MG4 Depreciation

[JoOLS]

Well, the most I can get for my 6-month old Trophy with 3,800 miles is £22,000 with one of the online purchasing supermarkets, or about £20,500 trade in at MG. That's a third of its price in just half a year. Doesn't really matter to me as my wife loves driving it and will now only ever drive an EV. Hard to say at the 7 to 8 year point as the battery warranties start to expire and only time will tell the condition of the batteries and, more importantly, the sentiment of the marketplace for older EV's against whatever are the newer offerings at the time. We just enjoy the car now and do not regret the purchase for a single minute.

I guess that 20% is already wiped out with VAT (if it was a new purchase) and then supply will dictate used prices until, demand weakens which is likely to happen mid next year. The recent leap of second hand prices may well soon burn out as retailers/manufacturers fight for share and volume sales.

 

[salty]

My take on Depreciation is, simple, don't worry about it. I never have and never will, I get the car I want, when I want it, enjoy it, very nearly always modify it, and when the time comes sell it. If you worry about losing money on a new car, you'll never get one, and also in my case I've spent 1000s on modifying, which also I will never get back, so what, I've enjoyed doing it, and to me that's all that matters, life really is too short.

 

[Themist0]

Dont forget that after 7/8 years you will have saved 7-10k on fuel costs and servicing, so the nett cost is 23-26k… 3k per year cost if no one wants it… I’ll take the battery out at that point and put it in a mobility scooter

 

[Buster72]

My sentiments exactly. The MG4 was the only candidate out there when I needed a new car. It was the right choice at the time. I won't regret it however it pans out.

Having driven the Cupra Born and VW ID3, I wholeheartedly chose the MG4 as being significantly better and significantly cheaper.
And like you, I absolutely know that was the right decision.
And I am not interested in thinking about depreciation because I have no intention of selling the car.

 

[Rolfe]

Hah, if Bowfer was still here he'd be taking you to task for that!

 

[Tangoed Man]

I guess that 20% is already wiped out with VAT (if it was a new purchase) and then supply will dictate used prices until, demand weakens which is likely to happen mid next year. The recent leap of second hand prices may well soon burn out as retailers/manufacturers fight for share and volume sales.

Indeed. I have never been a great believer in the VAT story because most of us are non-VAT registered retail owners and so we only ever see the retail price of everything and we also pay it on purchase of everything we buy. Also, the price we sell back to the garage is irrelevant for VAT purposes as they only pay VAT on the element of the profit between trade-in price and re-sell price, and more or less the same of we sell the car privately - we only think of one price, not a plus-VAT price if trading in to a garage.

 

[Anon70]

Could be worse, if you start with a higher purchase prices those % depreciation numbers are going to look much more painful... some of these Taycan owners certainly feeling the pain at the moment

https://www.taycanforum.com/forum/threads/let%E2%80%99s-talk-about-depreciation-uk.14835/

 

[Corindikev]

I've not read all the posts but here in Australia the general rule of thumb for any car is that it halves in value every 3 years. I don't buy new cars very often. My last car I bought new in 2012 for $30k & sold it a month ago with 225,000 km on the clock for $6.5k so did better than the rule. My intention is to keep the car for the rest of my driving life given I am 73 now.

The savings on fuel and maintenance hopefully will justify the additional cost associated with the initial purchase price. CATL reckon the battery should be good for about a million km before degrading to a point where replacement is required. That I assume is if you treat the battery with appropriate care. There are plenty of reports of EVs doing 100,000 km to more than 200,00 km with little degradation at all.

In Australia the warranty is 7 years unlimited warranty on car & battery with a service every 2 years or 40,000 km. First service is about $280 & second about $850. What they do for that I don't know. Teslas don't have a service requirement at all which seems a bit odd. You get it serviced if something goes wrong or I guess if it won't pass a rego inspection. Here that is annually after 5 years from new.

 

[Rolfe]

I suspect that by the time the battery "needs replacing" the rest of the car will be in such a state that it won't be worth putting a new battery in it. Scrap the car, and sell the battery either to be repurposed for static storage, or failing that recycled.

 

[Tigger]

To be fair, USB music went out the window close to 10 years ago.

So what do you do for music?

 

[siteguru]

A rhetorical question, given that bowfer will be unable to reply.

 

[salty]

A rhetorical question, given that bowfer will be unable to reply.

Who is this infamous bowfer?

 

[Rolfe]

Someone who had a lemon MG4 bought last year, and eventually rejected the car over a very serious fault which was in the end cured (for other people) by a software update. He bought a Cupra Born but hung around here like Banquo's ghost, rubbishing the MG4 and trying to persuade new owners with any sort of problem to reject their cars. He refused to stop being so negative and that eventually got him banned.

 

[salty]

Someone who had a lemon MG4 bought last year, and eventually rejected the car over a very serious fault which was in the end cured (for other people) by a software update. He bought a Cupra Born but hung around here like Banquo's ghost, rubbishing the MG4 and trying to persuade new owners with any sort of problem to reject their cars. He refused to stop being so negative and that eventually got him banned.

Ah, right. Thanks for clearing that up, as I've heard him mentioned a few times.

 

[Rolfe]

There's a thread he started about a year ago with a title something like weird loss of power that details the entire gruesome story. He had every reason to be disgruntled and dissatisfied, but he couldn't accept that other people were happy with their cars, and started to criticise every little software glitch mercilessly and nastily.