Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News! Steve Hanley wrote a great article about some nonsense lobbying Toyota is already engaged in following the results of the US election. I found Toyota’s complaining to be insidious, ridiculous, and laughable, so ...
Until a plethora of quality used EVs hit the secondary market, it absolutely won't dominate. Most people can never afford a new car or won't buy one new because of the instant depreciation. Currently if you're car shopping, the EV market is sparse. I should know because I was looking for a used one last year and the options sucked.
I’m in Canada so our EV incentives and infrastructure is extremely poor. I was looking at a second vehicle since my wife and I have shared one but we live somewhere with zero public transit and I can’t ride my dirtbike comfortably in -20 to do groceries (I tried).
All I could find were some Konas and Mach Es. I wasn’t opposed to either in theory but their prices were equivalent to brand new gas cars and these were 4-5 years old with 60-150k km on them…
It's still sparse but there are options now, I've finally switched to electric by getting a Peugeot e208 from 2020, didn't cost me anything when trading in my ford focus estate from late 2018, once accounting for some special tax stuff I benefit from and the government rebate.
Does it have as much space and range as a new model Y? Of course not, but it was also 37% of the cost and I cannot tell you how fucking happy I am zipping around in my small-ish electric car, it's perfect for the roads and cities I go in, never need to worry about range while doing normal living and I just did a multi-country trip in it with all my equipment and while I did wish for an extra 30min of highway speed before needing to plug, it was still totally fine. The Ford would start to fail when on the Belgian and French hilly highways, this one didn't peep despite the full load.
That started to happen in just the last year. Used 2022 Teslas are going for under $25k. A big one is car rental outfits like Hertz. They cycle out their cars every few years and they bought a bunch of Teslas that are now hitting the used market.