EVs Are Now The Most Inexpensive Used Cars

In a surprising and ironic twist, essentially the most inexpensive vehicle option for cash-strapped Americans without delay, and possibly for the foreseeable future, is a used EV.  Oddly, we owe a giant due to the Trump Administration for the valiant stupidity that got us here. Its effort to tear up clean energy incentives from the Biden era, plus the entanglement of the U.S.-Israel war with Iran, have each worked the alternative way intended. The wonderful folks fighting so hard for coal and dinosaur fuels have one way or the other found themselves inadvertently forcing people towards the very thing they despised. 

You see, the common price of a brand new automobile today within the U.S. is $50,000. Runaway automobile prices, inflation and gas prices have pushed so much more people into the used market. But when more people flood the used market, the demand outpaces supply, driving those prices up further. But ignorance of EVs and the general public’s unfounded distrust in used models (especially batteries) means used EV prices have consistently hovered on the low end of used automobile prices while offering buyers sometimes near luxury-level amenities for little money. EVs are also cheaper to service, more reliable as they use fewer moving parts, and do not cost an arm and a leg in fuel.

“In an expensive, affordability-constrained environment, used EVs represent the very best value for consumers now,” said Kevin Roberts, director of economic and market intelligence at CarGurus, told the Wall Street Journal.

What’s helped used EV prices most has come all the way down to supply and demand. In a market where uneducated buyers are wary of older EVs due to less exposure to how they work, etc., these electrified chariots usually are not flying off of lots. That is not including the 1.5 million used EVs Cox Automotive expects to be added to the market by the top of 2028. Automakers attempted to launch EVs with generous leasing bonuses to get off the bottom, but they’re now finding it difficult to make back that cash on the used side, used EVs are so low cost. 

And quantity trickles down into the worth side of it. As noted in a recent Latest York Times article, used vehicles are coming off their leases valued much lower than expected. A 2023 EV estimated to return off its three-year lease at 60 percent of its original value has come out in 2026 with a price closer to 45 percent or less. If a gas-powered vehicle presented that type of value loss in three years, you would not likely be as considering owning it. But at the least within the case of the EV, the abundance is not a results of shoddy reliability.

The 180-degree pivot the market appears to be forced to make considering U.S. leaders were moving towards an inherently opposite future it almost laughable. Yet with such attractive, hard-to-turn-down pricing for EVs and ever-rising gas prices, the electrified future everyone seemingly gave up on (including automakers) when the incentives to construct it went away could possibly come around by itself.