Rising fuel prices are making used electric cars more attractive and more expensive

Ostfildern. The high fuel prices make used electric cars more attractive - and more expensive. From May to August, the residual values ​​for three-year-old electric cars rose by 1.4 percentage points, according to data from market observer DAT. At the same time, the residual values ​​for petrol engines fell by 0.4 percentage points, and those for diesel by as much as 1.1 percentage points.

The percentage residual values ​​- here the dealer sales price determined by DAT - are still lower for electric vehicles than for combustion engines. For pure electric cars (BEV) it is on average 51.5 percent of the new list price, for diesel cars it is 58 percent and for gasoline cars it is 59.4 percent. However, the gap has fallen significantly in the past year: as recently as November 2025, electric vehicles were only at 48.4 percent, but gasoline engines were at 62.6 and diesel engines at 61.2.

“The most important driver for the decision to adopt electromobility is likely to be fuel prices. These have caused an increased demand for used and new BEVs. This in turn meant that the supply of used BEVs was relatively low in the meantime,” says the DAT.

Market observers have also noticed significantly reduced downtimes for electric vehicles. In May and the months before, it took a dealer a lot longer to sell an electric car than a combustion engine, but this ratio has now changed. Instead, diesels have a hard time, as they last 92 days. For petrol engines there are 84, for electric vehicles only 74.

The fact that the effect only sets in after May and not with the start of the high fuel prices in March is probably explained, among other things, by the fact that decisions such as buying a car usually have a certain lead time. In addition, as the crisis continued, it became clear that the high prices were not a short episode - so they became more important for car buyers.

However, electric cars still play a very minor role on the used market. According to the Federal Motor Transport Authority, in August they accounted for 5.3 percent of all ownership transfers. A year ago, however, it was only 3.9 percent.