Used car prices have been heading in the right direction after months of elevated values and inventory shortages. Even so, the values of some vehicles have declined much faster than others, with EVs doing the heavy lifting. Automotive data outfit iSeeCars’ latest study looked at used car values over the past year, finding that used electric vehicles are dropping at a much faster rate than their gas-powered counterparts.
While used car values have been dropping overall over the past year, used EVs have dropped like a stone in comparison. iSeeCars found that the average for used electric models fell by up to almost 32 percent since 2023, while the used gas vehicle average price sank by just 3.6 percent.
I suppose unless the instrumentation is built into the car’s systems (no idea if it is or not), it may be difficult or time consuming to check the health of an EV battery pack. But it’s not like you can eyeball the cylinder compression of an ICE car, either. I suspect that since they’re a relatively new tech, the tools and tricks aren’t widely known for evaluating them. You would have to measure the voltage drop on the battery vs current draw and have baseline data to compare that to. I would think EVs would track power usage (otherwise how do you know when to charge the vehicle?) and so they should be able to estimate the AH capacity of the battery?