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You can get replacement packs for most common EVs from either the manufacturer or third parties. They are on the expensive side. But they last quite long and te
by jillesvangurp 5y ago
You can get replacement packs for most common EVs from either the manufacturer or third parties. They are on the expensive side. But they last quite long and tend to come with pretty decent warranty of e.g. eight years or 150 k miles, which means they are very unlikely to fail before that (because that would be expensive for the manufacturer) and very likely to last a lot longer than that. E.g. Tesla seems to design for half a million miles.
Two challenges with standardizing battery packs:
- There is a lot of innovation in this space. A standardized battery would be obsolete by the time it would get widely used. The whole point of buying a premium model EV is getting good range and performance. So, manufacturers work hard on improving their battery packs and are competing on how well they work.
- Battery packs and cars are designed together to make best use of space, manage center of gravity, re-enforce the structure of the car, etc. Inevitably, you are going to end up with different shapes of battery packs. Better designs here maximize cabin space, minimize manufacturing cost, etc. Most car manufacturers buy battery cells and design their own battery packs for this reason: they need to customize their packs.
That makes workable standards in this space unlikely. But of course most bigger manufacturers do standardize components internally exactly so they can minimize their cost for servicing vehicles and leverage some economies of scale. No doubt over time, third parties will emerge that are able to service popular EV models with aftermarket battery replacements. Right now that's a tiny market because most EVs sold ever (i.e. produced in the last ten or so years) are still completely fine and not actually in need of new batteries.
Probably in a decade or so this market will get a lot bigger and by that time battery replacement might also be a lot cheaper. For the same reason, battery recycling companies are not yet able to scale their business because there simply is not a lot of supply of badly degraded batteries. Actually, most batteries coming out of EVs end up having a second life in e.g. power storage solutions because even in a degraded state they still can hold some power.
- judge2020 5y ago> E.g. Tesla seems to design for half a million miles. Tesla supposedly only warranties for 150k on the S[0], although they have been known to last longer (194k then 324k miles [1] on a 2014 model year car). 0: https://www.tesla.com/support/vehicle-warranty https://www.tesla.com/support/vehicle-warranty 1: https://www.motorbiscuit.com/tesla-model-s-that-surpassed-400000-miles/ https://www.motorbiscuit.com/tesla-model-s-that-surpassed-40...
- jillesvangurp 5y agoThey design to much higher specs than what they give warranty on. They've been talking about half million mile batteries and even a million mile batteries. In practical terms that means the battery might outlive the car for most average drivers.