this post was submitted on 26 Oct 2023
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Why does it have to be new? Whats wrong with a nearly new car that is only a couple of years old? Warranty, at least in Europe covers the major components like body shell and battery for 7 to 10 years now.
Part of reducing the impact of cars to the environment is making them last longer and EVs have the opportunity to be fully refurbished at what would have been the end of their normal lifespan to better than new. Replacing the battery pack for a more modern and denser version, replacing the motor for a more efficient and powerful one, even replace the entertainment unit with a more modern one. Sure, this is expensive but you are basically getting a new car for considerably less than a new car.
While I personally think Musk can eat a bag of dicks, the ability to upcycle early Teslas using Tesla parts is very welcome. It needs to be legally mandated that manufacturers have to offer this and end the cycle of scrapping cars.
What you described is already done with ICE vehicles. Engines and transmissions are rebuilt all the time. Even cars that are totaled are typically given a second life.
Ultimately it's the vehicle's body and frame that determine when it's at the end of it's life. You're not going to put a new battery in a tesla with a rusted out frame.
Arguably the lifespan could be worse for EVs since replacing the batteries is so expensive (more than a typical engine rebuild) that many probably won't be willing to put that much money into an old vehicle.
Rarely happens though in practice with ICE cars, average age of a car being scrapped in the UK is about 13 years, average age on the road is about 8 years. Car lifespan has been increasing in Western Europe as car reliability has improved. In general Cars do not rust as quickly as they used to, obviously there will be individual Friday afternoon shit boxes or even entire ranges as with Merc between the 90s and early 2000s. But in general they are light years better than pre 2000s and especially pre 1980s when they could start rusting their first year.
In practice the cost to repair vs. value of the car tends to dictate its lifespan in Europe, it becomes cheaper to replace the car than fix it. This is the cycle we need to end.
Current it tends to be limited to enthusiasts to upgrade the capabilities of ICE cars such as more powerful or efficient engine, etc. I do not see this market changing with EVs, you can already by performance upgrades for Teslas for example, even if I wouldn't touch these 3rd party performance upgrades with a ten foot pole (outside of things like brakes and suspension).
Retrofitting a much more efficient engine to a modern ICE car is difficult, it requires all sorts of other upgrades to enable it and manufacturers have been busy trying to lock people out, see BMW and their ECU encryption. Retrofitting a larger battery, particularly to earlier cars is reasonably trivial in comparison and the old battery still has value, whereas a knackered gearbox/engine/ecu combo is worth considerably less for the average car.
This should be similar to a right to repair law for EVs that also enables them to take advantage of the latest tech.
I'm the US the average age in the road is over 12 years and the average retirement age is about 20 years now. We don't have any required extended warranty rules but do require that OEMs produce parts for at least 10 years. Most parts for most vehicles are available from the aftermarket vendors though.
We have similar parts availability but when a job costs £1500 and the replacement car is £1500 with newer tyres and brake discs most just opt for scrapping as it doesn't make sense to keep the average car.
If you savvy you break the old car yourself and sell off the working parts for more than the value of the whole car.
Final owners just run the car till it breaks or fails it's MoT and is no longer road worthy then scrap it for a new one. Cars just depreciate faster than they become unrepairable for large amounts of money (see the costs for a proper restore or retromod).
COVID fucked with depreciation for a while with 7sed being more expensive than new for white goods cars but that's over now and depreciation is huge again.
In my experience, at least in the US, most people aren't getting rid of their car because a new car is cheaper, they do it because the cost to repair the old car exceeds the current car's value. This is actually a very poor justification for buying a new car but it happens all the time. People get scared when they get a high repair bill and jump into a multi year auto loan costing 250+/month.
Cars are expensive here though so you're unlikely to buy new for much less than 20k and the reality is most consumers aren't buying base model cheap compact cars.
Of course you may be able to buy used cheaper but people who are afraid of repair bills aren't usually rushing out to replace one old car with another.
It depends on if the car is about to enter an expensive period or not, if its not been looked after and/or is an unreliable model then when one thing goes it will be quickly followed by a whole bunch of other repairs. Cars can rapidly become a money pit and sunk cost fallacy applies very strongly to them. Its usually better to be dispassionate and cut your losses, especially if you can make money back breaking the old car yourself.
New vs. old is a difficult one. If you cannot work on the car yourself then having a fixed cost for a car that all non consumables are covered by the dealer can be very attractive. Plus you can offset some of the consumables costs for the first year or two as they will be brand new on the car. If you have the skills, tools, and time to do it yourself then usually its cheaper for a second hand car assuming you can choose a good one thats been looked after. Far too many people who think they know better know fuck all when it comes to choosing a good used car.
This was very much me when I was buying my first car. I was talked into not paying finance on a nearly new car and instead buying my dads old car that had just failed its MoT. I spent a few hundred fixing it myself and getting it back through the MoT. I then did about 50k in it over two or so years but I had to work on that fucker almost every week and spent thousands doing so. With hindsight the couple of hundred on the nearly new car would have worked out about the same cost and I would have saved hundreds of man hours of labor.
I think that there is a lot more mileage in taking a good old car and converting it to be an EV. Its not going to fit every use case but it is going to replace a lot of the old knackered rubbish that is in older ICE cars and is going to cost significantly less to run for the next decade of use before it needs another big refurb. My dream is to get an early Range Rover and do this to it.
Don't manufacturers charge something close to the price of a new car to exchange the battery?
Like they based the entire business model around the smartphone model of making them "disposable" so you keep buying new ones
Nope, the typical £10k to £12k on cars costing £30k, something like a Zoe for example, a Tesla Model S is around £20k to £30k depending on size with the Tesla being £60k to £100k to buy new.
The old battery is still worth a significant chunk of change as well, they certainly do not need to go in the bin. We haven't even started refurbishing old batteries yet, just repurposing them.
Couple that with more modern batteries often being bigger capacity for same sized packaging. Model S 60kwh with 70% usable is approx. 42kwh usable. Upgrade that to 85kwh and you've doubled your usable battery, so better than new.
Oh, and you'll often get another 7 to 10 year guarantee on the battery as well.
So nothing like a phone battery, well maybe one from Apple replaced by apple with an actual enforable warranty