[asdff]

I'm really curious to see how the used market shakes out when it becomes time to play hot potato with the inevitable battery array replacement. Gas cars need work to but that work is less costly and they can take a whole lot of neglect.

[pornel]

When it's time to replace, you'll get a larger battery for less money. You may be able to sell or reuse the old battery for stationary power storage.

Nissan Leaf (one of the oldest BEVs) launched with 24kWh batteries. Now it has 40kWh for the same price (even less if counting inflation), and 64kWh upgrade options.

Batteries tend to degrade 1%-2% per year, and there's no breaking point when you have to replace. In the Model S's (another old EV model with over a decade of data available) the cooling system tends to die sooner than the battery it cools.

BEV battery recycling is still in infancy, because EV batteries are lasting longer than expected.

[Clubber]

The battery is the achilles' heel of EV's. An ICE engine can last 20+ years if you take care of it. An EV needs a battery replacement at the tune of $10K+ after 10 years at best. I think once they make longer lasting and/or cheaper batteries, this difference will level out.

FWIW I drive a Toyota ICE and fully expect it to last to 200K+ miles and 20 years. If I decide to trade it, it would keep a heck of a lot of its value vs a Tesla. Those things depreciate like produce.

[asdff]

If theres no road salting a car can last literally forever. Especially older cars that were built on solid platforms. So many old big block trucks or diesel mercs in socal still working fine after 40-50 years. I see even older cars too, some of them beat to absolute crap with hardly any paint left on the metal but still in service.

[Clubber]

I did the math on the Toyota and based on how many miles I drive in a year (I work at home) and the expected life of the vehicle, it'll run reliably until I'm 169 years old. :)

[Dylan16807]

Batteries do keep getting cheaper, and from what I've seen even at median they do better than 10 years, let alone at beat.

Though just to toss some numbers out, if you had to buy a $10k battery every 150k miles that's definitely affordable.

[asdff]

The thing is with the used car market is that maintenance cost is not paid by all the owners. Its paid only by who happens to be holding the hot potato when the battery is screwed, and most people with means aren't holding a car to 150k miles, that's about how many miles an ICE car has in the maybe $5kish used range. The sort of person buying a $5k car can't afford a $10k battery. They might not have access to $10k on a line of credit either. The worst similar thing that could happen for an ICE car is a timing belt going before you replace it and screwing up the engine or the automatic transmission needing replace, both issues much less costly than a $10k battery but also costly enough that people sometimes walk away entirely from the car.

[rurp]

I feel like the battery cost issue is being hand-waved by too many people here. For most people driving a car with well over 100k miles, spending $10k to replace a battery is a total non-starter. In addition to batteries degrading, there's also the risk of an accident. Some crashes that would be fixable for an older ICE car will require replacing the battery in an EV at a cost far greater than the car would be worth, making it non-viable. The battery is a risk factor that many people already worried about their finances won't want to take on.

[Dylan16807]

> For most people driving a car with well over 100k miles, spending $10k to replace a battery is a total non-starter.

Well do the math with prices instead of miles.

If you think you need to replace the battery soon, and the EV is $8k cheaper, it's a tempting purchase. Just don't spend the $8k on something else.

If that's impossible because the battery car would have to go below free, then that could be a problem. But that's still way cheaper than EVs are right now. I wish we had that problem! And at that point in the future, the fix is cheaper batteries, and it will happen.

> Some crashes that would be fixable for an older ICE car will require replacing the battery in an EV at a cost far greater than the car would be worth, making it non-viable. The battery is a risk factor that many people already worried about their finances won't want to take on.

I don't think the difference between "4% chance it's totalled in the next few years" and "5% chance it's totalled in the next few years" is a deal breaker. And that math is affected by so many other model-specific things too...

[Dylan16807]

EV batteries don't tend to suddenly die, do they? You can negotiate a lower price for a weaker battery, and you don't have to replace it the moment it hits 80% capacity.

And we're currently talking about cars that are worth significantly more than $5k. An extra 30% to fix it up is very different from an extra 200%.

[Clubber]

A colleague of mine bought a Tesla. He was looking to trade it up for a newer model after a couple of years and it depreciated probably $30K (nearly half) if I recall correctly. He absolutely loves the car, but nobody wants to take on that type of depreciation hit.

[Dylan16807]

That's something worth nothing, but most of that is unrelated to the battery, and I don't see how it has anything to do with the rest of this comment thread.

[pedalpete]

Seeing as so many of these comments are related to battery replacement costs, I wonder if this will cause Tesla to take a larger hit than most automakers in the models where the battery is part of the frame. Are these even replacable?