I Drove An Electric Car For Three Years. Here’s How Much Value It Lost

After three years, I’ve just handed back my 2023 Peugeot e-2008 crossover. We did a little under 30,000 miles with it and things went mostly smoothly. Right now, our household has no EVs, which feels sort of weird after a total of five years of leased electric cars. Still, it feels like leasing them was the thing to do, considering their depreciation and residuals.

The Stellantis-built, front-wheel-drive Peugeot is a B-segment SUV, which means it’s the size of a basic family car here. Not only is it related to the smaller 208 hatchback, with a longer wheelbase, bigger trunk, bigger tires and a higher beltline, but it’s also an ICE-based EV in the sense that you can buy an identical looking car with a gasoline or gasoline-hybrid drive train.

In other words, it’s not really an EV from the get-go, which shows in the car’s design and the lack of frunk up front. The cars rolled out from the same production line in Vigo, Spain, and they are also related to the Jeep Avenger crossover.

Expensive Fuel, Cheap Electricity

Finland is the sort of Northern European country that has expensive fuel and relatively cheap electricity, at least for now. Geopolitical situations have affected both in recent years, as diesel fuel prices dropped down to one euro per liter (around $4.5/gal) in 2020 due to Covid-reduced demand, and have more than doubled since for various reasons ranging from Russia to Iran.

We haven’t really had cheap-cheap fuel … ever, and as distances are long as soon as you leave the Helsinki capital region, running costs are a thing to reckon with. As a result, and partially because of company car trends, more than half of new cars registered currently are EVs, and new diesel car sales have dropped to a minuscule level, especially as diesel now costs more per liter than gasoline. Traditionally, it was significantly cheaper.

When it comes to electricity prices, I currently pay less than seven Eurocents per kilowatt hour (plus taxes and grid fees for a total of double) for the next couple of years. With expensive fuel and cheap electricity, and an EV charging network that’s expanded immensely in the last five years, it makes more sense than earlier to drive an EV and skip buying fuel.

[Ed Note: That’s dirt-cheap electricity! This is why owning an EV is a no-brainer in some of the world (even here in California), so long as you can avoid the one thing that can nullify the savings: depreciation. -DT].

But then there’s depreciation.

Why All Of Finland Wanted This Orange Car

I had leased my first Hyundai EV in the fall of 2021 and soon traded my old, slightly broken commuter Volvo for a Kia Niro EV to use as a second car. For five years, I had a 100-mile commute for most of the week, so I had a good reason to keep running costs down, and I’d rather pay for using a new, warrantied car than fueling and fixing a cheap car since we also had a kid on the way.

Of course, with a lease you eventually give back your car; with a used car, you have a known good in your parking spot for as long as you wish. Another option is to get a used EV, which has already depreciated to a good price point. In these 4.5 years after originally ordering the Peugeot, the availability of affordable used EVs has grown significantly, and you can get away with monthly costs cheaper than any lease – and you won’t need to give it back.

In the spring of 2022, I jumped at another chance of getting a cheap EV lease deal: the Peugeot importer offered these orange Peugeots for a very reasonable 249 Euros per month with 15,000 km per year ($290, 9,300 miles/year, and it included a 2,000 Euro EV subsidy that’s no longer available). To reach price parity, you could also get the 1.2 Puretech gasoline version and pay the same. The metallic orange was the default color.

It’s not just Omega Swatches that got people crazy on the weekend. A thousand Finns are said to have signed up for a Peugeot 2008 or e-2008 between Thursday and today after the importer announced a department store branded, heavily discounted campaign. pic.twitter.com/0vxyd8K3jw

— Antti ”Antti Gauchonen” Kautonen (@julkinen) March 28, 2022

Since the cars would need to be factory-ordered, it would take until around New Year’s for the car to arrive, which would make for a smooth swap: the Kia Niro, only leased for a year, would be returned right then to the Kia dealer, and we’d drive the Peugeot from then on. I ordered the Peugeot in late March, choosing just a couple options (heated windscreen element, studded tires instead of studless) and began waiting. The dealer didn’t have any demo cars with the EV drivetrain, so I ordered mine unseen and test drove a used example much later. All the campaign cars were sold in three days, but looking back, the order books should have been closed after the first day.

The wait for the car proved to be long. In spring 2022, fuel prices had gone through the roof, and I was glad I wasn’t driving the Volvo anymore. A lot of customers signed up for these Peugeots, a lot more than the importer and dealers expected. Any guesses between a thousand, 1,500, to 2,000 cars are probably close to correct, and all of them had been set up for cheap 1% financing, a cheap monthly installment, and cash on the hood. The campaign’s sticker price, minus winter tires, was 27,990 Euros — 7,000 euro cheaper than MSRP. [Ed Note: $30 grand? That is a pretty cheap EV! -DT]. 

I believe the idea was that the pre-facelift e-2008, introduced in 2019, was already on its way out and due to be replaced by a facelift car in 2023, so the production slots for the outgoing car as well as potential overstock needed to be dealt with. But savvy Finns, sensing a deal was out there, ordered a lot of these cars. In addition, because the importer had also offered EV leases earlier, the cars were available to be leased with a buyback contract initially dated a year from receiving the car.

No Car For You?

Between March 2022 and spring 2023, some cars were delivered, but not even close to the ballpark figure that was ordered. The original New Year’s delivery estimate came and went. In the spring, the importer declared that no further cars would be delivered as the model was ending production.

This enraged everyone who hadn’t yet gotten their car, but eventually the decision was overturned, customers would get cars, and in May, I was told that the car would make June production. I picked the car up from the dealer in early August, nearly a year and a half after ordering it. At that point, the demand bubble for EVs had already burst due to improved availability, and our old Kia was still sitting at the dealer, eight months after returning it.

One and a half years later… here we are. At one point it seemed like they weren’t even going to deliver me one, but this is my new Peugeot e-2008 50kWh Active in Fusion Orange.

First impressions: quiet, smooth, drives well. Seems to have enough space and the colour is very good https://t.co/9CZfJiLZmn pic.twitter.com/jin6D04917

— Antti ”Antti Gauchonen” Kautonen (@julkinen) August 4, 2023

Actually Driving The Thing

From finally getting the Peugeot, things went well. I soon found out the remote app designed to set up pre-heating, cooling and charging was near useless, but the car itself worked. The first winter was harsh, and driving from home to town, parking and re-heating in -20C to -30C (-22F) sliced the real-world range on those days to some 70 miles from the optimal 200. Since these Peugeots were often people’s first EVs, many returned them at a year old as the usual 100-mile winter range disappointed them.

Still, we did fine, as that was enough for our use case, and the car proved reliable and warmed up instantly. I never ran out of battery, the 12-volt “small” battery never went empty, the car never left us stranded, and it didn’t make any weird noises.

We did a number of long trips cross-country, which showed that the 50kWh battery was best suited for highway speeds in summer and really didn’t like motorway speeds in winter. Cold weather consumption went through the roof past 60mph and it charged slowly with a cold battery; in the summer, you got 100kW DC charging speeds and good 4-mile/kWh consumption.

Incredibly, the base Active Pack car doesn’t have a percentage reading for the battery in the gauge cluster, just some bars like a fuel gauge. You can only see the percentage in the app – when it works. The car also always showed a full WLTP range reading with a full battery, never taking earlier usage into account. At -32C, it quickly lost the first 100km.

Another thing is that you cannot limit the charging level: unless you pull the plug or use the app to delay charging, the car will always charge to 100%.

Over these three years, the only things that broke were the charging port flap (the same plastic part as a fuel filler lid) in winter and the inner rear brake pads, which split. The brake pads weren’t covered by warranty, and they went bad from not using the brakes enough due to relying on regenerative braking: they heated and the friction material separated from the backing. Every time I got going, there was a snap from the rear brakes until I got them fixed. Other maintenance was very cheap, and I only needed to have two scheduled services done.

The importer had also realized that it would rather not take back over a thousand identical orange Peugeots at a year old, so some customers, myself included, were offered extensions on the buyback contract. Another extension was offered after the second year, meaning I could do 45,000 km and return the car at three years old – exactly at the spot when its main warranty would run out. The battery is covered for eight years or 160,000 km (100,000 miles).

In spring 2024, I changed jobs to be closer to home and no longer needed a lease for a long commute, so I returned the Hyundai lease I had at the time. The 4WD Corolla took its place, and the e-2008 was our “main” car until it was scheduled to be returned. I kept the Peugeot very well for a car that mainly hauled a toddler around, as I protected the rear seat with a barf vinyl and didn’t let anybody draw on the sides with their fingers. The original Continental summer tires nearly ran out of tread, but they were just about acceptable as I returned the car. I did pay a couple hundred for the extra mileage (0.20 cents per km, after 45k km), but that was the cheapest way out.

To control the number of cars finally being returned, the importer offered a deal to some Peugeot lessees. As long as they wouldn’t return the car, they would get a new financing deal that started at a 17,000 euro revaluation. I would still have had nearly 22,000 euros of financing left on the car, so slicing five grand off that would have been great, had I elected to keep the car.

Giving It Back

As I signed the papers to return the car after three years, I asked the salesman what they’d actually pay for the car, had I not had the buyback contract worth gold. He tapped on his calculator a little, noted the nearly worn-out tires, and told me: 14,000. I would’ve been nearly 8,000 Euros ($9,000) underwater without the contract, as they wouldn’t have had any obligation to re-finance it cheaper, either.

Another Peugeot customer had put 60,000 km on his car. He would have had to pay three grand in extra miles had he elected to return it, so instead, the importer refinanced his car at the same 17,000 Euros, and the buyback contract wasn’t used. If my 47,000km car was worth 14,000 Euros, his would’ve probably been 12 to 13, depending on condition. He, too, was sitting at 22 grand in financing.

Not one of the leased EVs has been worth what I owed on them at the point of returning them. Each of them has been worth less, especially the Peugeot. While the monthly installments have ranged from 250 to 400 euros, it would have been far more costly to buy these cars and sell them on myself.

What did I learn from this? Private leasing is great!

What did the importer learn from this? They aren’t offering private leasing deals at all, any more, even for ICE cars. Everything’s subcontracted to different leasing companies now.

Was the Peugeot’s depreciation severe? For a regular new car, losing 50% of its value in three years isn’t a worst-case scenario, especially if it’s a French car. A Corolla Hybrid wagon, with a sticker price five thousand over the Peugeot, would only have lost a quarter of its value, but some of the costs would have gone into fueling it. Since I mostly charged the car at home from three-phase power, at a cost of 16 eurocents per kWh with all taxes and fees included, I’d estimate home charging costs to have stayed below 1300 euros ($1500), based on 16kWh/100km average power consumption (3.88 miles per kWh). That doesn’t include power losses, but I almost always charged the car at the full 11kW the onboard charger could manage, which keeps losses down.

Used 2022-2023 gasoline versions of the Peugeot are also priced the same with similar miles, so they have lost their value similarly – but based on their average 5,6l/100km /42mpg fuel consumption, and an average fuel price of two euros per liter, it would have cost 5,300 Euros in fuel to drive the same amount, or $6,200. Rather, the EVs’ original monthly costs were based on unrealistic projected residuals, partially fueled by the high demand for EVs when the cheap campaign cars were originally offered.

Note, that the 50% depreciation only pertains to the campaign cars that stickered at 27,990 Euros for three days. If you bought a similar car before or after, it started depreciating from 34,990, and as it’s now worth the same as the cheaper cars, depreciation has hit it harder. It has to be said that most of these cars on the road are from the campaign, and I wouldn’t have gotten one for full price.

But as I said, I feel kind of empty with the Peugeot gone. It was a good car, in an extremely good color, and it suited our lives great. These days, there isn’t anything even close to being as cheap to lease, with the slightly smaller Ford Puma Gen-E costing 365 eur ($425) per month, and you can only do 10,000 km per year (6,200 miles) for that price. At least it comes in yellow.”

(Photos by author, unless otherwise mentioned)