Mileage is no longer the most important metric for used electric cars

Used electric cars need to be completely re-evaluated:
Mileage is no longer the most important metric for used electric cars. (Neither is the year of manufacture, for that matter.)

Nicholas Mayerhofer

A functioning market for used electric cars is the essential prerequisite, the decisive accelerator for the breakthrough of electromobility, which is already in full swing - whoever invests in a new e-car would like to sell their used one in advance, in any case.

The "used" are naturally more and more often - used electric cars.

The market for used electric cars, like any other market, only works if potential buyers and sellers have as precise information as possible regarding essential characteristics,.

So how are used cars valued?
A car with an internal combustion engine consists of up to 10,000 parts. Made of materials such as steel, plastic, rubber, and many more. These parts are exposed through daily use of the car to strong temperature fluctuations, strong vibrations, mechanical wear of all kinds, and thus they rust and become porous.

Now it is completely impossible to evaluate the respective condition of all these individual parts meaningfully or exactly. In daily use this is also not necessary.

If, on the other hand, you want to buy or sell a used vehicle, the situation is quite different - now you want to know exactly what the condition of the car is.
For you as a buyer of a used electric car, this means:
Even if a purchased test, no matter how good it is, certifies that your dream car is in perfect condition, this statement only ever applies to ONE HALF of the vehicle and in any case not to the drive unit, including the battery - the more valuable, important part remains unchecked.

The same applies to the year of manufacture for e-cars as for vehicles with internal combustion engines, it is a key figure with little significance, especially in view of the generally still "very young" used electric cars that are gradually coming onto the market.

Now to the mileage, that is, the indicator that is very often considered first when evaluating a used electric car.
Here, a paradigm shift could actually be triggered by the experts at the AVILOO Technology Center as part of a study:

1. We have used the vehicles of three manufacturers or models that are very successful in the market. These manufacturers remain anonymous.

The anonymization of the brands/models was done to not allow brand-related derivations or to allow specific statements.

Such data is available to us, but a publication would have an enormous explosive force on the market for electric cars - because AVILOO can clearly prove that, for example, the makes of brand A perform better or worse than the makes of competitor B.

2. We have defined four mileage ranges:
up to 50,000, up to 100,000, up to 150,000, up to 200,000 kilometers

3. About the graph: Each point represents a vehicle, the Y-axis shows the SoH (state of health), the X-axis the mileage

General statements in respect to the interpretation of the results:

1. There are manufacturers whose makes/batteries are on average better than those of other manufacturers. (Ceteris paribus: Assuming vehicles are identically battery efficient).
2. Despite nearly identical mileage, there are very significant differences in battery health. And thus in the range. And thus in the value of the vehicles.
3. The differences become greater as mileage increases, or from a buyer's perspective, the newer a vehicle, the greater the chances of purchasing a good make. The older a desired vehicle, the greater the chances of purchasing a poor make.
4. Even though some manufacturers perform better than others on average, there are always downward outliers.

For you as a buyer, this means: you can't rely on mileage, manufacturers, or models. General test results for individual manufacturers - e.g. in trade publications, blogs, etc. - do not allow any statements to be made about a specific vehicle. At least not on the one you might want to buy!