Used EV resale value falling six times faster as demand slumps despite Tesla's price cuts and battery capacity retention

After two years of multibillion Tesla flipping business, the EV resale boom is no more, as they lost more than 30% of their value just in the span of the past three quarters. For comparison, the general value of used vehicles that includes gas-powered ones only fell 5% in the January-September period.

The price war that Tesla has embarked on since January seems to have eroded demand for second-hand electric vehicles further. Besides the usual battery capacity retention and charging infrastructure anxieties, used EV buyers now have to worry about value retention as well, which has basically frozen the market.

Car rental giant SIXT recently announced that it is giving up on Tesla purchases as the value of the electric vehicles has fallen dramatically this year, pushing its whole fleet electrification undertaking into the red. Hertz will also slow down its Tesla fleet expansion dramatically, citing exorbitant depreciation, but also slow and cumbersome maintenance as the main culprits.

According to VW’s financial services chief "when a car loses 1% of its worth, I make 1% less profit," and used EV prices already dropped more than 30% in less than a year so he cautions that this would lead to billions in earnings destruction across the industry.

In the meantime, nobody seems to want second-hand electric cars anymore, despite their slumping prices and tangible evidence that their batteries, at 15 years of service, will last much longer than initially thought.

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