Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images

2026 is looking like a pretty good year for affordable electric vehicles. There’s a new Nissan Leaf that starts at a hair under $30,000 (as long as you ignore the destination charge). We’ll soon drive the reborn Chevrolet Bolt—with a new lithium iron phosphate battery, it also has a price tag starting with a two (again, ignoring the destination charge). And the closer you get to $40,000, the more your options expand: the Hyundai Ioniq 5, Chevy Equinox EV, Toyota bZ, Tesla Model 3, Ford Mustang Mach-E, and Subaru Solterra all fall within that price bracket, and some of those are pretty good cars.

But what if you only want to spend a fraction of that? Well, you won’t be buying anything new, but then neither do three-quarters of American car buyers, and there’s nothing wrong with that. A few weeks ago, we looked at what passes for the used EV bargain basement—ones that cost $5,000 or less. As long as you’re OK with limited range and slow charging, going electric on a shoestring is possible. But if you’re prepared to spend twice that, it turns out you’ve got plenty of options.

As before, we stress that you should have a reliable place to charge an EV if you’re going to buy one, which means at home at night or at work during the day. At this price range, you’re unlikely to find something that DC fast charges quickly, and relying on public AC charging sounds stressful. You’ll probably find a car with some battery degradation, but for the vast majority of models that use active battery cooling, this should be minimal; about 2 percent a year appears to be the average.

EVs in the US usually come with an eight-year, 100,000-mile warranty for the battery, although cars in this price range will probably be too old to take advantage of it. If you can, have the car checked out by an independent EV specialist; if not, for some models, there are apps you can use. Even a test drive would work, particularly if you can fully recharge it and see how much range the car reports.

Oh, I like those

In this price range, you should find plenty of two of Ars’ favorite small EVs: the BMW i3 and the Chevy Bolt. The i3 was one of the first EVs we tested; it appeared on the market around the same time Ars started covering cars. Even now, more than a decade later, there’s some seriously cool stuff in an i3. You’re unlikely to find any other car with a carbon fiber passenger cell for this little money, for one thing. And the interior is still one of the most stylish you’ll find on four wheels. It’s the perfect size for city traffic, and it handles pretty well, too.

Of course, it’s not the perfect EV. Its tires are an odd size and expensive to replace. And in this price range, you’re more likely to find earlier cars that came with a 22 kWh pack and a range of 81 miles (130 km), although for model year 2017, that increased to 33 kWh and 114 miles (183 km), making these the ones to look for. But plenty of i3s can also be found with the range extender, a two-cylinder motorbike engine that adds another 60 or 70 miles (97–112 km). And it is a true range extender—the little engine can’t directly drive the rear wheels; purists take note.

Similarly, we were smitten with the Chevy Bolt from our very first time behind the wheel at the 2016 Consumer Electronics Show. The following year, the little Bolt hit the market as the first affordable EV to offer more than 200 miles of range on a full battery: 238 miles (383 km) to be precise. That might not sound like a lot in 2026, when people expect a new EV to get 300 miles (482 km) between charges, but back then, it was plenty compared to the likes of the i3 or the compliance cars offered by other OEMs. And Tesla’s Model 3 was still some way away, remember.

Nearly a decade ago, Chevy let us autocross the Bolt against a Golf GTI: the Bolt won.
Credit: Chevrolet

The Bolt is efficient, but can also be a hoot to drive, especially if you fit it with tires that prioritize grip over low rolling resistance. Some people find the front seats uncomfortable. And it will only accept DC fast charges at up to 55 kW, but as long as you understand that up front, road trips are more than possible. Early Bolts—the ones in this price range—should have had their battery replaced as part of a $1.8 billion recall.

What else?

You’ll find lots of Nissan Leafs for less than $10,000, a mix of first- and second-generation models. Unlike the new Leaf, these don’t have active battery cooling, and thus will be subject to more battery degradation and therefore lost range than alternatives. (There’s a smartphone app you can use to interrogate the battery.) The Leaf is competent, but wouldn’t be our first pick over the Bolt.

If you’re feeling a bit quirky, consider a compliance car. You’ll find Volkswagen e-Golfs, electric Ford Focuses, Kia Souls, and even some Toyota RAV4s and Mercedes-Benz B-classes, the latter two both using Tesla-supplied powertrains. As all of these are less common, it’s probably worth investigating how easily you can get them fixed if something breaks.

And there are quite a few used Teslas within our budget. Mostly these are an older Model S with stratospheric mileages, but friend-of-Ars, the Late Brake Show’s Jonny Smith, bought a Tesla with more than 260,000 miles last year and seems to be doing OK with it. This includes benefiting from free Supercharging, although this does not apply to every Model S. And at this price, everyone will think you bought the car well before Elon took off the mask.