Im about to buy a one year old i4M50 with 3,500 miles on the clock for £61,000 (UK Pounds). This will be my first electric car and my primary concern is the rate of depreciation. Would anyone have any comments or personal experience of this cars depreciation rate. Thanks.
i4 Depreciation and Resale Values
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DeclanR
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There are some on the forum who have multiple expensive cars. Personally I have never spent anything close to this on a car. I like a nice car, and can afford one, but they seem such a waste of money. Normally I would buy a car that was a year or two old and save myself all that initial depreciation but if you wanted a decent EV a year ago, that wasn't really an option. My original budget was c.£50,000 and I was going to get a Polestar2 but when I got to drive in one, I wasn't £50,000 happy! Expanding my sights and checking down the back of the sofa for loose change, I ended up here. At least I was fortunate to get my M50 at the original price (c.£70,000 with most of the options).
I've already said that I think that it is a great price and a big saving for only 3,500 miles. You don't get to spec it yourself but I could make a few compromises to save £18,000! Going EV (this is my first too) can be a bit scary but this forum is a great place for information and tips, so have a good browse. I think it is a lovely car and get a lot of pleasure from driving it. The EV aspect has been a breeze but I do few long trips and can charge at home. And in the end, if you find it isn't for you, buying at that price, I can't see you loosing much if you decided to sell it six months down the road.
£61k for that? I'd take their hand off if I hadn't already bought my car. Have they said why it's up for sale?
Hmmm... I wonder if it has DAPP...
...like in "Little Britain"? You never know what lurks behind an internet avatar 🤣
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It must have Dapp and lots of other things, it is a £79.000 car meaning it’s got £6.000 worth of options will probably have 20 inch wheels too. A year ago the car price started at £63,000 now it’s £71,000, still great value at £61,000 with a low mileage!
Well, I must confess that an Internet troll decided to DM me on Facebook the other day to keep his bitchiness out of the public eye, so I told him to F off and then outed him on the public forum. 🤣 But this isn't something I'd normally do! Like I keep saying - I'm nice really!
Mind you, I might start to get a bit cross if I can't get to the bottom of why I can no longer post smileys or URLs in Chrome on a PC running Windows...
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You got an excellent deal. I had ordered the 2022 i4e40 and it never got built, was about to order the same thing in 2023 when I got the opportunity to buy an i4M50 someone had ordered yet backed out of the deal when it arrived. I am so glad I ended up with the M50. I betcha big time you're gonna just love your new ride. Congrats!
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I think that the i4 has far too high second hand price for now because of very long delivery times of new cars and that there are not a lot of them on the market.
Mod: DM me if you want to dig into this.
As others have pointed out, the initial rarity of the i4M50 due to productions issues and shortage of certain components plus a miscalculation by BMW of the popularity of the M50 compared to the E40 caused an unusual lack of depreciation and there were cases where M50 s were selling for a premium over list both here in the UK and also in other markets. Those days are long gone and it is not too difficult to get a new M50 both here in the UK and on other markets. My view is that the M50 will depreciate quite heavily from now onwards and I think we are beginning to see the effects of this in the depreciation over the last couple of months. You only have to see what is happening with the Porsche Taycan. I just did a quick valuation of my i4M50 on Parkers (I have more or less every option and the valuation was pretty shocking) If I compare the depreciation on my M50 to other cars I have then it does not come out of that comparison too well.
My e40 uk lease with bmw directly (well Alphabet, owned by BMW AG) has the depreciation rated marginally lower than the equivalent ICE 4 and 3 series (If you do the math and some sensible assumptions). Of course that’s also how bmw steer the market but it assured me on the lease approach
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I just checked BMW Austria's leasing T&Cs for an e40: Residual value after 4 years / 60.000 km is approx. 40 percent.
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Don’t believe any of that nonsense, that’s just the leasing company pitching the price so they make a profit at the end of the lease. Imagine you leased a Tesla model 3 with a list price of £37,000 in 2019, then after 4 years it’s worth £15,000, have you seen a 4 year old Tesla for that kind of price? If the BMW i4 follows that it was £52,500 last year so in 3 years time will be worth £21,000, that’s just not going to happen. After 4 years these cars are still going to be selling around £35,000 with less than 40,000 miles on if you can find one!
this is de facto normal at least in the uk. Sales tax (VAT) is 20% on new cars, and the moment you drive off the dealer lot - it depreciated by that. You can private sale without any tax and sales tax on second hand is much reduced and tied to margin not value.
I still say if your primary concern is a financial one why would you buy anything more expensive then a leaf +. My leaf is a very practical car that makes way way way more financial sense then the BMW ever will. It is comfortable, peppy, and has plenty of range, and costs maybe half of the BMW if you get one 2 or 3 years old.
I think that your primary concern is something like luxury or fun, and depreciation is a secondary or tertiary concern that you should let the kid in you stomp into the ground hard until it is no longer recognizable.
Solid state batteries are on the way folks, do not kid yourself that our toys will be worth half what we paid in 4 years. In 2026 the 2023 i4 will be like a 2015 leaf is to a 2018 leaf.
I think that your primary concern is something like luxury or fun, and depreciation is a secondary or tertiary concern that you should let the kid in you stomp into the ground hard until it is no longer recognizable.
Solid state batteries are on the way folks, do not kid yourself that our toys will be worth half what we paid in 4 years. In 2026 the 2023 i4 will be like a 2015 leaf is to a 2018 leaf.
That is your opinion. I tend to disagree but there are plenty of folk on here worried about the poor efficiency of the car when doing short journeys in the cold. That is solely a concern about a few pounds worth of electricity. Now I worry about the big pounds (depreciation) not the little pounds (how inefficient the car is on short journeys). But each to their own.
The thing I am not understanding is if your worried that the car might lose 30k in value, and that is the primary concern, why not just switch to a car that is already 30k less and save the 30k your worried you might lose.
Let's take a real example. I was considering BMW z4 and a Cayman GTS. Lets say I preferred the z4 but it depreciates 10k more than the Cayman. I would then decide if I preferred the z4 10k more than the Cayman. That is how my mind works. It doesn't work like you seem to suggest which is, if you are worried about depreciation then go and buy a skoda. It is more practical and gets you from a to b.
(By the way, I always preferred the Cayman
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