What the buoyant second-hand EV market tells us about the future of the automotive industry
Amid soaring fuel prices, a number of recent articles have reported on the growing demand for used EVs, particularly in the United States and Britain, a trend providing further evidence of the waning popularity of diesel and petrol vehicles and that the future is electric.
Several factors are at play here: electric vehicles have longer lives, disproving the self-serving myth that their batteries only last for a few years. The lie that batteries have short lives is being exposed with each day by electric vehicle users and, above all, by the experience of fleets, which in many cases put their vehicles to intense use, but which are standing up much better than some people had claimed.
In which case, why are people offloading EVs that may only be a couple of years old? On the one hand, it’s the result of a decades-long habit of considering a car as a rapidly depreciating asset typically paid for through leasing or renting. On the other, EVS are subject to rapid technological innovation, leading many owners to want to join what they perceive as a new generation of products.
At the same time, EVs hold their value: lower wear and tear due to their mechanical simplicity and their low total cost of ownership means that, in many cases, they hold…
