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Comment by ClumsyPilot | Hacker News Reader

What does ut cost to replace an engine on a BMW? Thats probably thr closest equivalent

According to this internet anecdote, up to $10,000 or so for parts and labor which is about what I'd expect.

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080401174600A...

Maybe back in 2011 when that was posted, if the swap was for a second hand engine out of a crashed donor car that happened to be on-hand at the independent workshop where the job was carried out.

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.

Anecdote but even back 4 or so years ago I got a similar quote (10k) to replace a BMW engine with a new crate motor at the dealership. Let’s not make assumptions.

Tesla goal is to get battery replacement cost down to 4-7k.

I think right now it’s 13k? So maybe a tad more than a BMW engine but falling fast.

The point is you'll never need to replace the engine in a BMW unless you got into an accident or something like that. EV batteries will just degrade with normal usage.

That's simply not true - of many makes of car, but BMW in particular. There are lots of issues with combustion engines which can be fatal - look at the issues with vanos bits dropping into them, camchain failures, etc.

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).

I'm sure there are exceptions, but engine problems are way, way less common than the accepted degradation of batteries over their lifetime. Most car engines keep working well even after running 100-200k kms. There is no "accepted" degradation into uselessness as we have for lithium batteries.

The same degradation happens with ICE engines - they lose power and become less efficient.

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.

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