Buying an EV Beware and watch this first

[Gadget Geek]

Really? Just go to Martin Lewis's website. Fix the money in an account for one year and you can get upto 6.1%.

 

[Rolfe]

Who is Martin Lewis?

 

[Gadget Geek]

Who is Martin Lewis?

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/savings/savings-accounts-best-interest/

 

[turntoport]

if the fellow was as 'on it' as a utube poster might be expected to be, he might have sold his value-increased car a year-ish ago while prices were stupidly (but obviously temporarily) over-cooked, and made a profit, which he could then have offset against the almost certain future losses as normality was restored. I realise not everyone could have done this, but it worked for me (Honda e, ID3) and my 3-yr 'loss' is ~zero. Even if ev's depreciate more (excessively compared to ice's) in the next few years - as should be expected when the government defers the 2030 iceban - over the expected life of our mg4sr the running-cost savings will virtually pay for my then-obsolete car, and as i scrap it i'll have a ~40kWh LFP battery to add to my domestic unit; that makes the net benefit likely iro £4-5k. Can't think of many cars that will do that, other than high-risk 'vintage' heaps that i can't actually drive more than 50 miles a year... These guys need to learn about 'whole lifecycle' costs.

 

[Spinynorman]

Don't plan on selling our EV.

My first car was a new Toyota RAV 4 - I had it 28 years before I sold it for a ZS EV. Had that three years and will update it to a MK 2 (refresh) and keep that till either it or I conk out! Wouldn’t do it on PCP though as the interest rate is now through the roof!

 

[Les burrows]

My first car was a new Toyota RAV 4 - I had it 28 years before I sold it for a ZS EV. Had that three years and will update it to a MK 2 (refresh) and keep that till either it or I conk out! Wouldn’t do it on PCP though as the interest rate is now through the roof!

100% agree with that decision if you intend to keep a vehicle or anything else for that matter for a long time cash is king on many but not a all occasions
Les

 

[Robf]

The BIK for purchasing is I think still 2%, this is a good option for many with own company.

 

[BarryH]

I think it is just as much a distortion to look at the rapid drop in used EV values in 2023 as it was to look at the non-depreciation in EV values last year. My 1st Gen red ZS Exclusive see pictured in my profile I bought in 2019 and after several months I took delivery in Jan 2020 just before Covid hit UK and lockdowns began 2 months later. I had paid £23,500 with free PodPoint as I'd been one of the 1st wave of 1,000 customers to take the leap into the unestablished MG EV brand. So this time last year with all the shortages the WBAC, CAZOO, Motorway etc were offering me close to the price I'd paid almost 3 years earlier and by the end of 2022 just before the first MOT I had a firm offer from a dealer of £19,995 so allowing for the included home ChargePoint I had in effect 3 years motoring for £3,000 depreciation - Wow! But in January 2023 remember supply chains began to ease and you started to get supplies of all kinds of vehicles coming through and I saw the offers tumble £500 to £1,000 every week or so and with hikes in electric prices the fossil fuel brigade piled in dissing in the press and on YouTube the cost bases for owning an EV. At the time I found all but CAZOO wouldn't take EVs into stock unless you bought a more expensive EV off their hands.

Also in January Tesla turned on the taps to being a vertically integrated company they had the ability to deliver cars and they took a lot of sales by dropping Model 3 and Model Y by £3,000 and certain specs of Model Y by £8,000. This of course pushed down the price of used Tesla Model 3s which were just coming on top of the market at the head of their initial 3-year leases as Tesla had launched Model 3 here in the UK in the summer of 2019. Tesla's action certainly shook up the market when you could pick up a 3-year-old Tesla for under £25k still on warranty!

But with or without Tesla's action at the start of this year there was an overdue correction in used car prices and although I can get annoyed over the drop in my car from £19,995 in Dec 2022 to £13,750 from CARZOO in April in reality it was a £10k drop in just over 3 years and is a lower depreciation rate than I had on my previous new car from Honda I'd bought that car, a CR-V Diesel about two months before the VW Dieselgate revelation and ALL Diesels took a hit whether to not your model/maker was involved. I went on an online depreciation tracker and that breaking news wiped £2k-£3k off the value of my car. Of course, if you bought a new car 8 to 10 months ago effectively at the top of the market at the end of 2022 just before the correction and need to sell it on now, after the correction, you'll have taken a hit but I'm sure that if you hold the car for an average amount of time that over the whole ownership period, it will come out in the wash. It does of course depend on the ownership model ie finance you used to buy the car. If you used PCP then the finance company will possibly (depending on the timing of when you signed the deal) be taking the brunt of the hit and you can walk away from the deal at the end of the team or even sooner (check the contract for the break point) and not take so much of a hit.

 

[bowfer]

I think it is just as much a distortion to look at the rapid drop in used EV values in 2023 as it was to look at the non-depreciation in EV values last year. My 1st Gen red ZS Exclusive see pictured in my profile I bought in 2019 and after several months I took delivery in Jan 2020 just before Covid hit UK and lockdowns began 2 months later. I had paid £23,500 with free PodPoint as I'd been one of the 1st wave of 1,000 customers to take the leap into the unestablished MG EV brand. So this time last year with all the shortages the WBAC, CAZOO, Motorway etc were offering me close to the price I'd paid almost 3 years earlier and by the end of 2022 just before the first MOT I had a firm offer from a dealer of £19,995 so allowing for the included home ChargePoint I had in effect 3 years motoring for £3,000 depreciation - Wow! But in January 2023 remember supply chains began to ease and you started to get supplies of all kinds of vehicles coming through and I saw the offers tumble £500 to £1,000 every week or so and with hikes in electric prices the fossil fuel brigade piled in dissing in the press and on YouTube the cost bases for owning an EV. At the time I found all but CAZOO wouldn't take EVs into stock unless you bought a more expensive EV off their hands.

Also in January Tesla turned on the taps to being a vertically integrated company they had the ability to deliver cars and they took a lot of sales by dropping Model 3 and Model Y by £3,000 and certain specs of Model Y by £8,000. This of course pushed down the price of used Tesla Model 3s which were just coming on top of the market at the head of their initial 3-year leases as Tesla had launched Model 3 here in the UK in the summer of 2019. Tesla's action certainly shook up the market when you could pick up a 3-year-old Tesla for under £25k still on warranty!

But with or without Tesla's action at the start of this year there was an overdue correction in used car prices and although I can get annoyed over the drop in my car from £19,995 in Dec 2022 to £13,750 from CARZOO in April in reality it was a £10k drop in just over 3 years and is a lower depreciation rate than I had on my previous new car from Honda I'd bought that car, a CR-V Diesel about two months before the VW Dieselgate revelation and ALL Diesels took a hit whether to not your model/maker was involved. I went on an online depreciation tracker and that breaking news wiped £2k-£3k off the value of my car. Of course, if you bought a new car 8 to 10 months ago effectively at the top of the market at the end of 2022 just before the correction and need to sell it on now, after the correction, you'll have taken a hit but I'm sure that if you hold the car for an average amount of time that over the whole ownership period, it will come out in the wash. It does of course depend on the ownership model ie finance you used to buy the car. If you used PCP then the finance company will possibly (depending on the timing of when you signed the deal) be taking the brunt of the hit and you can walk away from the deal at the end of the team or even sooner (check the contract for the break point) and not take so much of a hit.

PCP agreements don’t have a “break point”
Maybe you’re referring to voluntary termination which is a legal right to any private buyer (there’s lot online about VT)

You can, of course, get out of PCP early by simply selling the car or trading it in.
The finance has to be settled, obviously, various ways to do that.
I’ve done it three times in the past 4 years, each time using equity I had in the deal to move into my next car.