Recurrent’s quarterly market report can be quite dense. Since it’s drafted for industry experts, it can be difficult to find the important details for EV owners (like me) or EV shoppers - like a lot of you out there. 

One of the most interesting findings from July is that 63% of the used electric cars listings are for 2021 or newer model years. Here is some additional context to show the impact of that trend.

  • The average age of a used gas car is more than 6 years - that’s a 2018 model year. The average age of a gas car on the road is 12.6 years, or a 2011/2012 model year!
  • The battery size for all-electric vehicles has roughly doubled between 2017 and 2024 model years –  37 kWh vs 73 kWh.

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The chart helps to illustrate a variety of other trends that could be important to watch as the used EV market grows. 

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  1. Looking just at the used EVs from 2021 and newer, you can find at least 30 different models, starting as low as $9,000 for a 2021 Chevrolet Bolt (great deal!) and going as high as $234,000 for a 2024 Porsche Taycan.
  2. 26% of the listings are too new to qualify for the used EV tax credit, which requires cars to be at least two model years old. While they are more pricey and not eligible for $4000 off, their average battery size is 70 kWh, which, on average, gives you well over 200 miles of range. 
  3. The sweet spot for affordably priced, high range used EVs is the 50% of listings with model years between 2019 and 2022. Models in this category have batteries between 50 and 60 kWh and tons of modern features (think driver assistance, preconditioning, and navigation)
  4. We found that EVs 2016 and newer have a battery replacement rate below 1%. 92.5% of all used EV listings are from 2016 or later. 

So this is where the market is today. What do we expect to see next year? Using 2022 lease data from Experian, we forecast influxes of the following used EVs:

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  1. Ford Mustang Mach-Es
  2. ID4s
  3. Bolt EUVs
  4. Nissan LEAFs
  5. Porsche Taycans
  6. Hyundai Niros
  7. Mercedes EQSs
  8. Audi e-trons

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And what about Teslas, which made up 53% of the 2022 EV sales? That depends on the company, since they reclaim the vehicles at the end of a lease, presumably to resell via their own used car program.