I drove a 20+ year old car up until I had a kid, and suddenly I started to care about those safety features from the previous 20 years (like airbags and crumple zone improvements).

Can cost you more to maintain it though.

Unfortunately, you can't ignore depreciation. It's rarely possible to actually drive a car into the dirt, as they can last for hundreds of thousands of miles if properly maintained.

Even if you intend to drive the car into the ground, you usually can't. Every time you get on the road it's a roll of the dice. Over enough time, eventually you roll snake eyes. You can be the best driver in the world, you can't beat physics. If someone pulls out of a parking lot right in front of you, you're going to crash. You can't skill your way out of minimum stopping distance.

And this happens, depreciation matters regardless of your choices. The insurance company is going to offer you a settlement based on the depreciated value of the vehicle. Sure, in theory you could say, "well, they gave me the value of a 10 year old car, so I'm just going to buy another copy of the same car I just totaled!" But that rarely works in practice. Once they get that old, you really have to worry if the old owner took care of it properly or not. Driving a car into the dirt works well when you can be the original owner and know that the maintenance has been kept up with.

In the context of OP, depreciation means that a “$50K when new” car may only be worth ~$35K if you choose to buy it 1-2 years later.

So it’s not so much about it’s residual value at any point in time, but rather how EVs tend to have a steeper depreciation curve at the beginning - making lightly used models a more attractive bargain.

Then assume straight line depreciation between the car brand new and the car when it is scrap. If a $60,000 car lasts 20 years and you own it the whole time, you can consider the depreciation to be $3000/year if you'd like.

Either way, at the end of the car's useful life you need to be prepared to pony up more money to buy the next one.

It matters if you are in a collision for the payout.

That's what I do too. I just thought I'd pull out depreciation before a genius does.

Hello fellow Buzz owner. I also bought a 2025 buzz new a couple of weeks ago. So far love having the EV kid hauler

My sister has my old leaf and 2 kids. The leaf is the household car. The grocery getter. The child fetcher. When they announced the buzz she wanted one so goddamn bad. It’s the return of the minivan in electric form. Exactly what she wants but alas cannot afford.

Ordered a LWB earlier in the year, still waiting on delivery - currently due mid-Nov., but with the Suez Canal looking to be off-limits due to the conflict in Yemen - not sure if/when it’ll land here in Australia. 😭

How’re you finding it, in these first few weeks? Any quirks/niggles you weren’t expecting, or adjustments you’ve needed to make?

You'll need to show data for that. Depreciation is not linear. The first year is worst and then not so bad.

Unless you are getting an old Nissan leaf, you’re probably going to be fine. Todays EV batteries are so energy dense they undergo less strain than the old versions.

There were 2 problems with early EV batteries. First, they were not actively cooled and could cook themselves to death over time. Today’s batteries have their own climate control.

Second, they were not very energy dense, so when they were being charged or discharged, you were moving a larger proportion of overall capacity in a short amount of time. Batteries do not like that. But as the capacities grew, the instantaneous load on the batteries dropped, so they didn’t have to work as hard to do the same thing. So they weren’t as abused and last longer.

Event first gen Chevy volts are rolling around happily on their original batteries with no noticeable loss in capacity to this day.

Logistic curves tell us that there soon will come a time when ICE cars are basically stranded "assets". And I dare to say that time is closer than most think.

I'm glad someone else is talking about EV depreciation, although it is not a popular subject in this community.

I'm still very much pro-EV, and it's undoubtedly the future. But I think not talking about this one negative thing does a disservice to new potential EV buyers.

That's a good thing, is the point of this article and general wisdom. Cars last 10+ years so for the used market, the sooner the car depreciates the better. Unless you plan to sell your car, depreciation rarely matters right? You buy a car to run it into the ground, so the cheaper to start the better.