A new analysis of the used and second-hand electric vehicle (EV) market has shown that cars under $35,000 now account for a quarter of all used EV sales, double the share a year ago, and almost half are dealer demonstrators, and have therefore only driven a few hundred kilometres.
Australian digital platform and used car dealership Carma published new numbers earlier this month which revealed that 1,288 used EVs were sold at under $35,000 in September, accounting for 26 per cent of all EVs sold in the month, up from 13 per cent a year earlier.
Based on its own data and publicly available third-party data, Carma’s latest Used Car Market Report: Spring Snapshot, October 2026 also found that the overall used EV market grew by around three-quarters over the same time frame, and that the under-$35,000 segment grew faster than the rest.
Carma considers a car as ‘sold’ when its listing is taken down, meaning it has found a buyer or been taken off sale.
The report also showed that almost half of the EVs sold for under $35,000 were dealer demonstrator vehicles – a total of 580 of the 1,288 EVs sold in September. This is a huge increase from the same month a year earlier, when only 50 demos were sold of the 355 EVs under $35,000.
Of the 580 that were sold in September this year, nearly 300 were MG4 demos and over 100 were Geely EX2 demos.
But even if you were to limit the numbers to EVs that were sold by a private owner, cheaper EVs have still seen their share of the market increase, from 27 per cent to 33 per cent.
Snagging a dealer demo EV, however, means that the car has likely only ever travelled a few hundred kilometres, is being sold at a discount to the new-car price, and usually still has most of its new-car warranty intact.
Carma also found that the more affordable EVs tend to move out the door faster when petrol prices rise – such as in March of this year, when unleaded reached around $2.50 per litre, and twice as many EVs were sold than in the preceding month.
Finally, the report also revealed that Teslas are holding their price better than other EVs, while second-hand EVs are seeing their prices fall faster than the used-car price overall.
In September, for example, the same used EV from a brand other than Tesla was worth 9.8 per cent less than a year earlier, a drop of around $3,900 on a typical car. By comparison, used-car prices overall fell by 6.5 per cent over the same period, on the same basis.
Teslas, on the other hand, only saw their price fall by 4 per cent over the same period, dropping around $1,600 on a typical $39,900 car.
“To put that in perspective, for every $1,000 your EV was worth last September,” explained Carma, “a Tesla lost about $40 in value over the year, compared with $98 for an EV from another brand.”
