I was really thinking "used cars that sell for so close to what they cost new you might as well buy the new one" (Tesla) and I mentally leaped to "that should mean the car is built so well, being a few years old should cause any wear worth mentioning" (I.e. well built off-road capable vehicle that 90% of owners purchased to merely masquerade as someone who does things that justify owning one)
I too wonder what the range loss will do to the value over time. If lithium doesn’t get substantially more expensive, I know that for the Nissan Leaf my parents owned, getting a new battery + the labor was like $4,000. Admittedly the Tesla battery has 3x higher capacity, but I don’t know much that actually effects the end price after accounting for all of the other stuff that goes into those packs.
That's very young for mechanical equipment. Traditional cars , washing machines and fridges could be operated for several decades with little maintenance.
> Even ignoring the life of the cells themselves
That was the point of my argument, though. That a great part of the car's production cost is due to the battery, which has a rather limited lifespan.
And maintenance is definitely required along the way and will just keep climbing
I have no clue about such statistics, but in any case they don't mean the car itself becomes useless after that period.
> And maintenance is definitely required
Yes but that's an entirely reasonable cost, at least compared to new cars. Even if you need to change significant parts of your car every few years (which is usually not the case), it would cost you a few thousand euros at most. A budget of, let's say 1000€/year maintenance (high estimate) is still an order of magnitude cheaper than buying a new car (20-100k€). That 1000€ yearly budget estimate is a very high estimate which accounts for expensive parts to change at most once every decade.
Of course, many people who buy second-hand cars will just buy another second-hand car for 100-1000€ instead of changing expensive/hard-to-reach parts for over 1000€. It all depends on how easy finding the parts are, and whether you or a person close to you has the equipment and knowledge to change the part for free (or in exchange for other services).
I am curious how electric car batteries will fare in the long run. Lithium batteries in the computing world (eg. smartphone batteries) are well known to lose charge after a few years. Considering battery is a considerable cost in manufacture/maintenance of an electric car, i'm not sure how that would play out. I guess we'll have to wait another decade to find out whether that's a disaster or not.