New vs used: what a two-season fleet is actually worth

Every launch plan we see treats the fleet as money that disappears. You buy scooters, you operate them, and at the end of their life they are worth nothing, so the whole purchase price gets written off against the season.

That is not how it works, and building your model that way costs you twice - once when you overpay for new, and again when you scrap something you could have sold.

What used fleets actually go for

Here are the used fleets in our live catalogue, asking prices per unit, so you can see the shape of it:

These are asking prices, not closed deals, and fleets generally sell below the asking figure. But the ranges are real and they are the point of this article.

Why the spread is twenty-fold

Two fleets of the same model, same year, same unit count can legitimately sit at opposite ends of that range. Four things decide where:

Battery health. The biggest single factor, usually. Between a fleet that can go straight back into shared operation and one that needs a replacement programme, the difference in value is often larger than the entire asking price of the cheaper fleets above.

Backend release. Binary, and worth more than condition. A mechanically tired fleet that releases cleanly is a better asset than a pristine fleet locked to a vendor who has stopped replying.

Parts availability. A model you can still buy motors and packs for holds its value. An orphaned model does not, because the next buyer is doing the same maths you are.

Paperwork. UN 38.3 summaries, certificates of conformity, national approvals. A fleet with a clean documentation trail is worth materially more than the identical vehicles without one - and that gap is frequently bigger than the amount people spend haggling.

Age matters less than you would think

People fixate on production year. It is a weak signal on its own.

A three-year-old fleet that ran a short season in a small city, was stored indoors and charged properly can be in better shape than a one-year-old fleet that did twelve months of hard urban duty and sat outside all winter. Cycles and storage beat the calendar.

The vehicles themselves usually have life left. A fleet that has run two or three seasons in shared service will often do another two or three with a new operator - that is the entire premise of this market, and it is why fleets get sold rather than scrapped.

Buying used: the actual trade-off

The upside is bigger than the price tags suggest, because a factory order is not just a higher unit price. It comes with a minimum order quantity that may be well above the fleet you want, sea freight, import duty and VAT on the higher invoice value, and a lead time measured in months. By the time new vehicles are standing in your warehouse, the landed cost per unit is a long way above the sticker - and you have waited a season to find that out.

Used fleets cost a fraction of that, and they are available now, in the size you actually want. For anyone trying to make a season, the timing is often worth as much as the money.

The downside is that you are buying uncertainty, and the uncertainty is concentrated in the battery packs and the backend. Buy new and you know what you are getting. Buy used and you need to find out - which is why the inspection question matters so much more here than the price question.

There is a middle option worth knowing about. Some of what trades on the secondary market is new - unsold or never-deployed stock from an operator who over-ordered or an order that fell through. You get new hardware without the factory minimum, without the lead time and usually well under a factory landed cost. It is not always available in the model you want, but when it is, it is often the best value on the table.

Our honest position: used is the right call for most first fleets and for most expansions, provided you check properly. It is the wrong call if you buy on photos.

Selling: what you get back

This is the half nobody models. When you are done with a fleet - you are exiting a city, downsizing, moving to a different vehicle class - those vehicles are an asset, not a disposal problem.

What makes yours worth more when that day comes:

• Keep the documents. Every UN 38.3 summary, every certificate. Filing them costs nothing now and is worth real money later.
• Know your backend position. A seller who can say "yes, these release, here is the confirmation" sells faster and higher than one who says "probably".
• Buy supported models in the first place. Your exit value is set partly at purchase, by whether the next buyer can get parts.
• Store them properly. Packs sitting at zero charge through a winter in an unheated warehouse lose value you cannot get back.
• Do not wait until they are worthless. The fleets that sell well are the ones sold while they still have seasons in them. Vehicles parked "until we decide" quietly depreciate the whole time.

Put it in the model

If you take one thing from this: add a residual value line to your fleet economics. Even a conservative one changes the picture, because it turns the vehicles from a cost you consume into an asset you hold.

It also changes what you buy. Once the exit value is in the spreadsheet, the cheap orphaned model with no parts supply stops looking cheap.

If you want a view on what a specific fleet - yours or one you are looking at - is actually worth, ask us. We do this every day and we will give you a straight number.