Why WRECKED EVs are sold for FAR Higher Prices than Wrecked ICE Cars
I’ve just spoken to someone a few days ago and they said they bought an electric car with only very minor visible damage. It was written off even though there was nothing wrong with it. They bought it for $4,000. It was an MG electric car with a 65 kWh battery. $4,000, right? They’re using everything in that EV to make their own electric sports car. And many people are doing this. Yeah. Many people are actually getting these written off EVs, which there’s nothing wrong with almost all of them. They’re buying them really cheap and then using the batteries for energy storage or for making a Tesla van. I just met someone with a Tesla van. It’s not actually a Tesla van, but it’s got everything from a Tesla in it, including the software. literally the autopilot software. But now people are starting to cotton onto this and the prices were ridiculously cheap. I actually bought a brand new EV for $8,000 that was simply couldn’t be driven on the road even though there was nothing wrong with it. It was brand new. People are starting to figure this out now and there is now massive demand and this is pushing up the prices a little bit. Guys, I’m with Powershop for my EV charging electricity plan. you can get a $100 credit on your electricity bill. Plus, if you sign up with my referral link in the description below, you’ll get an additional that’s $175 of credit to sign up to Power Shop. I use the EV day saver plan. And the reason is because for those 2 hours from 12 till 2:00 p.m. in the day, you get electricity completely free. So, yeah, 2 hours a day, it’s probably going to cover your electricity bills for your EV every day. Basically, you can charge your your EV for free on this plan. I’ll put a link in the description below. Hello, my friends. Welcome to the channel. I’m Sam Evans. You’re watching the Electric Viking. The Guardian has said that powerful lithium batteries in writtenoff EVs are now hot property at salvage auctions. Demand for secondhand electric vehicle batteries is surging across the US, Europe, and Australia as buyers are repurposing them for everything from solar storage, off-grid energy, and even to make their own basically their own restood EVs out of internal combustion cars. Writtenoff vehicles typically um people aren’t really interested in them to be honest. uh they’re just sold for their parts. And those parts, if they’re an internal combustion vehicle, aren’t generally really worth all that much. The main buyers in the past were autoreckers seeking parts or car enthusiasts hunting for restoration projects. But the truth is, I mean, the demand for them is not that high because the value that these guys can get out of them wasn’t that high. But at salvage auctions across the UK, Australia, and the US, a new type of buyer is emerging, and they are interested in really one thing. The large high-powered batteries inside electric cars. The demand for secondhand EV batteries is skyrocketing, says the Guardian, with buyers repurposing them from for everything from solar storage units to off-grid energy systems that can replace diesel generators to actually manufacturing their own EVs out of, like I said, old internal combust or even new internal combustion cars. Brendan Green, the general manager of automotive solutions at Pickles here in Australia, says the auction house is selling about 100 salvaged EVs every single month. 100 a month in a country like Australia where EV penetration is well has been less than 10% this year, but interest is surging. It’s only very early days, but they are certainly in strong demand, says Green. We’ve got this new element of Second Life battery startups. That industry really didn’t exist 18 months ago. People are hunting for the batteries. Salvage auction houses started regularly seeing salvage EVs in early 2024. Most of them were Teslas cuz most of the cars that were sold in Australia at that point in time were Teslas. They were the first mass market electric vehicle on Australian roads and they’re still the bestselling EVs here in Australia. Battery hunters are now seeing alternatives such as Beds, MGs, uh many different models of car of EVs on the roads. Now, this is in line with the growing number of different makes on the market and different types of battery chemistries. In the future, we’re going to have sodium batteries. We’re going to have lithiumion phosphate. We’re going to have solid state batteries. Going to have NCM batteries. There is going to be a lot of choices of people, right? When a car gets a little bit of damage, insurance company writes it off. There’s nothing wrong with it. Nothing wrong with the battery at least. Anyway, then people will have all these choices of what do I want to use this for? What kind of chemistry do I need for my new project? And of course, these vehicles are not just write-offs as well. There are repairable write-offs, too. The appeal for EV batteries, it’s pretty clear given they are about five times as powerful as a typical home energy battery. If you look at it like a Tesla energy, a Tesla battery is what 13.5 kilwatt hours. The average the average battery right in an EV is closer to 70 kwatt hours. So what’s that? Five Tesla Power Walls. Andrew Chadwick, a lithium battery repair specialist, says even aging EV batteries have plenty of life in them for other purposes. And before I get to what he said, Rome’s airport is powered by Nissen Leaf batteries and not new ones either. They’re used ones. I mean, the truth is lithium batteries last much longer than what people have been saying. And even when lithium batteries get problems, like you might find your EV gets a problem with the EV battery, the manufacturer might replace it. It’s not very common, but it does happen. But they don’t throw them out. They actually just fixed them. The output requirements, said Andrew Chadwick, for a solar battery are a lot less than what you need for electric vehicle. And this is a guy coming from Second Life battery sales. Even if they are no longer good for an electric vehicle, with a little finessing, they’re perfect for a solar system. So, what what are the costs for these salvage EVs? What should you expect to pay for a vehicle? Well, here’s the approximate price being paid at auctions for a vehicle with less than 15,000 km on the odometer. The approximate price is 9 to$13,000 Australian or 9 to 14,000 Australian dollars cuz some of them are actually still really good and of course it depends on the model. Some of them might have a much bigger battery. So if if the batteries say 100 kilowatt hours, then people are willing to pay more. Average age 2.5 years 9 to4,000 with less than 15,000 km on the odometer. But if the vehicle is an average age much older than that say 12 years potentially an old much much older Tesla or a Nissan Leaf with an average distance of 130,000 km then the price ranges from 2.5,000 to 6,000. That’s Australian dollars by the way. In the US prices are similar. just convert those figures to US dollars. So you’re looking at probably about $5,000 to se to $8,000 and that’s for a newer one and and much much older than that you’re looking at about yeah a couple of thousand to up to4 $5,000 depending on the actual model of vehicle in the US as well. Remember there’s a lot of shops battery shops that can repair batteries. So, even battery shops that can refresh batteries. And there’s also other options where you can you can buy a salvaged EV and you can swap out the battery pack and put in a different battery not from the manufacturer and it could be often be much much cheaper. An EV battery that is down to 70% capacity. Right? Consider that this will considerably reduce the range of the vehicle making the car undesirable for a lot of people. Right? But it still holds plenty of charge for energy storage. So, you can even put a trailer load of secondhand EV batteries together, power an entire music festival, power the Rome airport, power. In fact, I believe there’s um also a Porsche, I believe Porsche’s headquarters in Germany is powered by batteries as well. There’s numerous locations around the world where they’re just using um old Second Life EV batteries to power factories and warehouses and all kinds of things. A music event here in here in Australia was postponed in June over council concerns its power usage would disrupt nearby businesses. The punk and indie alternative festival went ahead in early September powered by repurposed EV batteries. And that was their way of saying to the uh basically the government, no, no, no, we’re not going to use all your power. It’s fine. We’re going to use repurposed EV batteries. We don’t need all your power. Our trailers powered the whole event for the day, including speakers, food trucks, everything, and had plenty of power left over, says John Miler, co-founder of My New Energy. People really like them as an alternative to a diesel generator. If you’ve got sound equipment or food trucks, having a noisy, smelly diesel generator probably isn’t the atmosphere you’re looking for. Whereas these batteries are silent, pollutionfree, and hold huge amounts of power. After the event, the trailers were recharged using solar. ready for their next deployment. What a great business. You know, this guy obviously has found EV batteries from old cars, put them all together, and made these big trailer batteries that can he can take to an event and power the event, and then, you know, he charges them with his own solar panels. It’s a such a great idea. At auctions, the demand for EV batteries is very clear. Financial year sales of salvage EVs increased 200% over the past 12 months with the wrecked vehicles now boasting much higher price tags than combustion engine cars. Isn’t that interesting? I’ve been saying this for a long time now. Wrecked EVs worth far more than internal combustion engine vehicles that are wrecked. Buyers know that EVs contain some of the world’s most advanced battery technology ready to be deployed. About 1 in 10 new car sales in Australia are battery powered with the Tesla Model Y and the Model 3 and the Build Seal and the ADO the most popular models in 2024 according to the EV council. In 2025 or in fact in the last I guess you could say month you’d say the Zika 7X is right up there with the Model Y and of course the Buddion Model 3. I believe Xpang have sold 1,400 of the G6 as well. So, there’s quite a few different choices. Now, after a slow roll out in Australia, marked by political headwinds, motoring experts believe EV sales will surge over the next 12 months as prices become more competitive and charging infrastructure is built out. The more charges there are, the more confident people are that they can buy an EV and go on the road trips that they want to do. Currently, many batteries are shredded. The material is then separated into components ready to be rebuilt into new batteries with the process often including multiple facilities in different countries. Now the truth is that EV batteries even after they’ve been used up in an EV if that happens because many of them will outlast the life of the car. if they were and then they were used for energy storage. Well, after that, the batteries themselves are still worth thousands of dollars because black mass, which is what is in a battery, is worth about $8,000 US per ton when I last checked. And that’s what black mass is. It’s just a chopped up battery. And then they extract the lithium and any other valuable elements inside the battery. A repair battery can reduce the process though. And you know, it’s better than recycling a battery to just reuse it for energy storage. With some secondhand buyers, they’re saying they can get about 20 years of life from a repurposed battery from an EV. Um, 20 years of energy storage. And here’s the thing, repurposed EV batteries could be the solution to the world’s energy needs. Rather than using power out of the grid um and wasting all this solar during the middle of the day, we can just use all these old cars sitting around, crashed cars, um old cars that people don’t really want. Uh we can repurpose them, you know, we can use them for energy storage. And I think, you know, in 20, 30, 40 years time, we could have half the world powered by old EV batteries. This is a real real possibility and I think it could happen. What do you guys think? Let me know. Thanks for watching. [Music]
Why WRECKED EVs are sold for FAR Higher Prices than Wrecked ICE Cars
Wrecked electric vehicles are selling for much higher prices than wrecked gas cars, largely because their battery packs, motors, and control modules retain significant resale value even after severe damage. Salvage buyers and repair shops see EVs as valuable sources of rare, expensive components—especially batteries that can be reused, recycled, or repurposed for energy storage systems.
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