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Thanks to Tesla, which launched as a high-end performance car and still defines electric vehicles for many, people shopping for lower-priced cars don’t think of looking at EVs and especially don’t think of used EVs. Right?
A Seacoast dealer that sells nothing but used electric cars would beg to differ.
“There’s huge demand for cars in $15,00 to $25,000 range,” said Jesse Lore, co-founder of Green Wave Electric Vehicles in North Hampton, which has been selling used battery-only and plug-in-hybrid cars and SUVs since early 2023. The bulk of their inventory is in that price range, including a bunch of Teslas that have fallen in value following blowback due to the political views of the CEO, Elon Musk.
Lore will speak in Concord on Sunday as part of a clean-energy event called “Sun Day,” one of hundreds being held around the country to spread the word on solar power and other clean-energy technologies and practices. Electric vehicles often go hand-in-hand with solar panels.
Sun Day is sponsored by an organization called Third Act, which describes itself as ” a community of Americans over 60 determined to … safeguard our climate and democracy.” The event will take place at the State House from noon to 4 p.m. with a variety of events, including music, games, informational discussions and demonstrations of technology.
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The celebration is new this year. It is distinct from annual Sun Day celebrations held in May that were started in 1978 by President Jimmy Carter, which have never really taken off. Several other events are slated to take place in New Hampshire, including Gilford, New Boston and Barrington.
Used EVs are riding a wave at the moment as people rush to buy them before a tax credit of up to $4,000 expires. The credit was established by the Inflation Reduction Act in 2022 and was supposed to run for several years, but has fallen prey to President Donald Trump’s rollback of incentives to move consumers away from fossil fuel technologies.
Under the self-styled “big beautiful bill” the credit will now end on Sept. 30, after which prices are expected to rise sharply, since the tax credit was usually applied during the sale.
“We know that sales are going to go down; we don’t know by how much, ” Lore said. He anticipates that monthly sales of 45 to 55 cars will fall by a third.
New Hampshire doesn’t have a very good reputation in the EV community because of a shortage of public charging stations compared to neighboring states, but that doesn’t seem to have affected EV sales much. Data as of 2023 shows that the per-capita rate of electric cars registered in New Hampshire is actually higher than in Maine or Rhode Island.
Lore said 70% to 80% of the firm’s customers live in New Hampshire.
Electric cars have the reputation of being difficult to sell because customers need a lot more instruction than when shopping for a gas-powered car. Lore said the typical first visit with a customer can last 90 minutes, including an hour of just talking.
Despite that, he said, selling used EVs can actually be easier for a dealer compared to gas cars because electric vehicles have fewer things to be checked. “When buying a used gas car, there’s a lot of things that can go wrong – transmission, engine, radiator, etc. With electric cars, reconditioning costs are lower and the failure rate is significantly lower,” he said.
Lore said the company’s sales staff is not on commission. The firm has seven full-time employees and the two founders.
The vast majority of Green Wave’s buyers can charge their cars at home, he said, and the bulk of the models they sell are battery-only as compared to plug-in hybrids, which can run on batteries or gasoline.
In an ironic twist, considering Lore’s participation in the Sun Day celebration, the company does not have any solar panels. Lore said that’s because they lease the building and the North Hampton planning board turned down the idea of putting panels above the parking lot to shade cars.
David Brooks can be reached at dbrooks@cmonitor.com. Sign up for his Granite Geek weekly email newsletter at granitegeek.org. More by David Brooks
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