This week's EV bargain that I'm not buying

Leaf with 5200 miles

https://www.donedeal.ie/cars-for-sale/152-nissan-leaf-with-5-700-miles/34061718?campaign=23

Am very busy with the new job or I would have gone in to that auction for a nosey. I used to buy and sell at merlins a lot, you can really get a bargain if no one else there is interested

Why would they auction them if EV's are in high demand, no one wants old out of warranty EV's?

Why would you think a 5 year old modern car with only 160k miles would be so shot to ****? A 160k diesel Qashqai is just broke in at those miles, got years left, battery health is 85% on it btw

Now this 11 year old Leaf is shot to ****.

Battery health is 56%, you'd be lucky to get out Dublin :), a charge at every county on the way down lol

Merlin Car Auctions

That’s the leafs and teslas sold december to March 2023. Must issue the list for sale at the end of every month or so - it’s €5 and anybody can buy, covers previous 4 months, excel format. I bought to check fiestas in mid April .

if the attached is not readable let me know .

never looked for any other electrics but I can. There are around 3,000 cars on the spreadsheet and as you can see from the attached some can be miss labelled - 2 of the 3 teslas are down as hybrids.

i believe, but am not sure, that some Tesla features may disappear once a new owner registers with Tesla - needs to be checked before buying a Tesla at auction.

I would say the prices are hammer prices and don’t include fees as I know different buyers will pay different fees, a dealer buying 30 cars a month would pay less fees per car than the occasional private buyer or small dealer.

fees also have vat added which vat registered dealers can reclaim. Just the fees have vat added, not the hammer price (might be different for commercials sold by vat registered companies)

check fees beforehand if you intend to bid at any auction, don’t get over excited and then a big shock!

I am sure Merlin and Wilson’s etc publish fees. I can’t remember exactly but I think a few hundred ex vat on cars around €3500.

the fiesta I bought was cat N insurance claim so no structural damage, looked sound to us when we had a look beforehand. My mates insurance company was fine with that and as it did not sell for the reserve I called in and made a flat offer and said it was to include fees, they called back and said fine so I don’t actually know what fees merlin took from my mate or what the seller paid, I never seen the receipt or asked my mate . Mate went over with the Revolut card that afternoon and drove away.

ESB eCars fast charging was completely free up until the end of 2019. It's reasonable to think that taxi saw nothing but DC fast charging for a year or even the guts of two years* I haven't checked the link for reg, and as a result have damaged cells.

There was a story on here about a Leaf taxi that had a battery failure just outside warranty.

You can also bid on the web, easier to see what’s going on on the big screen.

another reason cars get sold at auction is speed - they might get €20k at auction or €23k after a few weeks on the forecourt with loads of people trying to trade in cars they don’t want.

also many used car dealers finance their stock. I.e they may have an agreed borrowing of up to say €200k and make interest payments per month depending on what’s outstanding - they may need to reduce their stock quickly to keep bellow their limit or reduce their interest charges. I know this happens in the Uk so

maybe it happens here. That type of finance won’t show on a motor heck etc (on the Uk) as it’s not on an individual car, the car can’t be re possessed if you buy from a

dealer that does this and has a finance issue. This type of dealer financing I believe is expensive so another reason some dealers may sell at auction to get money quickly. I know a dealer in the uk that used this method many years ago and he explained it to me.

you will see private cars at auctions here as well. I suppose it’s worth throwing a car through depending on the cost if you need funds quickly.

It’s more like nobody wants Nissan Leafs, Donedeal has nearly 700 of them listed.

9.9% APR on the finance calculator is scauldy.

That is a lot alright. 2,000 on autotrader Uk which is a market around 12 times the size. Strange

maybe with the bigger cities and larger urban areas its an easier sell to commuters over there. Tax is also zero for some years, not much of a saving at the end of the day.

I think quite a lot of leafs were sold as taxis here with the huge grants they never had in the Uk so that might influence the numbers for sale. A huge discrepancy though. They don’t have the grants over there for a few years now so that might influence used leccy cars for sale

maybe ripe for exporting for somebody, the Uk ones were built from around 2013 so no vat or duty to import to the Uk from here - around £80 to reg, need mot first to get reg and to pay some tax, it is not expensive (you do need a Uk address to use).

Not much of a vrt refund on a leaf if any I would think .

I am from scotland and I exported a lovely 2006 Porsche cayman s back home about 4 years ago after driving here for a year, got a nice €8k in vrt refund for getting the filthy beast out of the country, probably cost more to bring the same car back now. I use it when back sometimes. A cracking car, one of my all time favourites - the right size and pace for normal roads, flat 6 lovely noise, 300bhp and six speed. No intention of selling. Might bring it over for a month soon - a month is max tO avoid customs/Garda issues, book your inspection 30 days from arrival and leg it on day 30.

cayman was an original Irish car and had only 3 owners when I bought it but only tax paid for about 6 years of 12 when i got it - 21k miles in that time . Has 29k miles now and I did 5 of that on Irish plates here

I miscalculated the road tax and it’s £510 a year Uk as it was new in may 2006, pre March 2006 and it’s £210 per year.

no matter as they have a sensible system, you can pay monthly by direct debit for £1 extra a month and switch on and off via the web - I just log on to dvla, set it to be on the road and get charged a full months tax a few days later (a Callander month regardless of date) then reverse the process when I leave. Costs me €50 per calendar month or part thereof to tax.

how sensible is that. Maybe if they had a system like that here the tax take would actually go up

my mate has a 2012 merc cl500 at €2,350 tax per year. It costs him €370 extra per year to tax in 3 month chunks. Original Uk mainland but He bought pre brexit already on Irish plates and same car is now asking €7k more than he paid 3 years ago as it’s too expensive to import . I will help him sell in the Uk in the next few months - he will get a nice vrt refund plus there is no vat or duty to re register in the Uk as it was an original Uk car. Road tax for that car is £695/€800 over there .

had a few beers there and rambled on.

Low ICE taxes, limited EV incentives and it seems an underdeveloped public charging network and yet EV sales are rapidly increasing in the UK. Yet over here it's considered essential by some that ICE drivers should be lumbered with even greater ICE taxes and EV incentives should be increased further otherwise people won't transition quick enough. I wonder which market is more profitable for EV producers

Still smarting from the €7k VRT paid on 1 year old smax imported from UK in 2009. Paid €15.5k for car which became a €22.5k here.

When some full sized EV SUVs come to market and the supply of EV trucks improves then I'm sure market share will grow in the land of the free

I've been keeping an eye on 2nd hand EV prices for a while now.

The 52kwh Zoes look like good value now. Especially the R135 model. Example here:

https://www.donedeal.ie/cars-for-sale/renault-zoe-iconic-r135-100kw-rapid-charge-50kwh/33103168?campaign=23

Great 2nd car in the house with solid range, 22kwh AC charging and CCS as an option. Deceptively spacious as well for the class. 5 year warranty as well I think and usual 8 year battery / drivetrain warranty. No battery lease on these.

Cons, zero in the latest NCAP rating but previous versions were 5 star.

I'd go for this over a 40kwh leaf all day long if I was in the market.

How can a modern car get zero in the NCAP?