About to buy a quite-pricey second- hand electric car - advice on getting the best deal and what to check??

[loveyouradvice]

Hi all

We come from a family that doesn't typically spend money on cars - we buy something 2-3 years old, and then have it for 10 years.... barring accidents

We have now gone electric and are about to buy our 2nd secondhand one from a car dealer - for £20-25k which feels like masses of money to me.

It would be great to have advice on two things

1. What should we check, beyond history including accidents?
2. What can we negotiate on? Any freebies they might give that cost them little and are worth a fair amount to us? There is a high demand for second hand electric cars at the mo so although hoping we might get something on price, Im not convinced it will be much. What's your experience?

Huge thanks and looking forward to hearing your thoughts.

Check the range very carefully, they have come a long way in a short amount of time, so a car that doesn't seem that old might actually be several generations behind technology wise. I'd ask if you can do an extended test drive, like to the next town over and back so you can seen how fast the charge drops.

I bought one about a year ago, that was 8 years old, couldn't go anywhere. Even got stuck driving it the hour from where we bought it to our house. Ended up having to blag the use of a plug socket, then sitting for an hour until it had enough to limp to a fast charge station. Only kept it a few months, but luckily it did hold it's value.

Battery degradation is the obvious one. Just like phone batteries, as they get older they suffer from degradation and don't hold as much charge as when new. Ask the dealer to have the car fully charged when you go to look at it then compare the range showing on the dashboard to the manufacturers expected range for the car. This will give you an idea. For example, if it should have 300 miles range and it says 250 then the battery is degrading.

Servicing electric cars is relatively cheap so dealerships often throw that. Check the length of the warranty on that battery.

Not quite that simple. The "Guessometer" that gives the range works on averaging out what the car has been doing recently. Thus if people test driving have been lead footed (as is often the case) it will show a lower range. Also, just like on petrol and diesel cars, the manufacturer's claimed range is way above what people get in the real world. If you want to know what range should be, read reviews which will often give a "real world range". DH and I run 2 all electric cars, and electric motorcycle and a hybrid van so have some experience of EV's.

Tell us what model and year and then I can be more specific on what to check.

We are 7 years in to EV ownership and have had 8 different EV cars so have covered a lot!

We currently have an E-up and an MG4 but have had a Leaf, Zoe, E-niro, i3, i3S, Ioniq and DH used to be trade.

Oh, and probably worth avoiding the Nissan Leaf with a type 1 connecter. The standard is moving towards Type 2 so look for something with that type of connector.

That's not strictly the whole picture though, is it? It's not necessarily battery degradation if there's a difference between WLTP/Manufacturers Range vs charged range... Manufacturers claimed range is largely hogwash, you're best looking online at some of the car review websites / blogs "real world range" figures to determine this, and charged range is fairly substantially affected by recent driving styles (If I fully charge my car, there can be a good 10-20% difference between the range depending on if I've been pottering around town and such like, or I've returned home from a Motorway Heavy 200mile journey).

If you're looking at a 2/3 year old vehicle, I would be mainly looking for confirmation of the length and terms of their battery warrantee, maintenance history of brake components and other such items, asking for information regarding service intervals and associated costs (and maybe if they're able to cover one or two services, first MOT, breakdown cover and such like if you're buying an approved used vehicle). Also, find out ahead of time what tyres are on the vehicle and check out prices on black circles for instance - my husband had a fair shock going from a normal saloon to a EV, not only do the tyres cost more than double, but you will largely go through them far quicker due to the fact that equivalent EV's are at least 750kg - 1 tonne heavier than their ICE counterpart.

Yes, there's less to go wrong in terms of moving parts and so it's tempting to think servicing and maintenance are very very low, but unless you're buying a Tesla, you usually still need to stick to the recommended servicing schedule to maintain the battery warrantee, and depending on the brand, costs can still be hefty.

Oh wow .. such great advice on here.

We're moving on from a Nissan Leaf - which we loved apart from range ....

We are looking at Hyundai Iconiq 2020....

Want decent size boot and range as do drive long distances sometimes - but most of time just local stuff.. family car, but keen it isn't big....

Yes, please love anything more you can say!

@loveyouradvice what did you go for in the end? In a very similar position and curious to know how you're finding it?