Some problems facing the used EV market could be due to the models generally being larger than most buyers would like.

That's according to Matthew Freeman, managing consultant for data firm Cap HPI, who said consumers' general unfamiliarity with EVs - especially compared with those working in the industry - was also an issue.

Speaking at the Vehicle Remarketing Association's (VRA) annual seminar, Freeman (pictured) discussed how EV residual values had fallen by 42% over the past 12 months, and explained that his company had a number of theories about what could be behind this.

He said: "One of which is that these are in a way the wrong kind of cars. If you look at a typical non-EV, the normal profile is about a third of the market is superminis, and about a third of the market is lower-medium. The rest of the marketplace is city cars, supercars, luxury cars, executive cars, and traditional upper-medium. 

"If you look at EVs, you can see we have far too many upper-medium cars coming into the market. 

"Interestingly we have about the same for exec/luxury, and we're getting more superminis, which is a bit of a legacy of how when we started with EVs they started with smaller cars like the Nissan Leaf and Renault Zoe. But the real issue is that, because the market has focused on company cars, we've had a lot of product coming in in that larger sector, and those are not typical of the kind of cars that used buyers buy."

As well as company car demand, Freeman explained that manufacturers' fitting larger batteries to increase range was also a factor in increased vehicle size, as well as targeting more affluent buyers who could afford new EVs.

He said: "We know how much [OEM] investment is going into [EVs]. We know that we're in the beginning of the development cycle for these vehicles, and therefore the costs are higher. But the costs are significantly higher. 

"For manufacturers trying to get those vehicles out into the marketplace, what they want of course is for somebody to buy them, and therefore they have to be focused on customers who can afford them. And those customers are not the same as the used market customers."

As Freeman explained, these used market customers also face the issue of continued unfamiliarity with EVs generally.

He said: "I think it's important to remember, when we're in the industry, whether you're working with OEMs, operating a fleet, remarketing, [EVs have] become very central to us. To the rest of the marketplace, particularly the used consumer, these things are still unusual, they're still special, they're still different. 

"People really don't understand or know about these vehicles, and it's usually because they don't come into contact with them. They may be lucky enough to know someone who has got an electric car, probably because it's a company car, but for most people these things are very strange and very unusual still."

Noting that currently around 3% of retail used car adverts were for EVs, Freeman said: "It's a bit of a cause for concern that with a relatively small volume of product going out there, it's had a negative effect on residual values, and on the popularity of those products. And the point is, this is only going to get more and more difficult and more and more complex. 

"If we look at the ZEV mandate, they are very, very ambitious targets. We understand what the government is trying to do here, but what it's going to do is create an awful lot of volume going forwards.