This is the Honda N-Van EV and it looks pretty much like any other kei van. Tiny front clip, tall roofline, very flat sides, job done. Except it could be the most important kei van since the very first one. Here’s why.
It starts with the N-Van, a van unique in that it has no B-pillar on the passenger side. Imagine flinging open the front door and sliding it to find a massive opening the size of a storefront window, with the limits of what you can load through it being more creative than physical. Why not hang an awning, pack a pit bike, or take a flying leap into your vehicle? Oh, and if you want to carry passengers and cargo, check out the incredible array of folding seats. Marvelous, isn’t it?
Then again, form factor is just one reason the N-Van EV holds such great promise. In Japan, commercial-spec kei vans are often used for last-mile deliveries, exactly the sort of duty cycle best suited to EVs. Frequent stops maximize the benefits of regenerative braking, urban speeds keep energy consumption low, and the lack of tailpipe emissions will likely do some good in congested environments. While Honda says to expect a 124-mile range out of this little electric van, I wouldn’t be surprised if some feather-footed delivery drivers manage to occasionally beat the estimate.
Perhaps the most astonishing thing about the N-Van EV is its purported price tag. Honda claims that when this thing launches in the spring of 2024, it’ll start in the one million yen range, as Honda’s targeting price parity with gasoline-powered models. That’s right, a cheap EV with price parity to gasoline-powered equivalents. A regular base-model N-Van starts at 1,160,000 yen before consumption tax, or just under $8,500 at current conversion rates, so if Honda can land in that ballpark, it would be an amazing feat.
For context, the only comparable electric kei van, the Mitsuishi Minicab MIEV, costs a whopping 2,431,000 yen, or around $17,777. Still very cheap as far as cars go, but nowhere near what Honda claims the electric N-Van will cost. Plus, the Mitsubishi is based on a design from 1999, while the Honda’s design debuted in 2018.
While there are obvious reasons why we won’t get cheap electric kei vans in America such as crash test regulations, there’s a real market for cheap EVs that don’t even need to pack a ton of range. See, many members of the public know that EVs aren’t as practical as gasoline-powered vehicles for long trips, so cheap EVs will likely be second cars in two-car households. In addition to augmenting gasoline-powered cars, Wards Auto found that young people are more inclined towards EV ownership but don’t have the same disposable income as older generations, so cheap EVs would be a great opportunity to pick up some new customers.
Sure, the Chevrolet Bolt is attracting a ton of attention now that it’s cheap, but we can go even cheaper. Remember when car manufacturers were eager to brag about how little they could sell cars for? All the Escort Ponys and Dodge Omni Americas you could shake a stick at. Give the public 100 miles of range for a price tag close to $20,000 and watch them eat it up, especially since the days of free financing are essentially gone. Nissan has already proven that cheap EVs can do well in Japan with the sold-out Sakura, so why can’t we do the same here?
Just look at some of the fast-selling cars in automakers’ lineups to see what I’m on about. Kia sold 30,258 Fortes last quarter, Honda sold 25,951 Civics last quarter, Nissan sold 18,565 Sentras last quarter, all of which are solid numbers for cars that are quite attainable. The subcompact crossover segment largely can’t keep up with compact cars, which means there’s genuine desire for these attainable vehicles and price is a key factor. Electric cars don’t need to be kei car cheap, but they shouldn’t be expensive either.
In addition, we can’t incentivize EVs forever. Plus, we’ll eventually need a way to make up for gas tax revenue lost due to going electric. It’s not just possible for EV ownership to get more expensive in the future, it’s almost inevitable. The BBC reports that British electric car owners will need to pay Vehicle Excise Duty from 2025, just like owners of gasoline-powered cars do. States like Illinois and Georgia already charge dedicated EV fees to make up for lost gas tax revenue, and more states could join them in the future. Building cheaper EVs would help offset some of the total cost of ownership, which is important in an age where everything is expensive.
The bottom line is that if you want to sell more EVs, you have to build more EVs that everyday people can actually afford to buy. A $60,000 electric crossover isn’t saving the planet. It’s a luxury good, albeit likely a very nice one. A $20,000 electric car, though? That’s something people will buy in droves and will genuinely make a difference on our vehicle fleet’s carbon footprint. So, who will take up the gauntlet?
Lead photo credit: Honda
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I’m pretty sure that the most important reason electric cars are more expensive than gas cars is that there is a backlog of people who will pay more for them. As long as demand outstrips supply it’s going to stay that way. Most of the stuff that makes a luxury car a luxury car is cheap plastic and electronics, so there is no business case for selling low price cars when the margins are so much higher on the lux version. A publicly owned company would probably get sued by its shareholders if they sold a cheap EV right now.
I think resale may be a problem with cheap, limited-range electrics. If I buy an 80-mile range car for in-town use, I essentially have to sell it to another essentially urban dweller in the same area. Someone in the same city who somehow has access to parking and charging and is also in the market for a used cheap electric vehicle.
I can’t sell it to someone in the surrounding suburbs in a cold / snowy area because that range doesn’t allow for a three hour blizzard crawl home with the lights, heater, wipers and defrosters running the entire time.
I can’t sell it to someone in another city because they wouldn’t be able to drive it home. Not many normal shoppers would be confident having the thing shipped, and most normal sellers would assume the guy sending a tow truck and a check is a scam.
All of this can be avoided by trading it in, but dealerships would use those considerations to beat down the trade-in price.
I dont know.I’m extremely skeptical they can get the price close to the ICE version.I suspect the phrase “in the one million yen range” might mean anything up to two million .
But hey,prove me wrong! I wont mind at all
That door and flat floor really are cool right?
VW had 3 EV version of UP!/MII/Citigo with Golf-e power train. It sold for ~20k. However they sold out in few weeks and was discontinued in favor of ID-family. But in general that e-UP! wasn’t half bad execution and in my mind the perfect usecase for EV: Cheap commuter. But that’s not where the moneys at.
Sold out in weeks,then abandoned? Was terrible planning or simply sold at a loss?
They had limited number of components in the pipeline. And I guess the idea was anyho to just make it for limited time. However they sold 2 years of production in month or two and no new orders were taken in.
Also I think the factories were earmarked to be used later of ID family production.
Personally I wish they would again make new version of the e-Golf. It was really nice car apart from missing heatpump and few other winter friendly features. ID3 is really hideous in comparison.
Why the bland face?
The N-Van usually comes with this much more charming one:
https://www.honda.co.jp/N-VAN/webcatalog/type/type/image/f/bc_premium_yellow.jpg
I wonder if a bare bones model with ability to style it your way? Cargo van spray with bed liner. Or add a weathertec mat or carpet. Or DIY with salvage yard interiors the remove easier. Maybe a camper van platform add your custom made pieces. Easy to remove bench or cheap captain seats. Futon like bench seats.
$20,000 for a decontented, 100-mile-range EV intended as a second car for urban dwellers who already have a first car that presumably can get them to the pharmacy just fine? Come back at $10,000 and we’ll talk. There’s a huge difference between the $8,500-ish target price of the N-Van, and the $20,000 price that seems to be the bottom floor of new cars in America.
Nissan has already proven that cheap EVs can do well in Japan with the sold-out Sakura, so why can’t we do the same here?
Because a non-trivial percentage of Americans who drive eight miles per day believe if they don’t have the ability to drive four hundred miles nonstop, fill up in two minutes, and drive another four hundred miles nonstop they will literally immediately die and be banished to Communist Hell™
We are going to get to economies of scale with EVs but it is going to take longer than it should and there will be a huge surplus of driver’s seat phone camera rants along the way
I am sure many people buy a more expensive ice over a playskool EV for more reasons than the overnight charging time. I bet these ride like gokart, rattle like an aerosol paint can, got worse panel gaps than a Changali, have a 2 person weight limit, and have a worse interior than a 70s Yugo.
An interior worse than a 70’s yugo? That would be a miracle, an absolute clouds opening, descending from above miracle! Just ask Jason!
it is actually because at 20k, that is an expensive used car, to the crowd you are making light of. at 8500, the cost for a spare daily driver becomes less concerning, that is about where the winter beaters are right now.
At any rate the reason Trucks have become so comfortable, have extra doors and often covers over the beds, while also continuously getting better fuel economy is the fact that the price of even sedans has gone above the level where daily beaters are affordable to purchase and worse maintain. add in the issues with many high mile VVT/DOD/EGR motors these days and whammo, people have to buy the swiss army knife Half ton pick up and use it for everything.
If you live in Manhattan and own a car, the car is usually for trips outside the city.
The fact that the owner may only have to cover 10 miles a day to get to work and back is irrelevant to the car’s range since they will bike / walk / subway to work. Unless they have enough cash to drop a mortgage payment every month on a parking spot, that car probably spends its life parked on a street in Queens and the owner would have to put a fair amount of time into retrieving the car and then finding another parking spot.
Street parking offers notoriously few charging options for EVs. If you can afford parking with charging in major city in the northeast, you’re not likely to suffer driving around in a $20k car.
This had been subject to moderation. I am not sure why. I’m not whining – I’d rather have aggressive auto moderation than deal with the alternative.
The only thing I can see is maybe the word ‘Queens.’ Can anyone familiar with these things elaborate? I’d just rather not have the staff here approving my posts. I assume there are things they’d rather be doing.
I’d definitely buy one of these if they sold them in the US. Honestly Electric Kei automobiles and other very small electric automobiles should be exempt from the chicken tax, crash test standards, and range testing. Lawmakers want more people driving small electric cars so why not remove the barriers to entry keeping these small electric cars from being imported into the US.
That being said with the super slick folding seats on this van I bet it would be considered a passenger van and so the chicken tax wouldn’t apply to it.
I do not think any politician would be willing to have their name connected to anything that involved removing Safety testing of Foreign made vehicles. Hell at this point, we cannot hardly even get vehicle without Lane keeping sensors, adaptive Cruise and rear sensors/cameras. all of those things along with air bags that may work add cost and seem to be NHTSA requirements on new vehicles.
Why are Honda car so much cheaper in Japan but their motorcycles are so much more expensive?
Isn’t it specific to kei cars, because of tax exemptions ?
Not just kei cars, the type R is cheaper too. Of course they have to ship it over here, but that’s the same with motorcycles.
“…While there are obvious reasons why we won’t get cheap electric kei vans in America…”
Can you try to work that into the opening paragraph, so as to not build me up and knock me down again?
I second the idea of reintroducing the Honda Element as an EV. Add a camper fit option, some safari lights… I’d be all for that.
In a world where it’s perfectly legal to register and drive a motorcycle on city roads I don’t buy any argument that says Kei cars are too dangerous for here. Keep them off the highways, fine. Forcing people to buy $40k+ EVs when this would solve transportation issues for 50% of city dwellers with well under 50% of the resources needed for EV SUVs should be criminal.
Motorcyclists generally risk their own lives. A car like this on US highways allows the driver to risk many lives at once without the maneuverability of a motorcycle.
It’s basically a motorcycle that someone can load with children and still text while operating. If they were ever made legal, that legality would last until the first multi-fatality accident involving one of them. It would be a matter of weeks. It would absolutely be an Uber / Lyft driver.
People will buy it if it gives them good value for the money. The reason the auto industry doesn’t make cars like this much is because they want you to finance a more-expensive, more feature-laden vehicle, because there’s more margins in it, and the car manufacturer makes more money selling the loan than they do selling the car. THAT is the problem. Greed. The cheap cars are designed to be purposely less desirable in ways that don’t save on manufacturing cost, and then the company uses price discrimination to upcharge its more desirable products. Consumers are being relentlessly manipulated to make them more amenable to forking over their money, and that is the dishonest, scuzzy BS that needs to stop.
Regarding road tax, get it from the freight-haulers. They don’t pay their fair share of the road wear. The Minnesota Department of Transportation did a study 2 decades ago regarding the amount of road wear of a tractor-trailer, and found it induced about 7,000x the road wear of a passenger car. They should be paying 7,000x the cost per mile that a passenger car is. Drivers shouldn’t be subsidizing the trucking industry. This would make more energy efficient methods of freight shipping, like rail, more desirable and investments would go into this instead.
Man you sure dont get economics. That cost plus would be added to delivery costs. Then added to the buyer forget free shipping your cost for that would be about 3x the cost of the item.
Not likely.
When the cost gets to 2x, a local option becomes a viable / cheaper alternative.
Subsidizing transportation destroys local economics.
I heard a civil engineer saying that they don’t even consider passenger car traffic when determining the life cycle of a road surface. All the wear and tear is caused by commercial traffic.
Bring back the Honda Element as electric and you have about as close to this in the US. and price it at $20-25k.
Sell it as an SUV, then add a model with a bed to take on the Maverick.
EVs will remain bespoke outliers, truly available only for those up in the rarified air as long as they’re developed and targeted as they currently are.
Seems like companies are able to price stuff like this but they simply don’t here because they don’t have to. Before it was discontinued the cost of a Chevy Spark in Canada was 10k according to their website (unsure if CAD or USD but either way… maybe it was subsidized?). It is very American to make payments and take out loans. This is clear in the proportion of phone sales that are iPhones.
https://www.chevrolet.ca/byo-vc/client/en/CA/chevrolet/spark/2022/spark/summary?styleId=420660&rpo=LV7,MR7,GAZ,AV5,HBI,IOR&ss=H4sIAAAAAAAAAGNgYBBjYGhzYGDLNmFgSs1jYHJ2ZACJofAZGy+wn1jAwMgAAhwMzIbBjgzMPmHmDMy+QUDC3dGPgdkxzJSB2cPJk4HZ0z8IJBb1HwgYGGB6lJWVgQyIEWAD4ByQTjgHqA/BARkH54CMhXNAlsM5IEfAOAwM7AzODC4MrgxuDO4MHgwgA+BS+AAA4I10JgoBAAA=&postalCode=L1H8P7
Yeah um… 10k before fees and such.
It seems like this is CAD but I might be wrong.
Seeing the flexibility of the interior reminds me that Honda sold the Fit here. It makes me miss the Fit even more (they were quite underrated, IMO).
Apparently the current Euro Fit hybrid can do 50+ mpg. I’d be real interested in that if they still sold it here.
If you’re going by UK numbers, knock 25% off that MPG because their gallons are larger than ours (US Gal = 128 floz, UK Gal = 160 floz).
20% (128÷160=0.8)
Thanks. Thought it was 20% but then got confused, worked it the other way to check and came out at 25% (128 x 1.25 = 160).
You’re right, it’s .80 to convert UK mpg to US.
My 07 Fit does about 38 mpg if I keep it under 3500 rpm (72ish mph)
I suppose if they offer the Compo version in Electric, you could then take nap while charging. I don’t see where it might top out on speed, but a sub 10 K utility thing like this, odd proportionate styling and all, would still sell very well in the states at that price.
“A $20,000 electric car, though? That’s something people will buy in droves”
Highly dubious, as with few exceptions, people don’t buy droves of the ~$20K cars that exist now. There’s no stampede to the Mitsubishi dealer to pick up a new Mirage.
I suspect the only way to reach cost parity is to decontent even further which may please the Luddites of this comments section, but likely will make the penalty boxes even more of a tough sell the average buyer.
But there is a massive amount of people trying to get behind a 20K Maverick, $22k this year after selling out in 2022. I think the brand and vehicle specs would drive this, and let be honest, the Mirage should be sub 15 k.
The Maverick is the most notable of my “few exceptions”. Is there any other cheap vehicle with high demand? I can’t think of one, and the Mirage being overpriced for what it is is exactly my point. What are the commenters and authors envisioning a $20K EV that meets US standards will actually look like? I think it’s a stretch to assume such a vehicle will “sell in droves”.
I envision a streamliner designed to maximize range for a small battery pack size, perhaps as much as 200 miles “real world” range on a 25 kWh pack, and it will give the consumer supercar acceleration and use Miata style suspension arrangement to give the car good value for the money. The more power-dense batteries required to do this are not expensive, especially if you use the LiFePO4 chemistry, which has the bonus of being safer and not prone to catch fire. The electronics required to increase power 10 fold are not much more expensive to produce for an EV. The difference in manufacturing cost between a 100 horsepower controller/motor combo and a 500 horsepower motor/controller combo ends up being somewhere in the $1,XXX range.
THIS is the way to do it. Let Joe Sixpack buy a $20k car that can out-accelerate and at least for a small number of laps(keeping in mind the small battery) out-track a six-figure supercar. The performance is given in exchange for all the bloat and features sacrificed, accentuated by the car being inherently light. If that reduces sales of the supercar, so be it.
You and I have discussed this before, and knowing what I do of both manufacturing costs and consumer behavior, I remain skeptical that such a vehicle could be profitably produced at that price point, and even if it could in some form, that its necessary compromises and drawbacks would be palatable to anyone in the mainstream of car buying.
Even if that could be produced at that price point they would simply sell it for more because they aren’t in the business of selling cheap cars with “supercar performance.”
I do think a 20k electric car would be quite popular if reasonable for the price point. Automakers love to make the cheap cars penalty boxes to motivate people to buy more expensive ones though so again, probably not happening.
A vehicle as described would use a similar amount of raw materials to this Honda N-Van in the article. Keeping the cost down will involve using a lot of existing components. I think Mazda and Tesla partnering together could do it, given their existing lineup. Mazda could license Tesla’s technology and agree to make their cars compatible to its charge network, including any upcoming EVs, to help the Tesla Supercharger network compete with the alternatives by Mazda jumping on board with Tesla’s standard. A Model 3 drive system and an in-house made battery pack using LiFePO4 batteries would be an interesting route to try. Further, as Tesla did with Lotus, they could definitely use Mazda’s MX5 platform as a base for an affordable sports car in their own lineup. A cheap EV sedan could be designed to corner like a Miata and maybe share parts with it, but designed to seat 4 people instead of two.
Yeah, I get it. Such a thing will probably never happen. But the theoretical potential is there. Both companies have things they could offer each other. I can forsee Mazda having massive financial problems in the future if it continues on its current trajectory, so they need to be willing to try something new. Tesla is probably a bubble that is about to pop, and they need to find a way to add value in a way that can garner an increase in customers, as they have run out of cultists and government money printing can’t continue forever. I will be surprised if both of these companies still exist in their current form within a decade. But nothing is inevitable if corrected early enough.
Whether a product as described would be palatable to the mainstream car buyer is unknown. Nothing like what is described really exists. The Tesla Model 3 is perhaps the closest thing, and at a much higher price point than what is aimed for. It is selling very well. A lot of people of who can’t afford a Model 3 really want one. The most obvious way to reduce cost of such a car is to cut the size of the battery pack. It will need more powerful batteries than the Model 3 comes with, because the goal will be to match the drivetrain’s capabilities with a smaller battery pack thn what comes in a Model 3. This will yield less range, the result of less kWh available. It will also yield less mass, without resorting to any exotic weight reduction strategies, because the pack is so small. The resultant battery pack and motor/inverter/charger/cables/misc EV components combined would have comparable weight to the entirety of a Miata’s ICE system and its ancillaries.
Some of the lost range can be retrieved by making the car more slippery than conventional offerings, especially taking an avante garde approach to drag reduction in a way that will willingly sacrifice looks where necessary, but not so much sacrifice conformity to practical constraints that make the car easy to live with as an A to B appliance. Drag coefficients in the mid 0.1X range are doable with this in mind, and will not take a massive per unit cost to achieve on a car if it is mass produced, even if the up-front wind tunnel research costs will be high. It will be a cheaper route to getting more range on a cost per mile of range basis than increasing the size of the battery.
Drag reduction also comes with the bonus of increasing the car’s performance, because less horsepower is required versus speed, leaving more spare horsepower available for acceleration, especially as speeds climb after the triple digits. With EV drive systems, cheap performance is doable, and with much less components to mechanically fail.
For the last century, the auto industry has always been afraid of offering the slipperiest bastard that remains usable and something most could live with. The average new car’s drag coefficient just recently caught up with the 0.28 published for the 1921 Rumpler Tropfenwagen. The very slipperiest cars in production today are similar in drag coefficient value to the 1935 Tatra T77A. Road-drivable concept cars with drag coefficients in the 0.13-0.16 range in both sedan and sports car formats have been demonstrated in various times and places since the 1950s on through the present day. So it isn’t as if this sort of slipperiness isn’t possible, because it is.
All of the elements that could make such a car possible are disparately available in different relatively low-cost cars from different manufacturers. There are so many things possible with today’s tech, that are simply not happening in any frequency beyond what is needed to be a curiosity, rolling science project, or a proof of concept. But all of those things have been demonstrated on U.S. roads in bits and pieces. This why I think such a thing is possible.
Will it happen? Probably never. But the world doesn’t have unlimited resources available to continue a paradigm of endless growth. Resources available per capita are in decline as they deplete. If the industry refuses to consider these factors in the design of its products, then its products will eventually no longer have a place in the world because they will no longer be physically possible to manufacture. That very well could be the scenario in my lifetime. And it would have all been preventable had different decisions been made.
Do you think VW really could have realistically done better on the XL1? It has a drag coefficient of .19. With the primary goal for that being fuel economy they pulled out a lot of stops and it was incredibly expensive. I’m not an aerodynamics or crash safety engineer but I imagine it’s very difficult to both be more aerodynamic than cutting edge production vehicles and street legal from a crash/pedestrian safety standpoint.
I legitimately admire your passion for this topic.
I doubt it is possible to manufacture a US-legal vehicle for much cheaper than a $16,250 Mirage, and adding even a small battery pack will take that to nearly $20K on its own. Any lightweight materials or non-standard fabrication techniques to achieve a low drag coefficient would add to that. And as a subcompact hatchback, the Mirage is already too small for most buyers. Adding size to make it more appealing to American tastes or more useful to families entails more weight and cost. Which necessitates a larger battery pack, and the doom loop continues.
Simply as an engineering exercise, I’d be interested to see what is at the actual limits of possible efficiency. As a practical matter though, I think R&D is better spent by improving the efficiency of more mainstream vehicles.
A $20k electric in the US is an Elio three-wheeler with no space or passenger protection and guaranteed death in a collision with any highway-capable vehicle on the road.
those were initially supposed to be Gasoline 3 cylinders getting 80 mpg and costing under 10K. they were never actually produced for the public, I highly doubt they ever will be even in EV form. The Corbin Sparrow is a more appropriate comparison and those did not go anywhere.
Last update (Oct 2021) they were focusing on finding an electric motor and gas would follow later. I think the price at last update was expected to be over $15k.
Doesn’t matter. These stupid three wheeler concepts will keep popping up and none will ever go anywhere. Much like Americans don’t seem to be digging on small cars, they certainly won’t buy a three-wheeled egg shell out on public roads.
If there were a protected roadway system for very light electric vehicles (like the golf cart trails for NEVs in some southern developments) I may consider it. As long as I have to worry about being seen by the Nissan Titan in the lane next to me, I’ll take some more steel and a few airbags.
Used EVs (Leafs, Bolts, etc.) sell well when priced at $20,000 or less. I don’t see why a new $20,000 short range EV would be any different (assuming it offers a similar experience to a first-generation Leaf in terms of quality and features; a $20,000 Changli obviously wouldn’t sell). A cheap EV is a great replacement for one ICE vehicle in a two car household.
The answer to this is because the used Bolt/Leaf or whatever will always be its competition, and offer a higher feature content and longer range, at the cost of some wear and tear.
I believe the primary reason that entry level new cars have mostly gone away is because used cars are so much better than ever. Why suffer in a penalty box when a 5 year old car that’s larger, has more options, and a bigger engine costs the same and still has a decade or more of useful life left?
The Japanese shaken inspection system totally distorts the car market in Japan. Your car might have plenty of reliable and safe life left in it, but if it doesn’t pass… don’t pass go, don’t collect $200 and buy a new car. That’s kind of why there’s a huge market for Japanese cars in good condition if we didn’t have the 25 year export ban.
Mmmmm…. kind of. If you want to drive a tatty 15-year-old JDM Toyota Noah with nearly 400,000km on the clock, you can.
We do.
So long as it passes emissions and is mechanically sound and roadworthy, there is no reason not to keep an old car. Shaken is not that expensive, and certainly cheaper than the depreciation on a new car.
As a rule, most people in Japan would just prefer to have a shiny new car with all the trimmin’s.
I agree that entry level new cars have gone away since used cars are legitimately superior options. A 5 year old Civic is a better purchase than a new Mirage.
However, for EVs, many potential buyers are concerned with battery degradation. A 5 year old Leaf or Bolt should be a better vehicle to drive than a new $20,000 EV, but a lot of buyers view the 5 year old Leaf or Bolt as a vehicle that is 5 years closer to needing an expensive battery replacement. For that reason alone, I think a cheap new EV could work.
Also, for ICE vehicles, there are thousands of good used cars available in the $15,000 to $25,000 range. There are far fewer used EVs in this price range. Used EVs show there is a demand for cheap EVs. If there were a greater supply of cheap EVs (either by more used vehicles or Mirage-quality new ones), more buyers might choose that option.
Used electrics have sold well over the past couple of years because everything has sold well over that period. Before the pandemic, there were pages of used Leafs (Leaves?) on autotrader for $10k-ish and often less.
People were buying fully functional Leafs to pull the battery and supporting parts for EV conversions because it was the cheapest way to buy those parts.
Used car demand will be smoothing out soon. We’ll get a better idea then of non-panic car values.
Regarding used Leafs sold pre-pandemic, they were cheap since gas was cheap. I bought mine in 2019. At the time, gas was in the low $2 range where I lived, so my 3 year old, 28k mile car was only $11,000. Obviously, inventory shortages have driven up prices for used Leafs, but I suspect increased gas prices probably contributed to used EV sales as well. I’m curious how well used Leafs would sell for if gas were $4/gallon and there was an ample used vehicle supply. I think they would sell well in this scenario?
I’d be curious myself, but it seems like high gas prices go along with economic mayhem so we may not get to see. I remember being shocked at the prices of Leafs. I was considering buying one just to try it out – then things got weird.
The Mirage has no soul, no creative utility, and it’s an ugh-wagon. Gimme a sweet kei-van.
I’m really surprised it’s not Nissan. Their original Leaf was such a runaway success from lack of competition, you’d think they’d be slapping batteries in Versas and trying to hawk them at every street corner, but nope. $30k Leaf or $45k Ariya, take it or leave it. Seems like they really dropped the ball somehow as even Renault in the same group have more electric models than them (even if two are vans), not to mention the incredible value of the Dacia Spring.
One thing with Nissan is that they don’t make kei cars themselves, they rebadge Mitsubishi kei cars.
(That’s also why they bought Mitsubishi – they caught Mitsubishi cheating on emissions when they tested their rebadges themselves, but they wanted to keep using Mitsubishi to make kei cars for them, so buying them out cheap was preferable to letting them go out of business.)