this post was submitted on 06 May 2024
871 points (96.8% liked)
Technology
59696 readers
2122 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
There’s already a solid market for used cars, unless you mean EVs, so no use for an incentive there.
The point of an incentive is a temporary tool to accelerate the transition to less polluting technology. While EVs are new they naturally are more expensive, there’s temptation to import from cheaper countries, but the incentive makes them less expensive to buy, plus incents growth of local industry. I’d also vote to phase out the incentive after that transition has happened: fossil fuel incentives should have been gone half a century ago.
If you’re specifically talking the used EV market, the most important factor is time. The more new EVs there are, the better the used EV market will be in a few years. It doesn’t help to try to increase sales of used EVs when there are so few. If you are looking used, please be patient: let’s do what we can to accelerate the growth of new EVs, and one of the benefits will be a strong used market in a gpfew years
Yes, I'm talking specifically about used EVs. We have an incentive for buying used from a dealer, but that doesn't apply if I buy from the owner directly.
So all it's doing is funneling money to dealers. Why would I buy a car for $20k from a private seller if I can get a similar car for $22k from a dealer with a $4k credit (so $18k net)? The private seller would have to sell for $18k to be on par, so why wouldn't they sell to the dealer for $19k? In this scenario, the dealers pocket the difference. If I could get the credit for private sales, I'd be willing to pay $21k ($17k net), so both I and the seller are better off (seller gets $2k more, I pay $1k less). The result is that prices for used EVs stay higher than they normally would because the private market can't effectively put downward pressure on prices.
It's entirely stupid. The dealer certainly provides some level of value (financing, selection, etc), but the private option should be practical for those who don't need or want what dealers provide. I have never purchased a car from a dealer, and I don't plan to start now (I don't trust them), and it's part of why I don't have an EV.