Prices of low-mileage used cars continue to be high as the average wait time for delivery of new vehicles blows out beyond a year, but the Mazda MX-30 Electric is doing exactly the opposite, with plenty of new stock in showrooms and dealers slashing the prices of ex-demo/near-new examples.
In some cases, the discounts amount to more than $16,000 by the time on-road costs are factored in, with the cheapest example of the Mazda EV currently listed on carsales for $55,990 drive-away – about $10K less than the usual list price of $65,490 (plus on-road costs), or $72,598 drive-away in WA.
All 23 of the near-new or ex-demo MX-30 E35 Astinas listed on carsales at the time of writing are listed for less than the new drive-away price in WA, and while most mainstream EVs have wait times of between six and 11 months, Mazda Australia says its dealers have plenty of MX-30 E35 Astinas in stock.
This shouldn’t come as much of a surprise given the brand has sold less than 50 examples to July this year and the wider MX-30 small electrified SUV range (including the cheaper hybrid variants) was never intended to be a leader in its segment – it has the Mazda CX-30 for that.
In fact, while the CX-30 found 9520 homes and accounted for 14 per cent of the mainstream small SUV segment so far in 2022, placing second only to the MG ZS (11,609, 17%), only 414 MX-30s have been sold in the same period and Mazda initially earmarked only 100 examples of the MX-30 Electric for customer pre-order from May 2021, ahead of first deliveries last August.
The fact the EV can’t match its similarly priced competition on driving range, power and torque might not help matters, but perhaps a few more people will be swayed by the drastically discounted prices of MX-30 demonstrators.
Attractive deals on ex-demo and low-mileage used cars are far from a new thing; it’s practically written in the bible that if you want the sharpest deal on a near-new car from a dealer, thou should seek out a demo.
The COVID-19 pandemic flipped all that on its head, however, with production and other supply chain interruptions causing unprecedentedly long delivery times and even sales stoppages in a few extreme cases.
The new-car supply crisis then prompted many dealers and savvy private sellers to up prices of used cars and capitalise on the willingness of some new-vehicle buyers to pay more in order to avoid the long wait times.
The result is that some used vehicles were and continue to be sold for considerably more than their original new price, as new-vehicle prices also continue to rise.
The Toyota LandCruiser 300 Series, LandCruiser 70 Series and Suzuki Jimny are all prime examples of this.