No other EV has had major battery issues yet, so there really hasn't been time to develop a viable 3rd party battery replacement industry.
Even the actual car manufacturers tend to quote insane prices for full battery replacements because they really don't have a process in place on how to handle it yet.
When the battery replacement cost outvalues the cars price, it is uneconomical to repair.
The value of the car is only what someone would pay for it. If you're planning to keep it, then that value is only an insurance number.
A car is potentially worth a lot more if you keep it, especially if the car is low maintenance. With electric cars you trade some value up front (they are typically more expensive) to reduce the maintenance over the long term. But you will still have maintenance like replacing batteries when they go. You saved the cost of filling it up with gas and changing oil for going electric. So the smart move would be to treat your car like you're still sort of filling it with gas and changing oil and put that money towards the cost of new batteries when the time comes.
Every car has maintenance costs. With electric you just sort of push it down the road a ways when it comes to the battery.
You could get a new car... sure.. but now you have a car payment, or you may have thrown a bunch of cash at the problem. But if there's nothing wrong with your car except maintenance then put that money into the maintenance. Otherwise you're just pretending to care about the environment with your electric car that you probably tell yourself is cheaper (due to gas and oil changes) and better for the environment.
If the repair costs $2000 to fix the car, and it's otherwise fine, then it's worth it over another car so long as it is still getting the job done.
Where I would agree with you is when the car is no longer safe, either from a structural standpoint, or due to safety standards improving drastically. In those types of scenarios it is worth buying a new car simply for those reasons.
Maintenance has to be done regardless of what kind of car you have. If you're skipping those steps then it'll come back to bite you. I think people just don't like maintenance because they think it should be less than the value of the car. Which is simply not the case. Cars aren't investments (typically) in the sense that their value rarely goes up. It goes down, almost always.
Maintenance is done to keep the vehicle operating properly, reliable, safe, and in good condition. Sometimes those maintenance steps may increase it's value slightly
But here's an example. Say you have a car. It's worth $1000 but is otherwise in fine condition. It runs great, it's safe, it is rust free and structurally sound. Except it needs to tires. Lets say those tires cost $750 because you also have to buy a new wheel and maybe the tires are harder to find. Do you go "well... that's too much... I'm just going to throw the car out and get a new one"
If you do, you're doing it wrong. The same is true for battery maintenance. If the car is otherwise fine, it's like buying any other maintenance. You may not LIKE that you have to pay for maintenance, but it's part of vehicle ownership.
I think the same logic applies? $750 is way too low to have a good chance at finding a replacement that is relatively safe, structurally sound, etc. $2000 on the other hand is pretty close to buying a mid-2000s civic with no accidents on record. there's no clear cut answer here; either repair or replace could be the optimal choice depending on projected maintenance costs and your local used car market.
of course, this is all based on the assumption that your current car is already a beater. I probably wouldn't scrap/sell my 2017 vw if it needed a $2000 repair.
You need to calculate if the cost of 4 tyres plus any future maintenance costs (and the time that is going to be lost in the future for maintenance) exceeds the cost of a new car minus the cars current value.
Opportunity costs and value brought by a new car is hard to calculate, yes, but the motto is: if you like the car to spend 1000 on it, just do it. E.g. My car is 15 years old, while I can afford a brand new one, I don't, because I love it :)
You usually do not throw the car when it requires a major repair, but when the car is worth 2k with dead batteries to scrap and the replacement of the batteries costs 10k, while you can find a car that is OK to drive for 9k, it is considered uneconomical to repair. Because if you can just sell the car for 2k, pay 9k for another car, you are only losing 7k in the process. Replacing the battery costs 10k - the opportunity cost of replacing the battery is 3k.
This is why a car that requires an engine replacement (for an ICE car) is simply scrapped for parts instead of putting a new engine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3RCdrh666w&vl=de
Now, this probably isn't for the average person, an independent dealer or a resourceful (and careful) car owner could easily replace batteries much much cheaper.
https://twitter.com/TeslaMiles
https://insideevs.com/news/339110/highest-mileage-tesla-now-...
https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-record-mileage-900000-ki...
Right now I could buy a car for £1000. It won't be great but it would be good enough to get somebody too and from work and the shops. That won't be feasible when a new battery costs £5000 or more.
Cheapest Honda 21k https://automobiles.honda.com/tools/build-and-price#panel-so...
Cheapest Ford $19,995 https://shop.ford.com/showroom/?linktype=brand&intcmp=hp-sho...
Those budget brands generally don’t have dealers here.
Like I said you can maybe find a weird budget dealer somewhere, but it’s well under 1% if sales volume.
Low budget people typically buy 3-15 year old versions of these cars (which is easily under 10k cost).
The Mitsubishi Mirage, Nissan Versa and Chevy Spark (hatchbacks comparable to the small European cars the GP mentioned) MSRP at under 15k.
https://carsalesbase.com/us-chevrolet-spark/
What % of new car sales are under 20k? 5% maybe?
https://carsalesbase.com/us-honda-fit/
Only sold 32k cars in 2020, basically a rounding error compares to overall Honda sales. 260k civics and 200k accords.
Mitsubishi Mirage and other ~15k hatches fly off the (metaphorical) shelves.
Just not in the kinds of neighborhoods HN tends to live in.
Also HN's househeeper tends to buy a used Corrolla (or some other hallmark of upper middle class conspicuous consumption) from one of their clients so HN doesn't have that sort of exposure vector either.
https://carsalesbase.com/us-mitsubishi-mirage/
That is a tiny tiny fraction of things like Corrola and Civic.
There was also some talk about Teslas being able to send power back to the house with the new HPWC - not sure if that ever happened.
I guess I've used a bit more electricity during the last year because I worked from home more, but I doubt it's a factor 10. 100kWh per day would cost more than I pay for rent...
And with two small kids the laundry machine runs at least once per day and the dishwasher at least twice when we both grownups work from home.
I live in a just ok, older, 65m^2 (700sq ft) apartment in the midwest US with one other person. Everything is electric except the water heater.
We average about 30kWh/day in winter and summer, and about 15-20kWh/day in the fall and spring.
I agree that a lot of kWh are needed for heating. But I hope it's, in your case, for less than 6 months a year? Did you notice a difference in consumption in summer and winter months?
What I think will be the hard part of including cars into the grid is the warranty issues. I.e. if a battery gets so much usage from the grid that it somehow gets broken or worn out, who should take that cost/ risk?
I've heard the hard part right now is more regulatory in nature. Especially in the US where energy regulations vary not just from state to state, but also sometimes regionally within states based on power utility provider for a region.
Just put some solar panels on your roof
A good generator cost 5k or more. I have a 75 kWh battery sitting in my garage. Bummer the tech isn’t right to reverse the flow. My understanding is Tesla don’t have the right part to reverse the AC flow.
Refurbishing old car batteries into a Powerwall type of device might make more sense though for a domestic use a fuel cell make more sense.
Basically things that regularly need changing, although the hand brake cable is probably the exception to that.
Most reliable car I've ever owned.
https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080401174600A...
I think right now it’s 13k? So maybe a tad more than a BMW engine but falling fast.
I'd wager a guess that you'd be looking at well north of $30k for putting in a brand new engine in a Tesla-bracket BMW of semi-recent vintage.
I buy and sell cars as a side gig, and there are plenty of models which people like me would not touch with a barge pole because of issues like this - many of them German - and you'll find many for sale as spares or repairs, and find that secondhand engine supply is low (as many have blown up), and therefore expensive. Look at a diesel vauxhall insignia, for instance. Hand grenade engine, no chance of getting one secondhand (and even if it did, its got the pin pulled).
And batteries which are thermally managed (ie anything but an old leaf) will have a better lifetime than a typical ICE engine -tesla easily achieve 300k miles with less than 10% range loss.
This doesn't seem to be just an "early adopter effect" as the "neophilia" of "early adopters" you would think would trend the other way to a shorter first owner life.
If the increased first owner life of EVs remains as more "normal" people buy in, that implies there may be a major shift in the secondary/used markets and that may be fascinating to watch. It might possibly be a hugely surprising (to some) secondary effect of an EV transition. There's a lot of jobs in the used market, and such a big shift could disrupt those jobs quite a bit.
(I've got a 2012 Chevy Volt myself and don't feel a lot of pressure to replace it any time before the 15-year warranty on the drive chain/battery. I probably wouldn't replace the battery, as the small bit of pressure I do feel is that it is about time to get rid of the compromise of having an ICE generator backup I hardly/never use and move to a full proper EV.)
However from my 17 Volt to my 18 Tesla 3 I am now only considering BEVs, I really cannot reason myself back into a petrol powered car. With motorcycles there is no real alternative if you want to travel. For the most part they are still in "Leaf" tech with only dipping their toes into liquid cooling the pack and or motor. Worse is that most are useless for commuting as they don't have storage space or wind protection; protection which would improve their aerodynamics.
Late 2021 promises to have a much wider selection and 2022 should be a watershed year for EVs. Car wise I would love a good four seat convertible option. To me the EV power and open air travel were just meant to go together, too bad VW doesn't see fit to bring back the Beetle in that form as both previous incarnations were ideal for EV
I guess it's possible one could make a replacement battery pack which has an internal cooling loop, but it would be quite limited in how much heat it could get rid of through the battery case body without external radiators.
Of course better batteries might heat up less when used or charged, due to lower internal resistance, but that still leaves really hot or freezing days.
[1]: https://electricrevs.com/2019/01/31/does-the-new-62-kwh-leaf...
A heater for freezing days would be pretty simple.
The main problem(s) with the leaf are
- it charges to 100% every time (unless you dig into a menu, turn on analytics and switch to 80%) I never knew a leaf driver that figured this out.
- the battery size is very small, so you need a full charge to get anywhere reliably and/or drain it very low.
- to put any kind of mileage on the car, you need to cycle the battery MANY times. (one cycle might be a day's driving on the leaf, but one cycle on a tesla is a week's driving or more)
I think the leaf would be a perfect car with up to 20 miles of daily driving.
(I owned the same car as OP)
Ah, I hadn't picked up on this. My BMW i3 has a built-in buffer so what shows as 100% on the dash is actually about 80%, and similarly for 0% (I verified through the raw data).
Doing true "0-100" definitely does not do the battery any favors.
Either the battery heats up too much during driving to accept proper charge (no thermal management). Or it's too cold to accept charge (no heating).
Is there a website to keep track of all the gates?
It isn't comprehensive, though.