MILAN — The collapse in the value of used electric cars that rattled European leasing companies and discouraged buyers for two years appears to have ended, according to data released Friday by the automotive analytics firm Autovista Group, which found that three-year-old electric vehicles retained an average of 48.2 percent of their original list price in September, up from a low of 41 percent in early 2025.
The recovery has been strongest in Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, where used E.V. values rose between 6 and 9 percentage points over the year, and weakest in Britain, where an oversupply of former fleet vehicles continues to weigh on prices. Three-year-old gasoline cars, by comparison, retained about 55 percent of their value, a gap that has narrowed from 17 points to 7 in 18 months.
“The panic phase is over,” said Giulia Ferraro, head of residual value forecasting at Autovista in Milan. “Buyers have figured out that a four-year-old battery is not a time bomb, and the industry has stopped flooding the market with cars nobody asked for.”
The slump had several causes. Aggressive price cuts on new E.V.s in 2023 and 2024 dragged down the value of existing ones; a glut of vehicles returned from corporate leases hit the market at once; and buyers worried about battery degradation and rapid technological obsolescence. Leasing companies, which had set monthly payments based on assumed resale values that proved far too optimistic, absorbed losses that the European Leasing Federation estimated at 9 billion euros, about $9.7 billion, over two years.
Several factors have reversed the trend. Manufacturers have extended battery warranties to eight years and 160,000 kilometers on most models, and independent battery health certificates, now standard in used-car listings in Germany and the Netherlands, have reassured buyers. Fewer vehicles are coming off lease this year, because new E.V. sales dipped in 2023. And a wider public charging network has brought new buyers into the used market who could not have considered an electric car three years ago.
At a used-car dealership in Monza, north of Milan, the owner, Davide Colombo, said his inventory of electric cars now sells in an average of 31 days, down from 74 a year ago. “Last year I was giving away three-year-old cars for 14,000 euros because nobody wanted them,” he said. “Now I sell the same car for 17,500 and the customer asks for a second one for his wife.”
Analysts caution that the recovery could be tested. New E.V. prices continue to fall as cheaper models from Chinese brands reach European showrooms, and a large cohort of cars leased in 2024, a strong year for sales, will return to the market in 2027. “We have gone from a cliff to a slope,” Ms. Ferraro said. “It is still a slope.”
A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 11, 2026, Section B, Page 8 of the European edition with the headline: After Two Years of Free Fall, Used Electric Car Prices in Europe Have Stopped Dropping.
