MY OWN ELECTRIC car is a 2023 Volkswagen eUp.

It is small, it is slow by modern standards, and if you ask it to do a round trip to Cork it will need a lie down halfway through. I love it anyway.

It cost me a fraction to run of what my previous diesel costs, and it has never once complained about Dublin traffic, and the only maintenance it has asked of me in years is a set of tyres, brake pads and wipers and a bit of patience with public chargers.

I have had it now for three years on a PCP, and it is set to go back next month.

It has never given me a moment’s trouble, and it does about 200km on a full charge, which is fine for where I live, spinning around East Cork.

I bring this up because I get asked, more than almost anything else, some version of the same question.

A friend, a cousin, a fella at a wedding who has had two pints and wants to talk about cars: should I buy a used electric car, and if I do, what do I need to watch out for?

It is a good question, and it is a more complicated one than it used to be.

There are now enough used EVs on Irish roads and on the used market, with about 6,800 on DoneDeal Cars at any given time, which is still relatively small, but there is a decent choice now, across enough years and battery generations, that “buying a used EV” is not one decision any more.

With a petrol or diesel car, the main thing you worry about is the engine and the clutch.

With an EV, it is the battery, and specifically how much of its original capacity is left. This is called degradation, and it is real, but it is also wildly overstated in the popular imagination.

Most modern EV batteries lose capacity slowly and predictably, often in the low single digit percentages per year, and many owners report barely noticing it over five or six years of ownership.

The trick is not to assume, but to check.

A basic diagnostic reading of battery state of health takes a few minutes and any competent EV specialist or a growing number of general garages can do it.

Ask for it before you hand over money, the same way you would ask for a timing belt history on an old diesel.

If a seller is cagey about it, that tells you something too. I have a portable unit from an Austrian company called Aviloo and my eUp after 36,000km and three years of use has 96% of its original battery capacity left, which isn’t bad at all.

The oldest cars are now genuinely........

© TheJournal