Demand for EVs and hybrids at one of Australia’s leading car rental companies has exploded in the last year, outstripping requests for internal combustion vehicles by 2800 per cent, it has been revealed.

Rob Chan, managing director at car rental marketplace Turo Australia, said they have had to turn to buying second-hand EVs to cater for the wave of interest. The development comes as new information points to “extraordinary” demand for used electric vehicles as they hold their value better than expected.

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“A lot of hosts are on auction sites or on sales sites looking for more inventory because they know that this riding tide is lifting all the boats. They’re looking for EVs because the demand is there,” Chan told The Guardian. 

Pickles, which bills itself as Australia’s leading marketplace for used vehicles, found that battery life for used EVs is outstripping expectations after testing more than 2750 second-hand batteries. 

The results revealed that five-year-old EVs score 93 per cent for battery life, which measures their charge capacity. Former ride share cars that clocked up more than 230,000km also impressed with a score of approximately 90 per cent.

Battery degradation has long been thought to be a big drawback for second-hand electric vehicles, but the Pickles study – and others like the research by Austrian firm Aviloo, which conducted more than 50,000 tests – have found that the problem appears to be far less impactful.

Pickles illustrated the surge in demand by telling The Guardian that a recent auction of dozens of BYD EVs resulted in a bidding frenzy in March, even though the models had been damaged in an incident that saw them splattered with concrete spray.

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“We had thousands of buyers trying to bid on about 40 cars, so just the prices we generated were incredible. The amount of views that we got on those cars, the bidders that registered and the amount of bids that we took were extraordinary compared to what we could typically see,” said Pickles general manager of automotive solutions Brendon Green.

Earlier this month, Pickles busted another myth about EVs in Australia when it revealed that regional buyers are now snapping up almost a third of the electric models it sells, and the number is rising. It’s usually assumed that the long distances drivers clock up in regional areas, combined with the lack of charging infrastructure, would keep numbers low.

The company said the rise is “not simply a shift in buyer mix” as it revealed that the number of EVs bought in regional areas increased by approximately 130 per cent in the 2025/26 financial year.