I wonder how battery degradation factors in to this. After ten years of daily use, a well-maintained Toyota will continue to cost very little in maintenance, but a lithium battery will have lost 50% of its capacity. How does the need to replace a battery affect TCO? Or is the assumption that no one will own a car that long?
No it won't. If your degradation is that bad, you would have been able to replace the battery before the warranty was up. Most manufacturers are similar, but Tesla has a 70%/7 year battery warranty. Any battery that will hit 50% in 10 years would hit 70% in 7 years and you would have had it replaced.
And obviously Tesla sets the warranty at a level where it doesn't expect to replace many batteries.
> For warranty claims specific to Battery capacity, the replacement Battery will be in a condition appropriate to the age and mileage of the vehicle sufficient to achieve or exceed the minimum Battery capacity for the remainder of the warranty period of the original Battery. Note that the vehicle’s range estimates are an imperfect measure of Battery capacity because they are affected by additional factors separate from Battery capacity. The measurement method used to determine Battery capacity, and the decision of whether to repair, replace, or provide reconditioned or remanufactured parts, and the condition of any such replaced, reconditioned or remanufactured parts, are at the sole discretion of Tesla.
After 9 years and 1 month, my battery is down about 13% from new. 50% loss in 10 years is pure FUD, IMO.
Somebody might feel good about spending more for a car that they like or that protects the environment, etc.
Why twice? Isn't once sufficient?
One reason to require the expectation to be better than break even might be due to uncertainty. But EVs seem to have developed into better certainty about maintenance costs, since there are fewer suddenly large expenses ("need a new turbo" was my most recent ICE sudden expense experience, for example).
N=1
> are more informative than "journalism" [0] paid to have an opinion [1].
That's quite the statement. Can you point which parts of the article are paid for ? Especially when the conclusion goes against the title:
> With battery prices predicted to continue steadily declining in the coming years, the math is likely to shift more in favor of EVs.
[0] your bias is showing
[1] everyone is entitled to it but for an opinion piece there were still some sources in it