Written by by Brooke Crothers at forbes.com
I got some reverse sticker shock this weekend. My gorgeous, mint-condition electric vehicle is practically worthless.
I have a 2021 Chevy Bolt EV which I purchased for a little over $32,000 in the throes of the Covid crisis in 2021 when electric cars were scarce because of the chip shortage (and just before GM put a stop-sale on all Bolts nationwide because of a battery issue). Anyway, the short story is I needed a car fast and I wanted an EV so I ended up with the Bolt.
So, this weekend I went to my local CarMax in Los Angeles to get an appraisal. It was all smiles and small talk until he came back with the appraisal: $14,000. That terminated our friendly chat.
Mind you, my Bolt has been garaged with not even a scratch (that I can see) and with about 20K miles on the odometer. It has, to boot, a new battery that General Motors installed because of the battery recall. Unfortunately, none of that matters much to a used car dealer. And I don’t think I had wildly unrealistic expectations. I didn’t expect to get $20,000 but I didn’t expect $14,000 either. That means the dealer is going to sell it somewhere in the neighborhood of $18,000, which is, more or less, what I might get from a private sale.