9 ms·

New ICE cars are also $20K these days. That's also unaffordable for a lot of people, but they don't buy new cars.

bluedays 4y ago
The problem is that EV cars have a finite lifespan on the most expensive component of the car... the battery. It is not modular despite being composed of several individual cells, and often you are not allowed to work on it yourself. Once the battery is dead that's it. You either pay 3k or bust.
- eropple 4y ago
  This is true, but an EV that needs a battery swap is still carrying along a ton of mechanics that, compared to an ICE vehicle, are likely to be in generally better condition. People used to do powertrain replacements on used cars, after all. (Maybe still do? The used cars I see are generally in better mechanical shape these days.)
- brianwawok 4y ago
  3k? That’s a Prius salvage battery. EV batteries won’t get replaced in 20k cars anymore than engines are. You total it out at that point.
  - admax88qqq 4y ago
    Engine replacements are complicated. Many specific parts. Battery replacements may be much easier to complete.
    - jjav 4y ago
      > Engine replacements are complicated. Many specific parts. If you buy a full replacement engine (as opposed to parts to rebuild an engine), replacement is quick and easy in an ICE. In endurance racing an engine can often be replaced in less than 30 minutes. In non-racing conditions you'd do it a bit slower but it's not hard.
      - danaris 4y ago
        I would imagine that cars built for endurance racing, where this is known to be a common thing, would be designed to make it easy, while cars built for the general public will not have such a guarantee—some will be easy, some will be annoying, and some will be outright pains.
        jjav 4y ago
        > I would imagine that cars built for endurance racing At the higher end of professional racing, those are custom built cars. But for most categories of racing, endurance race cars are just regular street cars. Hondas, Mazdas and BMWs are what I've raced or crewed with.
  - Schroedingersat 4y ago
    It's a pipe dream that we could have regulatory sense, but if they were standardised this would not be a problem, you'd just pay $200/kWh or whatever the going rate is at the time.
    - brianwawok 4y ago
      I don’t want standard boring in my phones (I iPhone) and I don’t want standard boring cars in my car (I Tesla). In both cases I opt into vendor repair lock-in for a better product.
      - Schroedingersat 4y ago
        Proprietary monoliths where you have to take or leave the entire package based on what is most profitable is not how you get creativity and innovation. If you had to rent your cell phone off of ma bell with no other equipment allowed on the network we wouldn't have iphones. If roads had ford specific infrastructure like the future elon imagines we wouldn't have tesla. A balance between interoperability, end user control, and freedom for manufacturers is how you get innovation. In the current auto market you have none of the above.
    - _ea1k 4y ago
      That's not too far off from the cost for a replacement for the Model S packs. It can be much less expensive than $200/kwh for third party shops, as the bad battery can be refurbished often offsetting much of the cost.
      - Schroedingersat 4y ago
        In both of those cases the cost is $x and a mostly functional battery. This is substantially higher than $x and will track with the cost of dealing with whatever anti repair countermeasures tesla puts in place, not the cost of storage..
        _ea1k 4y ago
  - bitwize 4y ago
    You total it out when the hood gets a dent, so ultimately what does it matter?
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- bryanlarsen 4y ago
  EV batteries generally don't die outright. They just lose capacity. So instead of a 300 mile range you have a 250 or 200 mile range. It's still a useful vehicle, just not as valuable.
  - inkyoto 4y ago
    > EV batteries generally don't die outright. True. But since every point has at least three counterpoints (true, false and anywhere in between), I will provide a counterpoint. > They just lose capacity. So instead of a 300 mile range you have a 250 or 200 mile range. It's still a useful vehicle, just not as valuable. This is true for urban environments where infrastructure is plentiful, and making it to the next recharging station is not a problem. There are, however, many places on this planet that have resisted urbanisation (for one reason or another). On the A87 highway from Adelaide to Alice Springs in Australia, service stations can be up to 300 kms apart in some places. Losing 150 km of the driving range out of 450-500 kms on a brand new battery means that the vehicle will not be able to make it to the next service / recharging station. People going across South Australia into Western Australia on the federal highway bring extra fuel along because there are no service stations in between. Yes, people still travel by cars and, no, they can't bring a spare battery with them but they bring extra canisters filled up with petrol/diesel. Also, going up the coast in Western Australia can be a pretty harrowing or even lethal experience if the vehicle runs out of power especially at the turn of dry and wet seasons when weather turns a holiday road trip into a gamble with life. Cape York in Far North Queensland is not electrifed at all, and is powered locally by diesel generators. Electric vehicles are of no use in Cape York. I imagine there are multiple similar fringe areas in countries such as Canada, the US (Alaska certainly comes to mind), Argentina, Brazil, Russia, west and nort-west of China and probably many others that require the infratructure to be built first and, until that happens, the liquified hydrocarbons are still the only viable option.
    - _ph_ 4y ago
      Service stations can be 300 km apart because this seems to be an acceptable distance with gas powered cars. If there is a demand for service stations every 150km, wouldn't you think they would be built? The remote regions you describe, currently powered by diesel generators (where does that fuel come from?), isn't there an incentive to power them by solar and also charge electric cars that way? And even if there are some remote spots on earth where electric cars are not useful, how large is the market share for cars for these regions? If Toyota continues to make land cruisers for those regions, what does it matter for eletrifying 99% of all other cars?
- qqtt 4y ago
  > EV cars have a finite lifespan But the same is true of ICE cars. Transmission, engine, catalytic converter, fuel pump, alternators (not to mention routine maintenance like oil changes). EV's win on ongoing maintenance, and even if you have to replace a battery at an authorized dealership, you will still come out ahead versus the maintenance cost you would have otherwise paid. In terms of 'catastrophic battery failure' compared to 'catastrophic engine failure' - not sure the EV would lose that battle either. In short, yes, EV's have a finite lifespan, but so do ICE cars, and ICE cars are much more complicated, with many more expensive components that can fail, and are extremely expensive to replace.
  - Amezarak 4y ago
    > Transmission, engine, catalytic converter, fuel pump, alternators I have driven approximately 700k miles across five vehicles and never touched any of these, nor have I ever been concerned about them, except with the vague idea such things can become a problem around ~250-300k miles. What I have had enormous trouble with in all ICE cars is the electronics, which if anything are more populous in EVs. The idea that "EV maintenance is clearly superior to ICE maintenance" seems like a baffling canard to me, aside from relieving me of the very minor burden of changing my oil twice a year or so, and some even more infrequent $20 filter replacements or simple spark plug replacements I've had to do exactly once which required only a deep socket. I've done more maintenance on my desktop computer.
    - admax88qqq 4y ago
      Which miles were you driving on those ICEs? The first 100k will have few issues. Same applies for EVs.
    - supernovae 4y ago
      There are teslas getting half a million miles on them already..
      - Amezarak 4y ago
        Okay. I know a guy with 500k on his Ford Ranger. That doesn’t tell us anything about average maintenance in that time, or over time. Years matter as well, not just mileage. I have a 20 year old truck and the interior is basically just destroyed from sunlight and time.
- ip26 4y ago
  The economics just seem different. The batteries lose capacity with time, compared to ICE cars that wear out with miles.
- judge2020 4y ago
  > It is not modular despite being composed of several individual cells, and often you are not allowed to work on it yourself. At least with current tech, battery chemistry makes such replacement extremely tricky without a full replacement. You can technically swap individual packs in a Model S/X battery[0], but it'll inevitably die[1][2] because of how voltage balancing works. Packs each with their own BMS would be interesting but I'm sure the automakers have already considered the tradeoffs for a lot of ideas like this. 0: https://electrek.co/2021/09/13/tesla-battery-pack-replacement-repair/ https://electrek.co/2021/09/13/tesla-battery-pack-replacemen... 1: https://twitter.com/wk057/status/1437607772959428608?s=20&t=k4Y8Tx4kSKmenfa1vEuQvQ https://twitter.com/wk057/status/1437607772959428608?s=20&t=... 2: https://twitter.com/wk057/status/1480403593794621442 https://twitter.com/wk057/status/1480403593794621442
- SECProto 4y ago
  > The problem is that EV cars have a finite lifespan on the most expensive component of the car... the battery Then they get less range, they don't die completely..
  - fooker 4y ago
    This is one of those statements which are true only if you live in California. A 5-6 year old EV battery is unusable in winter at low-ish temperatures. Not only do you lose range when parked, you can be in real trouble if you’re stranded in a snowstorm. These issues are manageable with a new car of course!
    - SECProto 4y ago
      > This is one of those statements which are true only if you live in California. I definitely don't live in California. > A 5-6 year old EV battery is unusable in winter at low-ish temperatures. A brand new EV gets less range in winter. A used EV gets less range in winter. A used EV in winter gets less range still. But that doesn't make it unusable, it just changes the use case. A 300km range (when new) EV might reliably get 50% range in winter, and 70% range when 6 years old, combining for 35% of new range when used and in winter - plenty of buffer for an average driver's commute, but wouldn't want to use it for a winter road trip. > you lose range when parked Same applies whether it's a new EV or a used. If I were driving an EV in the winter (gets to -20C here regularly), I'd definitely be looking to park somewhere I could plug in - which are pretty common. As is, I drive an ICE, and I have to turn my car on for a few minutes to warm the engine before I start driving (or else the windshield becomes an unusable fogged-up mess before the end of the block) > you can be in real trouble if you’re stranded in a snowstorm. Yes, monitoring weather is important regardless of your vehicle choice. The only time I've been stuck in a snowstorm was when knowingly going for a weekend camping trip when a blizzard was forecast. (the solution was bring extra food in case we got stuck) > These issues are manageable with a new car of course! Or used. It's all about anticipating a situation.
    - adrianN 4y ago
      ICEs have less range in winter too and you're always in trouble if you're stranded in a snowstorm.
- soheil 4y ago
  What does fundamentally prevent a battery from being worked on? Finite lifespan applies to anything. Not being modular seems like an odd criteria to impose. Surely you can open a battery and work on its sub-parts. Not allowed to work on it? I don't know if you're being sarcastic or not, but vast majority of the world does not have the same set of laws and regulations.
- seanmcdirmid 4y ago
  A reconditioned EV battery is literally an old EV battery with new cells. The old cells are recycled, their lithium is mostly reused.
- cirgue 4y ago
  3k is pretty cheap for what is effectively an overhaul of the vehicle. You can easily spend 3k on an ICE car in repairs in the same span of time.
- hoseja 4y ago
  the "several individual cells" are welded together and also a structural component of the vehicle. You are not allowed to work on them yourself to not electrocute yourself to a crisp.
- r00fus 4y ago
  This is quite amusing. Unless the battery has some cliff where it stops working (very unlikely) my anecdotal experience is that the battery has a very slow degradation rate (2-3% over 5 years - great considering I have a 75mi roundtrip commute). On the other hand, I don't pay for: oil/fluid changes, filter replacements, transmission/engine rebuilds or smog checks. Probably forgetting a half dozen other things too. Add all that up and it's a free battery replacement in 10 years which I don't even think I'll need.
dubya 4y ago
Chevy Spark supposedly starts at $13600, available inventory seems to start at $14595 + tax, title license and fees. I have never bought a new car so I don't know the + part, but that's got to be getting close to $20k.
- BirAdam 4y ago
  If you have a decent older car you can get $5k at a dealer bringing the price down to $10k, tax/tag/title and you’re likely looking at $13k
  - seanmcdirmid 4y ago
    Ya, the horrible thing is that I’ve never seen a Tesla used for under $20k. Until we can get some used Tesla vehicles at economical price points, EVs will just not be mainstream. Ok, there is some sarcasm in that. You can get a Leaf for cheap.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

The problem is that EV cars have a finite lifespan on the most expensive component of the car... the battery. It is not modular despite being composed of several individual cells, and often you are not allowed to work on it yourself. Once the battery is dead that's it. You either pay 3k or bust.

eropple 4y ago
This is true, but an EV that needs a battery swap is still carrying along a ton of mechanics that, compared to an ICE vehicle, are likely to be in generally better condition. People used to do powertrain replacements on used cars, after all. (Maybe still do? The used cars I see are generally in better mechanical shape these days.)
brianwawok 4y ago
3k? That’s a Prius salvage battery. EV batteries won’t get replaced in 20k cars anymore than engines are. You total it out at that point.
- admax88qqq 4y ago
  Engine replacements are complicated. Many specific parts. Battery replacements may be much easier to complete.
  - jjav 4y ago
    > Engine replacements are complicated. Many specific parts. If you buy a full replacement engine (as opposed to parts to rebuild an engine), replacement is quick and easy in an ICE. In endurance racing an engine can often be replaced in less than 30 minutes. In non-racing conditions you'd do it a bit slower but it's not hard.
    - danaris 4y ago
      I would imagine that cars built for endurance racing, where this is known to be a common thing, would be designed to make it easy, while cars built for the general public will not have such a guarantee—some will be easy, some will be annoying, and some will be outright pains.
      - jjav 4y ago
        > I would imagine that cars built for endurance racing At the higher end of professional racing, those are custom built cars. But for most categories of racing, endurance race cars are just regular street cars. Hondas, Mazdas and BMWs are what I've raced or crewed with.
- Schroedingersat 4y ago
  It's a pipe dream that we could have regulatory sense, but if they were standardised this would not be a problem, you'd just pay $200/kWh or whatever the going rate is at the time.
  - brianwawok 4y ago
    I don’t want standard boring in my phones (I iPhone) and I don’t want standard boring cars in my car (I Tesla). In both cases I opt into vendor repair lock-in for a better product.
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      Proprietary monoliths where you have to take or leave the entire package based on what is most profitable is not how you get creativity and innovation. If you had to rent your cell phone off of ma bell with no other equipment allowed on the network we wouldn't have iphones. If roads had ford specific infrastructure like the future elon imagines we wouldn't have tesla. A balance between interoperability, end user control, and freedom for manufacturers is how you get innovation. In the current auto market you have none of the above.
  - _ea1k 4y ago
    That's not too far off from the cost for a replacement for the Model S packs. It can be much less expensive than $200/kwh for third party shops, as the bad battery can be refurbished often offsetting much of the cost.
    - Schroedingersat 4y ago
      In both of those cases the cost is $x and a mostly functional battery. This is substantially higher than $x and will track with the cost of dealing with whatever anti repair countermeasures tesla puts in place, not the cost of storage..
      - _ea1k 4y ago
- bitwize 4y ago
  You total it out when the hood gets a dent, so ultimately what does it matter?
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
bryanlarsen 4y ago
EV batteries generally don't die outright. They just lose capacity. So instead of a 300 mile range you have a 250 or 200 mile range. It's still a useful vehicle, just not as valuable.
- inkyoto 4y ago
  > EV batteries generally don't die outright. True. But since every point has at least three counterpoints (true, false and anywhere in between), I will provide a counterpoint. > They just lose capacity. So instead of a 300 mile range you have a 250 or 200 mile range. It's still a useful vehicle, just not as valuable. This is true for urban environments where infrastructure is plentiful, and making it to the next recharging station is not a problem. There are, however, many places on this planet that have resisted urbanisation (for one reason or another). On the A87 highway from Adelaide to Alice Springs in Australia, service stations can be up to 300 kms apart in some places. Losing 150 km of the driving range out of 450-500 kms on a brand new battery means that the vehicle will not be able to make it to the next service / recharging station. People going across South Australia into Western Australia on the federal highway bring extra fuel along because there are no service stations in between. Yes, people still travel by cars and, no, they can't bring a spare battery with them but they bring extra canisters filled up with petrol/diesel. Also, going up the coast in Western Australia can be a pretty harrowing or even lethal experience if the vehicle runs out of power especially at the turn of dry and wet seasons when weather turns a holiday road trip into a gamble with life. Cape York in Far North Queensland is not electrifed at all, and is powered locally by diesel generators. Electric vehicles are of no use in Cape York. I imagine there are multiple similar fringe areas in countries such as Canada, the US (Alaska certainly comes to mind), Argentina, Brazil, Russia, west and nort-west of China and probably many others that require the infratructure to be built first and, until that happens, the liquified hydrocarbons are still the only viable option.
  - _ph_ 4y ago
    Service stations can be 300 km apart because this seems to be an acceptable distance with gas powered cars. If there is a demand for service stations every 150km, wouldn't you think they would be built? The remote regions you describe, currently powered by diesel generators (where does that fuel come from?), isn't there an incentive to power them by solar and also charge electric cars that way? And even if there are some remote spots on earth where electric cars are not useful, how large is the market share for cars for these regions? If Toyota continues to make land cruisers for those regions, what does it matter for eletrifying 99% of all other cars?
qqtt 4y ago
> EV cars have a finite lifespan But the same is true of ICE cars. Transmission, engine, catalytic converter, fuel pump, alternators (not to mention routine maintenance like oil changes). EV's win on ongoing maintenance, and even if you have to replace a battery at an authorized dealership, you will still come out ahead versus the maintenance cost you would have otherwise paid. In terms of 'catastrophic battery failure' compared to 'catastrophic engine failure' - not sure the EV would lose that battle either. In short, yes, EV's have a finite lifespan, but so do ICE cars, and ICE cars are much more complicated, with many more expensive components that can fail, and are extremely expensive to replace.
- Amezarak 4y ago
  > Transmission, engine, catalytic converter, fuel pump, alternators I have driven approximately 700k miles across five vehicles and never touched any of these, nor have I ever been concerned about them, except with the vague idea such things can become a problem around ~250-300k miles. What I have had enormous trouble with in all ICE cars is the electronics, which if anything are more populous in EVs. The idea that "EV maintenance is clearly superior to ICE maintenance" seems like a baffling canard to me, aside from relieving me of the very minor burden of changing my oil twice a year or so, and some even more infrequent $20 filter replacements or simple spark plug replacements I've had to do exactly once which required only a deep socket. I've done more maintenance on my desktop computer.
  - admax88qqq 4y ago
    Which miles were you driving on those ICEs? The first 100k will have few issues. Same applies for EVs.
  - supernovae 4y ago
    There are teslas getting half a million miles on them already..
    - Amezarak 4y ago
      Okay. I know a guy with 500k on his Ford Ranger. That doesn’t tell us anything about average maintenance in that time, or over time. Years matter as well, not just mileage. I have a 20 year old truck and the interior is basically just destroyed from sunlight and time.
ip26 4y ago
The economics just seem different. The batteries lose capacity with time, compared to ICE cars that wear out with miles.
judge2020 4y ago
> It is not modular despite being composed of several individual cells, and often you are not allowed to work on it yourself. At least with current tech, battery chemistry makes such replacement extremely tricky without a full replacement. You can technically swap individual packs in a Model S/X battery[0], but it'll inevitably die[1][2] because of how voltage balancing works. Packs each with their own BMS would be interesting but I'm sure the automakers have already considered the tradeoffs for a lot of ideas like this. 0: https://electrek.co/2021/09/13/tesla-battery-pack-replacement-repair/ https://electrek.co/2021/09/13/tesla-battery-pack-replacemen... 1: https://twitter.com/wk057/status/1437607772959428608?s=20&t=k4Y8Tx4kSKmenfa1vEuQvQ https://twitter.com/wk057/status/1437607772959428608?s=20&t=... 2: https://twitter.com/wk057/status/1480403593794621442 https://twitter.com/wk057/status/1480403593794621442
SECProto 4y ago
> The problem is that EV cars have a finite lifespan on the most expensive component of the car... the battery Then they get less range, they don't die completely..
- fooker 4y ago
  This is one of those statements which are true only if you live in California. A 5-6 year old EV battery is unusable in winter at low-ish temperatures. Not only do you lose range when parked, you can be in real trouble if you’re stranded in a snowstorm. These issues are manageable with a new car of course!
  - SECProto 4y ago
    > This is one of those statements which are true only if you live in California. I definitely don't live in California. > A 5-6 year old EV battery is unusable in winter at low-ish temperatures. A brand new EV gets less range in winter. A used EV gets less range in winter. A used EV in winter gets less range still. But that doesn't make it unusable, it just changes the use case. A 300km range (when new) EV might reliably get 50% range in winter, and 70% range when 6 years old, combining for 35% of new range when used and in winter - plenty of buffer for an average driver's commute, but wouldn't want to use it for a winter road trip. > you lose range when parked Same applies whether it's a new EV or a used. If I were driving an EV in the winter (gets to -20C here regularly), I'd definitely be looking to park somewhere I could plug in - which are pretty common. As is, I drive an ICE, and I have to turn my car on for a few minutes to warm the engine before I start driving (or else the windshield becomes an unusable fogged-up mess before the end of the block) > you can be in real trouble if you’re stranded in a snowstorm. Yes, monitoring weather is important regardless of your vehicle choice. The only time I've been stuck in a snowstorm was when knowingly going for a weekend camping trip when a blizzard was forecast. (the solution was bring extra food in case we got stuck) > These issues are manageable with a new car of course! Or used. It's all about anticipating a situation.
  - adrianN 4y ago
    ICEs have less range in winter too and you're always in trouble if you're stranded in a snowstorm.
soheil 4y ago
What does fundamentally prevent a battery from being worked on? Finite lifespan applies to anything. Not being modular seems like an odd criteria to impose. Surely you can open a battery and work on its sub-parts. Not allowed to work on it? I don't know if you're being sarcastic or not, but vast majority of the world does not have the same set of laws and regulations.
seanmcdirmid 4y ago
A reconditioned EV battery is literally an old EV battery with new cells. The old cells are recycled, their lithium is mostly reused.
cirgue 4y ago
3k is pretty cheap for what is effectively an overhaul of the vehicle. You can easily spend 3k on an ICE car in repairs in the same span of time.
hoseja 4y ago
the "several individual cells" are welded together and also a structural component of the vehicle. You are not allowed to work on them yourself to not electrocute yourself to a crisp.
r00fus 4y ago
This is quite amusing. Unless the battery has some cliff where it stops working (very unlikely) my anecdotal experience is that the battery has a very slow degradation rate (2-3% over 5 years - great considering I have a 75mi roundtrip commute). On the other hand, I don't pay for: oil/fluid changes, filter replacements, transmission/engine rebuilds or smog checks. Probably forgetting a half dozen other things too. Add all that up and it's a free battery replacement in 10 years which I don't even think I'll need.

dubya 4y ago

Chevy Spark supposedly starts at $13600, available inventory seems to start at $14595 + tax, title license and fees. I have never bought a new car so I don't know the + part, but that's got to be getting close to $20k.

BirAdam 4y ago
If you have a decent older car you can get $5k at a dealer bringing the price down to $10k, tax/tag/title and you’re likely looking at $13k
- seanmcdirmid 4y ago
  Ya, the horrible thing is that I’ve never seen a Tesla used for under $20k. Until we can get some used Tesla vehicles at economical price points, EVs will just not be mainstream. Ok, there is some sarcasm in that. You can get a Leaf for cheap.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]