I heard someone said that, at the end EV will cost you almost the same as gasoline vehicle, if you have to change the expensive battery every so often. Can someone please give me more info on this? Thank you so much.
You know what you’ll never have to do to an electric vehicle?
Replace a stolen catalytic converter.
A gas car costs twice as much as a gas car after like 100k miles or so… you end up paying for some random ass shit that broke every couple months. Alternator here, transmission there, radiator, head gasket, O2 sensors, rusted out muffler, injectors… it’s not like your gas motor just keeps on trucking forever and doesn’t nickel and dime the fuck out of you as it ages. An EV is mainly just gonna lose some capacity as it gets elderly, and isn’t likely to have random little repairs as often.
If you ain’t super well off, you roll your shit til the wheels fall off, and with an EV, that’s just going to mean that the Tesla that goes 300 miles on a charge today, in ten years, is gonna be a Tesla that goes 150 miles on a charge, and there’s going to be people that will rock that old ass battery pack for as long as itll keep rocking, and a lot of those packs aren’t actually going to get replaced at the age everyone is claiming they will be.
Battery pack might be the whole ass cost of the car, but poo-pooing EVs over it is disingenuous if you ask me.
that’s just going to mean that the Tesla that goes 300 miles on a charge today, in ten years, is gonna be a Tesla that goes 150 miles on a charge, and there’s going to be people that will rock that old ass battery pack for as long as itll keep rocking
That 150 mile battery pack is still hugely useful with zero refurbishment as a stationary utility power battery. A Tesla model 3 Long Range (330 mile version) is 75kwh. A brand new Tesla Powerwall is 13.5kwh. So that old 150 mile battery is equal to the capacity of 5 and half brand new Tesla Powerwalls.
There’s already a solar power generating company using old Nissan Leaf batteries to store excess generated electricity, then putting that electricity back on the grid at peak times to earn money.
The main counter to that is that EVs are very difficult to repair on your own, so when something breaks, you’re going to be taking it to a specialist shop. While you’re right in saying that ICE components break, let’s not act like electric motors are indestructible pieces of machinery
I have never in my life repaired a car on my own, so that means nothing to me.
Bought an electric car in early 2020. Costs me a few bucks a months to keep charged, tops. I have spent literally 0 dollars on maintenance for it. There are just plain fewer moving parts. It’s a battery, an electric motor, and that’s about it.
So that’s 3.5 years (so far) of paying practically nothing to operate a smooth-driving, quiet vehicle that still gets almost 300 miles per charge and operates primarily off the wind power I buy from my utility company.
I expect to drive this one until it can’t hold a charge anymore, and then I’ll get another one.
How is an EV harder to repair on your own than an ICE? I think you’re wildly underestimating the shade tree tinkerers of the world.
Sure, an EV contains a bunch of proprietary software and configuration, but so do ICE vehicles, and people have been hacking that shit for decades. They’ll swap out the whole ass controller if that’s what it takes :)
They’ll swap out the whole ass controller if that’s what it takes :)
And we all know the ass controller is the most important part.
But there is sooo little to break on an EV. Mechanically, they are very simple machines. The only repairs we’ve payed for on our 2017 bolt has been a set of tires and wiper blades.
My smaller battery MX Tesla, after 7 years, has gone from 330km to 308km. The degradation is a lot slower than you indicate.
Battery lifetimes are specced as 80% capacity remaining. So a 300 mile range becomes 240 miles. Still highly usable.
I’m planning on buying a ~ $20k EV and rock it until the battery can’t take me for;m work and back over and I doubt that happens before I sell it to buy a (for realsies) cheap EV truck.
I’ve had an EV as my only vehicle for about 5 years. The biggest cost of maintenance was replacing my tires. Then replacing one of the new tires after I ran over something and put a big hole in one of them.
The regular maintenance on it has been effectively zero. I don’t have any fluids to change (other than windshield wiper fluid) or other regular maintenance tasks other than tire related things. My parents have had an EV for something like 8 or 9 years and their experience has been similar.
Do electric cars not have brake fluid? Should that not be being changed soon in it if you’ve had it 5 years.
Not accounting for rust and weather impact, EV brakes systems last much longer due to regenerative braking from the motors being used before the brake system is engaged.
I wouldn’t discount rust. I’ve had to change my rotors more frequently than pads due to rust (I drive a Prius). That said, I live in a state that oversalts their roads more than an amateur chef.
How often do you change tyrea? Also once a year? I always imagined that due the weight thetyres usage must be higher. Right now i work in a neighborhood with a lot of teslas and i saw that almost all their front tyres are absolutely gone.
That’s what happens when you don’t rotate your tires. If you rotate them every 6000 miles or so, they’ll be fine for a while. My stock tires are a year old and still look great.
I’ve changed mine twice in seven years.
No
Thanks for sharing!
It looks like you can construct scenarios where ICE cars are cheaper than EVs by a fine margin, for instance a mid-sized car that you own for just the wrong amount of time in a country with a high gas subsidy (the United States, for instance) that you don’t drive much. However, for most scenarios, it seems you’ll save 10-15% on the total cost of ownership.
The acronyms TCO (total cost of ownership), ICE (internal combustion engine) and EV (electric vehicle) may help you should you decide to continue research on your own.
Interesting read thank you so much.
It is hard to calculate. Some batteries will last longer because of didferent designs and environment. Sane with impacts of mining. It gets more complex since each country has different laws about how dispose of waste. That said studies i have read put the green point at aroynd 30 to 40 thousand miles.
Now Toyota’s researches found that plug in hybrids are better right now. Do to lower battey cost, and limited supply of batteries.
When it costs the costs are high. Electric vehicles still have coolant (2 different coolant systems, one for the battery pack and one for the electric motor), a hydraulic braking system and tires that will need to be replaced. But one of the best electric cars on the market was the electric ford focus, and they were really reliable. Except when the coolant system leaked onto the high voltage battery connections. When that happens it fries the battery and requires both battery packs to be replaced. To the tune of something like $20K each (from ford). This cars MSRP was something like $30K. The cost is so exorbitant that there are a few companies that will rebuild the cells rather than replace the battery packs themselves. I don’t know for sure whether that would work in the case of the focus, but even then the Labor involved would still also be expensive.
The lifetime of the car may be how long those battery packs are meant to last. But what happens when they don’t get the same range they had when you bought them? Battery tech gets better every single year. We make new strides in longevity, rechargeability, and sustainability. Each year the cost to manufacture them decreases as the process is further dialled in and streamlined. But the cost of cars continues to go up and tax credits for electric vehicles will probably not be the norm once they reach wide scale adoption.
On top of that, Tesla’s in particular have some significant build quality issues recently.
I brought up the focus because they’re out of factory warranty by now and likely to have at least one costly repair in their lifetime. People here are attesting to their own personal experiences with electric vehicles. But there are people out there who don’t have the same experience.
Good point here, thanks for sharing
Still way cheaper even if you replace the battery when recommended (7 years ish)
Add in the minimal to zero auto maintenance and your EV just keeps getting cheaper every time Tucker’s bronco needs an oil change and filter.
Last time I took my EV in for service the guy just told me to come back in 6 months. Truly hilarious.
No spark plugs, oil changes, no transmission fluid, nothing to leak. No air filter or fuel filter or vacuum hoses or plug wires or whatever they are going to try and sell you.
Plus, fewer brake jobs because of regenerative braking.
I miss a manual transmission but I don’t think I’ll ever go back to gas.
Exactly. The sheer convenience of owning an electric vehicle vs a rattle-trap changed the game for me.
My dream would be an 80s M3 with an electric engine swap. There are electric motors you can just bolt in front of the transmission as a direct replacement for a gasoline engine. I’ve heard most people just put the transmission in 3rd gear and leave it there, but I bet it would be crazy fun to take off from green lights in 2nd and go through the gears while accelerating. Having the best of both worlds imo
Perspective from India:
28% GST for spare parts of electric vehicles and the companies play monopoly by raising the price of the spare parts by 5x to 10x.
If we don’t use original parts sold by them and do maintenance outside the vehicle will not be covered under warranty.
There were many fire accidents due to the hot climate, which requires the warranty in place.
It’s kind of a nightmare to own an electric vehicle in India.
It’s good for someone who drives for more than 50km in a day. They can save on fuel, which will be higher than all other costs. The fossil fuel is 10x higher covering the same distance in an electric vehicle.
That’s good to know, thank you so much.
Better question is will you be able to sell your used 10yo EV.
“Maintenance” for your battery isn’t something that costs you every month. Nobody is going to open the thing and fiddle with it and turn screws etc.
It all consists of 1. how you are using it and 2. how good is your battery controller, hardware and software.
I have seen an old guy on TV who was driving his Tesla daily as a salesman, and he reported about several hundred thousand miles on his first battery and then twice as much on his second. He said he does never ever charge it above 80% and never discharge below 20%.
One thing to note is that car infrastructure maintenance (e.g. upkeeping roads and bridges) is often paid for in substantial part through a gas tax. Electric cars don’t pay the gas tax, so they are essentially freeloading. In the future, this may change, but this is one reason why EVs are currently cheaper than ICEs.
My state hits you with a tax you can pay per mile or once a year with registration, and was fairly expensive, so not really true here.
That sounds sensible. Car use is heavily subsidized, so someone is paying for those miles. It makes sense that a greater proportion of that cost falls on the driver.
I pay for that infrastructure when I register my car. As in, I pay easy more than an ICE car does. Way more. There is no freeloading going on. It is just a propaganda point used by oil interests to discourage people from adopting evs. The freeloaders you are looking for are the corporate interests who are using my lungs to clear the poisons they are spilling into the air with their diesel engines. Those are the freeloaders you are looking for. Protip: you can spot the freeloaders in a crowd real easy. They are the ones pointing their fingers and yelling “freeloaders”. Projection is a powerful tool
Oh please, your modest increase in registration fees do not cover all the externalities of cars. Cars still enjoy TONS of subsidies, including free parking, free highways, etc. In fact, 60% of the surface areas of most cities in NA are devoted to cars.
It’s hilarious that you think you’re fighting “Big Corporate Lobbying” by defending EVs. I don’t know where you get that I’m in favor of ICEs. I am against car dependence entirely. You’re being brainwashed into thinking environmentalism is just about buying another expensive product instead of fighting the car lobby entirely.
Planned obsolence. EVs suck after 5 years or so. SimPLy BuY a neW oNE.
You definitely sound like an actual EV owner and not someone who has no clue what they’re talking about.
I’m guessing you don’t actually know anyone who owns an ev. My coworker has been driving over 100km a day on his Leaf for nearly a decade and he’s only ever had tires and brakes done on it. I’d buy an electric myself if I didn’t need my truck for work
