Am I overthinking buying a used EV right now or is this actually a good window?

I bought a used EV about eight months ago with basically your exact situation, 45 mile round trip commute, garage with a level 2 charger I installed, gas car pushing six figures on the odometer. No regrets at all. The part people miss in these timing debates is that your personal math matters way more than the market. I'm spending maybe a third of what I was on fuel, almost nothing on maintenance, and I financed it at a rate I can live with. Even if the car keeps depreciating another 15 percent over the next two years, the savings eat that up pretty fast. On the 3 percent mortgage comparison, it's half right. The parallel that holds up is that cheap used EVs exist right now because of a specific one time pileup, early adopters upgrading, rental fleet turnover, and lease returns all hitting at once. That supply doesn't repeat. The part that doesn't hold up is assuming prices only go one direction from here. They might drift lower for another year, they might not. One reply above said prices already bottomed and are creeping back up, and in my area that matches what I saw while shopping. Decent ones with clean battery reports were getting snapped up in days.

Things I'd actually check on that specific car before signing anything. Get the battery state of health from a diagnostic, not just the dealer's own report sheet. Ask whether it was fast charged constantly or mostly home charged, since that shows up in degradation over time. Check that the charging port and onboard charger work on both AC and DC, because those repairs are the expensive surprise nobody budgets for. And look into whether any used EV incentive still applies to your income and the car's price cap where you are, that part of the rules has been changing. Waiting for the absolute bottom is how you end up keeping the 130k mile gas car for three more years while spending the difference on fuel and a timing job. If the battery checks out and the price is fair, the commute savings alone make this one of the easier calls you'll make.

I keep seeing the 'one time pileup of supply' arguement and I don't buy it. Lease returns and fleet turnover aren't a one and done event, they roll through on a cycle, and there's another wave of 2 and 3 year old EVs coming off those leases every year. On top of that, new EV prices have been coming down, wich drags used values along with them. The mortgage comparison falls apart for me for a simpler reason too, a house doesn't lose half its value while you're paying it off. I'd assume the car is worth less every year you own it and let the fuel savings be the bonus, not the pitch.

First post here so sorry if this is a dumb take, but I'm in a similar spot except I don't have a garage, just a driveway and an outlet I'd be stretching a cord to. That part has me more worried than the price timing stuff honestly. Reading the replies makes me wonder if the math changes alot when you're stuck paying for public charging half the week. Is that a dealbreaker or do people make it work without a home charger?

I bought mine last spring and the thing that actually sealed the deal for me was bringing my own scan tool to the test drive. I'd been going off the dealer's printed battery report like everyone said, but plugging in my own reader and watching the cell voltages sit evenly within a hair of each other told me more than any sheet of paper. Cost me nothing since I allready had it from fooling with my old gas car. Felt like I was buying with my eyes open instead of crossing fingers. Also asked the seller to leave it charging overnight so I could see the charge rate drop off normally in the morning, which apparantly spooked one seller who said no, and that was its own answer.

Update: went back for a second look and brought my own reader like the scan tool poster suggested. Cell voltages were sitting nice and even, so that eased a lot of my worry about the battery report being dealer window dressing. But the reply about lease returns being a yearly cycle, not a one-time supply dump, is sticking with me. Does that actually change the timing math, or just mean prices drift down slowly instead of bottoming out?