EV Discussion thread

JKenH

Some excellent new car figures for BEV registrations today - see link to SMMT post at bottom - but less cheery news on residual values for BEVs.

Leasing companies warned worse to come before used BEV prices improve

Forecasting from Oxford Economics, published in September, suggested that used EV prices will carry on falling over the rest of this decade.

Between 2024 and 2030, it predicts used BEV prices to fall by a further 28%. 

Some EVs, originally forecast to retain over 40% of their list price after three years, are achieving sale values in the 20% range. 

On a car with a new list price of £40,000, that’s an unexpected loss of more than £7,000.

“We are seeing recent analysis conducted across the fleet and finance sectors which indicates no end in sight for the EV residual values crisis and companies investigating ways to best postpone exposure to the used market,” she added.

“That means extending existing contracts wherever possible, to maintain revenue, and also re-leasing ex-contract vehicles rather than send them back into the market.”

https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/leasing-companies-warned-worse-to-come-before-bev-used-prices-improve

Discounts drive EV growth amid wider market contraction

Battery electric vehicle (BEV) registrations, meanwhile, rose for an eleventh successive month, up 58.4% to 38,581 units, representing 25.1% of the overall market but driven by heavy manufacturer discounting. With the best market share since December 2022,2 November is just the second month this year in which BEV uptake has reached mandated levels3, albeit against the backdrop of a declining overall market.

https://www.smmt.co.uk/2024/12/discounts-drive-ev-growth-amid-wider-market-contraction/

Martyn1981

michaels said:

Martyn1981 said:

Thanks guys. Just been to have a look at a pre-reg being sold by Kia. Nice looking, slightly smaller than Kona / Niro, but absolutely fine. Being the cut down version of the Soul, it's 'only' got the 39kWh battery, but that's fine for us as our second car, and will have a bit more range than the 28kWh IONIQ.

Caught me out of the blue tbh, it's ~£18k which is good for a new (24 reg 14 miles on the clock) BEV, but it is now discontinued. But at the same time, so is the IONIQ. Can't work out if it's a good car to consider, or one to avoid, as it's a bit of an anomaly (pre reg, discontinued, etc etc). But I've always been a bit of a fan of box shaped cars, as they are so practical.

@ET, had a nose around the Inster at the recent Everything Electric show. It's a lovely little package. Also got up close to some EV3's today, which I do thinbk look nice, and the seriously large EV9, which wouldn't fit in our drive, but looks like it could happily solve that by simply driving through our garden wall.

Think you could get a brand new MG ZS for about the same money on carwow.

Yep, and lots of 40kWh Leaf's too.

michaels

JKenH said:

Some excellent new car figures for BEV registrations today - see link to SMMT post at bottom - but less cheery news on residual values for BEVs.

Leasing companies warned worse to come before used BEV prices improve

Forecasting from Oxford Economics, published in September, suggested that used EV prices will carry on falling over the rest of this decade.

Between 2024 and 2030, it predicts used BEV prices to fall by a further 28%. 

Some EVs, originally forecast to retain over 40% of their list price after three years, are achieving sale values in the 20% range. 

On a car with a new list price of £40,000, that’s an unexpected loss of more than £7,000.

“We are seeing recent analysis conducted across the fleet and finance sectors which indicates no end in sight for the EV residual values crisis and companies investigating ways to best postpone exposure to the used market,” she added.

“That means extending existing contracts wherever possible, to maintain revenue, and also re-leasing ex-contract vehicles rather than send them back into the market.”

https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/leasing-companies-warned-worse-to-come-before-bev-used-prices-improve

Discounts drive EV growth amid wider market contraction

Battery electric vehicle (BEV) registrations, meanwhile, rose for an eleventh successive month, up 58.4% to 38,581 units, representing 25.1% of the overall market but driven by heavy manufacturer discounting. With the best market share since December 2022,2 November is just the second month this year in which BEV uptake has reached mandated levels3, albeit against the backdrop of a declining overall market.

https://www.smmt.co.uk/2024/12/discounts-drive-ev-growth-amid-wider-market-contraction/

So a company car tax break and EV mandate that both skew the new EV market and 'unexpected' weakness in EV residuals - can anyone see a connection here?

Grumpy_chap

michaels said:

So a company car tax break and EV mandate that both skew the new EV market and 'unexpected' weakness in EV residuals - can anyone see a connection here?

Is that "weakness" in the used EV values specific to EV's?  
The cars coming off lease / PCP now will be the cars sold during COVID when the shortage of supply of new cars of all types meant used values were unsustainably high.  At that time, some brand new cars were offered on PCP and lease deals with absurdly low monthlies because the predicted residual value was high.  All of those cars, irrespective of power source, will now be coming into the used market with a lower residual than the finance companies factored at the start of the agreement.

shinytop

Grumpy_chap said:

michaels said:

So a company car tax break and EV mandate that both skew the new EV market and 'unexpected' weakness in EV residuals - can anyone see a connection here?

Is that "weakness" in the used EV values specific to EV's?  
The cars coming off lease / PCP now will be the cars sold during COVID when the shortage of supply of new cars of all types meant used values were unsustainably high.  At that time, some brand new cars were offered on PCP and lease deals with absurdly low monthlies because the predicted residual value was high.  All of those cars, irrespective of power source, will now be coming into the used market with a lower residual than the finance companies factored at the start of the agreement.

I think so. As I said a few posts up, 3 year old EVs seem cheaper than their ICE equivalents. I'm sure their retail price when new was higher - 20% maybe?  Maybe ICE residuals are suffering too but not by as much. 

QrizB

JKenH said:

Some excellent new car figures for BEV registrations today - see link to SMMT post at bottom - but less cheery news on residual values for BEVs.

As someone who has never bought a new car and isn't planning to do so any time soon, weak BEV residuals are excellent news!

michaels

I am kind of thinking about buying a fisker.  Please could people talk me out of it!

silvercar

michaels said:

I am kind of thinking about buying a fisker.  Please could people talk me out of it!

I think they went bankrupt a couple of months ago, so any warranty won’t be worth the paper it’s written on.

michaels

silvercar said:

michaels said:

I am kind of thinking about buying a fisker.  Please could people talk me out of it!

I think they went bankrupt a couple of months ago, so any warranty won’t be worth the paper it’s written on.

Thanks, good start.  If anything goes wrong it becomes an expensive paperweight.  Problem is a brand new 70k car for £18k is just so tempting.  A 'volunteer' group has got control of the servers and are putting together a service network in the UK and apparently the group in Europe also has access to spare parts.

Martyn1981

michaels said:

I am kind of thinking about buying a fisker.  Please could people talk me out of it!

You're a braver man than me. But, since you have V2G, and I think the Fisker does too, then ~100kWh of battery with all associated management, might be a decent buy at £18k, so long as the battery side doesn't get bricked by some technical issue (even if the driveability side does).