[sokoloff]

My Nissan LEAF (pure EV) is almost 6 years old. It's going to be near-valueless (selling for parts) within another 6 years due to battery degradation [and not starting with that much range in the first place]. That's after one major battery-out warranty repair by Nissan already.

The last two ICE cars I had, I bought them when they were 12 and 9 years old, rather than planning how to get them parted out at that age. I've very much enjoyed having an EV (especially as the guy who turns the wrenches), but they don't last anywhere near as long as ICE cars without major infusions of cash for the battery.

My next car is very likely to be another 6-10 year-old ICE car where I'd probably never consider buying a 6-10 year-old pure EV.

[brianwawok]

LEAF went the cheap route of battery with bad thermal management. I think current generation of other BEV should get you at least 10 years. Not going to yet match my 16 year old Honda I have in my driveway as my backup car, but getting closer!!

[sokoloff]

All of that's true, but largely not helpful to the working poor who today can buy pretty reliable 15-20 year old Corollas, Civics, CR-Vs, etc for $1500-3000 and expect to drive them for 5 years or more and have them be every bit as useful at 25 years old as they were when they were 25 months old.

"other BEV should get you at least 10 years" isn't nearly the same as "will get you 25 years if it doesn't rust out or get crashed".

[brianwawok]

Sure, but do realize those 25 year old cars are likely polluting 2-10x more than modern cars. The sooner we can get the oldest cars off the road, the best chance our planet has.

[sokoloff]

Order of magnitude, making a car creates about as much emissions as driving it over its lifetime. [0]

If we typically average even just 20 years from an ICE and 10 from a BEV, the BEV starts out way behind in the green race and might never catch up.

Stopping making new inefficient cars is good. Scrapping working perfectly good cars is an alloy of good and bad.

[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/green-living-blog/20...

[maccard]

Looking at wikipedia [0], a 6 year old nissan leaf has a range of 75 miles to start with, and it was a minor iteration on the first generation of the nissan leaf. It looks like 2016 was a major upgrade to the leaf, so I'd be curious what the resale of a 2014 vs 2016 nissan leaf looks like when they're both out of warranty.

> The last two ICE cars I had, I bought them when they were 12 and 9 years old,

You're comparing technology that's had 100 years to develop, with the first iterations of EVs. You're right in that a current 2 year old EV likely has a much lower resale value than a 2 year old ICE vehicle. But remember that the Model S has been on sale for less time than the time between now and when this ban comes into place. Buying a 6 year old EV right now seems like a terrible idea, buying a 6 year old EV in 2035 will likely be a very different story.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_Leaf

[sokoloff]

I hope your last points are correct as the EV experience has been overall good.

I fear that we might instead have a time period where fundamental battery technology (or our ability to harness it) will not permit a retention of 75% of range over a 20-year period. It might be like the cars of the 50s though 80s which rarely made 250K miles without major engine service.

Cars used to have 5 digit odometers in miles and it was a noteworthy event to “roll one over”. Now, the worst crapbox you can buy will do 100K easily and many of the Japanese imports will do 300K miles with a few external accessories being changed along the way.

[maccard]

The great thing about batteries is that they _should_ be serviceable. It looks like a replacement leaf battery for your car is available for ~5k, which is stupidly expensive for a repair for a 6 year old car (that will hopefully be 8 or 9 years old when you do replace it). One would hope that within 10-15 years that follow up legislation has been passed to either make these parts affordable/user serviceable, or to have them standardised. In an ideal world, all cars would use a standard set of batteries, and instead of waiting 40 minutes for a fast charge, you just "swap" your battery with another one and keep going. 40 minutes later, your old battery is usable by someone else.

Of course, we could find ourselves in an apple-google situation where the cost of the cars themselves is reduced to a price point that a mass market can stomach, and the cars are "disposable". That thought makes me sad.

[sokoloff]

I think a lot of the disposable nature is related to the auto repair shop rate being $130+/hr to the customer and assembly line labor being $35/hr to the manufacturer. (And of course combined with "people like shiny new stuff".)

It also makes me sad, both from an ecological standpoint, but also from a financial standpoint. I see a lot of people making car payments that are $400+ for 72-month loans. (The average car loan length in 2019 was 69 months for a new car and perhaps an even more astonishing 65 months for used cars.)

Then, because they have a loan, they have to have expensive collision insurance and maybe even gap insurance. Then, because it's an expensive liability they see everyday, they feel like they have to take it to the dealership for repairs (to "protect their 'investment'"). Some people feel like they need to build a little house to protect it (which needs a curb cut and associated extra land usage), etc.

If it were more commonly accepted to drive a "millionaire next door" 15-year old Camry or CR-V, I think we could go easier on the world and on people (maybe except for people who work in the automotive new-car supply chain).

Until then, I can be happy that people buy so many new cars so often, because if they didn't do that, there wouldn't be any cheap used cars for me to buy and DIY-repair to avoid the shop rate and parts markup. :)