Used car EV sales are growing faster than new EV sales right now and it’s easy to see why. When new, electric cars tend to lose their value pretty quickly – not ideal if you’ve bought one new, but great if you fancy picking up a used car bargain. Concerns about the longevity of batteries are a thing of the past, too – we recently tested a nine-year old Tesla Model S that had covered over 250,000 miles and it still had 84 per cent if its original battery capacity.
That’s just one of the reasons the Model S – and the Tesla Model 3 – makes it into our list of the top ten used EVs you can buy. Even if you do buy an older EV, if it’s been looked after properly, the battery will be covered by an eight-year manufacturer warranty. And the two Kias on our list get the remainder of seven-year manufacturer cover for used car owners.
As with all used buys, condition and history are key, so make sure you do checks into the car and its history, and also check for reviews of the seller, too. Only when you’re 100 per cent happy, do the deal – and enjoy the comfort, refinement and low running costs electric cars have to offer. As with all our car tests, we start by understanding the needs of the buyer – and in the secondhand market there are different priorities, especially around reliability and build quality.
So we’ve looked into all that, while also talking to owners and looking into owner surveys to see if people are happy with their cars after a period of time liv.