Western Sydney buys and sells more used cars than anywhere else in the state, and increasingly those cars are electric or hybrid. It is also, for a battery, the hardest environment in greater Sydney.
Where we go
Parramatta, Blacktown, Liverpool, Penrith, Bankstown, Fairfield, Campbelltown, Castle Hill and the Hills, Auburn, Merrylands, St Marys, Mount Druitt, Rooty Hill and the surrounding suburbs.
$249, no travel surcharge, and we come to the car — a seller's driveway, a dealership forecourt, an auction yard or a workplace car park.
Heat is not a small factor out here
Western Sydney regularly runs several degrees hotter than the coastal suburbs through summer, and on the worst days the gap is much larger. Heat is the primary driver of lithium battery degradation — more than kilometres, more than age.
What that means in practice:
- A car that has spent five summers on an uncovered driveway in Penrith has had a harder life than the same car garaged in Chatswood
- Passively-cooled packs suffer most. The Nissan LEAF, which has no liquid thermal management, is the clearest example on the Australian market
- Cars regularly charged to 100% and left sitting in the sun have had the worst of both
None of this makes a western Sydney car a bad buy. It makes it a car worth testing, because the variation between individual cars out here is wider than anywhere else in the metropolitan area — and that variation is an opportunity if you know which car you are looking at.
The auction and dealer belt
A large share of Sydney's wholesale and auction activity happens in the west and south-west, which is where ex-fleet, ex-lease and ex-rideshare EVs enter the used market.
Those cars deserve particular attention. Fleet and rideshare use means high kilometres, frequent DC fast charging and many more charge cycles than the odometer suggests. A three-year-old ex-rideshare Model 3 has worked harder than a six-year-old private one.
We attend auction yards and dealer sites across the area, and the test takes minutes — which matters when a viewing window is an hour and bidding closes regardless.
Booking
Online booking is open across all Western Sydney postcodes. Phone 02 7252 1390 if you would rather talk it through, particularly for multi-vehicle or dealer bookings.