THE MORNING RANT: EV Owners and Lessors Have a Problem - Heavily Depreciated EVs that Dealerships Won’t Take Off Their Hands at Any Price

The failed “EV Transition” has led to a widespread suspension of electric vehicle manufacturing in the United States. Ford has discontinued its flagship F150 Conflagration Lightning, and it also mothballed an all-new plant that was intended to manufacture that unwanted electric pickup. Volkswagen suspended production of its only American-built electric offering, and GM is cancelling or postponing most of its electric offerings too.

But the nightmare isn’t over yet. There is still a great financial reckoning to come, due to all the lithium-ion albatrosses pushed on consumers over the past few years. Those who financed the purchase of their new electric vehicle will likely be woefully “upside down” when it comes trade-in time, because they’ll owe much more to the finance company than a dealer will offer for it in trade. There’s a good chance a dealer will not make a trade-in offer on an EV at any price. For those EV customers who were put in leases, the manufacturers’ finance companies are about to take a bath when those vehicles go to auction and don’t bring anywhere near the amount of the contracted lease-end residual value.

Whether the original owner of the EV is an individual or a leasing company, they will likely face a financial bloodletting trying to make the car go away. Horror stories are mounting.

Because Audi dealers are struggling to sell their new “e-tron GT” electric vehicles - despite heavy manufacturer incentives and discounting - those dealers have little interest in purchasing used e-tron GTs that are coming off lease, and certainly not for the original lease-end value. So, Audi is offering to pay the current drivers $10,000 to stay in the leased car they’re currently driving, because sending the car to auction would result in a much larger loss.

“Audi Is Paying Lessees $10,000 To Keep the EVs They Already Have” [Car Scoops – 2/26/226]

A recent Audi BEV Lessee Buyout Option Incentive sent to dealerships on September 1, reveals that current e-tron GT lessees are being offered a $10,000 discount to purchase their vehicle at the end of the lease term.

Dealers would be paid a small stipend for handling the paperwork, but Audi loses out on the sale of a new vehicle. When manufacturers offer leasing specials, the intent is for a customer to surrender the vehicle at lease-end to the originating dealership, at which time he is both car-less and in the perfect place to buy a replacement vehicle from the same manufacturer. Instead, Audi is forgoing a vehicle sale and paying a potential repeat customer not to buy a new car.

Meanwhile...

“Porsche Taycan Owner Discovers the Brutal Reality of EV Depreciation: ‘I’m Left With a Car That’s Worthless’” [Yahoo Autos – 7/17/2026]

Lee Davey bought a new Porsche Taycan EV two years ago, paying more than $160,000. There is such a glut of unwanted used EVs that the dealer he bought it from will not take the electric Taycan back in trade at any price:

Ironically, the Porsche dealership he bought it from valued the Taycan at roughly $54,000 but still refused to buy it back, saying it was already overstocked with older Taycan models. Davey said this in the video: “I’m basically left with a car that’s worthless. Even the dealership does not want this car back.”

The financing arms of auto manufacturers are also sitting on a portfolio of soon-to-mature EV leases with a value not much greater than “worthless.” As I have been documenting, legacy automakers have lost tens of billions of dollars on their failed effort to become mass market EV manufacturers. Their problem is that there never was a mass market for EVs, nor could government regulators compel it into being. So, despite all the EV losses already booked, more massive losses are looming for the industry.

Per Experian, just about half (46%) of EVs sold in the United States in 2024 were leased. The good news for those customers is that as their leases mature, they can simply surrender the EV and go get another new car. The bad news for the manufacturers is that they will have to somehow find buyers for the impending glut of off-lease EVs. The supply and demand math will worsen the situation. There is already little demand from dealers for used EVs, and when this wave hits, the already awful auction price for used EVs will plummet even further:

“800,000 EVs Are About to Hit the Used Market; Falling resale values on returning lease vehicles may drive massive industry losses by 2028”

Leasing played a major role in boosting EV adoption in the United States over the past few years. Incentives, especially federal tax credits that applied more broadly to leased vehicles than purchases, helped to lower monthly outlays and drove car shoppers toward short-term leases. Now, those two- and three-year leases are beginning to expire, sending a wave of used EVs back into the market.

A three-year-old EV retained about 40 percent of its original value at auction by the end of 2025. Compare that to early 2022 when comparable vehicles held roughly 90 percent of their value, says Cox Automotive. Analysts say that difference could translate into losses of around $10,000 per vehicle on average, adding up to as much as $8 billion across the industry by 2028.

Legacy auto manufacturers lost money on the front-end when customers bought and leased their electric vehicle offerings, and now they’re looking at losing another $10,000 or so per unit when the customer’s EV lease matures. The capital of these auto companies is not unlimited. They cannot absorb these losses indefinitely, and there is no path to profitability with EVs. They would be wise to take their final financial hits on these off-lease EVs and then return to doing what they know how to do profitably – manufacture and sell gasoline-powered vehicles.

On a related topic, my latest piece at the The American Spectator has been published. “Volkswagen’s Electric Suicide Pact; Caught in an EV-induced doom loop, Volkswagen continues to invest in new EV boondoggles” discusses the existential crisis at Volkswagen thanks to its catastrophic EV commitment, and how with its future at stake, Volkswagen continues to invest in new EV boondoggles – even here in the states.

Unbowed by its EV failure in North America, VW continues to plow its precious capital into other U.S. electric boondoggles. Rivian is an EV startup company that planned to sell hundreds of thousands of units per year — its business plan depended on it. Instead, Rivian is struggling to sell a fraction of that volume, and it has lost more than $24 billion since going public less than 5 years ago. Inexplicably, Volkswagen has given Rivian a $6 billion lifeline, including $1 billion just a few months ago, while at the very same time VW was weighing which of its own models to cut and what plants to close.

Even more preposterous is the fact that Volkswagen is building yet another all-new American plant to build yet another all-new EV, a pickup truck this time.

This piece is not behind a paywall. I’d be honored if you’d give it a read.

[buck.throckmorton at protonmail dot com]

posted by Buck Throckmorton at 11:00 AM

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