By: Gabriella Bass
At 9 a.m. on a recent Friday, Ajish Kannamala, 20, got a call that the rarest of finds had been located: a 2015 Tesla Model S equipped with Supercharge for life, autopilot and a lifetime battery warranty. Within an hour his flight was booked. By the next day he was sitting in a used car dealership in Newark, New Jersey, and by 5 p.m. he was on the road back to Valrico, Florida in his new used electric car.
“ Imagine literally driving from New Jersey to Florida, with a grand total of zero dollars, and you just drove a thousand plus miles,“ Kannamala boasts.
At a time when so many sectors are facing unprecedented uncertainty due to supply chain disruptions, fuel prices, and tariffs, few have been hit as hard as the auto industry. Yet, one niche is thriving in this volatility: the used electric vehicle market.
Sales of used EVs have surged 12% to 93,500 units this year, near record levels, according to new data from Cox Automotive. The surge is being driven by a constellation of timing, policies and circumstances. Soaring gas prices, lease maturities, policy changes and a push for industry standards like battery health ratings have thawed consumers’ skepticism making this secondhand market a viable option, if not a necessary one.
The boom is particularly striking because sales of new EVs have cratered, down 28% to just 212,600 units over the past year — a historic decoupling that experts say is in part the result of a parity with Internal Combustion Engines (ICE), with the price of a used EV coming within $1,300 of its fuel counterpart.
This divergence is partly the result of big swings in federal policy in recent years. In 2022, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, which offered big subsidies for electric vehicle purchases — $7,500 for new, $4,000 for used. That led to a spike in sales of both new and used EVs.
These federal incentives were withdrawn abruptly in September 2025 when Congress passed the tax-and-spending package known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The expiration caused a brief run on the sale of EVs for a last chance at subsidies. Gary Pretzfeld, a dealer from Florida, said the expiration-driven boom was like nothing he had seen before. Typically, he would sell 60 used EV cars a month; in September, he sold 150.
“October 1st, I had 3 cars left on my lot,” he recalled.
Now, in early 2026, the used EV market is being flooded with 1.4 million EVs released from 2023 to 2025. They are all going to start coming off lease and high percentage are going to go back into the used retail market and that’s going to bring more options to the consumer.
Some savvy buyers like Kannamala aren’t just looking for a good price—they are hunting for specific, high-value perks. For example, Supercharge—a package that was offered with particular models like the S and X between 2013-2016—allowed drivers to supercharge their vehicles free for life for a one-time fee when they were bought new. Kannamala now combs the 50 states looking for these that are still programmed for free charging.
“This one has 144,070 miles, and I was really shocked when I drove it from there because the drive felt like the battery was replaced yesterday,” Kannamala says of his latest acquisition.
At the Used Car Summit in Miami last month, the conversation centered on expanding infrastructure and educating the public on battery reliability. “We don’t have the data yet, but the expectation is that the battery will outlive the warranty of 8-10 years,” said Stephanie Valdez Streaty, director of industry insights at Cox Automotive.
The auto industry has welcome the Trump administration’s reprieve from the strict eco-friendly mandates of the Biden administration. But that doesn’t mean they will abandon electric vehicles. Reverting to high-volume production of vehicles with internal combustion engines — known in industry jargon as ICE — is a non-starter for an industry that plans its assembly lines decades in advance.
“The future is electric, but the timeline to get there is definitely changed” under the new framework, said Valdez Streaty.
Whether the US policies are rewritten, the American auto industry has to stay competitive with the world. “They are definitely making more ICE SUVs but they can’t completely change course to stay competitive on the global stage,” Valdez Streaty explains. “China is also another thing that’s gonna continue to have manufacturers in the US really, continue to focus on electrification.”
With the Iranian conflict drawing out, elevated fuel prices may also help push consumers into the EV market. Data from Kelly Blue Book Autotrader, a subsidiary of Cox Automotive, showed a 30% increase in shopping activity for EVs, including doing research or reading articles about the vehicles.
“ So definitely in our data we saw an increase in consideration,” Valdez Streaty said.
However, economists like Justin Begley from Moody’s caution that a brief jump in gas prices may not lead to a long-term increase in demand.
“It’s hard to make the link between gas prices and the EV consumer until there’s an elevation on cost for 7-8 months,” he said. “Two months in is too soon to tell.” Despite this, Begley sees the spike as a “clear indicator of demand” that has now decoupled from federal subsidies.
For Kannamala, the decision to drive used EVs is final. He started saving up for his first Tesla when he was 15 and now owns four 2016 Teslas, including the one he bought this spring for $16,000.
He used to spend $250 a week on gas, but now he has a new mantra: “I promised I will never pay for gas again”.