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> What will the limitation be? My guess is that the sticker shock from replacing battery packs on older electric cars is going to be the blocker for a lot of p

> What will the limitation be? My guess is that the sticker shock from replacing battery packs on older electric cars is going to be the blocker for a lot of people. It's going to feel tough for a lot of people to justify a $10K+ expense in one shot for an older electric car, even if that expense makes the electric car run perfect again for another decade+. To be fair, older ICE vehicles also come with their share of problems and necessary repairs, but those repairs are usually in piecemeal fashion, you might have a $300 repair one day and then need a $700 repair 6 months later of course. But it's rare that an older ICE vehicle has any single $10K+ repair: even replacing the entire engine out of a typical ICE vehicle probably wouldn't come near that.

thehappypm 4y ago
I expect as battery prices fall, car manufacturers will start offering free battery upgrades as an included service with the sticker price. Today people are actively paying $40K for a new car. As batteries get cheaper, some manufacturers might race to the bottom and just try to offer cars for as cheap as possible, like imagine a 300 mile range Honda Civic for $10k. Others might still charge $40k but give you goodies like a fresh battery every five years.
- Kirby64 4y ago
  This will never happen. Car manufacturers today are moving away from one-time-fee models and trending towards subscription-based models (see all the hub-bub around the BMW heated seat subscription). If anything, it'd be the opposite: Pay some smaller up-front cost, but a monthly 'battery service' fee or something instead. Also, I highly doubt there will ever be a car in the $10k new segment (at least in the US); it just isn't feasible with the demands of consumers for other things (safety, regulations, infotainment, interiors, etc). Even if the battery cost approaches zero, there's more than $10k worth of car (not in BOM, but what it would sell for) in probably every car today.
  - thehappypm 4y ago
    Sure, that’s a viable model as well! Either way I think the market and industry will find a way to make it work for the consumer such that they won’t feel like an EV is just a hidden $10k charge in 10 years.
    - Kirby64 4y ago
      Nobody worries about a hidden $10k cost for an engine replacement (which, after labor... is probably what it actually costs for many vehicles if you want a brand new engine) 10 years down the road either. I treat this as a similar thing. If you actually want to redo it, you buy a used battery with less miles on it for much less than a new battery. Just like an engine/transmission/etc. The only difference is you lose range as the car ages... although for a gas car, it probably gets less efficient with age too (but, this is much less noticeable thanks to refueling times)
shaftway 4y ago
I just sold my 12 year old Subaru that needed a full engine swap. The quote was "about five grand for the crate engine, about five grand for the labor, and that's if we don't find any other problems. Given what happened, there are definitely going to be other problems." To explain, radiator hose broke, all coolant was lost, and we were about a 2 hour drive from a cell phone signal in > 100 degree heat with no other traffic around. It was life or death. I do not regret flogging that engine until it died.
- Spooky23 4y ago
  This is a unique time for used cars, and people are uniquely stupid about Subarus.
WorldMaker 4y ago
"Sticker shock" implies that there will be a moment where people are "forced" to price check. I don't think that assumption holds with EV battery reality. Battery degradation isn't a binary state "working"/"broke" like many ICE components that need repairs. Battery degradation is a slow percentage effectiveness drop. It is often qualitative ("the battery is exactly 3% worse than when I bought it ten years ago"), but the "working"/"broke" decision process is still very subjective ("does 3% matter?" "does 7%?") with different people making different choices. But the big thing is that it is a slow shift over time with plenty of time to get used to whatever the new normal is. As the owner you slightly adjust charging stops over time, or you stop trying to hypermile it in quite the same way. A lot of it in subtle ways that you barely notice. There's no "red letter" day that comes where the battery is so much worse than the day before it that you immediately think "time to buy a new battery". Similarly, a person buying a used EV, they may have no idea what "true when brand new 100%" felt like at all. The state they buy that car in is their benchmark, the car has always been at that state for them. That's their "100%", that's the battery state that they expect (and they'll deal with any further slow fall off from their similarly to the previous owner). There's no "sticker shock" moment in any of that. If EVs see a big industry of battery replacements, and right now that's a Big If (because many cars aren't even built to support it and there's no current reason to demand that they need to be), it's going to be a "flipper" market (somewhat similar to home sales). It's going to be the used car middlemen (the auction houses, the used car dealerships, etc) making "sell as-is or flip" type decisions weighing the price that they think they can get in the used car market with the battery as-is versus the price that they think they can get in the used car market with a fresh battery. No person is going to directly see that sticker price. They'll indirectly see it reflected used car prices, but used car dealers don't want "sticker shock" from potential buyers so it'll continue to be sold as just the usual spectrum of used cars and "current market prices" and that may be very indirectly reflected indeed.
- logicalmonster 4y ago
  When I'm talking about sticker shock, I'm more talking along the lines of the psychology of having an older EV. My thinking (that I might be very wrong about) is that many people are going to eventually realize how much replacing car batteries cost. I don't think most people fully realize that reality right now. I think most people would feel very weird about throwing another $10K+ into an older EV and would view that as wasteful. That's probably going to be reflected into whatever resale and restoration markets exist over a long timeframe. Technically speaking, you make some good points about decaying batteries. They do decay very slightly over time. But I lived with a fading phone battery for a while because it was still barely serving my needs and I was being a little cheap and lazy to bother with getting it fixed. At one point, the battery just decayed enough to stop filling my daily needs and I had a real problem and had to get a replacement quickly. Of course, car batteries and car usage patterns are different than phones, but there does come a day when your batteries die off to the point where it doesn't fill your needs anymore and many people are going to learn that lesson at some point. I personally love the motors in EVs, but I think there's so many problems around their mass usage that society hasn't realized and grappled with yet. Personally I think there's going to be a lot of disappointed EV owners in the future.

thehappypm 4y ago

I expect as battery prices fall, car manufacturers will start offering free battery upgrades as an included service with the sticker price. Today people are actively paying $40K for a new car. As batteries get cheaper, some manufacturers might race to the bottom and just try to offer cars for as cheap as possible, like imagine a 300 mile range Honda Civic for $10k. Others might still charge $40k but give you goodies like a fresh battery every five years.

Kirby64 4y ago
This will never happen. Car manufacturers today are moving away from one-time-fee models and trending towards subscription-based models (see all the hub-bub around the BMW heated seat subscription). If anything, it'd be the opposite: Pay some smaller up-front cost, but a monthly 'battery service' fee or something instead. Also, I highly doubt there will ever be a car in the $10k new segment (at least in the US); it just isn't feasible with the demands of consumers for other things (safety, regulations, infotainment, interiors, etc). Even if the battery cost approaches zero, there's more than $10k worth of car (not in BOM, but what it would sell for) in probably every car today.
- thehappypm 4y ago
  Sure, that’s a viable model as well! Either way I think the market and industry will find a way to make it work for the consumer such that they won’t feel like an EV is just a hidden $10k charge in 10 years.
  - Kirby64 4y ago
    Nobody worries about a hidden $10k cost for an engine replacement (which, after labor... is probably what it actually costs for many vehicles if you want a brand new engine) 10 years down the road either. I treat this as a similar thing. If you actually want to redo it, you buy a used battery with less miles on it for much less than a new battery. Just like an engine/transmission/etc. The only difference is you lose range as the car ages... although for a gas car, it probably gets less efficient with age too (but, this is much less noticeable thanks to refueling times)

shaftway 4y ago

I just sold my 12 year old Subaru that needed a full engine swap. The quote was "about five grand for the crate engine, about five grand for the labor, and that's if we don't find any other problems. Given what happened, there are definitely going to be other problems." To explain, radiator hose broke, all coolant was lost, and we were about a 2 hour drive from a cell phone signal in > 100 degree heat with no other traffic around. It was life or death. I do not regret flogging that engine until it died.

Spooky23 4y ago
This is a unique time for used cars, and people are uniquely stupid about Subarus.

WorldMaker 4y ago

"Sticker shock" implies that there will be a moment where people are "forced" to price check. I don't think that assumption holds with EV battery reality. Battery degradation isn't a binary state "working"/"broke" like many ICE components that need repairs. Battery degradation is a slow percentage effectiveness drop. It is often qualitative ("the battery is exactly 3% worse than when I bought it ten years ago"), but the "working"/"broke" decision process is still very subjective ("does 3% matter?" "does 7%?") with different people making different choices. But the big thing is that it is a slow shift over time with plenty of time to get used to whatever the new normal is. As the owner you slightly adjust charging stops over time, or you stop trying to hypermile it in quite the same way. A lot of it in subtle ways that you barely notice. There's no "red letter" day that comes where the battery is so much worse than the day before it that you immediately think "time to buy a new battery". Similarly, a person buying a used EV, they may have no idea what "true when brand new 100%" felt like at all. The state they buy that car in is their benchmark, the car has always been at that state for them. That's their "100%", that's the battery state that they expect (and they'll deal with any further slow fall off from their similarly to the previous owner). There's no "sticker shock" moment in any of that. If EVs see a big industry of battery replacements, and right now that's a Big If (because many cars aren't even built to support it and there's no current reason to demand that they need to be), it's going to be a "flipper" market (somewhat similar to home sales). It's going to be the used car middlemen (the auction houses, the used car dealerships, etc) making "sell as-is or flip" type decisions weighing the price that they think they can get in the used car market with the battery as-is versus the price that they think they can get in the used car market with a fresh battery. No person is going to directly see that sticker price. They'll indirectly see it reflected used car prices, but used car dealers don't want "sticker shock" from potential buyers so it'll continue to be sold as just the usual spectrum of used cars and "current market prices" and that may be very indirectly reflected indeed.

logicalmonster 4y ago
When I'm talking about sticker shock, I'm more talking along the lines of the psychology of having an older EV. My thinking (that I might be very wrong about) is that many people are going to eventually realize how much replacing car batteries cost. I don't think most people fully realize that reality right now. I think most people would feel very weird about throwing another $10K+ into an older EV and would view that as wasteful. That's probably going to be reflected into whatever resale and restoration markets exist over a long timeframe. Technically speaking, you make some good points about decaying batteries. They do decay very slightly over time. But I lived with a fading phone battery for a while because it was still barely serving my needs and I was being a little cheap and lazy to bother with getting it fixed. At one point, the battery just decayed enough to stop filling my daily needs and I had a real problem and had to get a replacement quickly. Of course, car batteries and car usage patterns are different than phones, but there does come a day when your batteries die off to the point where it doesn't fill your needs anymore and many people are going to learn that lesson at some point. I personally love the motors in EVs, but I think there's so many problems around their mass usage that society hasn't realized and grappled with yet. Personally I think there's going to be a lot of disappointed EV owners in the future.