Thanks to Dave at Dave Martin design for suggesting this as a post regarding purchasing an EV.
For the past few months, my wife and I have known the lease on our Kia Niro EV was coming to an end. While we truly enjoyed the car, there were a few things we were looking for in our next EV, so the search began on which brands or models would meet our needs. Ultimately, we decided a used Kia EV6 would fit the bill. More research continued to reduce the choices to a few trims and features. We ended up at a Wind trim with the Technology package.
Our lease wasn’t up until December, but we know the process to find the right car could take a while – especially considering that Indiana isn’t the most EV-friendly state. For a few months, our searches went as far as New Jersey, Tennessee, Ohio, Illinois and even further to find what we were looking for. We also had one specific requirement: We needed a successful battery test, in order to reassure us as to the overall health of the big battery.
To try to make life a little easier, we decided to focus our research by working with Kia dealers within Indiana. We contacted the vast majority of the dealers in the state – four dealers in greater Indianapolis alone – to try to find it. We had a few disappointments:
- We deliberately started the search several months early, so dealerships had plenty of time to search their dealer networks, auctions, and even Kia itself, for the right vehicle. We let them know clearly our parameters, and the fact that if the vehicle showed up before the end of our lease, we were willing to end it early.
Most dealerships responded with, “we’ll keep an eye out for it.” And other than a few updates about models that were outside our parameters, none really seemed willing to make the effort to do a more extensive search.
In early October, a ray of light finally came through. After speaking with Bob Rohrman Kia in Lafayette, giving them our specifications and our timeline, they sent us a text within 2 hours after finding a matching EV6 at auction! - The dealership where we ultimately purchased our vehicle admitted that, while they CAN generate a battery health report for their own brands, the report is so complicated that it’s essentially impossible for a non-technician to read it! And needless to say, no dealerships we spoke to could generate a battery report on a brand that wasn’t theirs.
I also learned that Teslas have a battery test built into the software; however, the overall test involves draining the battery to near zero, then recharging the vehicle to 100 percent – a process that can take up to 24 hours, that’s a lot of time AND electricity!
Thankfully, I had been doing research about used EV battery reports, and I stumbled across a company called Voltest. They’ve created an analyzer that works for most available brands and models, and generates a full report, including overall health, charge cycles, individual battery voltages, and how much battery warranty remains – all in less than 10 minutes.
I was fortunate to connect with the CEO of Voltest, and he sent me a free scanner to use! It went to the dealership with us, and the entire deal was contingent on an acceptable Voltest report. Thankfully, the battery reported a 100 percent health with no issues, and over 80,000 miles of remaining warranty.
After the deal was sealed, I showed the sales manager the report I generated. He responded, “You know, we’ve lost at least five deals on used EVs this month because we couldn’t give them a report like this.”
I can honestly say it was a tremendous weight, and I believe a game changer for the used EV industry, and should benefit both buyers and dealerships.
Because of our experience, we recommend all vehicle dealers have a Voltest battery tester, to increase both buyer and seller confidence, growing the used EV market even further. My heartiest thanks to Davide Giacobbe of Voltest for working with us. We hope to put Voltest in more dealer’s hands to boost confidence in used EV adoption.