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The remote disabling sounds bad, but from an economic perspective renting batteries could be good for consumers and manufacturers at the same time. A lot of this battery stuff is very new at the moment. You look at, say, a Panasonic NCR18650 [1] and it's very affordable, but it loses 20% of its capacity after just 300 charge cycles. It depends on temprature, charge rate, depth of discharge and so on, so designers can trade off longevity for upfront cost. There are alternative battery chemistries that last longer - some manufacturers claim more than 10,000 charge cycles [2] but how do you test a manufacturer's claims that a battery will last 30 years without waiting until the technology is 30 years old? Or maybe the future is batteries getting swapped at change stations, Tesla style, so you'll end up with a different battery every day. We consumers aren't equipped to evaluate the longevity claims of the manufacturers, so why should we take on the risk when that 30-year battery might break after 3 years? On the other hand if we pay by the month or by the mile, if it needs replacement after 3 years that's the manufacturer's problem. In other words, renting gives the manufacturer an incentive not to cut corners, and to make sure their products are long-lasting and low maintenance, because the longer the product lasts the better the profit. Sure beats the printer ink economic model, where the manufacturers have an incentive to make cheap products that don't last long because selling more replacements means more profit. [1] http://industrial.panasonic.com/www-data/pdf2/ACA4000/ACA400...
[2] http://www.altairnano.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/60Ah-Da... |
You may not even be allowed to turn to alternative battery suppliers, because it might be forbidden by contract. Their are some user protection laws in some countries (say, France), but it won't be the case everywhere.