In news that will, without a doubt, please people who detest electric vehicles (EVs) — EV sales are floundering, even though their prices are dropping.
It’s not surprising news. We reported in October that Ford slashed their EV investments after massive losses. General Motors decided to delay their Chevy Silverado electric pickup truck by an entire year due to engineering challenges and diminishing demand for EVs in the marketplace.
Those moves by Ford and GM are looking very wise now.
According to automotive analyst iSeeCars, EV demand (both new and used) is rapidly declining.
Here’s What the Numbers Say
Last year, the average price of a used EV was $52,821; it’s since dropped to $34,994 — a 33.7 percent decline. At the same time, used EVs are also spending more time on the market than last year, when they were available for an average of 37.5 days before being sold; this year, that average has ballooned to 52.4 days. So, even though used EV prices are way down, their demand is not increasing.
The top 10 slowest-selling vehicles range from 137.8 days (the Maserati Quattroporte) to 73.4 days (the Polestar 2), while the average used car only waits 49.2 days before being sold this year, a number that’s down from an average of 54.9 days in October of 2022.
Conversely, three hybrids cracked the top ten fastest-selling used vehicle numbers for October this year: the BMW X5, the Toyota Highlander, and the Hyundai Elantra. The BMW X5 was the fastest-selling used vehicle, with an average wait time of 26.8 days, while the Toyota Highlander was the second fastest-selling with an average wait of 29 days. Hyundai Elantra was the sixth fastest-selling used vehicle overall, waiting an average of 31.8 days before selling.
Compare that with the fastest-selling used EVs, the Rivian R1T (35.5 days) and the Chevy Bolt EUV (42.1 days), and it’s clear that there’s not much competition between used EVs and used hybrids.
New Car Numbers Tell a Similar Story
While the number of days that all new cars spend on the market has increased to 44.4 days in October 2023 from an average of 32.6 days in 2022, EVs have seen the most significant increase. Last October, a new EV sat on a dealership lot for an average of 20.5 days. 2023 has seen a dramatic increase in that number, which has risen to an average of 57.5 days. However, hybrids have experienced the slightest increase, going from an average of 20 days in 2022 to 37.2 days in October 2023.
According to iSeeCars analyst Karl Brauer, the strong market demand for hybrids has been a long time coming, “It took years for the car-buying public to understand and appreciate the benefits of hybrid technology,” he said. “But enough people have figured out that hybrids sell faster than the average new car and much faster than new EVs.”
Brauer went on to add that the newness of EVs is part of what’s potentially hurting their sales. “Electric car technology remains unfamiliar to most consumers, and that lack of comfort, combined with their overall higher prices, is enough to reduce demand and slow EV sales compared to the average new gasoline or hybrid car,” he explained.