Gas Prices Are Soaring. So Is the Demand for Used EVs

Buying inquiries are way up at iDrive1 Motors in Carrollton, Texas, where owner Dink Davis has specialized in used electric vehicles for a decade. Gas prices aren’t nearly as high in the Lone Star State as they are in other parts of the US, after the Iran war and the ensuing crisis in the Strait of Hormuz spiked global oil costs in late February. Compare the average $3.68 per gallon in Texas to California’s $5.89. But AAA says prices are up nationally more than a third since the start of the conflict. Davis and his three employees—in the business of selling cars that run on batteries, not gas—are very, very busy.

“The last three weeks, it’s gotten stupid,” Davis says. “We can barely keep up with the stuff that’s coming in.” On Tuesday, he says, a customer traded in a diesel-eating Jeep, which costs more than $100 to fill up, for a used EV.

Data from Cox Automotive shows that US sales of used EVs popped 12 percent in the first quarter of the year compared to the same time in 2025, with 93,500 vehicles sold in 2026 so far. That’s still a small sliver of the overall used vehicle market, but “the trajectory stands out,” Stephanie Valdez Streaty, the firm’s director of industry insights, said last month.

Edmunds, which tracks shopper research into electrified vehicles on its website, says consumer interest in the powertrain is up a few percentage points since the beginning of the year.

The bump in used EV interest comes at both a weird and convenient time. In column weird: Automakers that sell electrics in the US are continuing to back away from introducing new ones right now, after the federal government cut support for both potential EV buyers and the companies manufacturing the vehicles. Honda last month nixed three EVs plus a long-planned collaboration with Sony to build an electric, digital entertainment-first sedan. Ford discontinued the F-150 Lightning and canceled its next-generation electric truck last year. Stellantis canceled its own all-electric Dodge Ram last fall. New EV car sales are still growing in the US but not at the level expected earlier this decade. In short, electric vibes are a bit off.

In column convenient: Used EVs are a pretty good deal right now. Though new battery-powered cars are still plenty more expensive than gas-powered ones—Cox noted an average $6,500 price gap in January—the gap is closing for used cars. The used electric average is $34,800, a lot, but just $1,300 more than the average gas-powered one.

In the months ahead, the price might get even better: Some 200,000 used EVs are set to come off lease this year, after US consumers, once attracted by generous tax incentives for leased electrics, start turning them in, triple 2024’s levels. (Those incentives went away with the Trump administration's One Big Beautiful Bill.) What’s more, the cars’ large, expensive batteries, once feared to be the Achilles’ heel of the used electric market, are holding up much better than even industry experts thought they might.

Cox analysts believe it would take six months or more of elevated gas prices to really turn consumers’ heads to EVs. The longer the conflict continues, the greater likelihood of lasting damage to Middle Eastern oil facilities—and continued pain at the pump.

In Utah, Alex Lawrence, the CEO of used EV business EV Auto, said in mid-March that buyer interest was working its way inland from California as gas prices kept rising. “I’m investing in my inventory even more, because I’m placing a bet that the demand is going up,” he said. Phone calls and comments on his business’s social media were notably up, he said, but customers “aren’t coming in droves yet.”

By the end of the month, the trend kept creeping. “It’s all getting busier,” Lawrence said.