Electric Vehicles

In 2019 I bought a 2003 Mercedes for somewhere between 5 and 10 percent of its sticker price, I guess pretty close to 5 if inflation is accounted for. Maybe even less.

It had 380k km on the odometer, but it had been through Lithuania so some of the modules showed 700k km when interrogated. Previous owner also told me that there's no way the 380k km is original.

I did have to do maintenance on it, but the only thing that really let me down was the steering rack. It failed and then a reman replacement unit failed too. Only reason I got rid of the car, otherwise I'd still be driving it. Bulletproof engine and transmission.

Unfortunately the Ariya is something I find completely uninspiring. Somehow the interior seems even more dull than Tesla's. For the same price I could have a Mercedes EQC. For even less, I could have a Jaguar I-Pace, just have to go a bit older with those.

If the fuel crisis goes on, I may just get an early I-Pace in a few months though. Otherwise I was planning on waiting a few more years till slightly newer luxury models are similarly depreciated, preferably something non-crossover.

Oh no, you're not getting me, I love depreciation. Re-read the first sentence.

Yes, it’s a good thing for buying a very used car.

Depreciation doesn't stop after 2 years. If you're the second owner of a lightly used car you intend to sell before the battery and powertrain warranty is over (as most do with EVs, at least here), you still get a fuckton of depreciation happening in the next few years with an EV, less so with ICE. If you're looking at something older, the extra depreciation benefits you a lot.

Personally I'm waiting for good 7-8 year old EVs to exist that are not Teslas. We're just a few years out from that for many popular models, at which point you can have the car of your dreams for 20k. For cars that were 100k new. If you get one that's 2 years old, it might still be 60-70k. Once that 100k car is around 20k, there's so little left to drop, you give no fucks. Even in my country there are now EV shops that will repair battery packs instead of replacing them so a few years of warranty isn't worth paying tens of thousands more for a car if you can probably get a battery pack repaired for <=5k in the very unlikely event that it fails. I'm not talking about gradual degradation, that's natural and not a big deal IMO with modern battery packs, I'm talking about actual sudden cell failure that leaves the car as a paperweight.

I've been looking at Jaguar I-Pace as I consider these sufficiently depreciated (can have one for ~15k), but I'm not a huge fan of crossovers and I dislike that most have no tow hitch and even if they do, they're rated to tow only 750 kg.

And to clarify while normally under "very used" I would mean 15 years or so, which is about what it takes an ICE vehicle to become properly cheap, for EVs this is slightly less, as you can get them super cheap at, like I said, ~7-8 years already.

I just meant that buying one that's 2-3 years old is still hella stupid because the next few years will continue to be brutal.

The best ones have heavily depreciated

Yes, like I said, actually used cars. Not something that's 2-3 years old. Those still have a ton left to lose.

I would argue no one should be buying a car with the intention of selling it later, because all cars depreciate terribly

They all do, but unless you want to be stuck with the same car until it literally dies, you're selling it. If you're buying a fairly new car, you're likely not planning on keeping it for 20 years, because if you're ok with driving a 20 year old car, you should just buy a 10 year old car and drive that for 10. And if you are planning to sell in about 5 years, which is what most people keep their cars for, used or not, wouldn't you want the one that loses 30-40% of its remaining value in that time, over the one that loses 60-70%?

The warranty does not care about the value of the car, it’s only for parts and repair so what you said doesn’t make any sense.

Unfortunately it does for some manufacturers of nice heavily depreciated EVs I'm eyeing ctrl+f "current value". I'm sure others will be following suit. Guy on reddit got told to piss off by dealer because battery replacement was going to cost 60k pounds and car worth 40k or less. Basically put up 20k of your own money to get a warranty job done, ridiculous. This with the manufacturer deciding the price of the battery in the first place because LG or whoever sure as shit doesn't charge them anywhere close to that amount.

No one should be buying a car they can’t afford, and definitely not with a loan they can’t safely afford.

And yet most people do. So when you've got 15k left to pay on your car and get laid off with only 6 months of income saved up (which is about 100x more in savings than the average person in some countries like the US) and have no idea if you'll get a new job in 3 months or 2 years, would you rather the market value of your car be 20k or 12k?

There's always refinancing

Yes, pay even more money by extending your loan. On something that's already underwater. This is why Americans for example are so fucked with vehicle debt. Many of them roll negative equity into their next loan, and the one after that and... you get the point. Soon the loan principals get much bigger than the cars are worth. Made worse by ever longer loans terms that are designed to sucker you into exactly that.