Meanwhile, I don't really care much about resale value because when I buy a car I typically intend to drive it until it dies.

In this sense, EVs depreciating faster than ICEVs is exciting, since if my current Tacoma prematurely gives up the ghost (or I buy a second car) I can add “snag an EV for cheap” to my list of available options.

That's still depreciation, just deprecation until it dies (down to near $0 value from new) vs depreciation until you sell it. If it dies fast, the depreciation is still high.

Yeah, but it doesn't die fast. Re-sale value is low because of the competition from newer models due to rapidly developing tech.

How many years/miles does the average new ev last and how much does it cost to own/operate for that time.

How many years/miles does the average new ice cost and how much does it cost to own/operate.

I tend to buy the bottom of the market. My last cost £1100 and has lasted 3 years/9k miles so far and seems reasonable.

I didn’t buy electric because they are far more expensive. That’s seems to be at odds with the claim they deprecate more.

There are 57 electric cars under 3k for sale and 30,000 petrol ones on auto trader.

At any price the ratio is about 10:1 rather than 600:1.

Second hand EVs are more expensive than second hand petrol cars.

Your arbitrary choice of a $3K price ceiling is skewing your interpretation of the data; cars at this price point are essentially scrap. Also, cars don't just get "used up", they get very expensive to maintain and keep operational. You might be able to find an ICE car in your price range that has a lot of things wrong with it but you can keep it going with the minimum, while for EVs basic operation is dependent on only a few, very expensive systems.

I chose that as roughly double the cost of the car I bought 3 years ago which has needed some new tyres, wipers, and a battery since then, hardly “scrap”

If you don't resale you don't lose anything.

Just drive it till it's no longer operational or gift it away to a family member at some point and you get full value of what you paid for without a care in the world about second hand market.

I care about the second hand market because that's where I'm going to get the car - the phenomenon of rapidly depreciating electric vehicles is all to the good for me! Resale value, though, is not something I care about at all.

Cars don't just "stop working" with no residual value, so this isn't how it works. They start to require very expensive repairs and maintenance and it gets tough to determine what you should get done. And why would you give a family member a car that's giving you problems and not good enough for you? "Here, take this EV that's likely to require repairs costing 10x the value of the car."

If the cost of repairs is more than the benefit of you having this car, it's worth zero to you and you should scrap it, sell it for $1 or gift it to someone who has more favorable math than you regarding repairs.

That's what I meant by stops working - stops working for you.

No longer operational meant broken and not worth repairing.

I feel like this shows a change in mindset these past couple decades.

More and more people buy things for the purpose of reselling them. Houses are now more investments than places to actually live in. Rubbing alcohol was bought up during Covid so people could resell. Cryptocurrency is bought with the goal of selling for double a few months later and nobody really believes in the "currency" aspect of it. Pokémon cards, originally made for kids and to play in a card game, are now all scooped up by cart load by adults so they can resell them on eBay, and those buyers hope to resell later. The 2020s has people trying to sell used cars for equal or more than their new value. Strange times.

Just pulling this from thin air, but it may be the combination of rising costs of living + lack of options which were available in the bad old days (subsistence farming, sending children to work (although some idiots are advocating for letting that happen again), highway robbery,...).

But the overwhelming trend is the exact opposite of that. Maybe what you see is more a minority counter culture. It offers more feelings of control when people are still a couple of missed cheques away from bankruptcy.

> The 2020s has people trying to sell used cars for equal or more than their new value. Strange times.

Not wanting to eat 50% of a car’s value in depreciation in 2-3 years is a sane decision.

Expecting to sell a used car for a profit without a shortage of used cars is not sane.

I bought a Toyota RAV4 in 2021 and it’s depreciated about 20-25% in 4 years. I could’ve saved a couple thousand bucks and got a Nissan Rogue instead, but that model has depreciated about 50% by now, and I’d be worse off.

A lot of people clearly are willing to spend lots of money for irrational reasons in cars. I