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> Tesla for example garuntees >=70% capacity for 8 years or 100k miles. If you're used to buying used vehicles - that's not sufficient. For context, all the c

> Tesla for example garuntees >=70% capacity for 8 years or 100k miles. If you're used to buying used vehicles - that's not sufficient. For context, all the cars I've bought in the last 20+ years have been at least 8 years old when I bought them. I can get an 8 year old Toyota/Honda and know I'm good for the next 5-7 years.[1] Buying an 8 year old used Tesla with only 75% capacity? No way. [1] Likely a lot longer. I'm right now driving a 22 year old vehicle that only started showing issues a year ago.

deleted 1y ago
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mulmen 1y ago
The warranty doesn’t suggest the battery will be at 70.00001% on the first day of year 9. It says if it goes below 70% it will get replaced. That 8 year old Toyota you bought came with a 6 year/60k mile warranty. If you are comfortable driving that to 2.5x the initial warranty then a used Tesla should be good to 250k and 20 years.
- BeetleB 1y ago
  > The warranty doesn’t suggest the battery will be at 70.00001% on the first day of year 9. It says if it goes below 70% it will get replaced. The point is that they're not confident enough to say it won't be in that range. Put another way, why don't they just make the warranty 80% instead of 70%? If Tesla's not confident in it, I definitely am not. > That 8 year old Toyota you bought came with a 6 year/60k mile warranty. If you are comfortable driving that to 2.5x the initial warranty then a used Tesla should be good to 250k and 20 years. We hope so, but we don't know, which is the point. Toyota has a track record. Tesla hasn't been around long enough to have a track record. That aside, the real point is that ICE cars don't have any particular component that costs that much to replace. How much will a new EV battery cost me? Sure, on occasion you may have to rehaul your whole engine, but that's really rare. I've only known one Toyota owner who had to do that, and it cost (in today's dollars), about $6K. When I buy an 8 year old car, I don't expect perfection. I know things will break - soon. I buy it with the confidence that repairs will not be too expensive, and even after all the repairs I'll still save a ton of money. The other blocker is the private party market. So far I've never bought a car from a dealer. I always go private party. The standard procedure with that is you take the car to a trusted mechanic who will examine it and inform you of any potential problems. With electric vehicles, those mechanics can't do much. I've asked them. They can look at a few things like the brakes, but stuff related to the engine is beyond their ability. So whereas I may be comfortable spending a lot of money buying an ICE car from private party, I'm not for EVs.
  - mulmen 1y ago
    Why doesn’t Toyota make their powertrain warranty 80k miles? Or 200k? The warranty is there to cover failures. If a pack has a defect it will drop under 70%. If it doesn’t then it will continue working beyond the warranty term. You’re assuming linear decay and that Tesla has fit the warranty coverage tightly to that line. It seems more likely to me that Teslas warranty is designed to address unexpected exponential decay. This is consistent with ICE powertrain warranties.
    - BeetleB 1y ago
      You're not wrong, but none of this answers the question I have: What will the capacity be at 15 years? My current car is 22 years old. I paid a whopping $3.5K for it, and have not spent much in repairs. My prior car - used it till it was 17 years old. Would have used it longer but someone totaled it. I paid (in today's dollars), about $12K for it. Spent very little in repairs. The car before that - used it till it was 16 years old. I know the person who bought it from me and he used it for another 3-4 years. I paid $5.5K for it (today's dollars). Spent very little on repairs. So anyone who's buying a 6-8 year old EV needs the following answers: 1. How long will the battery be good for? 2. How much will replacing it cost? 3. Will the savings on gas more than compensate?
      - mulmen 1y ago
        We have a pretty good idea how EV packs decay. This isn’t a new technology. Google searches suggest 1-2% decay per year. So a 15 year old car would have 70-85% of original range. For pack replacements I don’t know, however it seems unlikely you’d really need to. The battery will almost certainly outlast the car. Range will be degraded but I don’t see a lot of 2005 vehicles doing cross country trips either. Even a degraded EV will be useful in town. Many people only drive a few tens of miles a day. The cost per mile is a simple calculation. It’s a function of your local electricity prices.
        BeetleB 1y ago
        "In our 2023 reliability survey, 17 percent of 2013 Tesla Model S owners told us their cars needed battery pack replacements at a cost of $15,000 each." This is 11-12 years in. Granted, perhaps batteries were just crappier back then, but 17% is a scary high number for me. Also: "This is in line with data from Recurrent, a firm that analyzes and measures EV battery performance, which found that 13 percent of EVs older than 2015 needed battery replacements. By comparison, only 1 percent of EVs newer than 2016 needed new batteries. " The source of some of the data. What happened with 2020 vehicles?! https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/how-long-do-ev-batteries-last https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/how-long-do-ev-batter...
- NDizzle 1y ago
  Batteries don't work like that and you know they don't.
bcrosby95 1y ago
This. We have two cars. One is 8 years old. That's old right? The other is 18 years old. Neither have had major issues.
LeifCarrotson 1y ago
I'm in the same boat, or was until I finally caved last year and got my wife a 5 year old vehicle, everything else has had >150k miles and >10 years. I will say that my '03 Pontiac Vibe GT, at 280,000 miles, no longer has all the horses it did when it was younger. There's still a kick from 6000 to 8200 RPM, but I'm increasingly reluctant to hit that redline once a month to "keep it fresh" like I used to. The gradual compression loss and increased leak-down rate aren't that bad, but it might be 25% fewer horses, I guess. Man, I love that car and that engine. I ought to get it a new set of rings, get the cylinders bored out smooth, and give it fresh bearings. Sadly, the rust that's appearing on the body like a cancer probably makes that not worthwhile... The good news for electrics is that those older motors will remain almost exactly as powerful as they day when they were new for decades. Obviously, the fuel tank is still the same size it's always been, but range is not as much of a concern on a gas vehicle because gas stations are everywhere and you can fill up rapidly. I personally hope that this becomes less of a concern as charger density improves year over year - in particular, as EVs become ubiquitous, landlords will start including L2 chargers in apartment parking complexes. Once everyone can charge in a garage overnight, range anxiety is hugely less important.
- yibg 1y ago
  > 03 Pontiac Vibe GT So a Toyota :)
ricardobeat 1y ago
Fuel efficiency on an ICE can drop up to 30% after 10 years... the end result is the same. But that's not on anyone's mind when buying a used car.
- maxerickson 1y ago
  I have a 2013 CRV with a EPA combined mileage of 25 mpg (AWD): https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/bymodel/2013_Honda_CR-V.shtml https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/bymodel/2013_Honda_CR-V.shtm... I get combined mileage of 26 mpg. That's a short daily commute and a couple trips a month to a town ~70 miles away. I haven't taken particularly stellar care of it.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- nomel 1y ago
  > the end result is the same. Absolutely not. This completely ignores the relatively high initial range of ICE (especially hybrid), and the poor real world state of the EV charging infrastructure, compared to petrol. A 30% drop in range would be an extra 5 minutes at the nearest gas station, almost guaranteed to be within a couple miles. And, that 30% is usually cheap to get back, usually just by some combination of changing the spark plugs, running a bottle of carbon removal/fuel system cleaner through, or changing the fuel injectors. I have an electric, but I also understand why people are avoiding electric, and why 96% of people with EV also have an ICE car [1] (including me, with my newest being ICE)! [1] https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2023/11/10/the-stat-that-says-what-96-percent-wont-admit/ https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2023/11/10/the-stat-that-say...
- ragingregard 1y ago
  "Fuel efficiency on an ICE can drop up to 30% after 10 years" Complete nonsense. Every 15+ year old ICE car I've known or owned was within 5% to 10% of original fuel economy, the reliable brands actually maintained their original fuel economy or surpassed it as fuel economy improves as engine wear in completes at the 20k-40k mile mark. If your ICE car dropped by 30% then share the brand and your maintenance history.
- 1y ago
turtlebits 1y ago
TCO is way important than range. You'll likely spend thousands less on maintenance on an EV. The few oil changes on my recently out of warranty 2021 Toyota have already cost more than the entire maintenance spend on my 2017 Bolt.
- jandrewrogers 1y ago
  Range is often a hard requirement, it isn’t optional. The TCO is infinite if your vehicle can’t take you where you need to go.
- BeetleB 1y ago
  > You'll likely spend thousands less on maintenance on an EV. I don't spend many thousands on maintaining an ICE to begin with. I've kept track of all car expenses since 2008 for 3 different cars. My average per year is $445. This is repairs and maintenance. I'm not a gearhead. I know little about cars. I do whatever repairs my mechanic suggests. Things just don't break down much with reliable ICE cars. TCO calculators are, in my experience, off by an order of magnitude. Ignore them. > The few oil changes on my recently out of warranty 2021 Toyota Are you doing them at the dealer? You're likely paying too much. And are you doing them on the manufacturer schedule or have you fallen prey to the "Every 3 months or 3000 miles" propaganda? Most cars need it every 6 months. And unless your car needs some high quality oil, it's typically about $40 to get a regular mechanic to change it. So $80-100/year.
- Broken_Hippo 1y ago
  I have a car over 20 years old. I don't spend much money on maintenance. I don't have a car payment, taxes are very low, and insurance is decently cheap. Had it for a few years, have replaced brakes and some minor things. Didn't spend much on the vehicle, either. Having a car payment would automatically be more expensive than my current vehicle. More taxes, more money each month, and so on. For electric cars, I won't get the incentives here in Norway for much longer, as they are being (mostly) phased out in the next few years. To be fair, though: I walk a lot. I have a 5-10 minute walk to work (depending on snow). Driving takes longer. The car is used a few times a month. Realistically, my car is a luxury item and I'm lucky to live in a place that makes it so.
amatecha 1y ago
Oh yeah, my daily driver is a 20-year-old vehicle. It has cost literally just a couple $thousand in maintenance/repairs in the time we've owned it (probably around 10 years? I forget). It's getting kinda rough, but like... at least it doesn't have a battery replacement looming around the corner that would cost more than the entire price we paid for the vehicle. I want an electric vehicle, but I'm not willing to pay the insanely high prices they go for. I typically don't want to spend more than $10k on a vehicle and I only have once (and that one got totalled in an accident literally a month or two after I finished paying off its loan). The times I've found a used EV in that price range, it's old enough that it will need a new battery soon, instantly ~doubling the price of the vehicle for me.

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

mulmen 1y ago

The warranty doesn’t suggest the battery will be at 70.00001% on the first day of year 9. It says if it goes below 70% it will get replaced. That 8 year old Toyota you bought came with a 6 year/60k mile warranty. If you are comfortable driving that to 2.5x the initial warranty then a used Tesla should be good to 250k and 20 years.

BeetleB 1y ago
> The warranty doesn’t suggest the battery will be at 70.00001% on the first day of year 9. It says if it goes below 70% it will get replaced. The point is that they're not confident enough to say it won't be in that range. Put another way, why don't they just make the warranty 80% instead of 70%? If Tesla's not confident in it, I definitely am not. > That 8 year old Toyota you bought came with a 6 year/60k mile warranty. If you are comfortable driving that to 2.5x the initial warranty then a used Tesla should be good to 250k and 20 years. We hope so, but we don't know, which is the point. Toyota has a track record. Tesla hasn't been around long enough to have a track record. That aside, the real point is that ICE cars don't have any particular component that costs that much to replace. How much will a new EV battery cost me? Sure, on occasion you may have to rehaul your whole engine, but that's really rare. I've only known one Toyota owner who had to do that, and it cost (in today's dollars), about $6K. When I buy an 8 year old car, I don't expect perfection. I know things will break - soon. I buy it with the confidence that repairs will not be too expensive, and even after all the repairs I'll still save a ton of money. The other blocker is the private party market. So far I've never bought a car from a dealer. I always go private party. The standard procedure with that is you take the car to a trusted mechanic who will examine it and inform you of any potential problems. With electric vehicles, those mechanics can't do much. I've asked them. They can look at a few things like the brakes, but stuff related to the engine is beyond their ability. So whereas I may be comfortable spending a lot of money buying an ICE car from private party, I'm not for EVs.
- mulmen 1y ago
  Why doesn’t Toyota make their powertrain warranty 80k miles? Or 200k? The warranty is there to cover failures. If a pack has a defect it will drop under 70%. If it doesn’t then it will continue working beyond the warranty term. You’re assuming linear decay and that Tesla has fit the warranty coverage tightly to that line. It seems more likely to me that Teslas warranty is designed to address unexpected exponential decay. This is consistent with ICE powertrain warranties.
  - BeetleB 1y ago
    You're not wrong, but none of this answers the question I have: What will the capacity be at 15 years? My current car is 22 years old. I paid a whopping $3.5K for it, and have not spent much in repairs. My prior car - used it till it was 17 years old. Would have used it longer but someone totaled it. I paid (in today's dollars), about $12K for it. Spent very little in repairs. The car before that - used it till it was 16 years old. I know the person who bought it from me and he used it for another 3-4 years. I paid $5.5K for it (today's dollars). Spent very little on repairs. So anyone who's buying a 6-8 year old EV needs the following answers: 1. How long will the battery be good for? 2. How much will replacing it cost? 3. Will the savings on gas more than compensate?
    - mulmen 1y ago
      We have a pretty good idea how EV packs decay. This isn’t a new technology. Google searches suggest 1-2% decay per year. So a 15 year old car would have 70-85% of original range. For pack replacements I don’t know, however it seems unlikely you’d really need to. The battery will almost certainly outlast the car. Range will be degraded but I don’t see a lot of 2005 vehicles doing cross country trips either. Even a degraded EV will be useful in town. Many people only drive a few tens of miles a day. The cost per mile is a simple calculation. It’s a function of your local electricity prices.
      - BeetleB 1y ago
        "In our 2023 reliability survey, 17 percent of 2013 Tesla Model S owners told us their cars needed battery pack replacements at a cost of $15,000 each." This is 11-12 years in. Granted, perhaps batteries were just crappier back then, but 17% is a scary high number for me. Also: "This is in line with data from Recurrent, a firm that analyzes and measures EV battery performance, which found that 13 percent of EVs older than 2015 needed battery replacements. By comparison, only 1 percent of EVs newer than 2016 needed new batteries. " The source of some of the data. What happened with 2020 vehicles?! https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/how-long-do-ev-batteries-last https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/how-long-do-ev-batter...
NDizzle 1y ago
Batteries don't work like that and you know they don't.

bcrosby95 1y ago

This. We have two cars. One is 8 years old. That's old right? The other is 18 years old. Neither have had major issues.

LeifCarrotson 1y ago

I'm in the same boat, or was until I finally caved last year and got my wife a 5 year old vehicle, everything else has had >150k miles and >10 years. I will say that my '03 Pontiac Vibe GT, at 280,000 miles, no longer has all the horses it did when it was younger. There's still a kick from 6000 to 8200 RPM, but I'm increasingly reluctant to hit that redline once a month to "keep it fresh" like I used to. The gradual compression loss and increased leak-down rate aren't that bad, but it might be 25% fewer horses, I guess. Man, I love that car and that engine. I ought to get it a new set of rings, get the cylinders bored out smooth, and give it fresh bearings. Sadly, the rust that's appearing on the body like a cancer probably makes that not worthwhile... The good news for electrics is that those older motors will remain almost exactly as powerful as they day when they were new for decades. Obviously, the fuel tank is still the same size it's always been, but range is not as much of a concern on a gas vehicle because gas stations are everywhere and you can fill up rapidly. I personally hope that this becomes less of a concern as charger density improves year over year - in particular, as EVs become ubiquitous, landlords will start including L2 chargers in apartment parking complexes. Once everyone can charge in a garage overnight, range anxiety is hugely less important.

yibg 1y ago
> 03 Pontiac Vibe GT So a Toyota :)

ricardobeat 1y ago

Fuel efficiency on an ICE can drop up to 30% after 10 years... the end result is the same. But that's not on anyone's mind when buying a used car.

maxerickson 1y ago
I have a 2013 CRV with a EPA combined mileage of 25 mpg (AWD): https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/bymodel/2013_Honda_CR-V.shtml https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/bymodel/2013_Honda_CR-V.shtm... I get combined mileage of 26 mpg. That's a short daily commute and a couple trips a month to a town ~70 miles away. I haven't taken particularly stellar care of it.
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
nomel 1y ago
> the end result is the same. Absolutely not. This completely ignores the relatively high initial range of ICE (especially hybrid), and the poor real world state of the EV charging infrastructure, compared to petrol. A 30% drop in range would be an extra 5 minutes at the nearest gas station, almost guaranteed to be within a couple miles. And, that 30% is usually cheap to get back, usually just by some combination of changing the spark plugs, running a bottle of carbon removal/fuel system cleaner through, or changing the fuel injectors. I have an electric, but I also understand why people are avoiding electric, and why 96% of people with EV also have an ICE car [1] (including me, with my newest being ICE)! [1] https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2023/11/10/the-stat-that-says-what-96-percent-wont-admit/ https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2023/11/10/the-stat-that-say...
ragingregard 1y ago
"Fuel efficiency on an ICE can drop up to 30% after 10 years" Complete nonsense. Every 15+ year old ICE car I've known or owned was within 5% to 10% of original fuel economy, the reliable brands actually maintained their original fuel economy or surpassed it as fuel economy improves as engine wear in completes at the 20k-40k mile mark. If your ICE car dropped by 30% then share the brand and your maintenance history.
1y ago

turtlebits 1y ago

TCO is way important than range. You'll likely spend thousands less on maintenance on an EV. The few oil changes on my recently out of warranty 2021 Toyota have already cost more than the entire maintenance spend on my 2017 Bolt.

jandrewrogers 1y ago
Range is often a hard requirement, it isn’t optional. The TCO is infinite if your vehicle can’t take you where you need to go.
BeetleB 1y ago
> You'll likely spend thousands less on maintenance on an EV. I don't spend many thousands on maintaining an ICE to begin with. I've kept track of all car expenses since 2008 for 3 different cars. My average per year is $445. This is repairs and maintenance. I'm not a gearhead. I know little about cars. I do whatever repairs my mechanic suggests. Things just don't break down much with reliable ICE cars. TCO calculators are, in my experience, off by an order of magnitude. Ignore them. > The few oil changes on my recently out of warranty 2021 Toyota Are you doing them at the dealer? You're likely paying too much. And are you doing them on the manufacturer schedule or have you fallen prey to the "Every 3 months or 3000 miles" propaganda? Most cars need it every 6 months. And unless your car needs some high quality oil, it's typically about $40 to get a regular mechanic to change it. So $80-100/year.
Broken_Hippo 1y ago
I have a car over 20 years old. I don't spend much money on maintenance. I don't have a car payment, taxes are very low, and insurance is decently cheap. Had it for a few years, have replaced brakes and some minor things. Didn't spend much on the vehicle, either. Having a car payment would automatically be more expensive than my current vehicle. More taxes, more money each month, and so on. For electric cars, I won't get the incentives here in Norway for much longer, as they are being (mostly) phased out in the next few years. To be fair, though: I walk a lot. I have a 5-10 minute walk to work (depending on snow). Driving takes longer. The car is used a few times a month. Realistically, my car is a luxury item and I'm lucky to live in a place that makes it so.

amatecha 1y ago

Oh yeah, my daily driver is a 20-year-old vehicle. It has cost literally just a couple $thousand in maintenance/repairs in the time we've owned it (probably around 10 years? I forget). It's getting kinda rough, but like... at least it doesn't have a battery replacement looming around the corner that would cost more than the entire price we paid for the vehicle. I want an electric vehicle, but I'm not willing to pay the insanely high prices they go for. I typically don't want to spend more than $10k on a vehicle and I only have once (and that one got totalled in an accident literally a month or two after I finished paying off its loan). The times I've found a used EV in that price range, it's old enough that it will need a new battery soon, instantly ~doubling the price of the vehicle for me.