Toyota BZ4X Resale Value

[David64]

 

Was shocked to find out (curiosity), when using one of the car valuation sites that my Toyota BZ4X (2024) with 3,500 miles on the clock was valued at £26k. This also seems to be reflected in the used car market. Anybody else have similar experiences. Why the greater than 50% depreciation? 

Thanks.   

[FROSTYBALLS]

A possible insight - https://www.fleetnews.co.uk/news/-government-must-take-action-on-falling-used-ev-values-says-bvrla

[flash22]

no one wants the liability of a used EV, insurance, Battery degradation, road tax as of 2025 and lack of infrastructure, That is why most are on PCP or Lease

[David64]

So much for trying to do the best for the planet and switching to a greener alternative (leaving aside that EV's contribute to CO2 in their manufacture and disposal). 

[FROSTYBALLS]

A colleague of my wife who had a 72 reg Tesla on an NHS lease, recently had the Battery pack fail.  Replacement cost £18,000. Car, effectively scrap, handed back to the lease company. Wouldn't have another Tesla.

[Cyker]

6 hours ago, David64 said:

Was shocked to find out (curiosity), when using one of the car valuation sites that my Toyota BZ4X (2024) with 3,500 miles on the clock was valued at £26k. This also seems to be reflected in the used car market. Anybody else have similar experiences. Why the greater than 50% depreciation? 

Thanks.   

The problem is there's no demand from consumers so the car's aren't being bought, meanwhile fleets are continuously buying new ones and then selling them on after 3 years or whatever, so the supply is out-stripping the demand significantly.

Instead of fixing the problem, i.e. making EVs better for the general user by investing in it, helping new technologies get to market faster and doing something about the godawful charging infrastructure, they're just ramming more and more useless legislation into the market which is putting people off even more.

If the market had been allowed to evolve naturally, we'd be seeing a natural ramp-up of EV demand as these new Battery techs hit the market, as the Battery is literally the biggest thing holding them back.

However, world governments again try to wag the dog and forcing people into them before they're ready, and this is having the opposite effect.

 

5 hours ago, FROSTYBALLS said:

A colleague of my wife who had a 72 reg Tesla on an NHS lease, recently had the battery pack fail.  Replacement cost £18,000. Car, effectively scrap, handed back to the lease company. Wouldn't have another Tesla.

Sadly this is not just a Tesla problem - Every current EV has this problem and it's one thing all the people pushing EVs are just burying their heads about - Unlike a 10-15 year old ICE car which can be bought for a few hundred quid and have repairs done with cheaper after-market parts etc. to make it work, all old EVs will just become scrap as nobody is going to pay 10x the car is worth to replace the Battery.

I really don't know what the solutions for this could be because the economics just don't work. Maybe if some sort of core charge is mandated by law, so you can buy a new battery like you do with Toyota hybrids, but you get most of the cost refunded back when you return the old unit. However, often the manufacturer has moved on by then and the batteries are no longer manufactured - This is why e.g. Tavarish just ripped the whole hybrid system out of the McLaren P1 he's repairing, as they quickly found replacing the flood-damaged battery pack was virtually impossible - so unless some sort of standardization is also mandated then this won't work in the long term, esp. because, unlike mechanical parts, they can't manufacture a load of batteries and just store them in a warehouse for 10 years.

 

[wivenhoe]

What is the Toyota warranty on EV batteries ? If you keep servicing at a Toyota dealer, is the EV Battery covered by the 10 year warranty ?

[Cyker]

It has its own separate warranty that's topped up by getting a Hybrid Health Check done every service (Or year, I forget which)

 

[Heidfirst]

10 minutes ago, wivenhoe said:

What is the Toyota warranty on EV batteries ? If you keep servicing at a Toyota dealer, is the EV battery covered by the 10 year warranty ?

"Our confidence in the quality of the Battery is reflected by us providing up to 10 years Battery warranty with the Toyota bZ4X, provided through an initial 8 years manufacturer warranty from the vehicle’s registration date. In addition, 12 months warranty is included with every Toyota Service, up to 10 years from the vehicle’s registration date. Terms and conditions apply."

[wivenhoe]

My question is - what are they warranting ?  What degradation are they warranting - 80% at 8 years or just total failure only. Nobody provides a warranty that the Battery will be 100% so what is Toyota’s. Lexus, on the same EV system as the bz, warranty 80% at 8 years. When I ordered the marketing info said they expected 90% at 10 years but this changed after the range update. 

[Mister Mike]

19 hours ago, David64 said:

 

Was shocked to find out (curiosity), when using one of the car valuation sites that my Toyota BZ4X (2024) with 3,500 miles on the clock was valued at £26k. This also seems to be reflected in the used car market. Anybody else have similar experiences. Why the greater than 50% depreciation? 

Thanks.   

The rightwing press in the UK doesn’t help matters, as they constantly tell lies about how often EVs catch fire. To read some newspapers, you’d think charging your car is positively dangerous and will burn your house down. There are hundreds of petrol fires every day but they don’t make headline news. The stats are that a BEV is at least 20 times less likely to go up in flames as a petrol car, but the papers won’t report that. They also have some mad idea in their heads that they are too heavy for car parks and the brake pads wear out in no time and cause more pollution, none of which is true.

[philip42h]

19 hours ago, David64 said:

Was shocked to find out (curiosity), when using one of the car valuation sites that my Toyota BZ4X (2024) with 3,500 miles on the clock was valued at £26k. This also seems to be reflected in the used car market. Anybody else have similar experiences. Why the greater than 50% depreciation? 

Thanks.   

Yeah, depreciation sucks - but it's not unique to EVs by any means.

I work on the basis that a car can be expected to retain approximately 50% of its original value after 3 years. That equates to a loss of around 20% per annum - a retained value of 80% after year 1, 80% of that 80% = 64% after year 2, and 80% of that 64% = 52% after year 3. Some marques (e.g. French, Italian) depreciate faster; some marques (German, Japanese) depreciate more slowly; and the total mileage has an impact but as a rule of thumb it works to set expectations.

How are you buying your car?

Mine is on a PCP 'deal'. The first thing to note about PCP is that it guarantees that 'owner' pays the full cost of depreciation over the PCP period. The second is that it provides a good estimate of the retained value at the end of the PCP contract - the Guaranteed Future Value. The GFV is Toyota [Finance] estimate of the 'worst case' trade-in value of the car at the end of the deal. 'Worst case' because you can just hand the car back and walk away so all Toyota have is the used car as settlement. If they've got it wrong and the car is worth less than the GFV that's exactly what I'll do - but I hope to buy the car at the end and run it for a while longer before trading in for something newer.

We can work out the forecast depreciation rate by getting a PCP 'quote' online. For my bZ4X it runs at 28% per annum leaving an equivalent retain value of 37% after 3 years. That's not so great but at least I am well aware of my specific worst-case outcome.

For comparison, the PCP forecast on my RAV4 was a depreciation rate of 32% per annum leaving a retained value of 31% after 3 years. Of course, that is not what happen because I paid the GFV and subsequently traded the car in for the bZ4X. The actual depreciation was then only 12% per annum leaving an equivalent retained value of 68% after 3 years.

I'll be delighted if my bZ4X transaction works out so well but I'm not holding my breath! 😉

Cars sold after one year only will be either distressed sales or disposal of fashion accessories so not that useful as an indication of through life depreciation rates ...

[Cyker]

13 hours ago, wivenhoe said:

My question is - what are they warranting ?  What degradation are they warranting - 80% at 8 years or just total failure only. Nobody provides a warranty that the battery will be 100% so what is Toyota’s. Lexus, on the same EV system as the bz, warranty 80% at 8 years. When I ordered the marketing info said they expected 90% at 10 years but this changed after the range update. 

The standard is 80% but I'm not absolutely sure what Toyota's terms are off-hand.

11 hours ago, philip42h said:

Yeah, depreciation sucks - but it's not unique to EVs by any means.

For a lot of EV owners it's more the discrepancy in depreciation they're complaining about. Diesel went through a similar thing down here when the ULEZ and the ULEZ extension and the ULEZ extension extension happened - Used diesel values tanked and petrols and hybrids shot up as everyone tried to trade in their non-compliant diesel. The only reason diesels didn't drop as bad as EVs are currently is everyone outside London snapped up all those cheap diesels, but there's no such outlet for EVs.

I think, assuming the batteries survives, EVs depreciation will slow as the use experience improves, but not for a good few years.

11 hours ago, Mister Mike said:

The rightwing press in the UK doesn’t help matters, as they constantly tell lies about how often EVs catch fire. To read some newspapers, you’d think charging your car is positively dangerous and will burn your house down. There are hundreds of petrol fires every day but they don’t make headline news. The stats are that a BEV is at least 20 times less likely to go up in flames as a petrol car, but the papers won’t report that. They also have some mad idea in their heads that they are too heavy for car parks and the brake pads wear out in no time and cause more pollution, none of which is true.

Yeah, and ironically because the Chinese ones use LFP and not NMC-type batteries they tend to actually be less prone to catching fire than every other countries' who tend to use the more energy-dense NMC to get vaguely useful range. The downside of these batteries is when they do they are a lot harder to put out compared to petrol and even diesel as they have an annoying tendency to self-reignite which nobody's thought of a good solution for yet.

I think the press got bored of it as they did with normal car fires as both have gone back to being unreported for the most part  

I personally am waiting until batteries suck less so they can build one that at least has parity of utility with my Yaris before I look at them again. 

[wivenhoe]

Does anybody know what degradation the Toyota EV Battery warranty after 8 years. Having had a lot of new Merc’s I looked at their EV’s but their warranty only covered failures and didn’t guarantee a maximum degradation. So the Battery may lose say 30% capacity but if it doesn’t fail you cannot claim. Those with PCP’s will be protected against a drop in value but owners looking to buy for long term May be in for a bit of a shock. I think long term, EV residuals will reflect whether a car say 5 years old is risky or not. 

[philip42h]

2 hours ago, wivenhoe said:

Does anybody know what degradation the Toyota EV battery warranty after 8 years.

It's taken me a while to find ... the Toyota European Newsroom site states:

Toyota’s confidence in the quality of the Battery is reflected in a guarantee it will retain at least 70 per cent of its capacity up to 10 years, covered by the original EV Manufacturing Warranty until 8 years or 160.000 kilometres, and with the additional Extended Battery Care up to 10 years or 1 million kilometres driven that is activated by an annual EV Health Check (T&C apply).

I haven't yet been able to find the equivalent statement in formal warranty T&Cs ...

[wivenhoe]

Well done digging this out. They don’t make it easy as I think the majority of owners think that the up to 10 years warranty covers it. Nobody does, and it’s interesting that the bz is covered to only 70% but the Lexus using the same EV infrastructure is 80%.