Hundreds of thousands of leased electric cars are about to come back to market, and many of them are worth far less than the automakers that built them expected. Industry analysts say roughly 800,000 off-lease EVs could hit the used market by 2028, a wave that could leave manufacturers losing about $10,000 per vehicle on average.
That would add up to nearly $8 billion in losses. The numbers matter now because two- and three-year lease contracts that once helped push EV adoption are ending, sending cars back to dealers just as used values have fallen sharply.
Leasing gave electric vehicles an early lift. Low monthly payments, tax incentives and worries about battery longevity made short-term leases more attractive than buying outright for many shoppers, and automakers wrote those contracts before the current drop in used values became clear.
What is coming back is not the same product that went out the door two or three years ago. A three-year-old EV can look very different from a three-year-old gas-powered car because the technology moves fast, with newer models often offering more range, faster charging, better software and more advanced battery systems.
Tesla’s aggressive price cuts also helped drive used values lower, and when new EV prices fall suddenly, older examples tend to take an even bigger hit. That is why the returning lease fleet is landing into a market that already looks softer than the one automakers planned for when they set the contracts.
The result is a mismatch between what manufacturers expected and what dealers can now get. The next question is not whether the wave is coming — it is how much of that $8 billion bill automakers will have to absorb as the cars roll back into the ev dealership pipeline over the next few years.
