Credit: Aurich Lawson

I’ve been thinking about used electric vehicles lately. It’s not news that EVs depreciate faster than gasoline-powered cars. All the incentives like tax credits and OEM rebates that entice the first owner to sign the paperwork are factored in by whoever wants to be the second owner. There are widespread—if mostly ill-founded—worries about battery longevity and having to shell out for expensive replacement packs. Technology keeps improving, which means older models will date faster. Plus, there are the usual concerns about EVs, like charging infrastructure and winter performance.

So depreciate they do, and that’s good news for the three-quarters of US car buyers who buy used vehicles. It means that some very expensive EVs can now be had for quite little, but we’ll explore that more at a later date. Today, I want to focus on what you can get for peanuts. What if you wanted to only spend $5,000—or less—on an EV?

As it turns out, there are options even at this end of the market. Just don’t expect that much in the way of range: We’re still a while away from a $5,000 EV also being an EV a sane person would want to road trip. At the same time, most of us don’t drive more than 40 miles a day, and EVs are great at sitting in traffic because there’s no engine to idle. If you’re not commuting long distances and don’t live an hour from the nearest town, a cheap EV could make sense as a runabout. Especially as they’re cheaper to run than a gas-powered car.

However, since it doesn’t go without saying, let me state this clearly: Only buy an EV if you have a reliable place to plug it in at night. These EVs have small batteries, so a regular 120 V AC level 1 charger should probably be fine. But none will be able to take advantage of the latest hardware from Electrify America or Tesla Superchargers, which means the growth in public fast-charging infrastructure isn’t really relevant to these cars.

How about turning over an old Leaf instead?

The first-generation Nissan Leaf was the best-selling early EV, so it’s no surprise that it’s the most common EV you’ll find under our budget. The car didn’t have that much range to begin with, with a battery capacity of just 24 kWh at launch. And Nissan’s decision not to liquid-cool the battery pack means this EV battery will degrade more significantly over time than virtually any other modern EV. Essentially, the first- and second-generation Leafs are responsible for the general distrust of EV battery longevity.

Used Leafs can be had for less than $2,000, but below a certain point, they become economical to strip for spares, particularly the battery packs, which can have a second life as static storage. But what if you don’t want a Leaf?

Well, there’s the Mitsubishi i-MiEV, which will always hold a spot in my heart because it was the first car I tested for Ars Technica. I’ll always remember how quickly its skinny front tires were overwhelmed into understeer on a highway interchange. Its one-box pod-on-wheels design still looks different from almost anything else on an American road, and it’s very compact for city life. But its battery pack was just 16 kWh when new, and it’s certainly less than that now, so it helps if you live in a compact city.

Other choices lean more toward compliance cars, like the Chevrolet Spark EV or a Fiat 500e. A few Volkswagen e-Golfs and electric Ford Focuses might show up in this price range, too, and I’m seeing a couple of Kia Soul EVs and even a pair of very cheap BMW i3s just within budget. And I do like the i3.

However, something to consider is how wide to cast one’s net. Sites like Autotrader will happily let me search for cars across the entire country, but could I drive an i3 home to DC from Florida or Texas? An e-Golf from California? At this price point, charging will be level 2 at best, and stops would need to be more frequent than the “every 50 miles” we were shooting for under the Biden-era NEVI plan. While buying a bunch of very cheap EVs far away and seeing who gets closest to home would undoubtedly make for an entertaining video series, in the real world, a long-distance purchase probably needs to factor in the cost of shipping the car.