Worried about buying electric

[vitahelp]

I’m about to buy a new car, it will be either BMW i4 or BMW Gran Coupe 440i.

To look at they are virtually the same car, but the obvious difference is electric vs petrol. The ones in my price range of £35-40k are 2/3 years old with 10-20k mileage on the clock.

I’m not worried about range etc, my main concern is how much the car will be worth when I come to trade it in. I want to keep it for 4-5 years, by then it will be up to 8 years old. Will the battery be almost game over by then and the car worth virtually nothing? Or am I worrying over nothing here?

Well why don't you look up electric cars that are 4 or 5 years old and check their prices against their new price?

@Summerhillsquare This is where I struggle as the car would be around 8 years old when I come to trade it and there aren’t many examples out there of electric cars of that age. The i4 I’m looking at was only released in 2021.
It feels like it’s too soon to tell what an aged electric car would trade for, and I wondered how other buyers are getting their heads round this and if it is simply a risk people are taking.

Why don’t you just do a 4 year lease? We started leasing vs buying for that reason - cars just don’t hold value. So we rather do a 0% rental.

Full disclosure, i love my electric car (Volvo!).
However, from what i've seen, electric cars depreciate more heavily than their petrol equivalents (at the moment). This is more customer sentiment than anything. (I lease mine, for this reason, primarily).

The batteries on the earlier leafs, i3s etc have certainly taken a pumelling. My bosses i3 was down to about 60% of it's original charge (2015 plate) by 2023. That said, the batteries in early electric cars are fairly different to a 2024/2025 model. Volvo gurantee me '80% of capacity or more at 8 years old'.

All that aside, the 440i is absolutely ace. I had the 240i before the volvo, and it's a fine machine! If it was my money, i'd get the 440i. It'll cost more to run but i suspect the depreciation will be less savage.

Check out insurance costs. We have just got a hybrid and discovered that it more expensive for hybrids and electric cars.

The lack of working charging stations around the country would put me off an electric car . The infrastructure isn’t there yet .

I bought a 4 year old Leaf and sold it at 8 years old for £1200 less than I paid so I was happy.

You’re right it’s a bit of a gamble, as we don’t know yet what the market will be on used Evs at that time. I would say it’s similar with petrol though, as the reason we got our EV 2yrs ago was we were looking for a second hand petrol that would comply with LEZ and the prices were huge, compared to previous times we’ve looked/ bought. The impact of lockdown. A lot can change in any market in 6yrs, especially at the moment. I don’t think you can make your decision based on this, just look at other factors as to whether an ev is right for you. The charge points up and down the motorways have hugely increased in the time I’ve owned one. Yes sometimes there are issues but for me it’s great, we’d not look back.

Apparently the “they don’t hold their value”, is rather exaggerated.

I tend to agree. All new cars lose value
Expensive new cars lose value more quickly than cheap new cars.
EVs used to be expensive new cars.
So it's no surprise that EVs lose more money on average than non EVs because, until recently, the vast majority of EVs were at the expensive end of the sepectrum. Now there are more cheap EVs on the market I expect this will shift

Most of which is academic, as the EVs that the OP is looking at are second hand and so have had their biggest depreciation hit anyway. For me the bigger issue with actually owning them is not the depreciation directly, or even battery life, but the rate of change of technology. New cars will inevitably have a longer range. My first Tesla in 2014 had a claimed range of jjust under 300 miles, but would never do more than 220. My latest EV, a BMW, claims 350 and has maxed out at 380, but never falls below 280 :)

I leased my EV as I was worried about the same. So glad I did, the car was cursed, ot spent more time in the garage than being driven, was a BMW i3. The recovery man (who came regularly) kept tutting and saying "everyone knows electric BMWs are awful".

Lease a Tesla direct from them

Thanks everyone for sharing your thoughts and experiences. I ended up calling my local BMW dealership today and the sales guy I spoke to didn’t seem keen on electric and shared my concern about the end value of the car at 8ish years old. I know he might have had an ulterior motive, but having said that both options I am considering are of a similar selling value.

I’m going to go in at weekend to have a closer look and test drive some cars, I’m still open to the i4 but think I’m swaying more towards the petrol 4 series now.

It is such a shame that electric remains a more risky option even after all this time. It isn’t very encouraging.

Depending on your mileage the fuel saving alone will offset higher, if that is the case, deprecation. I would have thought a 440i will depreciate quite heavily…every car with a large petrol engine does. Been there, done that! :)

I do 20,000 miles a year so save £3,000 in ‘fuel’ and £500 or so a year in servicing costs. Over 5 years that’s £17,500. I / we have had at least one EV since 2014…which means we have saved nearly £40,000 over running an equivalent ICE. I certainly haven’t spent more in either leasing or deprecation, so I count that as 3 very nice holidays and a cleaner planet ;)

@Tryingtokeepgoing Thank you for this, that’s really interesting to see the savings you have made. Perhaps I need to reconsider and look at the bigger picture. I know what you mean about the large petrol engines, it’s tricky as I need the X Drive due to where we live and most of them at 440i as opposed to the 420i..

We have 2 EVs, both on lease. Best thing we ever did. Overnight tarrif from Octopus saves us a ton of money on charging (we can put 300 miles on for about £6). Charging infrastructure is getting better all the time. We've never had a problem.

unless you live and drive in a city centre, don’t buy electric.
you say you need the Xdrive due to where you live. Do not get electric unless you want a permanent headache with charging.
We now have a third car for when the electric doesn’t have enough charge to get to where we need. We can’t have a fast charger at home as the conservation officer won’t allow it. The car takes 38hrs to charge from 5miles of range. It only does 80 in winter and 120 in summer. It’s a mini.

The whole infrastructure isn’t fit for purpose.

@TMMC1 - that’s a load of rubbish. We live rural, up a mountain, where is snows and it’s freezing all winter, boiling summers. Have an electric now 3 years. Never had a problem charging, or with range in winter or any other problems people without an electric imagine up.

Good for you. That’s not our experience.

EV family for six years here- I think depreciation is an issue - we sold our first too cheaply when we needed to upgrade. We’re now planning to keep ours for a very long time so less of an issue for us.

however I wouldn’t worry about battery degradation- that was a thing with the first gen of EVs but isn’t any longer. Bought ours from new two years ago and there’s been zero noticable decrease so far. You would expect to see a bit after 8-10 years.

@TMMC1 - it’s not good for me. It’s you buy the car suitable. It’s not an electric car issue, but I presume you bought an electric car with a very low range. You would h e the same issue if you also bought a petrol car not suitable for where you live. I wouldn’t buy a tiny petrol smart car then complain they are rubbish off road

It’s basic science that battery capacity degrades considerably the colder it is. It’s definitely a factor to consider.

We did our research. We bought a car with an advertised 150 range to do a 100m a week back and forth commute. Until three months ago there hasn’t been a single public charger on route or in the town. The range isn’t accurate and the infrastructure isn’t in places yes, we did expect to get approval for a fast charger at home, the nearest one is 18miles away in a direction we rarely travel.

The weather makes a massive difference to the range, I totally dispute you saying it doesn’t!

If your car has a 150 mile range the battery must be small. The posted range of mine (77kwh battery) is 330 miles - real world range 260 miles.

Home charger at 7kwh and I get to charge from, say, 30% to 80% in around 5 hours at home. A 7kwh charge point is not a fast charger. You'd have to spend over £3k to get the fast charger infrastructure at home. If your car has a range of 150 miles in the real world it should take you half the time it takes mine to add 50% of a full charge to the battery. I can't understand why you say you need to charge away from your home.

the weather makes a bit. But not huge.

If I wanted 100miles, I would never have bought a ‘up to 150mile’ in perfect condition car. As that’s literally 150 at 50miles an hour, perfectly flat, no traffic, no hills, no heating or air con or anything.

Ours is up to 550km. It’s 500-520 average in summer ( with air con on full). In winter will still get 450km. So a bit less, but it’s not ‘really bad’. You buy looking at worse case range, not best case.

We also have a charger at home. No permission needed for 22kw charger or lower