What EV owners name their cars

A 2022 Rivian R1T out there responds to the name Sherman. We know because its owner told us, the same way thousands of owners have when they connect their car to Recurrent and give it a nickname.

Scroll that list long enough and you stop seeing VINs. You start seeing pets.

So we ranked them. Every name here has at least 10 active vehicles in the Recurrent community, spelling variations included. Here's the top of the leaderboard:

Look closely at that list and a pattern jumps out. Tessie is first. Tess is third. Tessy is seventh. Tessa is ninth. Four slots in the top ten are the same affectionate shorthand for the same brand .

A few other patterns caught our eye.

The pun names. EV owners cannot resist the electricity joke. Sparky leads the pack in the top five, followed by Electra, Wattson, Joules, Zippy, Flash, and Storm. Nikola made the list too.

The color names. Then there are the owners who just looked at the paint. Ruby is the headliner, second overall, with Bluey and Pearl close behind. Further down: Blue, Big Red, Silver, Silver Bullet, White Lightning. Simple, honest, hard to argue with.

The fandom names. This is the category that says the most about who's buying these cars. Jarvis cracks the top ten. Around it: KITT, the Batmobile, Baymax, TARS from Interstellar, Toothless the dragon, Shadowfax the horse that outran every rider in Middle-earth, and Serenity for the sci-fi diehards.

Here's what you learn watching tens of thousands of people name the same kind of machine: for a lot of them, the EV is more than a vehicle. It's a character. A dragon. A Civil War general.

People name the things they're attached to. Judging by this list, EV owners are pretty attached.

What's yours called? If you've connected your car to Recurrent, you've already got the option. If you haven't named it yet, the leaderboard's got ideas.

The lease-payment cliff is coming.

If you leased an EV in 2023 or 2024, you probably got a deal that no longer exists. That's about to matter.

Jonmar Teachman, a sales director at Baxter Volkswagen in Nebraska — one of Recurrent's 2026 best places to buy an EV — leased his ID.4 right before the $7,500 credit expired. So did a lot of his customers. Now the first wave is coming off lease, and the math has changed.

"I would love to give you a $200 payment on a new EV, but I can't. It just doesn't exist." That's the conversation dealers are bracing for.

Teachman's read on where those drivers go: not back to gas. The smart ones are already ahead of it. As he puts it, they're on the ID.4 subreddit saying, "I'm turning in my lease, I'm going to be looking for the pre-owned version of my car because it's that much less expensive."

A number of people have told us that they’ve bought the used version of the car they had leased. If your lease ends this year, keep your options open and let us know what you decide!

Question: “If I'm cross-shopping a used Model 3 and Model Y, is the Y worth the extra money?”

The gap is bigger than most shoppers expect. Across 14,106 used EV listings this spring, the Model Y's premium over the equivalent Model 3 ran from about $2,200 to $6,600, depending on the model year.

The tie-breaker is cargo and lifestyle. If you regularly haul kids, dogs, or lots of gear, the Y's extra space earns the premium. If your life fits in a sedan, the 3 saves you money.

If you just want the best used value on the lot, look at the 2023 Model 3: roughly $27,000 with about 37,000 miles.

Read the full breakdown →

If you're coming off a lease or eyeing an upgrade, it helps to know what your current EV is worth first. Recurrent gets you real offers from vetted buyers: no haggling, low balling or car lot visits.

See what your EV is worth →

Adam spent 20 minutes looking for a $36 receipt. His finance team sent three Slack messages. Someone made a sticky note.

Ramp would have matched it automatically the moment he swiped. Auto-coded, in-policy, synced. Nobody had to ask Adam for anything.

This is what finance looks like when it runs itself.

Your team can be Adam. Or they can not be Adam.

Don’t be like Adam