So what's the current situation with battery life on the Tesla and other full EV vehicles? I have a Prius (which uses NiMH, so not really the same but still) - some people have had the battery die under 100,000 miles, and others have everything still working fine at 300,000 miles. With the Prius it seems that concerns about battery life are rather unwarranted.

Currently Nissan Leafs can be bought here in the Bay for about 7k at under 50K miles, with 80%+ capacity on them. Depreciation on those things is crazy due to the tax subsidy, and the fact that better electric cars are coming to market.

I'd consider getting one of those when prices tank even further thanks to the Model 3, and upcoming Lea,f to supplement my hybrid.

Incidentally, I don't think battery life concerns are completely unwarranted - my hybrid's battery failed, and if it weren't for the extended emissions warranty in CA, I'd have been SOL. People seem to be aware of this, and it is evident in used hybrid prices, which many times cost about the same, and sometimes less that it's conventional counterpart.

Due to its severe depreciation, I believe that if a Leaf's battery failed outside the warranty, the car is totalled.

I think that may also be a little bit buyer's remorse as people discover what exactly a sub-100 mile range means in practice. According to Wikipedia 80% charge implies a 66 mile range. However that's for a new battery, so you'll have to assume a further haircut as the battery ages since to baby the batteries you're supposed to only charge them to 80% of their remaining capacity, whatever it may be.

My wife would normally be the ideal Leaf consumer - most of her jobs are no more than 10 miles from our house. But still that's 20 miles out of a pool of 66 before she a) turns on the air conditioner, b) runs any errands, c) runs into any traffic that delays her, and d) forgets to charge the car at home or finds the charger full at her grocery store.

The Leaf comes with a contingency planning overhead cars with longer ranges do not and that has to factor into any future decisions; could my wife take a job say 20 miles from home? Maybe but any of the factors listed above could easily result in a dead battery tow.

If I mapped that into my own use case even as an inner city dweller the short legs on the Leaf would preclude some practical applications I have now when a car with say 50 more miles of range would handily meet. If the Leaf ever gets to 150 miles new, which implies 120 mile range when new @ 80% charge and 96 miles when the battery has lost 20% of its capacity (also @ 80% charge) that would be workable for inner city driving with the air conditioning on and enough reserves for the unexpected.

I agree with the limited milage being a huge constraint.

Deep charging and discharging would severely degrade a battery's lifespan. Therefore all cars - From Model S to Prius - limit the battery's SOC to about 20-80% (Varies by chemistry and car model). The user may see 0-100%, but that is merely in regards to the usable energy available.

So a Leaf reporting 80 miles of range is already taking into account degradation and provisioning.

That is crazy. I have been keeping my eye on the electric motorcycle/scooter market as well as on electric bicycles thinking that that could be a good way to support/enter the electric market. But good electric motorcycles are retailing at $15k+ and good electric bicycles can easily push into the $5k range. While I don't think I can personally benefit from a used Leaf (commute to work via bike, and use my SO's car for occasional weekend trips where range would be an issue), seems like at $7k it would be an absolute steal as a commuter car for a 2 car household, especially when you take into account savings on fuel. Battery concerns are certainly warranted, but used ICE cars in the $7k range aren't exactly risk free either.

I don't think anyone really knows. The vehicles haven't been around long enough to understand what long term maintenance looks like regarding any aspect of the vehicle.

People throw numbers around regarding cost for things like replacement motors and battery packs but as far as I can tell nobody knows how much that stuff actually costs either except the manufacturers, because the replacements so far have been done under warranty. That may not be true for all current-gen EVs though; I've mostly been paying attention to the Tesla stuff.

Cost as in cost for materials & labor? Or as in price? Regarding the latter,

Replacement motor on 2013 Tesla Model S P85: USD 12,500

source: invoice from Tesla for my car

At 60 and above, isn't the Prius a gas-only car with some energy recovery in the brakes?

It seems battery life would vary tremendously based on how it was used.

I have owned a Prius for 12 years and the thing still got 50mpg - it had about 130k miles on it.

For all intents and purposes it was about as good as when I bought it.

It seems they should get to impressive mileage numbers reliably if used mostly for long-distance commuting. Electric motors during city-driving (traditionally where most engine wear takes place), and gas on the highway, where an ICE can basically run forever w/ proper maintenance.

Expect more and lower prices as the non-autopilot cars get traded in for cars with second-gen autopilot hardware. It will be interesting to see how Tesla owners handle cars with an iPhone upgrade cycle. https://www.slashgear.com/teslas-elon-musk-promises-12-18-mo...

Maybe not. The "second-gen" autopilot hardware is just more cameras and a new radar. No LIDAR yet. Tesla is struggling to get back the performance of their own first-generation autopilot, hopefully without the "crashes into stationary objects partially blocking lane" feature.

Tesla is at least one or two more hardware upgrades from Google/Waymo level performance.

I've yet to see one Google/Waymo car doing 90mph on the highway with Lane Keeping Assist Level 3 Autopilot. Not ten, not five, or even one. Tesla has thousands of them doing it as you read this.

and how does that make their computer vision hardware any better?

Cool. Where can I buy a Google / Waymo car? I will be happy to.

Sometimes shipping is a key.

The point on shipping is appropriate... But just for clarity: of all the autonomous cars companies that ultimately "succeed", you will probably not be able to purchase cars from at least half of them. You'll only be able to purchase rides.

How are you so sure of this? Maybe yes, maybe not. I think there is a merit to owning you own car and the traditional model might stand up quite well.

I know a lot of people at a lot of robotics companies (including autonomous cars companies), and have spoken at length with them about the ultimate business models.

Besides, it makes sense when you consider that most personal vehicles have sub-5% utilization. It's more capital and environmentally responsible to have shared assets rather than underutilizing assets with high embodied costs.

What may make sense to you and what people end up doing are often wildly different.

It's easier to make a car able to drive in a single city. Also, companies like Lyft could deploy manually driven cars for "hard" bookings.

Developing an autonomous car for Lyft is easier than developing it for a normal person.

Is the Autopilot not available aftermarket?

Ah, "pre-owned"... The soft language [0] version of "secondhand". You see, poor people buy secondhand cars and ewww that's icky and definitely not meant for the temporarily embarrassed millionaires looking for a Tesla.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h67k9eEw9AY

Or actually "used", I would say that "Would you buy a pre-owned car from this man?" doesn't sound as good as the original.

Their list: https://www.tesla.com/preowned?sort=price|asc

I guess the cars in the $30K's are sold.

According to EV-CPO a few under 40k still available:

https://ev-cpo.com/hunter/