Last spring, used EVs were selling like hot-cakes. Gas prices were at an all time high, and my trusty 2018 Nissan Leaf which I bought in 2020 was selling for about 10-15 k more than I bought it for. This fall, things look a little saner, at our 35k price cap, the Nissan Leaf is well represented, with a few choices from other brands, while inventory is better, prices remain high.
Methodology: As before, we use autotrader.ca to search for electric cars within a 100 km of Toronto,ON. While there are many platforms for finding used cars nowadays, autotrader is one of the few that allows you to specifically search for electric cars. We needed to see at least three EV’s in each category. The goal here is to find modestly priced EV’s, thus a limit of $35 000 is set. As before at that budget you could almost buy a new base version Nissan Leaf (MSRP – 5k federal incentive is $35 548 (source)), new inventory is tight these days with long waits being the norm (source).
As we can see from the table, inventory is much better. A total of 88 EVs from 7 manufacturers looking for a new home, compared with only 11 from three brands last spring ( source). Prices remain high, compared to fall of 2021, where you could get a used Mitsubishi MiEV for $8k (source), now the cheapest EV is a first generation Nissan Leaf at 12k.
Tesla cars are getting closer to making our $35k price cap, there were some at just under $40k available, although two had over 200 000 km on the odometer, and one was a salvage title, perhaps in our next survey, we will have a few Tesla cars.
Electric car adventures 