A used electric car's price reflects its age, not its fuel

In brief

• The median odometer reading of a used electric car sold is 57,000 km; for a diesel it is 272,475 km.
• Petrol and diesel account for three in four sales, electric for 10.7%.
• The median diesel price of 8,690 € sits above petrol, even though diesels have been driven further. Two of the class's best sellers are vans.
• The cheapest of the best-selling electric models is the Tesla Model 3, with a median price of 26,790 €.

Three in four sales are petrol or diesel

Finland's used car market has not gone electric at the pace at which new car sales have changed. In July 21,597 petrol cars and 15,986 diesels changed hands, or 42.7% and 31.6% of all sales. An electric car was involved in 5,420 sales, which is 10.7% of the total. Plug-in hybrids account for 7.8% and hybrids for 6.8%. The two oldest fuels therefore cover three in four sales, and the three classes that use electricity in some form add up to a quarter between them. Buyers traded 1,515 different models, so the range is wide, but it leans heavily on the two oldest fuels.

The order is no surprise. The used car market consists of what was once sold new, so it follows new car sales with a decade's delay. Nothing arrives here fresh; what trickles in is whatever the first owner has already used.

The seller split is settled. Dealers made 66.4% of the sales and private sellers 33.6%, so two cars in three change hands through a dealer. The price range is wide at the same time: a quarter of the sales were made below 3,990 € and a quarter above 23,870 €. Within one market there are cars costing a few thousand euros and cars whose price would buy a new city car.

A three-quarters majority does not mean the market has stalled. It means the used car trade measures past new car sales rather than current ones. This year's choices will show up on the used market only at the start of the next decade, and until then petrol and diesel hold their place simply because there are more of them on the road. What matters is therefore not how large the electric share is, but what kind of cars are traded within each class, and at what price.

Five figures per row are enough to show that these are not five versions of the same car. The median model year is 2009 for a petrol car and 2023 for an electric one. The median odometer reading for a diesel is 272,475 km, and the electric figure is a little over a fifth of that. Price follows those two numbers more closely than it follows what sits under the bonnet: the younger and less driven the class, the dearer it is. One row half breaks the rule. Diesels have been driven the furthest yet still cost more than petrol cars, and that is worth returning to.

The electric median is three times the market as a whole

The median price of a used electric car in July was 34,900 € and that of a petrol car 5,950 €. The median for the market as a whole sits between them at 11,300 €, and the electric figure differs from it by 208.8%. Plug-in hybrids come in at 27,890 € and hybrids at 23,790 €. The price order follows exactly the order in which these fuels reached the Finnish market: the age order and the price order are the same order.

The figure is true but misleading. It does not tell you what electricity costs. It tells you what ages of car are on offer in each class in the first place.

From the buyer's point of view the gap is still real at the moment they stand between two cars. The price of the electric car would buy several petrol-powered Golfs, and that sum is hard to ignore. The question, though, is not one of two options from the same pool. Built into the electric car's price is the fact that it is three years old, and into the petrol car's price the fact that it is seventeen years old and approaching the age at which a single repair bill starts to decide the fate of the whole car.

Setting the figure against the whole market makes the gap concrete. A quarter of July's sales were made above 23,870 €, so the median price of a used electric car is above the line that three quarters of all sales fall below. A typical used electric car therefore sits in the most expensive quarter of the market, with the plug-in hybrid alongside it. The hybrid falls just below the line. At the other end the petrol median sits below the market median but nowhere near the cheapest quarter, whose line is 3,990 €. Petrol does not represent the bottom of the market either, even though it is the cheapest class.

The same effect appears in every price comparison where the groups are defined by a property that travels with age. In Finland fuel is exactly such a property, because each fuel reached the market in its own era and none has had time to spread evenly across every age group.

The electric class trades 2023 cars

The median model year of a used electric car sold is 2023. That means the most ordinary used electric car has been on the road for three years. The same figure is 2009 for a petrol car and 2012 for a diesel, and the median model year for the whole market is 2015. An electric car changing hands is therefore more than a decade fresher than the average car sold in Finland. Plug-in hybrids and hybrids both land on 2021, so they too are closer to electric than to the combustion classes.

Three years is no accident. It is the ordinary cycle of a company or leasing car: the car enters traffic new, runs its contract period and moves to the used market once that ends. Electric cars have been sold new in Finland for such a short time that no second or third generation of owners has had time to form. Petrol cars have one: a 2009 car has already changed hands several times, and every change has worn the price down. By the fourth sale only a fraction of what the first buyer paid is left.

The 2009 model year of the petrol car points to something else. Cars stay on the road a long time in Finland, and a median model year of 2015 for the whole market means half of the cars sold are more than ten years old. Petrol is the class in which that old stock has gathered, because it was the dominant fuel throughout the period from which cars are still on the road. When one class holds both last year's car and one from twenty years ago, the median settles far back in time. Electric cars have no such tail behind them, and that is not a credit to their pricing but a consequence of the calendar.

Age is therefore a property of the class, not of the individual car. An electric car does not sell dear because it is electric, but because there are no old electric cars on the market yet.

The age gap shows directly in what you get for the money. A three-year-old electric car has 57,000 km and three winters behind it. A seventeen-year-old petrol car has more than three times the kilometres behind it, and the whole stretch of its life in which the wearing parts are replaced for the first time: cambelt, brakes, exhaust and often the gearbox as well. Set those two side by side on the price tag alone and the comparison holds two different products.

Diesels have been driven almost five times as far as electric cars

The odometer separates the classes even more sharply than the model year does. The median diesel sold shows 272,475 km and the electric car 57,000 km. The petrol car sits between them at 187,000 km, and the median for the whole market is 176,000 km. Hybrids and plug-in hybrids land at 77,000 km and 87,000 km, closer to electric than to the combustion classes.

The diesel figure says something about what diesels were bought for in Finland. It has been the fuel of long distances and heavy loads, and the buyer chose it precisely because of the mileage: the more you drive, the sooner a diesel's higher purchase price and lower consumption pay themselves back. Three hundred thousand kilometres is not an exception in a diesel but a starting point. That is why the median for the class settles where only some petrol cars reach, and why a diesel's odometer says less about its condition than its service history does.

The electric figure is the other extreme. It does not say that electric cars are driven little, but that they have only been on the road for a few years. In five years' time the same car will be a different car on the odometer too, and today's reading does not predict where the median for the class will sit then.

For a buyer these readings mean different things. The electric figure is mostly the work of the first owner, and most of the car's wearing parts are still original. At the diesel figure the car has been through several service intervals and probably several owners, so what decides matters is not the number on the odometer but what has been done to the car along the way. The petrol car sits in between here too. Three readings from the same instrument therefore describe three different buying situations, and they cannot be compared as bare figures.

The hybrid readings fall in between consistently. Both classes are 2021 model years, and their odometers read 77,000 km and 87,000 km, which matches about five years of ordinary driving. The electric figure is the result of three years and the diesel one of fourteen. Kilometres therefore say almost nothing about the fuel until they are set against how long the car has been on the road. Buyers rarely do that, because on a listing the odometer is a single number with no unit of time attached. Distance driven per year separates cars better than the total does, and it can be worked out from any listing without further information.

The combination of kilometres and model year is what price actually follows. Neither is enough on its own, and that is exactly why setting the fuels' median prices side by side gives the buyer the wrong idea of what they are paying for.

Two Teslas lead the electric class

The difference between the classes shows in which models change hands in them. The best-selling electric model is the Tesla Model 3, with 352 sales at a median price of 26,790 €. Second comes the Tesla Model Y and third the Polestar 2. The cheapest of the top five is the Model 3 and the dearest the Skoda Enyaq at 36,900 €, so the whole leading group fits inside a range of just over ten thousand euros.

1. 1 Tesla Model 3 26,790 € Median price352 Sales
2. 2 Tesla Model Y 34,990 € Median price327 Sales
3. 3 Polestar 2 32,450 € Median price304 Sales
4. 4 Skoda Enyaq 36,900 € Median price282 Sales
5. 5 Volkswagen ID.4 29,990 € Median price273 Sales

The petrol leaders are another world. The best seller is the Volkswagen Golf with 829 sales at a median price of 4,650 €, followed by the Ford Focus at the same price and the Skoda Octavia at 8,790 €. The cheapest on the list is the Toyota Corolla, with a median price of 3,500 €. Not one model among the petrol leaders comes anywhere near the cheapest of the electric ones. It is not that the same cars cost different amounts, but that the classes trade objects of different sizes, different ages and different prices.

One model appears on two leading lists. The Skoda Octavia is the third best-selling petrol car with 557 sales and the fourth best-selling diesel with 487, so the same car is traded on both fuels. The median price of a petrol Octavia is 8,790 € and of a diesel one 6,900 €. Hold the model steady and the price gap between the fuels shrinks to a fraction of what the class medians suggest, and even turns the other way. The difference between the classes is therefore not the price of the fuel but the price of the group in which that fuel happens to appear.

On the hybrid side the leading list is effectively one brand: the five best-selling hybrids are all Toyotas, and the best seller among them is the Toyota Corolla with 421 sales. The plug-in hybrids are led by the Volvo XC60, with a median price of 35,680 €. Fuel therefore says something not only about the engine but about the size of car built around it and the price bracket it was sold into when new.

The plug-in hybrid leaders are spread widest by price. The XC60 leads, but fifth is the Volkswagen Passat, with a median price of 15,900 €. Within a single fuel there is therefore a gap of almost twenty thousand euros, and it comes not from charging capability but from the fact that these are cars of different sizes sold into different price brackets. Fuel is an even poorer predictor of price in this class than elsewhere. The same will happen to electric as soon as the class holds models sold into something other than the dear bracket.

None of these lists needs to be surprising to matter. They show that when a buyer compares the fuels, they are at the same time comparing cars of different size classes, and a fifteen-year-old car with a three-year-old one.

Two of the best-selling diesels are vans

If age alone decided the price, diesel should land close to petrol. The gap in model year is three years, and in kilometres diesel has been driven further than any other class. Yet the median diesel price of 8,690 € sits above the petrol figure of 5,950 €. Age therefore does not explain price on its own.

The explanation lies in what kind of vehicles are traded as diesels. Two of the class's best sellers are vans: the Volkswagen Transporter with 662 sales at a median price of 12,490 €, and the Mercedes-Benz Vito with 444 sales at 16,280 €. Both are vehicles bought for work, and their prices hold up even at high mileage, because their value rests on carrying capacity rather than on model year. On the passenger car side too the diesel leaders are large machinery: the best seller is the Mercedes-Benz E with 720 sales at a median price of 8,500 €.

The exception does not overturn the finding but sharpens it. Diesel shows that price follows what kind of vehicle sits in the class, not what the engine burns. The same holds for electric: its median is not the price of electricity but the price of a three-year-old car, and mostly a mid-sized one or larger. When the content of a class changes, so does the median.

A second finding of the same kind sits between the hybrids. Hybrids and plug-in hybrids are both 2021 model years, but the plug-in hybrid median of 27,890 € is above the hybrid figure of 23,790 €, even though plug-in hybrids have been driven further. Age is the same in these two classes, so the difference comes from something else. Plug-in hybrids are on average larger cars and were already dearer when new, and that difference survives into the used market. Two classes with the same model year and almost the same odometer reading are therefore priced differently, because the cars in them are different.

For a buyer this means vans and passenger cars are worth separating before the diesel price is compared with anything. One figure describes two very different vehicles, and their relative shares decide where the median for the class lands.

The record year of 2023 has reached the used market

The electric figure of 34,900 € only makes sense once you look at where these cars came from. According to the Finnish Transport and Communications Agency (Traficom), 29,536 fully electric passenger cars were registered for the first time in Finland in 2023, more than ever before and more than double the year before. In the same year fully electric cars passed a third of all new passenger car registrations.

Those are precisely the cars that are now three years old. The first large generation of electric cars has arrived on the used market in one burst, and that shows in both the model year of the class and its price. In the years before it, fewer electric cars were registered new each year, so there is far less older electric stock on offer. The median for the class therefore does not describe electric cars in general but a single vintage.

The price of a used electric car is not the price of the fuel. It is the price of a three-year-old car, and a three-year-old car always costs more than a seventeen-year-old one.

It follows that the median for the class will drift downwards over the coming years without any individual car getting cheaper than it would have anyway. As older and further-driven electric cars join the 2023 ones, the median falls from the change in the composition of the group alone. The same has happened to petrol cars, whose class has had time to fill with cars of every age, right down to those nearing the scrapyard. The petrol median is not low because petrol is cheap, but because the class contains the whole age range.

The change will show first in how many electric cars are on the market. In July 5,420 of them were sold, and the number grows as cars sold new reach the end of their contract periods and move to the used market. As more vintages like 2023 arrive, the class grows and its internal age range widens. Only then will the median for the class describe electric cars in general rather than one generation. Until then, every figure about the price of an electric car is worth reading with a model year attached to it.

Comparability therefore improves on its own over time, but that does not help a buyer deciding now. One practical route is left to them: compare cars of the same model year and leave the class medians alone. The same goes for a seller weighing up what their own car is worth. The value of a three-year-old electric car is not worth measuring against the electric median, but against what cars of the same model year and the same odometer reading have sold for.

Cars of the same age compare, cars of different ages do not

One practical rule follows for the buyer. Comparing the fuels' median prices with each other does not tell you which is the dearer choice, because the figures are calculated from cars of different ages. If the comparison is made, it is made within the same model year or the same price bracket, where age no longer explains the difference and the fuel becomes visible for what it is. This is also the only way to answer the question the buyer is actually asking: whether, for this particular sum, it makes sense to take an electric car or a combustion one. The class medians answer a different question, namely what kind of cars happen to be traded in each class at the moment.

In practice that means a search where the model year is narrowed before the fuel. Comparing a 2021 electric car with a petrol car of the same model year is a genuine comparison, because age is held steady and the fuel is the variable. Comparing whole-class medians is the opposite arrangement: fuel is nominally the variable, but what actually stands side by side is a three-year-old car and a seventeen-year-old one. The same question about the weight of age and kilometres comes up within a price bracket, and it has a story of its own: the same money buys either a young small car or an old large one.

On the used car market fuel is not merely a property. It is also an age group, and price follows the age group.

A second consequence concerns what the buyer gets for their money. The petrol car's 187,000 km and the electric car's three years of age are both properties built into the price, not by-products of it. The cheaper car is cheaper because it has more of its life behind it, and what you pay for in the dearer one is that more of it is left. On running costs the difference partly turns the other way, since an electric car's annual vehicle tax is worked out on a different basis from a combustion car's, but the difference in purchase price is not the price of the fuel. It is the price of age.

The practical advice is simple. Narrow the model year and the kilometres to what you are willing to buy first, and only then look at which fuels the remaining group holds. If that group turns out to be empty of electric cars, it does not mean an electric car is dear; it means electric cars of that age are not on sale yet. The difference sounds small, but it decides whether the buyer is making the decision about a number or about a car.

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