff (often don't need to use trailer), it's an old sh**ter so I can filth it up as much as I like and lose no sleep (I think if a car is going to be your "pride and joy" it better be something really special - I'm a super utilitarian driver), air con works, boot still has water ingress (must get around to sealing it up). It does all the things I want.

Would just be nice to be able to program it to warm itself up in the morning . Maybe I can make up something arduino with a 7ah battery and a heating element....

 

[artie]

The thing that's triggered all this is, I've done £300 this year already on my 2006 Focus on suspension repair following MOT. It's on 90k miles and I need to decide if I'm going to drop £450 on cam belt change,

£300 repair cost is quite low compared to depreciation on a newish vehicle

My Kuga will be 14 come spring I spent over £500 this year on DPM filter and new discs and pads, plus a bit of hassle figuring the DPM fault out.

£450 seems a bit spendy for cam belt kit, but a lot depends on where you go.

Luckily around here there are many one man band owner operator mechanics who work from a shed beside their house and have a pride in what they do.
I would expect to pay half of that.

Nowadays I can do without a car for a few days if necessary so I don't mind repairing an older vehicle, When it gets to the point that repairs + inconvenience outweighs depreciation on a newer one I start to do my sums.
Always remembering that newish cars can breakdown too.

 

[Croolis]

£300 repair cost is quite low compared to depreciation on a newish vehicle

I probably should have said from the get go that I don't really tend to think about/factor in saleability of vehicles I own, since I tend to keep them until they die (bangernomics). And with these EV cars have such frequent iteration and crazy depreciation I probably wouldn't plan the EV any other way.

£450 seems a bit spendy for cam belt kit, but a lot depends on where you go.

The lot I'm using aren't properly cheap but they're old school and don't take the mickey as far as I can tell. The ~£450 quote was "you'll probably find that when we get down to do it we'll probably recommend changing the other belts while we're at it". I thiink just the cam belt and nothing else was sub £200, not sure.

 

[artie]

I probably should have said from the get go that I don't really tend to think about/factor in saleability of vehicles I own, since I tend to keep them until they die (bangernomics). And with these EV cars have such frequent iteration and crazy depreciation I probably wouldn't plan the EV any other way.

There's a guy I deal with sometimes. His MO is to buy a clunker for a few hundred and drive it as long as possible, scrap it and do the same again.

I thiink just the cam belt and nothing else was sub £200, not sure.

That's more like it.

 

[tsh2]

My 5 year old model 3 has lost 10% of its range, down to 209 miles nominal. Worth noting that degradation is not steady, for 3 years in the middle the reported range barely changed. Mostly charging at home, in the 30-80% range, a few long trips through France with back to back supercharging sessions.

 

[jetsetwilly]

I have a 7.5 yr old low-miles Model S, I've not tried to track degradation yet but I haven't noticed any over the last nearly 2 yrs. Nothing has broken that wasn't already broken when I got it (door handles and wing mirror). Insurance is actually comparable to my last car (Discovery) and the rest of the running costs are v low (I get free supercharging but mostly charge at home, mine is free VED - soon to be £20 or whatever) except for the stupid 21" tyres. I do suspect that nearly any crash would write it off simply because a new battery is almost the price of the car, and they are twitchy about crashed batteries. I couldn't recommend a model S as a workhorse - no towball and a pretty delicate interior - but it's my only EV experience and so far it's been lovely.

 

[Vulcan]

I took the plunge a while back with a brand new Skoda Enyaq and can heartily recommend the EV experience. We were that impressed at the savings to be had that we then did exactly what you propose for my wife’s transport. She has now had her second hand low mileage Nissan leaf for just over a year and loves it. For servicing neither of us would entertain main “stealers” and always seek out independent service agents (the wife used cleevelys recently who will come to you and service your vehicle wherever you want like at home or work etc). When buying secondhand you should get a battery condition report that will tell you what degradation has occurred as part of the sales pack.
Unfortunately there are lots of people with very vocal opinions to the detriment of EV’s and as such it can be hard to establish for yourself whether it’s a risk you’re prepared to take , particularly when so many of those opinions are based on no genuine knowledge or experience and are quite often far from the truth.

Good post. What is the insurance like on your cars? I’m keen that my next car will be a BEV, either bought or leased. I’m just concerned about insurance. I’ve had to switch several times due to rip off pricing, even on a modest petrol car.

 

[Croolis]

I forgot to say - there's a yard that backs onto my work that moves insurance write offs of all types of vehicles. Suspect it's the kind of place that the insurance investigators work at or visit every day, don't know how that stuff works. It's always full of smashed Teslas, easily the most common car.

 

[Lons]

That strikes a chord

I forgot to say - there's a yard that backs onto my work that moves insurance write offs of all types of vehicles. Suspect it's the kind of place that the insurance investigators work at or visit every day, don't know how that stuff works. It's always full of smashed Teslas, easily the most common car.

That strikes a chord.

My daughter wrote off her 65 plate Fiesta earlier this year and surprisingly got nearly £6k for it. I took her to get some possessions from her car which was in a similar yard which was full of older ICE but also a number of much newer Teslas all written off. The guy who was in charge said the insurance companies are very quick to write them off and that fewer parts are salvaged and re sold that ICE cars which are sold on for salvage very quickly.

 

[AndyP]

I bought a second hand Nissan Leaf 6 years ago and have been really impressed. I haven't laid a spanner on it in all that time. I've had no major problems just a couple of tyres.
The range is not huge (80 miles) as by today's standards it's probably old technology but for general commuting it's fine, you just need to plan a little. I charge at home and work (luckily free) and it's very cost effective.