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Comment by maximus-decimus | Hacker News Reader

The Tesla Model S has been out for almost 13 years, so you can already see it.

Your phone doesn't have liquid cooling temp management and is probably recharged daily. With a car that has 300 miles range, a lot of people probably only do a full cycle every week.

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It was recently in the media that old Tesla’s are now worthless once the batteries are dead and that this is happening now.

Heres one such source but theres hundreds if you care to look: https://min.news/en/auto/2a2636e0ac962b5d94ee68babcd09a3d.ht...

Old ICE cars are also usually dead when major drivetrain parts fail after a decade and a half.

For old ice car the solution often is to swap with used parts from wrecked vehicles. Not suitable for batteries.

For old EVs the solution is to deal with used parts from wrecked vehicles. It can absolutely be suitable for batteries.

We had a 2010 Ford Transit van (diesel) and after 189000km, we sold it because the parts were becoming too hard to source (disclaimer: in New Zealand).

> are now worthless once the batteries are dead

13 years old dead luxury cars are worthless, yes, especially when the tech is quickly evolving. That doesn't say anything about how long it takes for them to die or how reliable the tech is.

And even those those ancient luxury cars can often be repaired by a third-party shop like EVClinic.

There aren't many 10+ year old EVs yet, and demand is limited. This is changing, and EVClinic will be the first of many aftermarket EV repair shops.

So 7000 to 8000 euros to replace a battery of a 80 to 100k car?

It depends on how many miles it has driven and how much other maintenance the car has had. It's a big expense but a battery dying is probably comparable to a timing belt breaking, those aren't cheap either and thats not even for luxury cars...

where did you get that number?

parts and labour is $15,000 to $22,000 from all sources I can find.

Heres one: https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/tesla-battery-replace...

The article linked speaks of 70 to 80k yuan, which I then turned into euros

for parts only, in china

but, sure, fair enough.

First of all, as your article shows, batteries rarely need replacement at all, even at very high mileage. And those are old vehicles, battery management and cell chemistry are much better now.

And when they do, it's usually just a few cells that need replacing. In Europe, there are specialized third party repair shops that can do it a fraction of the cost of a new battery: https://www.smart-emotion.de/article/431-cell-replacement-at...

Lots of real world data shows that the TCO of EVs is much lower - fewer moving parts, less complexity, less maintenance.

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