If your current car is on the way out and you think an electric replacement is too expensive, think again. Three-year-old
Tesla Model 3s and Kia e-Niros that will do 250-300 miles on a single charge can now be bought for as little as £14,000. Values have fallen so much that two weeks ago Auto Trader said they had reached near-parity with petrol cars. The average price of a three- to five-year-old EV in July was £18,964, compared with £18,076 for petrol models of the same age, it said.
Used, long-range Tesla Model 3s with about 100,000 miles on the clock can be bought for less than £15,000, while £20,000 buys you a more recent model with 55,000 miles on the dashboard. There are several cars for sale with 170,000 miles on the clock, and some Teslas being used as taxis have clocked up 440,000 miles, suggesting they are good for big mileages.
“These are high-performance cars packed with technology – if that’s your thing – and they cost peanuts to recharge at home", says Richard Symons, who set up R Symons, a specialist EV dealer way back (in EV terms) in 2010. He recommends the e-Niro if you need a family-type car that offers good internal space. If a standard saloon fits the bill, he says Tesla Model 3s are now fantastic used buys. “We sell them and run them ourselves,” he says. “We have a white Model 3 that we use on a daily basis and now has over 100,000 miles on the clock. In that time, the only thing that it required was some new suspension bushes at a cost of about £1,500, some wiper blades, and tyres.
If you are still not convinced, consider his parting shot. He says buyers who can charge at home using an off-peak EV tariff will pay as little as £150 for every 10,000 miles travelled, a fraction of the £1,600 or so it would cost to fuel a petrol or diesel car over the same distance.
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