'Those who already have this Tesla are footing the bill': Big discounts on electric cars cause frustration | car

Under the influence of the Flemish premium for electric cars, car manufacturers have reduced the prices of several models over the past two months, temporarily or otherwise. This week Tesla is once again offering a price cut, this time on the Model 3. Anyone who buys a temporarily stock model will pay €39,990 instead of around €450,000. Toyota goes even further: the bZ4X Dynamic currently costs €39,590, a discount of at least €11,000.

“But anyone who already has an electric car pays the bill,” explains Brecht VanHelwen, mobility expert at HLN. “From the beginning, the automotive industry has been advertising that electric driving may come with a higher purchase price, but that an electric car is cheaper in the long run, which is the famous 'total cost of ownership'. But it does not depend only on favorable taxes or lower energy costs, you also To take into account the resale value of such an electric vehicle.

“And this is exactly the problem with price cuts for current models. These ensure that promises are impossible to keep. “This is great for new customers, but this is the death knell for the residual value of existing electric cars,” wrote Edesbald Vaniewiese of automotive data analysis agency AutoVista. In other words, anyone who has already purchased a Tesla Model 3 or Toyota bZ4X Dynamic will now see their car's resale value suddenly drop.

The Flemish premium will continue to be maintained for anyone who buys an electric car for less than 40,000 euros this year. Meanwhile, more than half of the initially planned budget has already been used.

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