This is an early 2022 story of Sri Lanka, in the backlash of the Car Import ban and Fuel Price hike cum Shortage. Sri Lanka is a different market anyways where people paid less for EV s when new, where the world had to pay a premium to own an EV. The EV advantage was due to the high import taxes in Sri Lanka, which overseas readers need to have in mind.
A different market getting created for Leaf!
High-profile guys are paying despite its value thinking beyond rupees and cents.
This is the concept of EV s in general, not to be cheaper than ICE anywhere in the world when new. And buyers paid higher, thinking environmental and overall cost benefits. But Sri Lanka got it cheaper than ICE when new (registered new at least).
What mattered to some was buying cheap and run cheap only, nothing beyond. Good that some of this fraction moved away from EV s by converting, they shouldn’t have bought in the first place.
Many make the excuse of battery scarcity, true that. We all need to work on it collectively.
After all the average daily driving distance in Sri Lanka is just 22 km per day (as per UOM). That’s a good match for a real 3 bar (Not the doctored).
We have 900,000 private cars, and EVs are just 0.004% of it. Mind you, that’s a massive market size even for 3 bars!
So the Leafs should not remain with unsuitable people, good some changed hands to the apt, at least due to the crisis!
Anyways, all this will be changed once the restrictions are lifted! Overseas readers need to know that the price of a 5-year-old mid-size ICE SUV/Sedan fetches in the range of 50,000 USD in Sri Lanka due to the import ban. Land cruisers, Mercs to Range Rovers are getting priced up to 100,000 USD as of early 2022.
However, there won’t be landslide pricing on EV s like for ICE when the ban is lifted. Only the capable owners will be switched to new EVs!