I think a large majority of these EV analyses suffer from short-term biases as well. It will be interesting to see if the cost of maintenance remains super low when these vehicles need battery replacements.
I always imagined it as similar to transmission replacement - ie. If they can make the battery pack last as long as a median transmission, then it’ll be after the overall vehicles useful life before it comes time to replace.
We will see. We just swapped the battery on ours, price if it hadn’t been done on warranty was $50K, on a car we paid $35K for.. but then again, cost to us was zero.
Just like what happens to the cost of maintenance when fossil fuel vehicles need engine and transmission replacements.
Anything is possible but there is no indication that a battery replacement will be a typical or expected repair during the normal lifetime of an EV. An 8 year, 100,000 mile warranty on the battery pack is quickly becoming the norm.
The cost to replace an ICE engine often exceeds the value of the car. In which case, the car is typically junked/sold for parts/salvaged.
Does it really matter?
Once the cost exceeds the replacement value of the car, only a fool would pay the money to do the work.
There’s a difference in the utility and investment value. Lots of people are in the position where they can’t afford a $50k EV repair to keep a car roadworthy or $35k for a new car. Many more can stomach a $5k ICE repair. It may be the difference between getting to work and not for someone who can’t afford a new car. They will still get much more utility out of it even if it’s not worth it on paper.
Not everyone is in a position where they can just decide to buy a new car because it’s the prudent financial decision.
Regardless of your position --- salvage the old car (puts some money in your pocket) and replace it (with a similar used one if necessary) for *less* than the cost of the repairs to the old one. Take your significant other to dinner with the money you just avoided wasting on your broken old heap.
Why would a reasonable person *ever* spend more on repairs than the money required to just replace the broken car with one that works? Irrational, sentimental reasons perhaps?
Why spend $6K on repairs if you can buy a similar working car for only $5K? Why make your net "position" $1K worse with flawed logic?
What part of this sounds "tone deaf" to you?
But a 6k repair to get a new engine/transmission is almost a new car (utility wise) - you know that for the next 100k miles you're probably set w.r.t. drivetrain.
It makes sense to me?
And you certainly can't buy a whole new drivetrain and get it installed for $6k. The only people who attempt this are those who can do the work themselves.
There are plenty of engines that go back 30+ years that can still be bought brand new. You're probably right about the "whole new drivetrain" not being able to be installed for under $6k though (depending on what you define as a whole drivetrain). But even a rebuilt engine can fairly easily last another 100k miles, depending on the vehicle and the quality of the rebuild.
I mean, sure, if that's an option. But there's always risk in swapping out one used car for another. If I can only swing $2.5k, I'd rather put it in the vehicle that I've had for 10 years and know the maintenance background on that roll the dice with, as you say, another "old heap."
It's not about being sentimental or irrational. If you're in the situation where you have to weigh these decisions, you tend to have limited options. It's not likely one of them is "trade in my old heap for something great and reliable." In these situations, taking money that could go to your car and instead go out to dinner would be the irrational choice.
>Why spend $6K on repairs if you can buy a similar working car for only $5K? Why make your net "position" $1K worse with flawed logic?
I don't think it's flawed. I can reduce the uncertainty on my utility a lot more with $6k on my own vehicle than I can on a $5k random car. When you get to that low of a price, most cars are going to have maintenance issues. There's nothing guaranteeing that I spend $5k on something else to only have drivetrain (or other major) issues six months down the road.
Writing something down/off means that you're asserting the asset has less/no economic value left, and you can basically treat the delta between its book value and the written down value as an expense for taxation purposes. But if you e.g. write off a car from its real value of $10k to $0, it'll reduce your corporate taxes by $3k, and means you can't rent the car or sell it. So why write it off, rather than sell it for $10k? $10k > $3k.
Edit: Just realized, the correct term is depreciation... That's what you get after a long day, and word by word translating from German to English...