‘Supply not being matched by demand’ as EV values fall 18% in year – Percayso Inform

Electric vehicles (EVs) on the used car marketplace have retained much less of their value than their petrol, diesel and hybrid counterparts, dropping a dramatic 17.9% in value over the past year as supply outstrips demand.

This is according to the latest data from insurtech Percayso Inform’s vehicle intelligence platform, a daily tracker of over 800,000 car sales across more than three million adverts, provided exclusively for analysis to Insurance Times.

In this edition of the report, Insurance Times has tracked the performance of a cohort of vehicles of all fuel types over the past year, to see how macro trends in the marketplace are affecting car values across categories.

In order to provide an accurate view of healthy, high turnover segments of the market, only cars with number plates released between 1 September 2022 and 28 February 2024 with between 10,000 and 75,000 miles driven were analysed.

Between February 2025 and February 2026, all vehicle types saw large decreases in values. According to Derren Martin, data consultant at Percayso Inform, used vehicles might expect to see a depreciation of approximately 10% across such a time frame.

Of the fuel types, only petrol vehicles retained more value than that, falling by just 8.7% across the year. Hybrid vehicles and diesel vehicles performed slightly worse, falling by 12.7% and 14.6% respectively.

EVs, however, were the big losers, dropping by a dramatic 17.9% across the period. Martin explained: “EVs suffered a large downturn in the first half of 2025, caused by supply not being matched by demand.

“The used car EV market is volatile as there are strong new car offers, little incentive for a used car buyer and we are now beyond the early adopter stage for EVs, so many prospective used car buyers do not have the facility to charge from home.

“Cheaper price points also favour petrol buyers. Some EVs remain expensive versus equivalent internal combustion engine (ICE) cars, so continue to drop in price, however they did stabilise in the second half of the year.”

New Year’s bump

Focusing on sales value changes over the most recent three months, the data reveals that despite their relative recovery in H2 of 2025, EV performances are still lagging compared to all fuel types except diesel.

According to Martin, the sales data across the Christmas and New Year period usually reveals a fairly reliable pattern of consumer behaviours. He said: “It is normal in the used car market for prices to dip away in December and to then recover in Q1.

“In the run up to Christmas, potential car buyers’ attention and financial outlay switches to covering the costs of the festive period. Boxing Day is traditionally the busiest day on online used car sites and then people start to buy from January – New Year, new car.”

In defiance of the expected January bump, EV values fell by 1.13% in the month, a poor result compared to rises of 0.46% and 0.37% in value for hybrid and petrol vehicles respectively. Prices did rally in February, up 1.06% for EVs, compared to increases of 2.31% and 1.48% for hybrid and petrol cars.

Diesel vehicles were shown to be the outlier, seeing sustained price falls across the last three months. As previously reported, diesel vehicles are persistently unattractive to new buyers.

“Whilst diesel may now not be such a desirable fuel type, all of the others have seen their prices rise since the start of the year,” added Martin.

Depreciation variation

With used car values reacting strongly to macro market forces, both insurers and insureds rely heavily on accurate valuations to ensure adequate cover levels are maintained.

Pricing models, however, cannot simply factor in depreciation as a repeatable phenomenon, as vehicle cohorts of different ages can perform very differently over time.

Indeed, analysing the resale values of cars from the last four registration plate cohorts across the first weeks of their availability on the used market, marked differences could be seen.

After 26 weeks on the market, cars released in H2 2024 had retained 93.2% of their value, while vehicles released in H1 2024, H1 2025 and H2 2025 had all fallen to between 79% and 81% of their original price – a difference of over 10 percentage points.

Ultimately, as market dynamic continue to diverge across fuel types, accurate and up-to-date vehicle valuations will remain critical for insurers seeking to price risk and cover appropriately.