[vanattab]

>Whatever is cheapest today will likely result in the cheapest car in 5 years.

Maybe but I could also see electric vehicles not being the cheapest option with used cars do to the cost of battery replacement. I am not an expert in cars sales or electric vehicles but my understanding is that currently batteries make up a huge cost of an electric vehicle. We also know how battery performance degrades over time. If your in the used car market and your choice is between an electric car with 1/2 the range it had new so 120 miles or so, and $10,000 to replace the batteries or an ice vehicle with an engine with 150,000 miles on it but still full range and if the engine fails a $2000-$3000 engine rebuild price some day. If I am strapped for cash and trying to feed my family I know what I would do.

[WorldMaker]

The difference in cost between a battery replacement and an engine rebuild is partly market dynamics (our good old friends supply and demand). As more used electric cars enter the market, presumably the supply of replacement battery options increases and with it prices should theoretically drop.

Similarly, there's a possible inflection point where ICE engine rebuild demand drops low enough that some of the very specialized ICE engine parts start to jump in price.

> an electric car with 1/2 the range it had new

This seems a particularly pessimistic assumption given current information. (It's generally fair for the small batteries in a laptop or phone, but cars seem to be trending much better than "half".) The used market seems to be seeing 70% as the "low" figure and actively temperature managed batteries (such as GM's, recent Tesla's, very recent Nissan's) as much as 90%+ range entering the used market. Admittedly, sample sizes are still relatively low because overall electric vehicles seem to have longer than ICE average "first owner" lives (which makes comparing the EV and ICE used markets right now a bit more apples and oranges than people realize).