[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. :)