Electronics Weekly
The ‘zero-mileage used car’ is not only a contradiction in terms but a new way to shift EV inventory in China.
To create a zero-mileage used car a dealer registers a new EV to get the manufacturer’s rebate then re-registers it as a second hand ‘zero mileage used car’ and drops the price.
In April China’s collective inventory of unsold EVs was the highest since December 2023. Aggressive price-cutting – up to 34% at BYD – hasn’t solved the issue.
Now the EV war in China is getting up-front and personal. The Nikkei reports a Huawei director denigrating Xiaomi’s success in EVs as due to “strong branding and marketing capabilities,” rather than technology, to which Xiaomi’s co-founder Lei Jun responded: “Slander, in itself, is a form of admiration.”
The chairman of Great Wall Motor called BYD the ‘Evergrande of the car industry’ referring to the collapsed property company, to which a BYD exec responded : “A dog can bite a person. But a person doesn’t bite a dog.”
The same thing seems to be happening in the U.K. There are 1548 “used” EVs with less than 100 miles on the clock on the U.K.’s biggest car listing site. If you can sit through one of his videos car dealer Barrie Crampton on Youtube keeps going on and on about this.
Plenty of non-EVs like this as well without any subsidy. My wife’s ‘used’ Aygo was one of loads at the dealer with ‘delivery-only’ mileage.