Modeling the Used Vehicle Market Share in the Electric Vehicle Transition

The adoption of a new technology is well described by an S-curve. It starts with a slow initial introduction, faster growth, and a final low-pace stage that corresponds to saturation. Once the innovation is introduced and progressively adopted, prior to saturation, some of the initial owners will begin selling their initially owned goods for different reasons, including lack of satisfaction, upgrading to a newer model, or other special unrevealed reasons. In a given market, new and second-hand products will coexist that will find new owners. The evolution of the two qualities of the same product will progress to a given equilibrium and a final ratio specific to each market. With the hypothesis of second-hand goods viewed as a new technology for lower budgets in the market, their adoption can also be described by the S-curve. The questions to be answered will relate to the dynamics of adoption of the two technologies, the ratio at equilibrium between new and used products in a market, and the delay required before equilibrium is achieved. In this manuscript, a realistic model is presented to approach and analyze the adoption of electric vehicles (EVs) with the mix of new and used vehicles with new registrations. The EV transition is presented with an adoption represented by the S-curve; the ratio of new to used EVs with new registrations is also presented in a context of high demand of used EVs and a context of rapid depreciation of EVs corresponding to lower demand of pre-owned EVs. The model predicts the number of years required before an equilibrium is reached in the ratio between used and new EVs in new registrations for a given market.