| Ok, sure let’s step away from actual data and work in theory. > lowering resale value, if the uncertainty of battery replacement costs loom in the future buyers mind. Saying batteries are a liability for resale value is no different than saying engines are a liability for resale value. High mileage cars have lower value than low mileage cars because they face more mechanical issues. The question is just how much. > no one is going to buy a 10 year old electric car if they think the battery (@$15,000) will need to be replaced in 2 years. This breaks down you you start running the numbers. Look at it this way, people are going to buy an EV that will last another 5 years before needing a battery at some price let’s call it 15k. Take an otherwise identical car and say it needs a 15k new battery right now is it worth 0$? No it’s worth more than that because after replacing the battery you have a car that’s going to last longer than 5 years. It’s also going to have the full range of a new car etc. Essentially, it’s only a bad idea to replace the battery when a car with a new battery would be worth less than the cost to replace that battery. Of course the random factor could also play a role, but that’s down to design or manufacturing defects not some inherent issue with EV’s. Put another way some ICE cars had huge issues with head gasket replacement etc, but people singled out specific makes and models with issues rather than saying the ICE was simply an unworkable design. PS: Saying it needs a replacement at some fixed point isn’t generally true. Battery’s rarely just fail, it’s normally a steady degradation such that someone can say range will be at least X miles for N years if I drive 13k miles per year but someone that doesn’t need as long a range or drives fewer miles could go much longer without replacing the battery. Presumably the market will do some filtering so people with lower range requirements will be getting great deals. |