The Expert Podcast

In addition to all the news about the cold weather affecting electric vehicle charging and range, a couple of other sneaky little pieces of news showed up. First of all, used electric vehicles (EVs) have unsustainable depreciation. That's one of the reasons why Hertz sold all their Teslas from their rental fleet — because they're losing too much money on depreciation. Used EVs drop 23% per year, so after two or three years, they're worth less than half of what their value is, according to AutoTrader, which tracks all these values. So, keep in mind, you may save some money on gas, and maybe not, but either way, it's costing you a lot more in depreciation.

Another little piece of news that was overlooked is there was actually some misrepresentation in how much the efficiency of these EVs is. The electric vehicle cheating scandal. The government has come out with ratings on these EVs about how much they save and what their efficiency is. It turns out that the ratings weren't even accurate. They can multiply the efficiency by six times. The Energy Department rule artificially multiplies the efficiency by six times. So if you have a vehicle that really gets 65 miles per gallon equivalency, they rank it at 430, which has no basis in reality or law.

The ratings you see on these EVs may not be accurate, according to the Wall Street Journal. Once these new accurate ratings come out, it might change the way that electric vehicles are looked at in terms of efficiency and environmental impact.