Comment by cmiles8
3 hours ago
Because driving includes a lot more costs than just fuel. And as others are calling out, nobody wants a used EV so deprecation is a real cost to every day regardless of if the car is driven or not.
3 hours ago
Because driving includes a lot more costs than just fuel. And as others are calling out, nobody wants a used EV so deprecation is a real cost to every day regardless of if the car is driven or not.
A few years ago used EV's had a lot less depreciation than gasoline vehicles. Now it's the other way around. And in a few years it'll change again.
Right now the lowest depreciation is on cars like the Honda Civic. Used buyers want a right sized highly reliable vehicle. The average EV is smaller than the average petrol car, and high mileage EV's are far more reliable than high mileage petrols.
> driving includes a lot more costs than just fuel
Oil changes, break pads, oil filters, spark plugs, …
For whatever reason, my wife’s car needs yearly scheduled dealership visits that always cost a few hundred. Meanwhile, my 5 year old EV has had none of that, other than one of those recalls that required a technician to park 15 minutes on our driveway to tighten some bolt (which my wife’s car also had, but it took another visit to the dealership.)
The depreciation thing is true, but I drive my cars into the ground anyway, so it’s not a factor for me.
I think "nobody wants a used EV" will change, there is already a growing amount of evidence that battery deterioration is nowhere near as bad as feared on average. ICE vehicles also tend to get less efficient over time as well due to wear and tear, build-up, degrading sensors etc, it's just that nobody talks about that.
It will really depends on charging infrastructure as well.
There is a large intersection of people who only buy second hand cars and who have to park them in the streets or in shared parkings. If you can't charge at home, owning an EV is much more a hassle, especially if there are very few chargers around (which is the case in my area) and charging at dedicated third party charging station in much less interesting from a financial point of view.
Business idea to solve all the battery complaints:
Make cars work off power tools batteries.
Take e.g. Bosch AMP Share 18V 8.8 Ah bricks[0] or equivalents. Back-of-the-napkin, you'd need about one per 1km of range (+/- various factors). Put them in racks of 5, and allow people to swap out dead racks for charged ones at gas stations[1].
This would give regular people back their favorite experience of gas stations, while preserving environmental and economical benefits. For example:
- People riding short routes could run with only 20%-40% of the racks in. Means they won't need to carry as much mass around. This is like people today who always keep their gas tank half empty or even emptier, to not waste fuel on carrying fuel around.
- People riding long routes could take extra racks in their trunk to exchange range; people operating other equipment could get extra racks for it at the station, too -- same as people today do when coming with gas canisters to the station.
- In case you run out of power in the middle of the road, for some reason, someone else can help you by lending you their battery pack - even easier than lending you gasoline.
- No more worry about battery life degradation - you're constantly swapping out packs, never using the same ones for more than few days or weeks, and it's an activity you are doing regularly - so people would finally realize that batteries are replaceable and stop complaining about used EVs being as good as used iPhones.
- Overall preserves established economics of gas stations and attached restaurants and service centers; every driver born in the last 100 years understands that and will find it intuitive.
- Bonus - the "power tool batteries" was more of a joke establishing scale; actual implementation would be probably sealed "rack-sized" packs with different trade-offs, but on the off chance it is made power-tool compatible, so much extra utility opens - from charging at home, to powering power tools :).
(I think the mistake of the OG idea of swappable battery packs of yore was to optimize for swapping time and keep battery as a unit. Breaking it down into pieces that weigh 5kg or less means you can reuse existing infrastructure.)
--
[0] - Not an ad, I just have bunch of those and invent more and more silly ways to power things from them.
[1] - The new "battery passport" regulations around the world already solve some of the technical issues here.
1 reply →
Right now I would hesitate to buy a used car with 5 years and a 100% of 300 km range but down to 250 km due to battery wear, when I could buy a new car with 500 km range. Owners of first Leafs got hit by already low initial ranges (~120km), so even a 20-30% battery wear have huge impact or car usability. That would change when ranges stops growing (about 700 km, maybe, the same as ICEs?), and used cars have the same range than buying new. 600 km instead of 700 km? Good enough.
Nobody is doing battery swaps yet? That sounds like an obvious thing? Or is the mobile "glued in battery not serviceable component" thinking spread like poison so much that people don't consider it?
If the rest of the car is fine, it should be one visit to a shop to swap out old battery for new (and the shop handling recycling/disposal of the old one), and off you go with car good as new.