Features / 13 March 2025 / Michael Taylor

How much you’ll pay for an “affordable” electric car in South Africa

The second-hand market is a great place to look if you’re shopping on a budget, but prices can still be incredibly high depending on what you’re looking for.

Nowhere is this more clear than with electric vehicles (EVs), which can still go for quite the sum even after they’ve been used and (hopefully not) abused.

AutoTrader recently published its latest Annual Car Industry Report for 2024, which documented the top 10 best-selling pre-owned EVs in the country.

The “most affordable” entry on the list is the BMW i3, which is still selling for around R509,000 on average, despite being a relatively old model at this point.

This was closely followed by the Mini Cooper SE with a similar asking price of R512,000, but the next cheapest listings were the Volvo EX30 and Jaguar I-Pace, clocking in at R927,000 and R996,000, respectively.

The EX30 was the most popular unit overall with 74 sales, which may not sound like a lot, but is actually a fairly impressive figure given how small South Africa’s EV market currently is.

In fact, the top 10 used EVs collectively sold 469 units, which is quite an achievement given that most still cost over R1 million.

Interestingly, the most searched-for model was the GWM Ora 03, though it was absent from the best-seller’s list.

This is likely the result of high demand and limited supply, as the Ora is one of the few “affordable” EVs to be introduced in recent years.

The Ora models that are listed on AutoTrader are typically only a year old with a mileage under 5,000km, which means they can still fetch a price of around R780,061.

However, while prices for used EVs are still undeniably high, sales increased by a substantial 76% year-on-year from 2023, indicating that the market for these cars is growing at an exponential rate.