> (guaranteed because of the chemistry and physics of battery - charge/recharge cycles, temperature and even just sitting idle in the garage will erode battery life anyway)
Please post the "guarantee" based on chemistry and physics.
> According to Tesla's 2021 impact report, its batteries are designed to last the life of the vehicle, which the company estimates as roughly 200,000 miles in the U.S. and 150,000 miles in Europe. Tesla's own data show Model S and X batteries retain about 90 percent of their original capacity on average over 200,000 miles of use.
> whereas cheapest battery replacement costs are north of 25,000 USD/EURO - sometimes 25% or more of the cost of the a new car.
You can also see 2013 Nissan Leafs on ebay, although those are quoted at 50 mile range because the battery has somewhat degraded. Honestly I suspect the first decade or so of electric cars will not have long lives, because the technology keeps overtaking them.
I think it's fair to just exclude Leafs from the discussion altogether. They did not have any meaningful thermal management for the battery, which has a huge effect on longevity. AFAIK all other modern EVs have thermal management and it puts them in an entirely different category.
The 2013 Nissan Leaf had a range of ~75 miles when it was brand new. 33% degredation is nothing to write off but like my sibling says, leaf has always been a lemon of an EV.
Tesla's claims are their to make, they can say whatever they want and what incentive they have to say something against the whole category of their main and only product. They have been saying bunch of stuff about automated driving, Tesla truck which isn't even possible under current laws of physics.
The real world mileage depletes with every usage and depletes faster. Having more charging stations along the way isn't very helpful because charging isn't instantaneous. If your battery lasts barely 50 miles, a charging station every 40 miles isn't helpful because you'd be sitting ducks there every 80 miles or so waiting your battery to have enough energy to catapult you to the next charging station.
About costs - I did inquire it myself for a German EV, battery had to be imported and I was quoted around 20,000 USD. Tesla has been quoting this much as well [0]
Whereas a full ICE engine rebuild would be 1/10th of that, easily.
It's not just Tesla. Their are enough > 10 year old EV's of multiple brands on the road to get statistics. And the only EV that regularly requires battery replacement is the Nissan Leaf, which doesn't have battery thermal management. Every EV with battery thermal management is seeing a significant majority of their batteries outlast their cars.
And if you're worried about battery life, buy a car with a LiFePo4 battery. Those batteries last 3x as long as batteries with a nickel chemistry. So instead of 200,000 miles you get 600,000 miles.
150k to 200k miles is not a lot though? Every car I've ever owned has passed those landmarks easily unless I've sold it first without being anywhere close to "end of life". In other words, if your battery only lasts that long then the battery most definitely is the limiting factor.
Prove what? The OP said it was guaranteed to fail within 8-10 years. That number is clearly made up since the base warranty is already 8 years, and we already have examples of batteries that are older keeping up just fine.
Its OP's responsibility to prove their claims. But they can't, because they are making up numbers
About range, please note the conclusion as the end of first link that you referenced:
> That said, the overall dataset seems to be pointing to Tesla’s 90 kWh battery packs performing badly in general.
Keyword here - general. And I am not talking about Tesla specifically. Just EVs in general.
Second article that you quoted contains this about the costs:
> In the event your Tesla needs an out-of-warranty battery replacement, you can expect to pay between $10,000 and $20,000 depending on the model, local labor costs, and taxes.
10 to 20,000 USD whereas I projected it to around 25,000 because I am adjusting for inflation as the article is from 2020 and we're in 2023 with massive wave of inflation everywhere.
> 10 to 20,000 USD whereas I projected it to around 25,000 because I am adjusting for inflation as the article is from 2020 and we're in 2023 with massive wave of inflation everywhere.
I would imagine the cost of batteries would go down as the technology improves, and the production scale increases. It wouldn't surprise me if this decrease was faster than inflation right now.
I won't downvote you, but if I did it wouldn't have anything to do with ideology but the fact that you seem to be presenting an ideological viewpoint yourself without accurate data to back it up.
> whereas cheapest battery replacement costs are north of 25,000 USD
A Bolt battery pack, as I recall, is 16K retail. And that's a previous generation battery that is essentially out of production now, or very close. Given the trajectory in battery prices, that number is just going lower and lower every year.
Comparing it to an engine rebuild is a bit disingenuous, too. Buy a brand new engine and let's talk about what it costs. And then don't forget the ongoing fuel cost difference. In the future, there will be rebuilt battery packs for older EVs too.
> Aren't at this point electric cars mainly "rich boy's toy" unless something disruptive in energy storage comes along?
The TCO on a Bolt is way, way, way below a comparable ICE car right now. And I'm willing to bet the TCO on a RWD Model 3 is also better than competing ICE designs as well. And I have to tell you, I live in an area with mixed incomes and there are lots of regular people in modest neighborhoods with Niro EVs, Bolts, and no small number of Model 3s. The economics are favorable for the type of people who keep a car for at least 5 years.
> I live in an area with mixed incomes and there are lots of regular people in modest neighborhoods with Niro EVs, Bolts, and no small number of Model 3s. The economics are favorable for the type of people who keep a car for at least 5 years.
Without commenting on anything else, I can tell you that what people are buying doesn't have a thing to do with what the those same people should actually buy to be smart with their money. There would be a lot less financial problems in the world if they were one and the same.
(I'll go as far as saying that I don't believe purchasing a new-from-the-dealer car ever makes financial sense, no matter how big your wallet is. I'm not sure which forced depreciation scheme is worse: the drop in value of a diamond ring when you walk out the store or the drop in value of a new car as soon as you drive it off the lot.)
That's probably true. There are a disproportionate number of people in very middle-of-the-road neighborhoods with solar panels on the roof, and the ROI on solar in Oregon isn't really awesome. So there's some idealism going on, for sure.
But I've run the numbers enough times, and for the people who buy a car and drive it into the ground the EV math is pretty great. At least around here, because 9pm-5am every day and all-day weekends our per-kWh electricity cost is under 8 cents (all-in, including transmission costs, etc).
That's an insane electric cost if it's comprehensive of everything including delivery fees plus taxes and surcharges (i.e. your actual monthly payment divided by total kWh consumed).
I'm in Illinois and we are considered to have fairly cheap electricity (and the highest (?) rate of nuclear energy in the States) but even with time-of-use billing heavily biased towards late night and the wee hours of the morning, I still paid net just over 10¢/kWh this past month. (State law mandates the availability of a real-time pricing option by all electric providers in Illinois.)
The reason I asked if it was calculable with the simple formula I listed above is that—according to ComEd—my price was 6.809¢/kWh, but that's not taking into account the ~34% of the total bill that's taxes and surcharges.
It extends it, sure, and if you only keep cars a few years it will be tough to get the economics to be favorable. As someone who buys a new fun car every 18 months, I recognize it's not a good economic choice.
But my nearest neighbors buy a new Camry every 10 years, over and over, and the economics would be really great for them. Here is how the economics are working for me, using my most recent EV as an example:
I've spent 197.24 on electricity since buying it, and driven 5428 miles. 127.82 of that was home charging, and 69.42 was spent supercharging. $0.036/mile.
Local gasoline is $4.69/gal. A typical Camry hybrid gets 46 mpg overall and costs $0.101/mile.
An average modern car is expected to go approximately 200K miles before being recycled. Over that time, assuming fuel prices do not change (they will, of course, but we don't know how that will play out), the Camry will cost an additional $12940 in fueling costs.
The battery is warrantied for 8 years or 120K miles, and if it makes it that far without needing replacement then the odds are good it'll make it to the EOL of the car. Even if I had to replace it, by that point it'll cost less than how much I've saved on gasoline. Given the sheer number of Model 3s on the road right now, used battery packs 5-10 years down the road are going to be even more common (it's already easy enough to get used Model 3 packs on eBay for 5-7 grand).
I like the economic outlook for EVs, and it just gets better every year.
> what about the fact that electric cars just become a useless heavy paperweight in eight to ten years (guaranteed because of the chemistry and physics of battery - charge/recharge cycles
An understandable concern, considering how quickly smartphone batteries degrade.
But the batteries in most EVs are treated a lot better than smartphone batteries - heaters for when it's cold; water cooling when it's hot; and enough capacity it's easy to keep the charge level in the most durable range.
There are reports [1] of Teslas with 100k miles on the odometer still having almost the same range as when they were new.
And even if not every EV fares that well, if your EV starts its life with enough range for a 4 hour drive and after a decade you only have the range for a 2 or 3 hour drive, that would still meet the needs of a lot of motorists.
1. Car companies disagree that their batteries will all be paperweights within 8-10 years
2. Car companies don't think batteries will cost $25k to replace.
3. Car companies are not trying to be profitable. They are choosing to sell cars that will lose them tens of thousands of dollars in warranty claims. Car companies like Hyundai and Kia will go bankrupt as they spend billions on replacement batteries for cars that cost <$50k
Im inclined to think it's actually 1 or 2, and I'd imagine they have actual data to back up their decisions.
My 10+ yr old Yaris is leaking some fluid (I forgot which), and the dealer said it would be $1k+ to fix it, I didn't know if I could even sell it for $1k, so I said forget it. Thankfully the car is holding up valiantly, but if the leak becomes worse there's a very good chance I'll just throw it away because fixing it is not worth the value of the car.
So.... one might even say my 10+ year old ICE car is just a useless paperweight. One would be exaggerating, of course, but exaggeration seems the name of the game.
You are free to take your Yaris to any independent mechanic to fix that leak for a fraction of that price, probably with the option of using aftermarket parts to boot. The tech lock-in for EV batteries must not be underestimated.
> My 10+ yr old Yaris is leaking some fluid (I forgot which), and the dealer said it would be $1k+ to fix it, I didn't know if I could even sell it for $1k, so I said forget it. Thankfully the car is holding up valiantly, but if the leak becomes worse there's a very good chance I'll just throw it away because fixing it is not worth the value of the car.
I don't understand why you are comparing the cost of fixing it to how much you could sell it for. Shouldn't you be comparing to the cost of replacing it?
Why does swapping out a battery pack cost more than the cost of the car? Seems like a simple maintenance step and I doubt battery packs are sold at below cost in new cars. Do you have a good citation for that? If so that's news to me.
Edit: Ohh you're comparing the price of swapping out a battery on a luxury car with getting a small and frugal ICE car. That's apple to oranges.
As an EV owner I am concerned about the eventual battery death of my car, but the two Honda Civics that I owned prior to my Tesla both started breaking down and were more expensive to repair than to replace after ten years. The vast majority of ICE vehicles built today aren't designed to last more than ten years.
On top of that, your numbers literally don't add up. If a replacement battery costs >$25K, and that is "sometimes more than 25% the cost of the car", that would mean EVs cost well over $100K, which the vast majority do not. And if you can point me to reputable repair shop that can "totally rebuild" a 10yo Ford or Honda for <$2K, I'll go jump off a cliff.
You are implicitly assuming zero progress on battery and or car technology. This is not entirely unfounded as the combustion engine has stopped progressing much for decades. As for Electric Cars, this is a whole different ballgame. The battery you are going to get in 15-25 years when you replace yours, will be a significant upgrade.
Also, an n=1 story: My girlfriend's parents bought an electric car in the mid 2000's with a range of 120km for short trips. 15ish years later, it still works perfectly.
Finally, Air Pollution is easily one of the most lethal (can it be THE most lethal?) thing in the world depending on how you measure. A significant part of this comes from cars. My guess is that for most of us, the gains in air pollution are personally significantly more important than those in climate change
“How often does a Tesla battery need to be replaced? There haven't been many electric cars that needed battery replacement, but according to Elon Musk, your Tesla batteries last for 300,000 to 500,000 miles, or 1,500 battery cycles. That's around 22 to 37 years for someone driving an average of 40 miles a day.”
That’s the top answer from google but wouldn’t be surprised if that wasn’t true?
I'm so tired of this electric car bashing. It is so exhausting. How long is this nonsense going to keep going?
Electric cars last somewhere between 150k-300,000 miles - that's about the same as a gas car - slightly more. Yes, the number of cars we go through is wasteful, but these latest attacks pretend like it's never happened before and is brand new with electric cars.
It's not like we're all driving around 1970s Oldsmobile Cutlasses and Buick Rivieras while someone is advocating for disposable cars.
It's talking points from right wing propaganda machines funded by the gas and coal industry - the same ones that have been attacking climate change science for 40 years.
> whereas cheapest battery replacement costs are north of 25,000 USD/EURO sometimes 25% or more of the cost of the a new car.
You know that not all EVs cost 100k+ as you seem to be implying. For a perfectly adequate 50k car the battery would be 50% of the price. Really?
Anyway.. even if this were true how are you so sure that battery prices won’t continue going down in the next 10 years?
Also an ~8 year + 70% warranty seems to be pretty standard nowadays which would make no sense if manufacturers expected most batteries to become useless in 8-10 years?
Enough people are willing to defect for money in this particular Nash game, that we have to solve the problems rather than just point to the happy case where we all cooperate and compare it to the unhappy case where we all seek our personal best interests.
Cars in Europe are really more like appliances. Most people don’t really need them and will inevitably find some other solution if they become too expensive.
As opposed to the fuel of ICE engines which is literally just burned away into the atmosphere causing the earth to warm, and people to die from heat?
I think there is a back of the napkin calculations you can make here. How many ICE engines are actually rebuilt after they die? How much fuel does the average ICE engine spend? How does this compare to a battery ending up in a landfill?
Also worth considering—since you are giving the ICE engine the benefit of being recycled/rebuilt—batteries can be recycled, whether they will be is up to your government’s policy. You should perhaps include that in you back of the napkin calculations.
The median age of the average car on the road in the US today is over 12 years. Independent mechanics everywhere are buying and installing rebuilt ICE vehicle engines on a daily basis; you will face no particular difficulty in sourcing one for pretty much any vehicle more than a year old.
I'm not saying this can't be - someday - true for EVs, but it's disingenuous to try and throw mud at the fact that this absolutely is the case for ICE cars today.
It won't matter because in 8 to 10 years (even sooner) we're all going to be conditioned into seeing our personal cars as enablers of the climate apocalypse (yes, even the EVs) and as such we'll be kindly asked to travel less.
Because, of course, public transportation won't be able to compensate for the sudden and very big demand caused by people being forced to give up personal transportation en masse.
