“What do I look for?” Promise and pitfalls in buying a used EV

In spite of lingering battery range anxiety, Nicole Cook bought a used 2017 Hyundai IONIQ in late 2023. 

Her initial motivation in buying the EV was reduced emissions and the circular logic of investing in a used car, but like so many first-time EV drivers, she was soon hooked on more than the prospect of bypassing gas stations. 

“They’re super quiet, fast and responsive,” said Cook, the operations manager for an engineering firm who lives in North Vancouver. “EVs are really fun to drive.”

Since her 2023 purchase, the economics of buying a used EV have continued to look bright. 

The average price of a used battery electric vehicle (BEV) on AutoTrader.ca – home to more than 400,000 vehicles – fell to $42,398 in February, a 16.3 per cent year-over-year decline, said Baris Akyurek, vice president, insights and intelligence at the website.

That compared to an average list price of $70,297 for a new BEV, down 5.7 per cent during the same period.

Budget-minded consumers might consider buying now rather than later. 

The impact of the Trump tariffs on North American supply chains could slow new auto production overall and push prices higher, forcing some buyers into the used market, said Akyurek.

“We are seeing a little bit of an uptick already in new car prices,” he said of their data for the first six days of March. 

A few years ago, COVID disrupted auto supply chains and forced new car prices higher. That led to a 21.7 per spike in used car prices in 2021 as many buyers shifted into the used market.

Buying a used EV starts with doing your homework.

In the lead-up to buying her Hyundai, Cook made it her mission to understand as much as she could about the upside and potential pitfalls of buying an EV with 40,000 km on the odometer. 

Her first step was to approach the Vancouver Electric Vehicle Association (VEVA), a not-for-profit group that works to get more British Columbians into EVs.

The group includes EV-owner enthusiasts with a broad range of experience who can answer first-time buyer questions. Cook perused VEVA summaries for all the EVs and hybrids on the market, listed by price, which was the starting point for working out what her family was willing to pay.

“I went to a meeting, and basically asked them, what am I looking for and what do I look out for?” she recalled.

Her next stop was AutoTrader.ca to set up a search filter to screen for EVs in her chosen age and price range. Over a few months, she got a good sense of what kinds of EVs were on the market.

“We decided we wanted to go through a dealer because we wanted to have a battery test and a service history,” she said, as opposed to buying from a private seller. The Hyundai’s battery was still at a 100 per cent state of health. A test drive sealed the deal.

Her family already owns a Mitsubishi Outlander plug-in hybrid which they can use for long summer road trips. The used EV is perfect for everything else: including trips to work, shopping and hockey practices for their son. Their house has an EV charger installed in the garage.

EV on a fixed budget

Unlike Cook's family, whose EV is the most active vehicle in their busy two-car family life, East Vancouverite Wally Kunz bought his used Chevy Spark as a retirement car. 

Similar to Cook, the reduction in emissions from transportation was the critical initial motivation, as was the lower price. 

“We couldn’t afford a new Tesla, and we couldn’t afford a new Leaf,” said the 77-year old retired engineer. 

What he could afford was a 2015 Spark with 33,000 km, which he and his wife Robin bought in 2020. Kunz found it on AutoTrader, and purchased the vehicle from a Chevrolet dealership. 

The Kunz family drove a Honda Civic for 25 years, but near the end it cost $3,000 a year to keep on the road. 

Critical to making the new purchase on their fixed budget was the credit they received from the dealership for their old vehicle. They also received cash from BC’s SCRAP-IT!, an incentive program that encourages consumers to ditch their gas beaters for zero emission vehicles. 

They have a level one charger in their garage, the slowest of three currently available EV charging modes, which delivers a full charge overnight. They don’t notice the “EV bump” on their hydro bill, and Robin adds with satisfaction that the smelly oil stains on their garage floor are gone too.

One piece of advice Kunz has for used EV buyers, something that they did not do, is to get a full report on the battery health before buying the vehicle. 

For many EV models, a phone app, such as the Nissan Leaf-specific Leaf Spy, works with a small ODB adapter which connects to a socket just under the vehicle’s dashboard, enabling the driver to see a visualization of the battery health data. 

“We didn’t do that, but we were lucky,” he said. “We still have about 90 per cent of the original range after nine years. In summertime, we get about 100 km in range, which is all we need.”
 

Anyone who has shopped for a used internal combustion engine (ICE) vehicle will already know some of the advantages of a used EV: it costs less and the original buyer bears the brunt of depreciation. One used EV buyer told Canada’s National Observer the purchase of a 2023 Hyundai IONIQ saved him at least $12,000. 

With few moving parts to maintain, the cost of upkeep is close to zero and the vehicle pays for itself from gas savings over time. But similar to a used ICE vehicle, there’s the risk of an unknown daily driving history. 

Because an EV is essentially a giant battery, questions about battery health, including range and integrity of range over time, loom even larger over used EVs than new ones. 

For Montrealer Ken Dyson, battery issues influenced his decision last year to buy a new Kia EV6 Land GT Line 2024. 

“As for buying a used EV, I was not comfortable with that. My understanding of battery tech had me skeptical of battery life depending on how the previous owner took care of it,” Dyson said. 

“For instance, high speed DC charging can reduce battery life, and so can over-charging, or letting it fall below 20 per cent frequently. So, until I can be convinced that I would have long battery life, I would rather not get used,” he added.

On a recent November day trip from Montreal to the Eastern townships to visit friends, Dyson drove the 220 km round trip with battery left to spare. There was zero range anxiety.

“Battery math”

Another factor pushing Quebec owners like Dyson to purchase new are Canada’s richest provincial government subsidies at $7,000 per vehicle last year. This has contributed to Quebec’s status as the province with the most EVs, ahead of B.C. and Ontario in third place. 

But Quebec’s subsidies for fully electric vehicles will drop to $4,000 in 2025 before lowering to $2,000 by 2026 – with the program set to end in 2027.

Virtually all subsidies for EVs in Canada are for new vehicles only — although B.C.’s  SCRAP IT! program applies to used vehicles, and B.C. currently does not charge PST on used EVs. 

Aside from a detailed battery report, there are two more things to consider before you buy, said Andrew Garberson, head of growth and research at Recurrent, a Seattle-based platform providing consumers and car dealerships with information about used EV batteries.

First, if you find a used EV you like enough to test drive, he suggests doing some simple battery math.

If the console tells you, for example, that the car has 80 per cent charge left on the battery, and you know it has a certain range, make sure the battery reading accurately reflects that at the end of the test drive. If the battery reading drops down to 50 per cent after a 10-minute test drive, there’s a problem. 

His second piece of advice is to “understand that these batteries last much longer than most people expect.”

In Canada, the minimum government-mandated warranty for battery electric drivetrains is eight years or 160,000 km, whichever comes first.

“In all the research that we’ve done, less than two per cent of the cars have had a battery replaced, and we study cars that are up to 12 years old now,” Garberson said.

“The manufacturers created warranties that would protect both the consumer and themselves. Nobody wants to have to pay for an expensive EV battery replacement or repair,” he added.

A lot of used EV buyers right now are buying vehicles in the two-to-four year-old range, so they are well within warranty.

“I love this car”

Not that everyone has anxiety about replacing an EV battery.

Burnaby’s Rick Jang is a recently-retired heavy mechanic who spent his entire working life around emission-spewing ICE machines of every description. But in 2018, he bought a three-year old Nissan Leaf with 33,000 kms of mileage.

After six years of driving 51,000 kms, he only has changed three wiper blades and the electrical coolant. His brakes are still at 80 per cent, and he said the gas savings have more than paid for the vehicle.

A climate skeptic, Jang did not buy the vehicle to cut emissions: “I bought it because I didn’t want to pay $2 for a litre of gas.”

His 10-year-old used EV can still get 150 km range, but the battery warranty is long past. Jang plans to eventually buy a Chinese battery pack and hire a dealer to install it at a cost of around $6,000 or maybe less by the time it happens.

“If my battery lasts another five years, I will order in a [new] battery pack, because I love this car.”