Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News! Global plugin vehicle registrations were up 45% in August 2023 compared to August 2022, rising to 1,238,00 units. In the end, plugins represented 18% share of the overall auto market (with a 13% BEV share alone). This means that […]
It’ll be interesting as these batteries have to be replaced. How will people handle needing to pay a car’s price to replace the battery. Pretty daunting as the owner and destroys selling it as a used car.
Battery prices are dropping rapidly, and recycling cells is actually economically viable.
True, but they have a long way to go to be economically feasible for most people. People aren’t going to drop $10k on a car repair, and people aren’t going to buy a used car they’ll immediately have to spend $10k on.
For reference I was looking at Chevy Volts recently. Granted it’s a hybrid but it does have a larger battery than other hybrids. The car itself costs $8k to $10k on average and most likely due to the age of the vehicle the battery is on its way out you’ll need to spend $5k to $7.5k on a rebuilt hybrid battery. You’re almost buying the car twice.
When youre dropping 50-70K per vehicle, an extra 10k 15-20 years down the line isn’t really a big deal. Also the average life of a vehicle is around 12 years. Most of these people will be on to their 2nd or 3rd electric car by then or whatever propulsion is popular at that time…
Good thing the Volt has a really well-designed battery that you’ll basically never need to replace. The management system babies those cells.
There’s a reason people love crashed volts for DIY battery storage and EV conversions.
Few if any are keeping a car long enough to even require replacing a battery. This is a nonsense argument to start. Aside outlier failures, batteries functionally last many more miles than most people drive an ICE car over their years of ownership. If the battery on a vehicle is badly degraded and not worth replacing, it’ll be sold off for recycling and the car parted out and scrapped like any other vehicle.
They really don’t. It’s not like after 10 years your battery just explodes and stops working. They lose a little bit of capacity and work just fine.
I have a 5 year old EV with barely any battery degredation. That I bought used!
I have a 12 year old electric car with an old battery chemistry known for it’s fast degradation compared to current chemistries. It still has more than 50% of its original capacity, which is still more than we need.
I wouldn’t be surprised if I can keep driving it for another 5-10 years before selling the battery for grid storage.
As a guess do you have a Nissan Leaf? If so I think there is a cottage market for replacement and range booster packs. Still cheaper than a new EV. I miss my leaf but not the horrible highway range.
It is a Leaf.
When the battery does eventually die, I’ll be looking at EVs enhanced for an upgrade. The car is too nice to throw away.
I also have a 62kWh Leaf E+ for highway driving. It’s ok, but the older Leafs (from before the refresh) are much more fun to drive, have more storage space, a tighter turning circle, and are much better value for money. I would recommend almost any EV instead of buying a new Leaf. (Maybe not the Hummer EV).
Oh no, this isn’t good news! I’m looking into a newer Leaf, 2019 or newer and was expecting similar performance and such, just bigger battery.
The main problem with the new leaf is the lack of battery cooling. After 3 (sometimes 2) rapid charges in a day the battery is at max temperature and the charge rate drastically reduces.
Unless you already have a CHAdeMO V2G charger, I recommend choosing an EV with battery cooling (almost all of them). You can probably find one with more features and longer range for a lower price than a new Leaf.
If you aren’t planning on using the car enough to worry about battery overheating, and you enjoy the test drive, it’s not actually a bad car. Just a little overpriced.
Wait wait….I thought the new leafs had active cooling and heating? Now got to research this.
I loved the old leafs but lack of active heat and cooling killed the batteries in a few years.
They’ve always had a heating pad in them, unless it only came with some cold weather packages. The “active cooling” is just a fan that blows across the battery, and does basically nothing if you’re charging and it’s already warm outside.
I am dumbfounded. After the class action lawsuit from Arizona and the lizard battery chemistry from early Leafs why would Nissan not move to active cooling in a huge refresh.
You def saved my bacon, thanks for the info!
And what’s your current range?
About 60km from 80%, so I’m guessing 75km (45mi) from 100%.
We rarely drive it more than 10km in a day, and there are chargers every 20km around here.
That’s not bad for your use case!
I’ve got some 60+ mile days since I live so far from Seattle, and the occasional drive to Portland. I’d love to get a leaf, but I need to know that it can handle 200-300 miles on a charge.
Generally, the cars fall apart around the battery, not the other way around.
Cars aren’t usually worth much when they have 250,000 to 300,000 miles on the odometer. That’s how long a properly designed modern battery will last until wear and tear means its not usable anymore.
But you can still buy a 20 year old car with 250k on it for really cheap and drive it for the next 10 years till it completely craps itself.
The last thing I would call a 250k mile car driven for another 10 years is “cheap”. Large expensive things will be breaking left and right.
Yeah, but people with no choice buy them and ride them till they break. And some take a while to break.
In that situation they’d likely be better served with a 250k mile EV and whatever range it has left or purchase of a subpar pack from a wrecked EV of the same model to keep it on the road. EV just have so many fewer moving parts. The moving parts are what wear out over time.
Engines have to be replaced after a decade or more, that’s a huge expense that usually isn’t worth the value of the vehicle. How is this any different?
Uh, no, they don’t.
I have three 18-20 year old beaters with the original engines in them. Replacing an engine in a decade isn’t normal unless it’s a Ford.
What? A well looked after engine will live 20-40 years and are easily repaired.
Lmao what?
Seems like the type of cost that we could insure or somehow include in maintenance costs. But hopefully as production ramps up the cost falls quickly. And local mechanics learn to repair them.
Also, the cars with proper charging and cooling, there is a good chance they last the life of the car. A repair being an outlier or not expected, and large, is the type of expenses we buy insurance for.
Renault tried that with their early EVs, people liked it for new cars as it made them slightly cheaper for battery lease plus car lease vs. car lease as Renault retained ownership of the battery.
Subsequent owners did not as the monthly cost was then higher as the battery lease didn’t drop in price so it would cost the same or more than the straight car lease for battery plus car lease.
Dearlerships in the UK have surplus used stock stuck with battery leases they can’t shift that has depreciated massively (are now great buys secondhand) and Renault dropped the idea a couple of years ago .
Personally it’s a great idea as the car gets over ten years old (but not in the middle period of ownership) as Renault have to replace the battery for free if it gets to less than 75% usable with not time limit. So if you keep an older car it will eventually pay out. Meanwhile a normal battery warranty is between 5 and 10 years and between 70 and 60% with tighter mileage, highly unlikely to pay out on an older car. Needless to say Renault are keen for you to buy out a battery lease…
I agree except for buying insurance for repairs. Those are scams, you’d probably be better off putting that money into a general emergency savings fund.
My real estate agent advised me to buy homeowner’s warranty coverage when we bought our house. I did not, because I knew those were scams back then too. I have savings instead, and it has worked out for the best.