The used electric car in Germany has spent years being the cautionary tale of the market — the thing that lost value fastest and sat longest on the forecourt. Figures from DAT, the valuation house whose numbers underpin German residual-value contracts, say that has now reversed on all three counts.
The three months that turned
Between May and August 2026, the residual value of a three-year-old battery-electric car rose by 1.4 percentage points. Over the same stretch petrol fell 0.4 points and diesel 1.1.
That is a change of direction, not just of degree. For most of the past three years the electric line moved the other way while combustion held firm.
Where the numbers now stand
| Fuel | Residual value, 3-year-old | November 2025 | Days on forecourt |
|---|---|---|---|
| Battery-electric | 51.5 % | 48.4 % | 74 |
| Diesel | 58 % | 61.2 % | 92 |
| Petrol | 59.4 % | 62.6 % | 84 |
Residual value here is the dealer selling price as a share of the original list price when new. Electric cars still trail both fuels in absolute terms, and a buyer should not read this as parity. What has changed is the size of the shortfall. Against petrol it was 14.2 points in November 2025 and is now 7.9. Against diesel it was 12.8 and is now 6.5. Both gaps have roughly halved in under a year, and they closed from both ends — electric values rising while combustion values fell.
The forecourt figure is the one dealers will notice first. A used electric car now moves in 74 days, ten days faster than a petrol car and eighteen faster than a diesel. Slow turnover was the practical reason used-car dealers discounted electric stock; that reason is weakening.
What is driving it
DAT points at the pumps. Fuel prices have been climbing since March, and the effect showed up in residuals only from May because buying decisions take time to work through. The valuation house puts it plainly: fuel prices are likely the most important driver of the decision to go electric.
That is consistent with what German buyers have been telling researchers directly — rising fuel prices have been lifting stated interest in electric cars through the same period. Residual values are the harder evidence, because they are set by money actually changing hands rather than by survey answers.
The volume data agrees. Electric cars accounted for 5.3 percent of all German change-of-ownership transactions in August, against 3.9 percent a year earlier. Used battery-electric owner changes were already running 64 percent ahead of last year through July while the used market as a whole contracted; these residual figures are the price side of that same demand, and the first hard numbers on it.
What it means for a Tesla owner
DAT publishes these figures by fuel type, not by brand, so none of them is a Tesla number and none should be quoted as one. What they describe is the cohort a three-year-old Model 3 or Model Y sits in, and the direction of travel for anyone selling one privately, trading one in, or reaching the end of a lease where the residual was struck years ago on gloomier assumptions.
The caution is that the cause is external. This recovery is being driven by the price of petrol rather than by anything that changed about electric cars, which means it is as reversible as the oil price. A used-EV market that firms up because diesel got expensive can soften again when it gets cheap.