Buying any new ev or ice car is a mugs game imo, depreciation the second you drive either away. New cards are nice but imo are for people on leases or that have too much money laid around, or that won't sell it for a long time so don't actually care about depreciation. Everyone else would just buy a year or two old after that depreciation hit.
It's certainly not the cheapest way to do it, but was the only real choice many had with EV's initially when there wasn't many models out in each bracket. Can't really say that for ICE, as there's been hundreds of models for decades. It's very different for EV now of course, there's loads of options in almost every car type, even second hand.
I had basically 0% depreciation and 0% finance on my first EV, for a year and I'm about 25% down on the new one in two years, so over 3 years I'm down ~8% on average, which isn't that bad, and some cars a year or two old would depreciate at that rate or more, but it all depends on supply and demand.
I still wouldn't be put off with a new car (new EV) if they had something new I wanted, and it had fast charging/ better efficiency/ performance / tech/ self driving or whatever etc. There still isn't much in the two seater or small lighter 4 seater sports car type, which is the only thing I would potentially change to. I might end up getting the new Cayman EV when it comes out, but waiting on specs, but don't think there's much about like that which isn't silly money.
The thing what would put me off is finance, first new EV was 0% and second new ev was 3% I think, what's it now 6% on new and 10%+ on second hand? Those percentages make a massive difference on big numbers. In some cases if you can get 0% on new, then this will beat or match 10% on 2 year old, if you sum up depreciation and finance charges. There's a sweet spot/ value for everyone I suppose, and it's very much in different places.
They had to get loads of EV's sold quickly, to fuel that second hand car market, and they basically did that with business ownership/ no BIK, which saved a killing, even on new cars. Loads of company car owners/ users expect newer cars, so opening the door for this with reduced tax really kicked the market on.
I suppose it's down to budgets too mind, one persons budget to use 10% of wages for motoring or whatever will be very different to another, and you need people buying new cars or there wouldn't be any year or two year cars old for sale.
I expect most who buy new are keeping for 3-5 years, but there will be a few who swap every year if they get a decent trade in value (dealers like these), best way to do it is to be fluid with it, but you need the cash to cover the variance so people should never stretch themselves.
