11 ms·

Hyundai Ioniq EV battery replacement costs $60k, more than new car

43 points by bastard_op 3y ago

aftbit 3y ago
This is a major problem that will plague EVs during the second half of their lifecycle. They are cheaper to maintain up until they need a battery replacement, then they are essentially e-waste. Will that happen before or after their bodies rust into dust?
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  If only we could invent swappable batteries.
  - jlturner 3y ago
    You can swap the batteries in some cars, but it’s still something to have a professional do. For leaf info: https://github.com/dalathegreat/Nissan-LEAF-Battery-Upgrade https://github.com/dalathegreat/Nissan-LEAF-Battery-Upgrade
    - mytailorisrich 3y ago
      Nio, a Chinese EV manufacturer, allows batteries swap instead of charging. They have swapping stations where you just drive the car in and the battery is swapped through an automated process in under 5 minutes, then you drive off with a full charge. Edit: here it is https://youtu.be/1kZgG58zz8U?si=RVdtpw7uthJFZqVv https://youtu.be/1kZgG58zz8U?si=RVdtpw7uthJFZqVv
      - narag 3y ago
        Wait until that reachs F1 and it will be 5 seconds. The problem will be battery thieves.
        FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        You mean Formula E?
        narag 3y ago
        In other words, wait until E becomes 1.
  - kybernetikos 3y ago
    https://insideevs.com/news/664267/nio-drivers-prefer-ev-battery-swapping-to-recharging/ https://insideevs.com/news/664267/nio-drivers-prefer-ev-batt...
    - Arnavion 3y ago
      Recent Tom Scott video about them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNZy603as5w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNZy603as5w
  - magic_man 3y ago
    Nio does that. Chinese are killing it with their evs.
- theshrike79 3y ago
  The problem is that shops are basically replacing the whole engine because a head gasket swap is too hard for them. It’s perfectly possible to swap faulty cells in an EV battery, but it requires specific skills and tools. Most shops don’t bother. It’s easier to swap the whole battery.
  - ZeroGravitas 3y ago
    Swapping the whole thing is reasonable if you get the full value of the "dud" battery. There's specific factories that buy and refurb these, only replacing specific cells and/or modules and then selling them on again as replacement parts. Even the totally mashed parts (from a crash perhaps) have some residual value as scrap. Fairly certain similar has happened when I've mailed off Xboxes for warranty repairs. I've got someone else's refurbed unit sent to me and mine then enters the refurb process before being returned to someone else.
    - theshrike79 3y ago
      As long as you can get the battery working, even with the missing cells, it's gonna be multiple tens of kilowatts of capacity. And if you can sell the client a full battery replacement for full price while still keeping the old one, you're making $$$
- thebruce87m 3y ago
  An NMC battery that gets 200 miles to a charge will last 1,000 cycles x 200 miles = 200,000 miles. An LFP battery will get 3x that. You’ll probably get batteries that outlast the bodies. The batteries themselves are recyclable too.
  - bluGill 3y ago
    Most of the time the engine on a modern car out lasts the body. At least an snowy climates
    - thebruce87m 3y ago
      Sure, but I’m not sure how common it is to transplant an engine into another car - maybe we will do that with batteries?
      - bluGill 3y ago
        It used to be common. In the 1950s engines didn't last as long so you would do such a thing. Now when I hear of it I assume a mechanic ripped someone off. Though race cars do abuse engines enough that a swap is worth it for them.
- jlturner 3y ago
  I bought a used EV back in 2016 (2013 Leaf, certified preowned from dealer, just off 3 year lease), and negotiated 25% off asking price, coming in at $9k. I have had $0 in maintenance costs, the battery health meter (and approx range) is still exactly where it was when I bought it, despite tripling the miles. I drive it every day for in city driving. Meanwhile my Jeep of the same era required a new crate motor be installed after a cooling failure, and I’m pretty sure the transmission will need replacing in the next 5 years. The repair costs on this vehicle have been well over $10k. We ended up giving it to my sister in law after fixing it up, then bought a Subaru (which the assisted cruise control on is basically highway self driving, so good for long trips!). A lot of ICE cars end up as junk too. The EV is actually more promising to me BECAUSE of the battery swap. I can put a battery in my Leaf from a newer vehicle and increase range to a couple hundred miles (I’ll do this eventually, maybe in another 10 years). This increases the longevity of the vehicle (it’s a great car aside from range). Honestly, the Leaf was the best car purchase I’ve ever made (I’ve owned 7 in my life, all for > 10 years, aside from the latest car and another which was stolen). I’d highly recommend people buy used EVs (but I would do a certified preowned vehicle from the dealer again, you want to know that it doesn’t have said costly damage to the vehicle, but that’s true of ICE cars that require major work too). PS: we use the EV for city driving (easily 90% of our car use) and the ICE car to go long distances (visit relatives, camping, road trips), and only leaves the garage 2-5 times a month (but packs on the miles!).
  - loloquwowndueo 3y ago
    “I can put a battery in my Leaf from a newer vehicle … and increase range to a couple hundred miles“ I think you’ll find putting a battery from a newer LEAF generation is not going to be trivial or cheap. Cars invented planned obsolescence, computers have nothing on them, so there’s likely to be non-trivial differences between batteries.
    - djaychela 3y ago
      Wrong in this case. It's a straightforward common swap on these, at most needing some brackets and an intermediary on the can bus, and stronger rear springs depending on the exact swap.
- ramesh31 3y ago
  >They are cheaper to maintain up until they need a battery replacement, then they are essentially e-waste. Will that happen before or after their bodies rust into dust? Modern EV lithium batteries last a very long time. Tesla numbers are showing >80% capacity remaining on a 10 year old car. Yes there will be people who want to swap out at that point to restore their range. But the reality is that the degradation is acceptable for most people and still leaves you with plenty of usable range.
  - tyfon 3y ago
    Tesla actually has reasonable pricing for the battery replacement. Part of the price you pay for the car is what we in Norway called "pant", so when you replace the battery this price is subtracted since it's the price tesla buys the old battery back for. For my X it would cost $10000 to replace the battery, however after 5 years and 100.000 km it's still at 95% of the original capacity..
    - deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
- bryanlarsen 3y ago
  Modern gasoline cars are remarkably well designed to have everything fall apart at once. They come with an 5 year / 100,000 mile warranty and fall apart at 15 years / 200,000 miles. This not-a-coincidence is a combination of both increasing the reliability of unreliable power train components over the decades and cost cutting in others. But an electric motor can easily last 1,000,000 miles, and we've got some battery technologies (LFP) that can also get close to that. The rest of the car could be engineered to go that far, but isn't because there has been no demand for it. But taxis, Ubers and self-driving cars do, so I wonder if we'll see cars with a 250,000 mile / 5 year warranty. What kind of premium would the market for such a car bear?
  - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
    I drive a mercedes diesel van whose engine is likely to last 1M miles. The problem is that engineering the rest of a vehicle to last even half that is incredibly challenging. Suspension systems, steering, braking, even just body panel fit over 500k miles are all subject to incredible demands. At this point, I feel that the 1M target is a bit silly. Given technological change (often but not always progress), a 20 year target seems like a sensible compromise.
    - bryanlarsen 3y ago
      Class 8 trucks regularly do > 1 million miles and Toyota taxis regularly do > 500,000 miles. It's certainly not easy, but it is possible.
      - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
        Yeah, it is clearly possible. But trucks have the benefit of generally accumulating huge amounts of highway miles, which is substantially easier on the entire vehicle than family hauling and commuting. Those taxis are amazing, but I wonder if that's the right model given technological change over their lifetimes. Also, particularly for trucks, the economics of a vehicle used to make money look a bit different than one that is purely for transportation utility.
  - 3y ago
- fnordpiglet 3y ago
  Tesla will happily replace the batteries in your car for around $10,000. However generally they retain 80-90% of their capacity after over 200,000 miles and 15 years of driving. Lithium ion batteries can be reconditioned and remanufactured. ICE cars have been rusting in junkyards since the outset at much fewer miles and more expensive overhauls of their major systems for generations. The ewaste battery meme stuff is just folks hanging onto the age of fire unreasonably. The age of Maxwell is upon us. N.b., Other car makers, YMMV. But it’s not intrinsic to the technology. If there are issues like this, it’s brand dependent. Caveat emptor.
filereaper 3y ago
This smells like insurance scam from the "independent" dealership. Now all three parties, the dealer, manufacturer and insurance are pointing fingers. Good on the owner to have brought this to the media.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  This could be it, but it could also be the case that a streamlined repair pipeline (including parts and labor) simply isn't in place for the vehicle yet. Hyundai/Kia isn't exactly the most reliable/responsible car marker (just ask the Kia Boyz).
hnburnsy 3y ago
Here is a better story and FYI $60,000 is Canadian dollars... >ICBC scraps 2022 electric car after owners faced with $60,000 bill to replace damaged battery https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/vancouver-ev-owner-shocked-by-60000-battery-replacement-bill/ar-AA1lQJOI https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/vancouver-ev-owner-sho...
- hef19898 3y ago
  So, a financial write off? Happens all the time, with all kinds of cars for all kinds of reasons: repair costs more than the cars value, insurance pays you the amount needed to buy an equivalent car. If it wasn't for EVs and batteries, I guess it wouldn't even have made the headlines.
andyp-kw 3y ago
Is this because Hyundai simply don't want you to replace the battery, and would prefer you buy a new car? Batteries are not like most other car parts which can be manufactured by a dozen different companies. It sounds like a right to repair issue, where car companies should be able to supply replacement parts at reasonable prices for n number of years after the car was sold.
- wongarsu 3y ago
  Even if you force companies to provide them at cost, they could conceivably end up more expensive than a new car. If you sell a vehicle model for 5 years, you don't keep the production lines for spare parts around for another 20 years. Instead you predict how much you will need and put that in a warehouse somewhere to ship out over the years. That's naturally expensive, often more expensive than the production cost. Not a massive issue for the smaller stuff, but if you take a part that is massive and makes up a significant fraction of the cost of the vehicle you get headlines like this. Imho that's a sign it shouldn't be a replacement part, its something that should be serviced and have smaller individual replacement parts (EV battery packs are more than a bunch of cells, after all)
  - LeifCarrotson 3y ago
    > you don't keep the production lines for spare parts around for another 20 years As a controls engineer who supports a number of automotive manufacturing lines, this is not accurate. They're still running many of those production lines, just at lower volumes, or just shuttled to less important locations. They may eventually transition to alternative (more manual) production methods, and yeah, some new-old-stock exists, but they don't stop after 5 years. In particular, I loathe the lines where they used polyurethane moisture-cure hot-melt adhesive. It's awesome for bonding wood veneers to plastics, and it's not a huge deal when you're in production running 2 or 3 shifts weekdays and one on weekends (it somewhat reacts with itself and cleans out the lines), but even when the supplier buys the expensive purge compound from Nordsen and purges it after they run the line for one shift a month, the next time they go to start it up after sitting idle and cold, something's going to be plugged up. When you sell equipment to an automotive manufacturer, you have to design it for a service life of at least 10 years. And they'll use it for every one of those, and they'll hold you to it.
bryanlarsen 3y ago
This failure mode used to be a big issue for Tesla's. In 2014 they added a titanium belly skid plate.
- mikestew 3y ago
  Which models have a titanium skid plate? Model 3s have a "skid plate" made out of cardboard. A quick search doesn't reveal what other models use. And, frankly, I ask partially because a titanium skid plate would be ungodly expensive for my motorcycle, let alone something big enough to cover a Tesla battery pack.
ck2 3y ago
That DARPA electrolyte fluid replacement idea the other day really seems like the best way forward for large batteries, hope they can make it work, well actually they did make it work I guess the hope it to make it cheap. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38756441 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38756441
tibbydudeza 3y ago
It is the pricing model for car parts vs cars - say you take a car and order all the possible parts from the factory/dealer the costs is way more than the car itself by a factor of 3 I reckon. Keeping parts around and stocked is very expensive for the distributor - you have to handle multiple model years and various trim levels.
mikestew 3y ago
When we went to Nissan's dog-and-pony show before the Leaf was released, they went on about how, by the time the 2011 Leaf battery needs replacement, that prices on batteries would come down, the old batteries would be recycled to $UNDEFINED_BATTERY_STORAGE, etc. Twelve years later when I went to look at replacing the battery, the prices had barely budged, and good luck finding a shop that would actually do the job. It would seem that those battery cells make more money in a new car than in a replacement battery pack. It was incredibly disappointing.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  And people are being surprised that the same battery and software DRM lockout anti-consumer practices we see in mobile devices make their way into EVs, combined with the already existing planned obsolescence of the auto industry and their service networks, and why people who aren't rich are still holding on to ICEs with their 20+ year lifespan, as they can't afford to be early adopters on the yet unproven EV future hype train?
  - mikestew 3y ago
    Oh, but you knew all along, eh? I didn't say "surprised", I said "disappointed". But I otherwise fail to see the point you're driving at.
    - zdragnar 3y ago
      Politicians around the world are pushing for mass adoption of what is basically a luxury good, not a substitute for an existing one. Some people have indeed been calling this out, but there hasn't really been long enough adoption for their point to be proven. It's less "nobody knew" and more "look, our leaders really are shills who have been gaslighting us".
      - mnkmnk 3y ago
        I think "leaders" have lost touch with reality. Actually, people in general have lost touch with reality, with instagram and tiktok influencers essentially saying you are a loser if you don't have these luxury products that "everyone" has.
bdcravens 3y ago
This was already discussed a few days ago, and the price of the battery went up substantially from the original estimate. While I'm sure this will be a favorite story to quote among those against EVs, this is more a story about estimate padding (and borderline insurance fraud) than anything else.
- toomuchtodo 3y ago
  People rant about Tesla non stop, but they’ll approve my 100kw battery replacement for $10k-$15k and I’ll be on my way. I can even do it through the Tesla app. Most people can’t afford this themselves out of pocket; that is a call to provide financing with the battery as collateral, just as we do with the entire vehicle today. Even with a battery replacement out of warranty, you come out ahead total cost of ownership due to fuel cost delta between electricity and petrol.
- FirmwareBurner 3y ago
  >While I'm sure this will be a favorite story to quote among those against EVs I don't think anyone is ever arguing against EVs, that they're not better for our air quality than sticking to ICEs, but the mass adoption issues come when the rubber hits the road. EVs range is still way behind ICE and drops like a rock in cold weather, and the ones with fast charging and the range close to a cheap ICE cost an arm and a leg, charging networks are still way too sparse and have shit payment UX plus the incoming charges for loitering after your car is charged, while fast chargers being even more sparse and Tesla's prices has continuously been higher than what Elon originally promised in his announcements. All this make EVs still not a drop in replacement for ICEs for the general public with small budgets and who don't live at their own house where they have a charger in their garage. Depending on where you live, public charging infrastructure today is a nightmare in most places making the charging experience much more annoying and time consuming than tanking gas. For example, I bought my 4 year old used ICE car with just 36K KM on the clock for only 6k Euros including another set of wheels with the mandatory winter tires. There are currently no low mileage EVs on the used market anywhere remotely in this price range, and that's before I run into the issue of the smaller range making vacation in Southern Europe nearly impossible, and not having any chargers where I live and park my car. Basically for me right now and others like me(most people in the country), a switch to an EV would be an expansive downgrade, and it doesn't look like pricing is going down and range and charging infrastructure is going up fast enough to match ICEs by the time they're banned from sale in 2030, meaning there will be a lot of angry voters priced/ranged out of EV ownership at that date meaning we might realistically see the ICE ban deadline extended until we sort out the infrastructure and the overly optimistic range/price reaches the values that were said we would reach years ago(basically a More's law for EVs). So nobody in their right mind is against EVs, but since they're too far away in term of range, price and convenience from ICEs for the general masses they need to hit in order to make the transition a smooth reality, I think the correct wording here is people are against a forced premature transition to EVs when they're not yet the drop-in replacements they need to be in order to not negatively affect the lives of people who depend on their cars for work and leisure.
talldatethrow 3y ago
Dealers aren't called Stealerships for nothing. My friend had a rat chew through a fuel injector wire. Dealer quoted $8000 for a new wire harness. My friend said there's no way he can pay that. They said "don't worry, file it with your insurance and it'll be covered since an outside action did it" with a smile. My friend has a $1k deductible, and doesn't like filing claims he doesn't need to. He and I soldered the wires back together and protected them. Took us about 30 minutes. Been 4 years since. Why can't the dealer offer a professional version of that at $200 an hour for 1 hour? Because they'd prefer to sell 40 hours of wire harness replacement.
- krallja 3y ago
  The professional version is to hire an independent mechanic to do the soldering and wire protection.
- zdragnar 3y ago
  Depending on the brand, the dealership likely has agreements in place to only do formally approved work, and I doubt "soldering wires together and wrapping them in electrical tape" is covered in the manufacturers tech manual. More than that, they may not have wanted to risk overlooking a different wire that may have been partially chewed through, sending the car back only to have it short out again the next day. Replacing the whole harness is "safer" (and certainly more lucrative).
  - talldatethrow 3y ago
    I didn't wrap them in electrical tape. You're giving dealerships a lot of credit. The reason my friend called me was because I spent 10 years working at dealerships. And am a decent mechanic overall too. Luckily this didn't need much. Dealers constantly throw half measures and guesses at repairs and send them on their way only for the customer to have issues miles or days later. This is simply a revenue maximization scheme and that's it.
hristov 3y ago
This is a great opportunity for an aftermarket business. New LFP battery cells are plummeting in costs. LFP cells are also very reliable. Other than the battery, electric cars are very durable. Some electric car models (i.e., older Tesla Model S's made during the Mercedes partnership) are actually much higher quality than the current versions. So somebody should reverse engineer the BMS for a popular old electric car model, create a new LFP based battery pack with a new BMS that is a drop in replacement for the old one (that means it is the same physical dimensions and the same electric and mechanical properties), and make the replacement. This will probably void the warranty, but people that need a battery pack replacement are usually already out of warranty. The LFP cells are less energy dense than the NMC cells that are used in most US sold electric vehicles, but they would probably be more energy dense than the completely used up, broken down NMC cells of a pack that needs replacement. So say you have an old 100KWH tesla model S, but the pack is completely screwed and you are getting 40 kwh out of it. The same weight in LFPs should come out to about 70 kwh. Well, people would gladly pay 6-7K for a new 70 KWH pack and a chance to keep their car, than having to shell out 80K for a brand new Model S that is made at a time of cost cutting and decreased production quality at Tesla. It seems like complex thing to do, but it is entirely possible. All the parts are available. Power electronics are no longer back-ordered to oblivion. And it seems something that is much more useful and potentially lucrative than dozens of crazy dumb car modification projects I see people do for views on youtube.
winpickup 3y ago
[flagged]

43 points by bastard_op 3y ago

This is a major problem that will plague EVs during the second half of their lifecycle. They are cheaper to maintain up until they need a battery replacement, then they are essentially e-waste. Will that happen before or after their bodies rust into dust?

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
If only we could invent swappable batteries.
- jlturner 3y ago
  You can swap the batteries in some cars, but it’s still something to have a professional do. For leaf info: https://github.com/dalathegreat/Nissan-LEAF-Battery-Upgrade https://github.com/dalathegreat/Nissan-LEAF-Battery-Upgrade
  - mytailorisrich 3y ago
    Nio, a Chinese EV manufacturer, allows batteries swap instead of charging. They have swapping stations where you just drive the car in and the battery is swapped through an automated process in under 5 minutes, then you drive off with a full charge. Edit: here it is https://youtu.be/1kZgG58zz8U?si=RVdtpw7uthJFZqVv https://youtu.be/1kZgG58zz8U?si=RVdtpw7uthJFZqVv
    - narag 3y ago
      Wait until that reachs F1 and it will be 5 seconds. The problem will be battery thieves.
      - FirmwareBurner 3y ago
        You mean Formula E?
        narag 3y ago
        In other words, wait until E becomes 1.
- kybernetikos 3y ago
  https://insideevs.com/news/664267/nio-drivers-prefer-ev-battery-swapping-to-recharging/ https://insideevs.com/news/664267/nio-drivers-prefer-ev-batt...
  - Arnavion 3y ago
    Recent Tom Scott video about them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNZy603as5w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNZy603as5w
- magic_man 3y ago
  Nio does that. Chinese are killing it with their evs.
theshrike79 3y ago
The problem is that shops are basically replacing the whole engine because a head gasket swap is too hard for them. It’s perfectly possible to swap faulty cells in an EV battery, but it requires specific skills and tools. Most shops don’t bother. It’s easier to swap the whole battery.
- ZeroGravitas 3y ago
  Swapping the whole thing is reasonable if you get the full value of the "dud" battery. There's specific factories that buy and refurb these, only replacing specific cells and/or modules and then selling them on again as replacement parts. Even the totally mashed parts (from a crash perhaps) have some residual value as scrap. Fairly certain similar has happened when I've mailed off Xboxes for warranty repairs. I've got someone else's refurbed unit sent to me and mine then enters the refurb process before being returned to someone else.
  - theshrike79 3y ago
    As long as you can get the battery working, even with the missing cells, it's gonna be multiple tens of kilowatts of capacity. And if you can sell the client a full battery replacement for full price while still keeping the old one, you're making $$$
thebruce87m 3y ago
An NMC battery that gets 200 miles to a charge will last 1,000 cycles x 200 miles = 200,000 miles. An LFP battery will get 3x that. You’ll probably get batteries that outlast the bodies. The batteries themselves are recyclable too.
- bluGill 3y ago
  Most of the time the engine on a modern car out lasts the body. At least an snowy climates
  - thebruce87m 3y ago
    Sure, but I’m not sure how common it is to transplant an engine into another car - maybe we will do that with batteries?
    - bluGill 3y ago
      It used to be common. In the 1950s engines didn't last as long so you would do such a thing. Now when I hear of it I assume a mechanic ripped someone off. Though race cars do abuse engines enough that a swap is worth it for them.
jlturner 3y ago
I bought a used EV back in 2016 (2013 Leaf, certified preowned from dealer, just off 3 year lease), and negotiated 25% off asking price, coming in at $9k. I have had $0 in maintenance costs, the battery health meter (and approx range) is still exactly where it was when I bought it, despite tripling the miles. I drive it every day for in city driving. Meanwhile my Jeep of the same era required a new crate motor be installed after a cooling failure, and I’m pretty sure the transmission will need replacing in the next 5 years. The repair costs on this vehicle have been well over $10k. We ended up giving it to my sister in law after fixing it up, then bought a Subaru (which the assisted cruise control on is basically highway self driving, so good for long trips!). A lot of ICE cars end up as junk too. The EV is actually more promising to me BECAUSE of the battery swap. I can put a battery in my Leaf from a newer vehicle and increase range to a couple hundred miles (I’ll do this eventually, maybe in another 10 years). This increases the longevity of the vehicle (it’s a great car aside from range). Honestly, the Leaf was the best car purchase I’ve ever made (I’ve owned 7 in my life, all for > 10 years, aside from the latest car and another which was stolen). I’d highly recommend people buy used EVs (but I would do a certified preowned vehicle from the dealer again, you want to know that it doesn’t have said costly damage to the vehicle, but that’s true of ICE cars that require major work too). PS: we use the EV for city driving (easily 90% of our car use) and the ICE car to go long distances (visit relatives, camping, road trips), and only leaves the garage 2-5 times a month (but packs on the miles!).
- loloquwowndueo 3y ago
  “I can put a battery in my Leaf from a newer vehicle … and increase range to a couple hundred miles“ I think you’ll find putting a battery from a newer LEAF generation is not going to be trivial or cheap. Cars invented planned obsolescence, computers have nothing on them, so there’s likely to be non-trivial differences between batteries.
  - djaychela 3y ago
    Wrong in this case. It's a straightforward common swap on these, at most needing some brackets and an intermediary on the can bus, and stronger rear springs depending on the exact swap.
ramesh31 3y ago
>They are cheaper to maintain up until they need a battery replacement, then they are essentially e-waste. Will that happen before or after their bodies rust into dust? Modern EV lithium batteries last a very long time. Tesla numbers are showing >80% capacity remaining on a 10 year old car. Yes there will be people who want to swap out at that point to restore their range. But the reality is that the degradation is acceptable for most people and still leaves you with plenty of usable range.
- tyfon 3y ago
  Tesla actually has reasonable pricing for the battery replacement. Part of the price you pay for the car is what we in Norway called "pant", so when you replace the battery this price is subtracted since it's the price tesla buys the old battery back for. For my X it would cost $10000 to replace the battery, however after 5 years and 100.000 km it's still at 95% of the original capacity..
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
bryanlarsen 3y ago
Modern gasoline cars are remarkably well designed to have everything fall apart at once. They come with an 5 year / 100,000 mile warranty and fall apart at 15 years / 200,000 miles. This not-a-coincidence is a combination of both increasing the reliability of unreliable power train components over the decades and cost cutting in others. But an electric motor can easily last 1,000,000 miles, and we've got some battery technologies (LFP) that can also get close to that. The rest of the car could be engineered to go that far, but isn't because there has been no demand for it. But taxis, Ubers and self-driving cars do, so I wonder if we'll see cars with a 250,000 mile / 5 year warranty. What kind of premium would the market for such a car bear?
- PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
  I drive a mercedes diesel van whose engine is likely to last 1M miles. The problem is that engineering the rest of a vehicle to last even half that is incredibly challenging. Suspension systems, steering, braking, even just body panel fit over 500k miles are all subject to incredible demands. At this point, I feel that the 1M target is a bit silly. Given technological change (often but not always progress), a 20 year target seems like a sensible compromise.
  - bryanlarsen 3y ago
    Class 8 trucks regularly do > 1 million miles and Toyota taxis regularly do > 500,000 miles. It's certainly not easy, but it is possible.
    - PaulDavisThe1st 3y ago
      Yeah, it is clearly possible. But trucks have the benefit of generally accumulating huge amounts of highway miles, which is substantially easier on the entire vehicle than family hauling and commuting. Those taxis are amazing, but I wonder if that's the right model given technological change over their lifetimes. Also, particularly for trucks, the economics of a vehicle used to make money look a bit different than one that is purely for transportation utility.
- 3y ago
fnordpiglet 3y ago
Tesla will happily replace the batteries in your car for around $10,000. However generally they retain 80-90% of their capacity after over 200,000 miles and 15 years of driving. Lithium ion batteries can be reconditioned and remanufactured. ICE cars have been rusting in junkyards since the outset at much fewer miles and more expensive overhauls of their major systems for generations. The ewaste battery meme stuff is just folks hanging onto the age of fire unreasonably. The age of Maxwell is upon us. N.b., Other car makers, YMMV. But it’s not intrinsic to the technology. If there are issues like this, it’s brand dependent. Caveat emptor.

filereaper 3y ago

This smells like insurance scam from the "independent" dealership. Now all three parties, the dealer, manufacturer and insurance are pointing fingers. Good on the owner to have brought this to the media.

seanmcdirmid 3y ago
This could be it, but it could also be the case that a streamlined repair pipeline (including parts and labor) simply isn't in place for the vehicle yet. Hyundai/Kia isn't exactly the most reliable/responsible car marker (just ask the Kia Boyz).

hnburnsy 3y ago

Here is a better story and FYI $60,000 is Canadian dollars... >ICBC scraps 2022 electric car after owners faced with $60,000 bill to replace damaged battery https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/vancouver-ev-owner-shocked-by-60000-battery-replacement-bill/ar-AA1lQJOI https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/vancouver-ev-owner-sho...

hef19898 3y ago
So, a financial write off? Happens all the time, with all kinds of cars for all kinds of reasons: repair costs more than the cars value, insurance pays you the amount needed to buy an equivalent car. If it wasn't for EVs and batteries, I guess it wouldn't even have made the headlines.

andyp-kw 3y ago

Is this because Hyundai simply don't want you to replace the battery, and would prefer you buy a new car? Batteries are not like most other car parts which can be manufactured by a dozen different companies. It sounds like a right to repair issue, where car companies should be able to supply replacement parts at reasonable prices for n number of years after the car was sold.

wongarsu 3y ago
Even if you force companies to provide them at cost, they could conceivably end up more expensive than a new car. If you sell a vehicle model for 5 years, you don't keep the production lines for spare parts around for another 20 years. Instead you predict how much you will need and put that in a warehouse somewhere to ship out over the years. That's naturally expensive, often more expensive than the production cost. Not a massive issue for the smaller stuff, but if you take a part that is massive and makes up a significant fraction of the cost of the vehicle you get headlines like this. Imho that's a sign it shouldn't be a replacement part, its something that should be serviced and have smaller individual replacement parts (EV battery packs are more than a bunch of cells, after all)
- LeifCarrotson 3y ago
  > you don't keep the production lines for spare parts around for another 20 years As a controls engineer who supports a number of automotive manufacturing lines, this is not accurate. They're still running many of those production lines, just at lower volumes, or just shuttled to less important locations. They may eventually transition to alternative (more manual) production methods, and yeah, some new-old-stock exists, but they don't stop after 5 years. In particular, I loathe the lines where they used polyurethane moisture-cure hot-melt adhesive. It's awesome for bonding wood veneers to plastics, and it's not a huge deal when you're in production running 2 or 3 shifts weekdays and one on weekends (it somewhat reacts with itself and cleans out the lines), but even when the supplier buys the expensive purge compound from Nordsen and purges it after they run the line for one shift a month, the next time they go to start it up after sitting idle and cold, something's going to be plugged up. When you sell equipment to an automotive manufacturer, you have to design it for a service life of at least 10 years. And they'll use it for every one of those, and they'll hold you to it.

bryanlarsen 3y ago

This failure mode used to be a big issue for Tesla's. In 2014 they added a titanium belly skid plate.

mikestew 3y ago
Which models have a titanium skid plate? Model 3s have a "skid plate" made out of cardboard. A quick search doesn't reveal what other models use. And, frankly, I ask partially because a titanium skid plate would be ungodly expensive for my motorcycle, let alone something big enough to cover a Tesla battery pack.

ck2 3y ago

That DARPA electrolyte fluid replacement idea the other day really seems like the best way forward for large batteries, hope they can make it work, well actually they did make it work I guess the hope it to make it cheap. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38756441 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38756441

tibbydudeza 3y ago

It is the pricing model for car parts vs cars - say you take a car and order all the possible parts from the factory/dealer the costs is way more than the car itself by a factor of 3 I reckon. Keeping parts around and stocked is very expensive for the distributor - you have to handle multiple model years and various trim levels.

mikestew 3y ago

When we went to Nissan's dog-and-pony show before the Leaf was released, they went on about how, by the time the 2011 Leaf battery needs replacement, that prices on batteries would come down, the old batteries would be recycled to $UNDEFINED_BATTERY_STORAGE, etc. Twelve years later when I went to look at replacing the battery, the prices had barely budged, and good luck finding a shop that would actually do the job. It would seem that those battery cells make more money in a new car than in a replacement battery pack. It was incredibly disappointing.

FirmwareBurner 3y ago
And people are being surprised that the same battery and software DRM lockout anti-consumer practices we see in mobile devices make their way into EVs, combined with the already existing planned obsolescence of the auto industry and their service networks, and why people who aren't rich are still holding on to ICEs with their 20+ year lifespan, as they can't afford to be early adopters on the yet unproven EV future hype train?
- mikestew 3y ago
  Oh, but you knew all along, eh? I didn't say "surprised", I said "disappointed". But I otherwise fail to see the point you're driving at.
  - zdragnar 3y ago
    Politicians around the world are pushing for mass adoption of what is basically a luxury good, not a substitute for an existing one. Some people have indeed been calling this out, but there hasn't really been long enough adoption for their point to be proven. It's less "nobody knew" and more "look, our leaders really are shills who have been gaslighting us".
    - mnkmnk 3y ago
      I think "leaders" have lost touch with reality. Actually, people in general have lost touch with reality, with instagram and tiktok influencers essentially saying you are a loser if you don't have these luxury products that "everyone" has.

bdcravens 3y ago

This was already discussed a few days ago, and the price of the battery went up substantially from the original estimate. While I'm sure this will be a favorite story to quote among those against EVs, this is more a story about estimate padding (and borderline insurance fraud) than anything else.

toomuchtodo 3y ago
People rant about Tesla non stop, but they’ll approve my 100kw battery replacement for $10k-$15k and I’ll be on my way. I can even do it through the Tesla app. Most people can’t afford this themselves out of pocket; that is a call to provide financing with the battery as collateral, just as we do with the entire vehicle today. Even with a battery replacement out of warranty, you come out ahead total cost of ownership due to fuel cost delta between electricity and petrol.
FirmwareBurner 3y ago
>While I'm sure this will be a favorite story to quote among those against EVs I don't think anyone is ever arguing against EVs, that they're not better for our air quality than sticking to ICEs, but the mass adoption issues come when the rubber hits the road. EVs range is still way behind ICE and drops like a rock in cold weather, and the ones with fast charging and the range close to a cheap ICE cost an arm and a leg, charging networks are still way too sparse and have shit payment UX plus the incoming charges for loitering after your car is charged, while fast chargers being even more sparse and Tesla's prices has continuously been higher than what Elon originally promised in his announcements. All this make EVs still not a drop in replacement for ICEs for the general public with small budgets and who don't live at their own house where they have a charger in their garage. Depending on where you live, public charging infrastructure today is a nightmare in most places making the charging experience much more annoying and time consuming than tanking gas. For example, I bought my 4 year old used ICE car with just 36K KM on the clock for only 6k Euros including another set of wheels with the mandatory winter tires. There are currently no low mileage EVs on the used market anywhere remotely in this price range, and that's before I run into the issue of the smaller range making vacation in Southern Europe nearly impossible, and not having any chargers where I live and park my car. Basically for me right now and others like me(most people in the country), a switch to an EV would be an expansive downgrade, and it doesn't look like pricing is going down and range and charging infrastructure is going up fast enough to match ICEs by the time they're banned from sale in 2030, meaning there will be a lot of angry voters priced/ranged out of EV ownership at that date meaning we might realistically see the ICE ban deadline extended until we sort out the infrastructure and the overly optimistic range/price reaches the values that were said we would reach years ago(basically a More's law for EVs). So nobody in their right mind is against EVs, but since they're too far away in term of range, price and convenience from ICEs for the general masses they need to hit in order to make the transition a smooth reality, I think the correct wording here is people are against a forced premature transition to EVs when they're not yet the drop-in replacements they need to be in order to not negatively affect the lives of people who depend on their cars for work and leisure.

talldatethrow 3y ago

Dealers aren't called Stealerships for nothing. My friend had a rat chew through a fuel injector wire. Dealer quoted $8000 for a new wire harness. My friend said there's no way he can pay that. They said "don't worry, file it with your insurance and it'll be covered since an outside action did it" with a smile. My friend has a $1k deductible, and doesn't like filing claims he doesn't need to. He and I soldered the wires back together and protected them. Took us about 30 minutes. Been 4 years since. Why can't the dealer offer a professional version of that at $200 an hour for 1 hour? Because they'd prefer to sell 40 hours of wire harness replacement.

krallja 3y ago
The professional version is to hire an independent mechanic to do the soldering and wire protection.
zdragnar 3y ago
Depending on the brand, the dealership likely has agreements in place to only do formally approved work, and I doubt "soldering wires together and wrapping them in electrical tape" is covered in the manufacturers tech manual. More than that, they may not have wanted to risk overlooking a different wire that may have been partially chewed through, sending the car back only to have it short out again the next day. Replacing the whole harness is "safer" (and certainly more lucrative).
- talldatethrow 3y ago
  I didn't wrap them in electrical tape. You're giving dealerships a lot of credit. The reason my friend called me was because I spent 10 years working at dealerships. And am a decent mechanic overall too. Luckily this didn't need much. Dealers constantly throw half measures and guesses at repairs and send them on their way only for the customer to have issues miles or days later. This is simply a revenue maximization scheme and that's it.

hristov 3y ago

This is a great opportunity for an aftermarket business. New LFP battery cells are plummeting in costs. LFP cells are also very reliable. Other than the battery, electric cars are very durable. Some electric car models (i.e., older Tesla Model S's made during the Mercedes partnership) are actually much higher quality than the current versions. So somebody should reverse engineer the BMS for a popular old electric car model, create a new LFP based battery pack with a new BMS that is a drop in replacement for the old one (that means it is the same physical dimensions and the same electric and mechanical properties), and make the replacement. This will probably void the warranty, but people that need a battery pack replacement are usually already out of warranty. The LFP cells are less energy dense than the NMC cells that are used in most US sold electric vehicles, but they would probably be more energy dense than the completely used up, broken down NMC cells of a pack that needs replacement. So say you have an old 100KWH tesla model S, but the pack is completely screwed and you are getting 40 kwh out of it. The same weight in LFPs should come out to about 70 kwh. Well, people would gladly pay 6-7K for a new 70 KWH pack and a chance to keep their car, than having to shell out 80K for a brand new Model S that is made at a time of cost cutting and decreased production quality at Tesla. It seems like complex thing to do, but it is entirely possible. All the parts are available. Power electronics are no longer back-ordered to oblivion. And it seems something that is much more useful and potentially lucrative than dozens of crazy dumb car modification projects I see people do for views on youtube.

winpickup 3y ago

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