According to some recent words on Kelley Blue Book, electric vehicles will depreciate much faster than their conventional counterparts.
Kelley Blue Book (KBB) ought to be known to practically anyone who has ever bought or sold a new or used car. Indeed, it is one of the first sites you should check if you are trying to figure out how much to sell your 1989 Toyota Camry DX for, even if it’s pimped with spinners and a 1,500W in-dash DVD-player (About $600 because, “Why the heck would you put spinners on a Camry?”) On the other hand, apparently KBB doesn’t know much about the electric vehicle market.
Kelley Blue Book director of residual consulting Eric Ibarra said recently that electric vehicles would depreciate more rapidly over the next five years than conventional vehicles. How does Ibarra come to that conclusion? “Pure electrics have been slow to catch on in the resale market,” he says. He’s absolutely right because, who would buy a no-tax-incentives used electric vehicle when they could get what amounts to a two-year free ride in a new electric vehicle? (In Norway, the State practically buys it for you.)
On the other hand, given that there will be plenty of electric vehicles on the used market in a couple of years, probably about the time that Federal and State tax incentives on new electric vehicles runs out. (Good things don’t last forever, you know.) I don’t see their value dropping all that much. After all, electric vehicle powertrains, their electric motor(s), have just one moving part, which means that, even a beaten electric vehicle will require a set of tires and brakes and it’ll be good as new. (Check this out!)
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