TL;DR
Used electric vehicles in China are depreciating sharply because battery health cannot be assessed, foreshadowing the same problem for countries that have imported Chinese EVs.
China's used-car dealers have set an expiry date on electric cars: around four in five refuse to take a fully electric vehicle older than five years, fearing battery failure and replacement costs. According to the International Energy Agency, a three-year-old EV now resells for about 45% of its original price.
The battery is a black box, so pricing is a lottery
The heart of the problem is the battery. Two cars of the same age and mileage can have very different battery health, depending on how they were driven and charged. But dealers rarely ask for battery reports and still price by age, mileage, and warranty, leaving the battery's true condition a mystery.
The most expensive part of the car has no agreed way to measure its health. China, with 44 million EVs on its roads, is the first to confront large-scale aging, but the same cars are already being exported worldwide.
Year five becomes the wall
Outside China, the same problem looms. Europe and Southeast Asia import many Chinese EVs, and buyers in the Gulf also back away at the five-year mark, as battery warranties wind down and a replacement can cost a third of a new car.
Fleet cars fast-charged constantly can lose up to 8% of battery capacity annually, but the market cannot tell them apart from carefully driven private cars. Reading battery health is easy; the market just is not used to it.
China has started to respond, with buyers asking for battery inspection reports and dealerships investing in test equipment. But the rest of the world will have to take the same lesson. In short: the battery is everything for an EV, and if the used market cannot see its health, the car's value collapses.
Curated from high-quality sources, with concise summaries and key takeaways.
