this post was submitted on 28 Sep 2026
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Even at today's ridiculous fuel prices, 100 km won't cost me more than about 15€ and that's because I have an early 3.0 tdi, the ones made just one year after mine would do more like 12€ and smaller engines might be able to stretch 10€. Just talking highway kilometers right now, city kilometers are WAY too variable.
You can get a 60k€ EV with under 100k km on it for 25k€, roughly speaking. That's over 35€ per 100 km in depreciation if you bought it new and sold after 4-5 years.
Even the currently ~25-30k ones might still have a few more years of rapid depreciation roughly in line with fuel costs I'd wager.
Where the market really gets interesting for the budget-constrained buyer is when actually good EVs are out of battery warranty for good. They should have reached most of their depreciation at that point, people still have a hard time trusting batteries because they're more expensive to replace than the cars cost (yes, I know you don't usually have to replace the entire battery and that failures are increasingly uncommon, but the average joe does not). Since actually good EVs outside of Tesla mostly started arriving around 2020-2021, that's about 2-3 more years at 8 years of battery warranty.
Your 20k over 10 years only applies to cars that are already cheap. Which for EVs means I'd be stuck with an early Tesla model S or a Dacia Spring (actually that one can't depreciate 20k over 10 years, it doesn't even cost 20k). My love for turning wrenches and ability to usually repair even the most annoying problems, means that I can comfortably buy super depreciated luxury cars and keep them on the road for cheap. Equivalent comfort in an EV can't be had in a cheap EV other than, again, a used Tesla S. I test drove an Audi E-tron and I found it lacking compared to what I can buy for just 2k lol
But a few more years and some EVs I like will have depreciated to under 20k, at which point I might as well go for it.