this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2026
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only problem with me personally about this, is that i'm stuck with gasoline using car, i dont have money to buy 50k electric car :/
Cars in general are the problem and even if they all went electric they'd be bad. (But cities would be much quieter and they are hella fun to drive.)
If you're able to use a bicycle for some of your trips instead of a car, that's a good change. (And if you're not then you might not even be able to use an EV car if you could afford it. It takes way longer to charge a battery than to fill a gas tank.)
We got ours for 30k with 200 miles on it, retails 45k.
Dealerships hate buying these cars used because they think there isn't a market for used ev's, in part because they're so expensive, anyone who wants an ev can afford to buy one new, they think the second hand market isn't there, go in and offer to buy a used one and see what your dealer says, I bet you can get one for half that.
Also there's some electric only second hand dealerships starting to pop up. Maybe one in your area?
Get one used... The batteries are good enough now that even used, they are a good investment
Ikr? I could have had $10k BYD Dolphin, but we haaaad to do the tariff wars.
I will offhandedly mention that ebikes are getting pretty good/cheap nowadays, but that's obviously not going to work for everyone.
20k EUR would get me a Dolphin Surf over here, Dolphin is over 30k. We also have tariffs because the EU has an auto industry to protect from cars being sold under cost of manufacturing too. Dacia Spring can be had for like 15k.
It's not a bad deal for the average person looking at a vehicle they don't have to work on, but 2k for a used Audi gets me a significantly more comfortable car that's also more powerful and has twice as much cargo space. I don't even like Audi, it was just the cheapest 6 cylinder diesel wagon around with isofix at the time. Also the list price might've been 2k, I actually paid less because it was ugly as sin (in terms of paintwork, not the model itself).
The economics don't work the same if you're incapable of maintaining a 20 year old German executive car at home (which most people aren't), but for some of us, ICE vehicles are DIRT cheap because you can get a 20 year old one that really has 90% of the tech you'd want in a car, and is missing all the stuff you don't, parts are cheap, and doing your own work on a car is as much therapeutic as it is work. And the reason I specifically go for these vehicles is that they're cheap because people are afraid of the complexity and unreliability, but I'm familiar with them and know how to keep them on the road indefinitely without going bankrupt.
So part of me wishes I had an EV, but the other part of me says I'd be paying 10-20X as much for a vehicle with inferior driving characteristics (I don't mean acceleration, I mean the suspension setup in budget EVs, I have well-designed multi-link front and rear, adaptive dampers and it's all on air springs) and less space. I'd gain a fancy touch screen, but that actively repels me.
Now I did test drive an Audi E-Tron as those are available for cheap (for a big EV SUV), but I was very disappointed with the comfort in that. Literally not comparable to my 20 year old A6 Allroad, which isn't even most comfortable car I've owned. But as EVs have undergone rapid development in the last 5 or 6 years, I think that there's finally stuff available that I'd actually like to own. In 5 more years when they're depreciated to hell and the powertrain and battery warranty starts running out.
I don't know anything about the situation in the US, but you get a great second hand EV for around 12.000€ here in Germany. Combustion is cheaper to buy but gets more expensive over time. It has over 250 moving parts, EVs have like 7.
problem with second hand ev is that if the battery has to be replaced, might as well just buy new car entirely