Summary
Electric cars from the 2022 model year were advertised by dealers at a median of £49,700. Four years later the same models stand at £18,500. That is a fall of 63%, or £650 a month across the four years. Petrol cars of the same year fell 38%, from £33,900 to £21,200, which works out at £265 a month. That leaves £385 a month between the two fuels. Over the four years it is £31,200 against £12,700.
An analysis by AutoUncle follows the 2022 model year model by model, from 2022 into the first half of 2026. The same 44 electric and 188 petrol models are priced in all five years and weighted by their 2022 sales volumes, so the figures measure the fall in advertised price rather than a change in which cars dealers were selling.
Every electric model fell further than the typical petrol car
Leaving aside the tenth of models that fell furthest and the tenth that fell least on each side, the electric models lost between 56% and 67% and the petrol models between 29% and 47%. Nine percentage points of clear air separate the two ranges.
The edges point the same way. Line up the 188 petrol models by how far they fell and take the one halfway along: not one of the 44 electric models did as well as that, not even the one that held its price best. Going the other way, only one petrol model in 188 fell as far as the typical electric car.
The obvious explanation would be price class: electric cars from 2022 were the more expensive cars, and expensive cars give up a larger share of their price. The second half of that barely holds here. Sort the petrol models by what they cost in 2022 and the fall runs from 32% below £20,000 to 39% above £55,000, a spread of seven points across the entire range.
Sorted the same way, the electric cars lost 22 to 26 percentage points more inside every one of the five bands. Among the models advertised between £20,000 and £30,000 in 2022, the electric cars lost 60% and the petrol cars 38%.
| Model | Fuel | Fall 2022 to 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| VW ID.3 | Electric | 64% |
| Tesla Model Y | Electric | 63% |
| MG MG5 EV | Electric | 62% |
| Porsche Taycan | Electric | 60% |
| Fiat 500e | Electric | 58% |
| Vauxhall Mokka | Petrol | 45% |
| Nissan Qashqai | Petrol | 45% |
| VW Golf VIII | Petrol | 33% |
| Vauxhall Corsa | Petrol | 32% |
| VW Polo | Petrol | 27% |
In every price band the electric car now sits below the petrol car
The two baskets are not the same cars. Electric cars from 2022 were the more expensive half of the market: as a group they were advertised 47% above the petrol group, £49,700 against £33,900. Put those two whole-basket figures side by side four years later and you are weighing a premium set of cars against a mass-market one, which is a different question from electric against petrol.
So the comparison is made the way the fall was: inside each 2022 price band, where the two fuels started on similar money. In all five bands the electric car now sits below the petrol car, in every case by a wide margin.
The cleanest case is the £30,000 to £40,000 band. There the two fuels began about £100 apart, at roughly £34,000 each. Today the electric car stands at £13,600 and the petrol car at £21,300.
Seen from the buyer’s side of the desk, the electric car has stopped being the expensive option in its class and become the cheap one.
The gap is closing, but it has not closed
Against the first half of 2025, the electric cars from 2022 have lost a further 15% and the petrol cars 9%. The distance between them halved over that year, from twelve percentage points to six.
“In my assessment electric cars will go on falling a little faster than petrol cars. The technology is simply moving so quickly that a four-year-old electric car is measured against something markedly better, and that pushes down what a dealer can ask for it.
But the worst is behind us. The price war Tesla started in January 2023 set off an avalanche of price cuts. I do not think it repeats on the same scale, though, unless we see a genuine technological leap in range or in self-driving.”
Mads Noergaard, Market Analyst at AutoUncle
Source note
AutoUncle is the European standard for car valuations and price comparisons, aggregating used-car data from thousands of dealers across 14 European markets. This analysis tracks cars of the 2022 model year sold by dealers in the United Kingdom from 2022 into the first half of 2026, measured at the last price each car was advertised at, and covers over 51,000 dealer listings in 2022 and over 148,000 in the first half of 2026. The per-month figures spread the total fall over 48 months; the two measurements are on average 42.5 months apart, so those figures understate the monthly rate by about a tenth. Models are included when they have at least 30 sales at both ends of the period and are weighted by their 2022 sales volumes; private sales, leasing cars and new cars are excluded. The period begins in 2022, when used-car prices stood at their post-pandemic high and the cars in this basket had covered a median 1,600 miles, a price level common to both fuels. Grouping the models by what they cost in 2022 controls for price class. It does not separate out that peak, and whether the peak lifted the two fuels by the same amount is not something this basket can settle.
