I wonder what effect this will have on the resale value of second-hand electric vehicles?
So far they have not been performing as well as ICE cars. EV cars from even three years ago are seen as technologically behind today’s models, particularly when it comes to battery technology.
Theoretically the second hand EV market should be vibrant in future. EVs have much simpler engines, require much less maintenance when they are older, and should hold their value longer than ICE cars.
I had a conversation with someone the other day about getting a used EV. I want one (tho the spy-on-wheels aspect isn’t something I’m fond of), and specifically I want a used one because they are stupid cheap.
I’m convinced that people are actively trying to talk themselves out of getting one rather than doing even the basic look into the whole thing…
Person I was talking to was like “yeah but if the batteries go you’d be spending $28k to replace them!”
Dumbfuck, I’m not going to spend more than 10k on this used EV, which is only a few grand more than my current car is supposedly worth (which I’ll easily save in gas in just a few years)… I’m not going to replace the batteries if it’s expensive. I’d replace the car with another cheap used one, and trade in the busted battery one.
That’s to say nothing of the fact that If the battery goes within roughly a decade from manufacture, probs under warranty, and if not, well my ICE vehicle wouldn’t be worth shit for trade-in if the engine cracked or something, so what’s the difference?
Honestly, i’m really looking forward to the point where their are a lot of used EVs with degraded batteries on the market. This is because battery degradation is not like the battery suddenly stops working, but rather that is consistently losses a percent or two of capacity per year. While car manufacturers consider a battery worthless when it only holds 80% of what it did new, for a car that started with a 280mi range that still means 220mi, more than enough to cross the US interstate system.
Moreover, even that car at 50% would still have 140miles of range, which is more than enough for most city cars and nearly all commutes, even in the sprawling suburbs of the US.
It’s also worth noting that you can absolutely swap an EV battery with another one. It’s just unplugging a few plugs and hoses, undoing a dozen bolts, and then dropping it out of the car.
Finally, note most of the value of an EV battery is in the very easily recycled raw materials, which means that even a completely dead and degraded battery is still worth most of the cost of a replacement, and as such you’re effectively only out the difference between the raw materials and the lightly used battery your puting in plus an hour or two of a mechanics labor.
In short, as long as people have commuter and city cars, and especially if manufacturers don’t succeed in killing right to repair and aftermarket mechanics, I expect the battery degradation fears will be looked back on in thirty or forty years as a quaint little case of making a mountain out of a molehill.
