South Africans who are too impatient for the arrival of more affordable electric vehicles can save on some of the models currently available by shopping on the secondhand market.As of 2021, as many as 2.67 used cars were sold for every new vehicle sale, according to data from one of South Africa’s biggest vehicle classified’s platforms —One of the major reasons for this difference is that cars tend to lose their value fairly quickly.The same approach seems to make sense when it comes to EVs.
Many people with reputable load-shedding backup systems might not be aware that their backup batteries were likely sourced from scrapped EVs in China. The publication likened hot weather to “heart disease” for EVs. However, that only applies when people do not regularly charge the batteries. If his driving and charging habits remained the same over the next few years, he should go past 500,000km with over 70% of the battery still being useable.Given that the losses in battery life should be relatively minimal for EVs sold in South Africa in the last ten years, we investigated the secondhand options on AutoTrader.The cheapest on offer were two BMW i3s — one from 2015 and another from 2016 — each selling for R399,900.
The two cheapest distinct models available on AutoTrader had lost 34–35% of their price, despite entering the market last year and only having a few thousand kilometres on their odometers.Although the e-tron’s driving experience and comfort received praise, it is substantially less energy efficient than the competition, leading to relatively poor range.