$26,500? [0]
How much is a new Mitsubishi Mirage (for instance) where you are?
> There are a lot of people who just can't afford a new car
I'm talking about people who can afford a new ICE vehicle, but won't/can't pay the extra to get an EV.
https://www.coxautoinc.com/market-insights/kbb-atp-december-...
As a concrete example, the last time I used the official government calculator to compare ICE vs a comparable sized EV (e.g. size of Honda Accord), it gave the breakeven point at 7 years, with the following assumptions:
1. Gas at $7/gal (you pick the price and the chart adjusts accordingly - if I picked a more reasonable price the breakeven point was way far out).
2. It estimated repairs/maintenance for ICE at over $2000/year starting from year 1.
Bullet 2 above is ridiculous. I have all my car related transactions. In over 20 years of owning cars, I never came close to $2000/year. Note that:
1. I buy old cars (typically 8 years old when I buy them) - so they need more repairs than the one that's 1-3 years old.
2. I'm not a car person. I do whatever my mechanic recommends. I follow the maintenance schedule in the manual. I'm not cheaping out on repairs.
Similarly, the Edmunds TCO calculator also spits out some insanely high repair numbers.
When you track the expenses like I do, it becomes hard to believe that the up front extra cost for an EV will ever be compensated by gasoline and repair costs.
EVs are, frankly, really expensive right now.
(I will note that when I buy cars, I do thorough research on "reliability", with the aim of minimizing repairs).
My 2012 leaf has never been in a shop other than a tire shop. I haven't even had to change brake pads.
My 2004 Volvo and 2003 ranger were constantly throwing errors I spent thousands chasing, some of which required replacing the same part twice. Oh and don't forget about oil changes.
Also, if you haven't changed brake pads, I wonder how many miles you've driven it. Was this your primary car?
For me a Leaf wasn't an option. I can't go smaller than a Corolla/Civic, and prefer an Accord sized car - that's what I compared prices with EV.
Still, here are my numbers from 2012 onwards:
Repairs + maintenance = $5173.75 (includes tire changes). Gas = $9480.13 (about 110K miles)
Now the Leaf MSRP in 2012 was $36K. The equivalent sized Yaris was $17K. When you factor in tax benefits, the extra repairs the Yaris would need, and adjust the cost for fuel, it's not obvious that the Leaf was a better buy. Also, the real maintenance/repair costs would be significantly lower than what I quoted above, because those repairs were due to buying fairly old cars.
(And then factor in how much I actually spent on purchasing cars in that time period because I bought used: $12500 and the Leaf looks even less appealing).
Of course, the Yaris is way better if going out of town.
Anecdata, but everyone I know who bought a Leaf till about 2016 said it was not usable as a primary car - too short a range in cold weather. One person said "I can't commute to work and back, and do errands, without recharging."
As for Volvo/Ranger: Do you not take some responsibility for those purchasing decisions? When I was buying my first car, I was told to stay away from BMW, Mercedes, and Volvo. I was a student and was told I'd never be able to afford even minor repairs. In fact, a friend who was an engineer in Austin at the time bought a used Mercedes, and soon after the AC stopped working. He never got it fixed - he would use it only in the winter while he drove his Corolla the rest of the year.
Regarding the Ranger: I'm looking at reliability scores and they're poor, even for brand new ones.
I don't know about Leafs specifically, but brake pads usually last a long time in EVs due to regenerative braking. You might not use brakes at all if you can avoid doing any hard stops.
Buying 8 year old cars is a lower cost strategy ss your filtering out the lemons. You can’t buy the shitty BMW 3 series as it’s been converted to a Coke can by that time. :) Even then you’re lucky as stuff starts breaking due to age and mileage.
I drove a 2003 Pilot until 2019 and it hit a bunch of repairs at 125k and then at 250k major repairs came up just due to age and frame rust. I still miss that car!
Things definitely do break, hence the repairs I've done. I don't think I got lucky 3 times in a row - I researched and bought known reliable vehicles, and always paid a mechanic to go over the car before I bought it.
I've posted actual repair numbers since 2012 in this comment:
Minus $7500 for the tax credit, minus another $7500 in some states with rebates.
And even if you did pay $26.5K, saving 75% or more on fueling cost also helps a bunch with TCO.
Many of the most poor do not file taxes -- but they may still need personal transportation.
It's a shame the credit isn't refundable. It's weird that you can be too poor to get the whole subsidy.
Looking at a random local Mitsubishi dealer's website, it looks like a 2023 Mirage is around 19-20k. Which is cheaper than a Bolt, but if you qualify for the full federal rebate or have big state rebates it'd come out about the same price.
They do have a 2017 Mirage listed for $9,900, which is a lot less than the Bolt. The site doesn't say it's used.
> I'm talking about people who can afford a new ICE vehicle, but won't/can't pay the extra to get an EV.
What does a new battery run?
Having said that, I don't have first-hand experience refurbishing EV battery packs. Someone who does this kind of repair regularly might have a better idea of what you can or can't get away with.
This sounds great, for which EVs is this available?
"For many electric vehicles, there is no way to repair or assess even slightly damaged battery packs after accidents [..] Battery packs can cost tens of thousands of dollars and represent up to 50% of an EV's price tag, often making it uneconomical to replace them.
While some automakers like Ford Motor Co (F.N) and General Motors Co (GM.N) said they have made battery packs easier to repair, Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) has taken the opposite tack with its Texas-built Model Y, whose new structural battery pack has been described by experts as having 'zero repairability.'"[0]
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/scratc...
The cost to replace a Model Y battery is around $13K (no where near 50% of the cost of the vehicle). More than that, the battery will probably outlast the lifetime of the vehicle, with a design lifespan of approximately 500K miles.
Yes, eventually when the battery dies it won't be repaired as such - instead it is designed to be nearly 100% recyclable.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7Q0nNkQTCo
Here's where right to repair is exceedingly important. Obviously if it were up to Tesla, you'd only be allowed to go to them for repairs, at their full markup. But here's the secret - they have a huge markup, but no monopoly on electrical engineering. Like the video shows, 3rd party repair shops can repair these things. It's not rocket science - you're thinking of a Elon Musk's other company, SpaceX.
But $5,000, down from $22,500, is still more than "a couple hundred bucks to hundred bucks to tear the car down and expose the battery, and then identity the bad cell and pop in a new one". Now, in my haste, I wrote "cell" when I mean "module", sorry about that. The car for which I'm referring to that job is at the bottom of the segment - a first generation Nissan Leaf. They first came out in 2010 and here's a 12 year old used one for $6k (https://losangeles.craigslist.org/wst/ctd/d/redondo-beach-20...). It's almost guaranteed to have at least one bad module if you're buying something that particular car (they didn't have battery cooling systems that generation) and that old (simply due to the number of charge cycles).
The procedure for finding the and replacing the bad module is documented at:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTiFEapky8s&t=24s
and
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVaCMbXKrd4&t=423s
For the module itself, you're looking at 3rd party supplier for a refurbished one. Here's one battery module for $90 on Ebay https://www.ebay.com/itm/354422211418?hash=item528535c35a:g:...
or another listing asking $250: https://www.ebay.com/itm/225422969988?hash=item347c418c84:g:...
Or via FB Marketplace for $60: https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/5165480583467846/
If you take your Nissan Leaf to a shop that specializes in them, they'll likely have modules for cheap off salvaged cars, but we don't have access to those prices here. So let's say a refurbished battery module is anywhere from $60-250 and then kick $200 in labor to your cousin who's good with cars to watch those two videos and replace the bad module for you unless you're that cousin, then spend $250 on a battery module and buy yourself a nice voltmeter.
Official battery replacement jobs on a Nissan Leaf are going to run you much more (multiple thousands) but if you have a Nissan Leaf, or any electric car really, you should be aware that that's a total ripoff. Everyone knows you don't go to the dealer for repairs on an ICE unless you want to get ripped off, and the same is true for EVs.
Obviously there's some batteries that are tolerant of this (Prius' commonly have this repair on their NiMH batteries), but it's not universal.
Similar to many Apple or Xbox repairs, they swap it for one they've previously refurbed and tested, then add yours to the pile to be refurbed for another customer rather than make you wait for your specific battery to go through the process.
Not trying to be adversarial - genuinely curious. I only buy old cars (median is 8 years old), and I keep them for a while (5-10 years), and I often wonder whether EV cars that old would be a decent buy or not.
In theory, lithium iron phosphate batteries should last a very long time. That's what I'd go for if you want the best longevity, but they also have a lower energy density and can be damaged if you charge them in below-freezing temperatures. (Presumably all the cars with LFP have smart charging systems that disable regen and refuse to charge when the battery is too cold, and hopefully most of them have battery heaters.)
With batteries there's this weird dynamic that if it last for a reasonably long time, by the time you need a replacement the new batteries /should/ be much cheaper and more energy dense. Unfortunately, there aren't really any companies making 3rd party aftermarket batteries for old cars. Maybe that will change, and maybe the industry will standardize on some generic battery module design. For now, the replacement battery options seem to be a) buy a replacement from the OEM, b) find a replacement from a low-mileage junkyard vehicle or c) reverse engineer the BMS and install an equivalent custom battery constructed from new or used cells/modules, possibly using some kind of custom-fabricated battery box. It'd be great if you could just walk in to any auto parts store and buy a replacement battery pack, but we're not there yet.
There are a lot of people who just can't afford a new car. That's a legitimate concern. EVs are gradually working their way into the used market.
EV conversion is another option that's currently only for moderately well-off people with a lot of free time, but with the right kits it could be a more routine thing.