Best Used EVs For Less Than £10,000

Electric cars are expensive, right? Not if you buy used, they’re not. And can you believe that you can actually get a really good second-hand electric vehicle (EV) for less than £10,000? That’s right – all the goodness of zero-emissions driving, for a four-figure outlay. Bear in mind when we’re talking about older EVs, though, they tended to have smaller battery packs and not as much one-shot driving range. Still, all of the following will have enough battery range to make a great everyday car.
Here are our favourite super-affordable EVs.

Amazing to think something so futuristic looking, so forward-thinking and so downright brilliant is available for less than ten grand, but the earlier BMW i3 models are falling into that realm now. Early i3s could do around 100 miles to a charge, which is more than enough for most people’s daily commute. And what you get for your money here will typically be a 2015 or 2016 car with an average number of miles on the clock – newer, higher mileage examples are available too. Then you can enjoy a top-notch interior, roomy enough for four adults, plus BMW’s typically brilliant driving characteristics, thanks to the i3’s rear-wheel-drive set-up.
Find your BMW i3 on Auto Trader

OK, so the Ami is less than £10,000 new, but if you fancy having Citroen’s quirky quadricycle, you can still make savings if you look for a lightly used example. They’ve dipped below six grand, in some instances, but even for that money you can expect your second-hand Ami to have as little as 1,000 miles on the odometer. This is perfect for urban transportation: its tiny battery and extremely modest electric motor will not get you very far, or do it very fast, but they will make scooting about in cityscapes a huge amount of fun. And the Ami’s cubist body will keep the rain off you, in a way an electric scooter or moped never could.
Find your Citroen Ami on Auto Trader

Hard to believe that such a big, practical, electric car is available for such little cash, but the Hyundai Ioniq is now a four-figure second-hand proposition. You need to search carefully to find the sub-£10k Ioniq, and avoid the mega-milers with 100,000 miles-plus on the clock, but you can find cars with under 60,000-miles which can go up to 174 miles to a single charge – and which is large enough and accommodating enough to work as your only family car. That the Ioniq is refined and impressive to drive is merely the icing on the EV cake.
find your Hyundai Ioniq on Auto Trader

The car which democratised EVs is thick on the ground for less than £10,000 – in fact, more than four-in-ten used electrics within our budget will be Nissan Leafs. For this sort of cash, you will even find second generation cars, providing a real-world range of around 150 miles. The Leaf makes a brilliant everyday usable EV hatchback. All Leafs get Nissan’s famous e-Pedal driving mode, harvesting as much energy as possible back into the battery and allowing you to control the car using the accelerator pedal alone. Higher grade models come with 360-degree camera and lots of other great features. However, it doesn’t matter what Nissan Leaf you find on the used market for this cash – what you end up with is a simply fantastic, practical hatchback… which just so happens to be fully electric. Win-win.
Find your Nissan Leaf on Auto Trader

All the class of the Volkswagen Up! city car, blended with the saintliness of an all-electric drivetrain – what’s not to like? Well, when good Volkswagen e-Up! models are available for less than £10,000 these days, we’re really not sure. This is a superb semi-urban commuter. Early cars had an official range of up to 99 miles on a single charge, yet post-2020 this increased to 160 miles so it’s worth shopping around. With all the interior quality and smooth driving manners of any up! going for an electric version is a very pleasant bonus. Plus, the same electric drivetrain was employed to create the Skoda e-Citigo and SEAT Mii Electric cars, so search out those if you prefer.
Find your Volkswagen e-Up! on Auto Trader

The Kia Soul hasn’t really been the success story it probably should have been. The original 2008 car was spacious, fun and uniquely styled – and arguably ahead of its time by virtue of being a small crossover/SUV, two years before the Nissan Juke came out and ‘created’ the segment. Anyways, these days it makes for an unusual, practical and highly enjoyable EV. Around £9,000 should get you a low mileage 2017-2018 model with a 30kWh battery good for a 155-mile quoted range. As per all the best small crossovers, it has a high driving position, feels really suited to town driving, and should be very cheap to run.
Find your Kia Soul on Auto Trader

This is the second Volkswagen on our list. The Golf wasn’t designed to be an EV from the outset, and so Volkswagen had to shoehorn an electric drivetrain into a car designed for petrol and diesel. It did a good job – the e-Golf is lovely to drive and has a decent enough battery range at 180-odd miles – but boot space is compromised a little, and it’s not as quick as you might expect. All that said, as a used buy it’s looking fantastic value these days. It’s still a Golf, after all, so the quality and refinement are outstanding. For a shade under £10,000, a 2019-year zero-emissions Golf feels like a very good deal.
Find your Volkswagen e-Golf on Auto Trader

The Renault Zoe arrived on the scene at a similar time to the Nissan Leaf, right at the beginning of today’s electric car era, so there’s plenty to choose from. We’d recommend avoiding cars with leased batteries when you can pick up an early car with battery ownership included for around £6,000. If your budget stretches closer to £10,000 you will find post-2019 cars with improved LED headlights, nicer interior and an increased range of over 200 miles. However, these cars grabbed headlines with their shocking zero-star NCAP safety rating, so if you like to err on the side of caution the Zoe might not be for you.
Find your Renault Zoe on Auto Trader

Smart has had a total transformation in recent years, but it was offering battery powered cars long before it launched all-electric models like the #1. An electric version of the Smart ForTwo first appeared over a decade ago and there’s a surprising number of pre-loved ones available. This is a tiny car with an even tinier range. However, when you consider you can pick one up for the price of a Citroen Ami it becomes an appealing option for taking on inner cities and concrete jungles.
Find your Smart ForTwo on Auto Trader

At the time of writing, Auto Trader has more Seat Mii Electrics available than Volkswagen e-Up!s. As we previously mentioned, behind the badge these are both the same car along with the rarer Skoda e-Citigo. Whichever you choose you’ll have a fab little car with a decent range, solid build quality and more interior space than you might expect in something so pint-sized. We’re gutted production has stopped, but with a handful available for less than £10,000, we think it should be near the top of your shortlist.
Find your Seat Mii Electric on Auto Trader