From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT
By Paul Homewood
Now they want the taxpayer to subsidise the second hand market for EVs!
From GB News:
Labour has been urged to intervene and offer more support for used electric vehicles, with experts warning that without support, the car finance sector risks losing “hundreds of millions” of pounds due to lapsing driver demand.
The need for intervention comes as experts warned that due to interest in used electric cars falling, car finance companies have been forced to pass on higher interest rates and car financing costs to consumers.
Earlier this month, the British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association (BVRLA) sent a letter to the Government stating that demand for used EVs is “struggling to keep pace” with supply, which could rise to 178 per cent over the next three years.
The letter stated that the imbalance has meant that EV residual values have dropped by 50 per cent in the last two years, with it expected to decline by a further 28 per cent by 2030.
But the BVRLA warned that weak residuals in the used electric car market have created “financial pressure” on car finance firms, which base their pricing models on optimistic residual value forecasts. This, in turn, has meant that used EVs are worth much less now than expected.
The letter stated: “The difference between the price of the new vehicle and its value on disposal determine the cost of financing, leasing or rental for a customer. This depreciation is costing fleets hundreds of millions and being passed on to new buyers in the form of higher motor finance costs.”
It noted that the second-hand EV market remains under pressure, before calling on the Government to provide residual value support across the automotive value chain.
This could help keep new electric vehicle retail sales lagging behind fleet levels, “straining the automotive ecosystem”, the letter claimed.
It added: “Without a stronger used BEV market where values are stable, the future of the entire transition to electric vehicles is at risk. Cars, vans and trucks all require used market demand at levels that create pricing stability.
“For the transition to electric commercial vehicles to hit its stride, the current position must be improved. There are no silver bullets, and this change can be delivered only through wide-ranging and aligned policy steps.”
Read the full story here.
I have been warning about the looming losses for leasing companies, who are now attempting to sell EVs at the end of leases. As with the new car market, private buyers are simply not interested in the useless things, so second hand prices are going through the floor. Remember that only one-in-ten private buyers went electric last year.
To make matters worse, there will be a flood of EVs hitting the second hand market in the next year or so, and the flood will get bigger year on year. Three years ago, for instance, new EV sales were much lower than they were last year.
But will demand for second hand EVs be any greater than today? It is hard to see why it should be. Indeed as the 2030 deadline approaches there is likely to be strong demand instead for petrol/diesels, as buyers will want to get hold of one before they are gone for good.
Leasing companies have gambled that second hand values for EVs would be as strong as for conventional cars. It is a gamble that could cost them billions.
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Oh Dear, How sad. Never Mind!
Oh GEE no-one realized that a New and already “Worthless” product would be “Worth Much Less” when used
Indeed, Whenever the “[worse] than expected” meme gets sprayed around the obvious question is “Expected by whom?”.
“Car Leasing Association Wants Govt Support “
Doesn’t everybody these days? Labour is “all over the place” on energy, industry, law and order etc etc etc, not to mention the doubling down on the teachings of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, MIT, Stanford, Columbia… you get the idea… in critical theories; put into practice with socially disastrous results by Labour.***
Second hand EVs have a major problem. You don’t query the size of the petrol tank with a second hand ICE car, but what state is the second hand battery in? All vehicle test docs are only good on the day they were printed out. EV numbers around here have barely budged in the last 6 months. Why do they look like large sports shoes on wheels?
As I said, Labour are all over the place…
“Coking coal and iron from the US are being moved to Scunthorpe from the port at Immingham as we speak to keep the fires burning at British Steel’s plant. Shipments, including from Sweden and Australia, were to be ditched by Jingye prior to the state takeover of operations…
After industry minister Sarah Jones refused to rule out another Chinese firm taking over British Steel business secretary Jonathan Reynolds has refused to rule out job losses. “
https://order-order.com/2025/04/15/jonathan-reynolds-refuses-to-rule-job-losses-at-british-steel/
A note on the esteemed business secretary…
“In a point of order Jonathan Reynolds tonight corrected the official record after claiming to have been a solicitor in the House of Commons
…
The Solicitors Regulation Authority opened an investigation into the business secretary three weeks ago. The Commons was only one of several places where the claim was made, including on official election material, LinkedIn, a parliamentary bio, and newspaper write-ups. Can’t correct the record on those as easily…
https://order-order.com/2025/03/12/reynolds-finally-corrects-record-after-saying-he-was-a-solicitor-in-commons/
Nuff said.
*** “The UK’s Supreme Court has unanimously ruled that sex and woman definitions in Equality Act 2010 relates to “a biological woman and biological sex” after a long-running legal case brought against the Scottish Government by For Women Scotland. “
Trebles all round.
From the UK Telegraph
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/content/dam/news/2025/04
Maya Forstater, the chief executive of Sex Matters, said it meant the notion of gender self-identification (self-ID) was “dead”.
“We’re really proud,” she told the Telegraph. “They thanked us for our cogent argument. It has turned the Equality Act from confused to being clear.
“They looked at the whole argument, not just who goes in what bathroom and trans women. This is going to change organisations, employers, service providers.
“Everyone is going to have to pay attention to this, this is from the highest court in the land. It’s saying sex in the Equality Act is biological sex. Self ID is dead.”
Ruling provides ‘absolute clarity’ on what a woman is, say campaignersTrina Budge, the director of For Women Scotland, said the Supreme Court’s ruling had provided “absolute clarity” on what a woman is.
Ms Budge said the ruling would answer the question once and for all of who could use women-only spaces.
She told Sky News: “It is absolutely a victory for women’s rights. This case was always about women, never about trans rights who, as Judge Hodge said, that they are fully protected in law still. “But now we have clarity over what a woman means in law.”
She added: “It means there is absolute clarity in law regarding what a woman is. We know for sure now that we are referring to the biological sex class of women and that when we say a woman-only space it means exactly that: Just women, no men, not even if they have a gender recognition certificate.”
Sex is binary, the Supreme Court has ruled.
“The definition of sex in the Equality Act 2010 makes clear that the concept of sex is binary, a person is either a woman or a man,” the judgement reads.
“Persons who share that protected characteristic for the purposes of the group-based rights and protections are persons of the same sex and provisions that refer to protection for women necessarily exclude men.
“Although the word ‘biological’ does not appear in this definition, the ordinary meaning of those plain and unambiguous words corresponds with the biological characteristics that make an individual a man or a woman.
“These are assumed to be self-explanatory and to require no further explanation. Men and women are on the face of the definition only differentiated as a grouping by the biology they share with their group.”
The thing however I am not clear about is: what is the force now of a ‘gender recognition certificate’? In fact, what is the status of the concept of gender itself? You hold a GRC. But what use is it, if the concept of gender has no legal relation to your legal sex? Or if gender is not a legal attribute in UK law?
It seems this might only be the first stage in a complicated unravelling.
My guess would be that anyone who has made a full transition – surgery and all – would be entitled to use the appropriate facilities.
If it swings – then, they should use the Gents.
What if it’s really cold that day?
No, explicitly ruled against, women only places are only for women born as women. The GRC is now relegated to being able to state Gender as woman on your Passport and official paperwork. But your Sex is still what you were born as and the Sex Equality Act states that Women only places are defined by Sex not Gender so even with a GRC you cannot enter a Women only place.
Entitled? No. Permitted? Possibly.
No longer , in the UK !
UK’s highest court has said that the Equality Act was intended to define “woman” as “biological woman”
That will apply to many things.. such as toilets, changerooms, sports, clubs etc
It’s a bit like putting a Vauxhall badge on your Ford , it still doesn’t make it a Vauxhall
Someone once put the grill and radiator cap from a Mercedes on a VW beetle.
Gender is a classification system. Identity is personal belief. Sex is biology.
Sex is not assigned at birth, it is created at the moment of conception. Sex is recorded at birth based on physical examination of the newborn. Any woman who had an ultrasound knows the sex of her baby long before it is born.
The impact of your comment wrt this article – A future court ruling: “Regardless of the plaintiff’s sincere beliefs, putting oil under his arms, sleeping in a garage, and shoving batteries up his arse does not make him an EV. Plaintiff’s demand for a subsidy DENIED.”
I would imagine that to beat the ban on petrol and diesel cars after 2030 you will buy your car outside the UK and companies will be set up to do personal import into the UK . Could even be the USA as they already sell RHD Ford mustangs in the UK
Not cheap
Won’t bother the elite.
We have to wait until the smoke clears from all the tariff conflagrations.
Probably won’t be able to register it, although I still doubt that the ban will really go ahead.
Trebles all round.
UK Supreme Court works out sheilas aint blokes.
Return of the jazz hands all round.
You can only dodge the truth for so long, then reality bites.
You can only dodge the truth for so long, then DOGE.
It’s going to get much worse. In many places EV’s are mandatory for business car. Here 25% of the fleet is for businesses that lease cars, it’s part of your paycheck to reduce taxes, that’s why we have so many business cars on the road. Second hand demand is almost non existent. What are they going to do? Recycle 5 year old EV’s? That’ green baby! All this is doing tremendous economical and environmental harm.
Yes, the Climate Alarmists never thought their Net Zero efforts through to the end.
That’s usually what happens when government gets involved in private business.
The customer is the ultimate decision maker and they are making a decision now which will change the thinking about mandating EV’s.
Net Zero Wishful Thinking has cost society a lot of money. It’s done a lot of harm.
My heart bleeds.
Well, if the EV batteries haven’t exploded/burned, who wants to buy an EV whose time is ripe for a change in batteries?
What’s the track-record on used EV success/failure?
Who is an expert on used EV’s?
Government program to support battery replacements in 3 …2…1…
Precisely.
Remember this? https://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2021/12/30/tesla-exploded-dynamite-repair-costs-22k-moos-pkg-vpx.cnn
Or one that maybe has been in a minor prang causing as yet unseen damage to the potential firebox under their feet…
Such as crossing a speed bump a little too fast?
The majority of leases for EVs in the U.K. are for corporate car schemes for managers, where the tax break given for EVs is obscene. Because of the tax break it’s a no brainer for a manager to chose an EV. This is the main driver of EV sales in the country.
The leasing companies now have the nerve to suggest that the Government subsidizes them to make up for their poor residual value after three years use. Jeez!
This problem was seen early on in the EV “mandate” push. Leasing companies’ lack of research and failure of business acumen is on them, not taxpayers.
What is needed is a government directive that all battery packs are interchangeable so that a company like INNengine can make ICE conversion packs to swap out dead battery packs: https://innengine.com/
In most cars, the battery pack is part of the frame, they can’t be just, swapped out.
In any case, the battery is about 2/3rds or higher, the price of the car.
2/3rds? Not really. $5K to $10K of a $40K-$80K price.
Unless the price of the car in your post meant USED car price, in which case you are in the ball park.
Expensive either way.
I would not buy a used EV without a decision to immediately replace the battery.
Well, actually, I would not buy an EV new or used.
Electric cars have less differentiation than ICE as ICE had the engine configuration to create different feel to the driver. So the traditional high cost ICE car makers lose one of their selling points. An electric motor is an electric motor, only the power is adjustable. So they are left with the body being different to keep their customer base. Going to a common battery would limit body differences so its never going to happen expect at the commodity car level.
Aside from the principle of opposing government directives in the commercial arena, having a standard, interchangeable battery would make chargers and charge installations somewhat more efficient.
Nobody wants them even when new:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQkkLphnhro
Pre-registrations skewing the figures. Who could’ve guessed?
Yeah Baz is an old horse trader and keeps cruelling the EV spruikers and Motoring media sycophants with the facts. It’s just like the Biden era and the old Soviet. We know they’re lying and they know we know they’re lying and we know…………but they don’t care because they still think they have the megaphone and there won’t be a day of reckoning.
There is always a day of reckoning. It may take 70 years as was the case for the Soviet Union or it may be only 5 to 10 years as in the case of Nut Zero and EV subsidies and mandates. The UK has stepped off a cliff and its economy may never recover.
The market for EVs was artificially inflated by government policies. EVs weigh about 50% more than ICE vehicles causing them to wear out tires faster. Their additional weigh makes them more prone to slide on wet and icy roads. EVs also have battery issues in extreme cold environments drastically reducing their range per charge. Insurance companies are requiring their batteries to be replaced for nearly every accident they are involved in.
Batteries can’t be recharged when below freezing, the charging station has to first provide power to warm up the battery.
Point is accurate with one addition. Those EV batteries are equipped with heaters so they do not freeze in winter. That drains the batteries. If the battery fully depletes or shuts off the heater, recharging is a bomb waiting to explode.
There is also an ever growing list of mandates that EVs, especially when charging, are parked no closer than 50 feet from anything that could be damaged when they ignite.
Other mandates exclude EVs from parking garages. The list keeps growing as more and more fires cause unrecoverable financial loss.
Somehow it seems that makes it difficult to park in front of a town/row house or condo/apartment complex.
They made their bed and wet it. Now, stay there.
Sorry car leasing Companies, you took the risk – now accept the losses.
Take a lesson from it, don’t gamble on the Government picking winners, they always fail.
A minor little problem is that the battery pack on a BEV is a very large proportion of the value of the new vehicle, and is short lived. And the technical support for those replacements does not really exist.
Actually the battery tech in say a Tesla will likely outlive the car and represent good buying as a second family car (offstreet parking and home charging assumed) but the risk of catastrophic battery loss out of warranty is the killer. Buy a new one and drive it into the ground can make economic sense but then who wants old laptops with computers on wheels appliance cars nowadays?
My understanding is that the battery pack in a BEV is good for maybe 100 k km, definitely less than 100k miles. The infrastructure for replacing such battery packs is both inadequate and expensive. Which is why used BEVs are a dog on the market.
Every single car we have ever owned has served us for well over 100,000 miles with regular and minimal maintenance. Why would I want something that can’t make it that far before a total overhaul? No thanks.
The Tesla battery pack consists of
That’s 7256 potential ignition sources of thermal runaway in the.Tesla battery pack
It was later determined that the source of the blaze was a damaged cell 3 hours after the Tesla encountered a bit of road debris.
I believe that you will find that later Teslas used a more modern larger-diameter battery cell.
That does not alter the total surface area for ion exchange in the aggregate battery pack. It only means when one cell goes, there are somewhat fewer cells that join the chorus. It also means when one cell goes, it is a bigger hazzard.
Then there’s the small issue of tires only lasting 15-20,000 miles due to Battery Weight.
From the above article:
Now that’s a very interesting perspective. When consumers no longer want a product or service, is it really truthful to say they are “struggling” to keep up with the (over)supply of such???
For example, when LED/LCD flat-screen TVs entered the consumer marketplace, did consumers struggle to keep pace with then-current production of cathode ray vacuum tube TVs?
I thought the same thing. Since when does demand struggle?
A free market economy (supply and demand) is the only true democracy. People vote with their wallets.
BEV is a stupid design because energy density of the battery sucks
The successful alternative is a hybrid with a small gas engine for average loads and an electric motor and small battery for peak loads. Replace the mechanical transmission and drive train with electrical to cost cost and weight and improve efficiency.
Make one with a reasonably sized engine & fuel tank (gas or diesel) & electric motor(s) w/ battery pack that is serviceable, and I would look at it.
Why not have gas range of 300 miles combined with electric range of 200 miles. I don’t have to keep the fuel tank(s) full.
In a properly done hybrid, the existing starting battery and starter motor are simply replaced with a larger battery and electric motor. The extra weight is offset by using the electric motor in place of the mechanical transmission to provide regenerative braking.
Most of the inefficiency of a gas motor is stop and go driving. A hybrid eliminates this by ensuring the gas engine only operates when efficient to do so.
Or when the battery is depleted which any daily commute of more than 35 miles one way usually does
Oops…
Over £275,000 of Unwanted Electric Cars Dumped on Roadside in Nottingham
Nine cars. Could this be the start of a lemming march off a cliff?
Buy a used EV? I’d rather buy a used Yugo.
(At least I could sell it to a scrap yard for the metal in it. Would a scrap yard even accept a used EV?)
Yugo, I’d rather buys used Lada
There’s very little to recommend an EV to the average Brit, living in a terraced house or flat with only on-street or communal parking. Charging is a nightmare and will not save you much money over the ownership car, especially at today’s electricity prices. Then there’s the road tax, which is GBP195 (apart from the first year when it is GBP10) plus, if your car cost GBP40,000 or more, the “expensive car supplement” of GBP410 per year for five years, from the second year.
Yes, this bunch of thieving tosspots currently masquerading as a government decided to arbitratrily take more money out of your pocket for no reason other than the price tag attached to the car. So if you’re looking at ex-lease cars that are three years old, you’re looking at GBP615 in road tax for three years, on top of everything else. That’s more than what I used to pay on my 3.5 litre petrol engined sports car, by nearly GBP200.
The initial selling point of EV’s from a financial perspective was the zero road tax and the dirt cheap electricity to run them, both of which have faded into dust in the rear view mirror.
The rental companies have themselves to blame here because they never did proper surveys of potential car renters to see how much interest there was in renting EVs over ICE types in the first place.. Buying/leasing an EV with fuel savings in mind over a 3-year term might make some sense; but how much would be saved in renting for 3-7 days and how much emissions would be avoided? And once again taxpayers could left on the hook for being forced to subsidize EVs’ initial cost and now with the threat of further subsidies to bail out rental companies that never did enough homework.
Ever since their divorce from reality, Britain can say some of the stupidest things out loud. The sunk cost fallacy continues apace.
This is exactly why the market system is superior to any other. The market is speaking loud and clear, EVs suck stop trying to shove them down our throat. Moron bureaucrats are pitiful.
I wonder if any UK leasing companies have Fiskers on their books. webuyanycar.com are offering £150 (yes, that really is one hundred and fifty) for nearly-new examples. On that basis a three-year old one with 50K on the clock should be worth what, £9.50?
“Hertz has completed selling off 30,000 electric vehicles (EVs), including Teslas, as part of a plan to reduce its EV fleet and address losses stemming from the company’s prior investment in EVs. This strategy led to a significant loss of $2.9 billion for Hertz in 2024.”
$2.9B divided by 30,000 EVs = $96,667 per EV. They must have given one hell of a discount.