What to know if buying a used electric vehicle | Driving into the Future

PHILADELPHIA (WPVI) -- The used vehicle market for electric vehicles is starting to become robust with inventory.

Automotive expert, Keith Barry, with Consumer Reports, said one of the best pieces of advice when buying a used electric vehicle is to look at reliability reports.

And on top of the list of vehicle components: the battery.

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"It is more important than ever to remember that new products, new cars that are designed or redesigned from scratch, tend to have the most reliability issues," said Barry.

Barry said potential used EV buyers also need to ask several questions about an EV's battery, like what the capacity is and how fast it can charge.

"We've seen some of the earlier EVs are not able to take advantage of some of the new DC public fast chargers that are out there," he said.

Barry said to also ask questions about the vehicle's battery warranty.

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He added that more recent EV models largely have great warranties on batteries, often eight years or 100,000 miles.

"One thing that buyers can do to protect themselves is that sometimes you can run a battery health report. Sometimes this is something the dealer can do. There are third parties that can do that," he said.

Barry also recommends test-driving a battery on a full charge and seeing how quickly the charging level drops.

Some dealerships have been unable to unload EVs, as widespread adoption has been slow, so consider depreciation.

"Finally, I'm going to look at the price. I don't want to have to deal with a ton of depreciation. I want to buy something that somebody else had already took that hit on."