The Replacement Battery Costs for These Six Normal EVs Is Staggeringly High

[Caribbeans]

The battery pack is almost the entire cost of the car in some cases. Some are more costly than the car itself.

The Drive.com | CHRIS ROSALES | SEP 13, 2022

Old EVs are cheap, and slightly used examples are getting more affordable. But after we saw a battery replacement horror story for a Chevrolet Volt owner last week, we looked into the cost of replacing six different contemporary EV batteries. The news isn’t pretty.

The long-term costs of owning EVs are often misunderstood. Even if they’re powered by batteries, electric cars still need brakes, tires, and suspension. And because of the complex chemistry of lithium-ion batteries, these cars have a specific shelf life and degradation compared to internal combustion. Trouble is, engines get cheaper on a long enough timeline and generally can sit around indefinitely. Batteries are in constant decline.

A caveat of this list is the omission of Tesla. The reason is simply because there is no information on true parts cost from Tesla, with only used packs on eBay as a marker. We also looked into labor costs for replacing the batteries, on top of the astronomical battery costs. These change from state to state, but the quotes range from $1200 to $3000 depending on the car. The majority of the cost is parts. Let’s start with the humble (and good) Chevy Bolt...

...There is no getting around the high cost of batteries. At least for now. 10 years from now, there will be a reckoning on EV longevity. It will be interesting to see where used EVs land compared to ICE cars.
more: https://www.thedrive.com/guides-and-gear/these-replacement-battery-costs-for-these-six-normal-evs-is-staggeringly-high

Chevy Bolt - $9.9k
Hyundai Ioniq - $17.8k
BMW i3 - $24.4k
Nissan Leaf - $11.3k
VW eGolf - $27k
Ford Mach-E - $22.7k

2012 Tesla Model S batteries are now 10 years old. $12,000 for reman, $20,000+ for "new" with 4 year warranty

Tesla Motors Club
Model S: Battery & Charging
https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/forums/model-s-battery-charging.109/

[Timewas]

1. Without serious progress

In batteries EV's are at best a stopgap til better comes along. Personally I think hydrogen is the answer, can be extracted fairly easy and new systems that use solar and even better there is one being developed that can supposedly extract from the moisture in the air even as low as 4% or less humidity. Of course a good solar charging system for EV's would be great but you still have to face the battery replacement problem...Where as hydrogen burns clean with water as a side effect from which you can get more hydrogen.

[keithbvadu2]

2. How could they possibly leave out Toyota Prius?

How could they possibly leave out Toyota Prius?

A friend said it cost her $3,500 for batteries.

I don't know it that was new or refurb.

[Thunderbeast]

4. My brand new guaranteed battery for Camry Hybrid (160k miles)was $2 ,000.

Same technology as Prius.

Much less than the three transmission rebuilds I did on my Dodge Caravan in 120,000 miles.

[Nay]

10. Yeah, and the Lexus hybrid?? nt

[hatrack]

18. I owned a 2001 Prius, so definitely out of synch with these estimates. However . . .

When I bought it, the marketing manual the dealership let me borrow estimated 10-year life and $10,000 replacement costs (they didn't even have brochures back then). When the battery crapped out 13 years later, replacement cost was about $1,300.

Certainly, the relatively small battery of my old car doesn't accurately reflect the likely replacement cost of the far larger batteries of today. That said, I'd wager that economies of scale are going to push down costs over the next few years.

[brush]

3. Thanks much for posting this critical info. IMO it shows EVs...

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should cost a lot less than they do since replacing the battery will cost almost as much as what the remaining rest car is worth. And there's no way to stop degradation of the battery, even if you only drive it like the proverbial "little old lady only to church and back."

Once enough people are confronted with have to replace a battery 5-figure expense, there will have to be a shake out in auto industry pricing.

[MichMan]

5. Or they will shun buying one altogether.....

Once they figure out that depreciation is high if they trade it in and repair costs are high if they keep it.

[Caribbeans]

14. Thank You!

The fact that the lifetime of EV Batteries isn't discussed much is going to hurt some buyers.

Imagine all the people (particularly young people) saving every single penny for a new (used) electric car and then 6 months or a year later after they drive it they find out they will have to pay $10,000 + to be able to continue to drive their new purchase will be a complete shock. And for some it will mean they don't have a car anymore. And this could actually harm BEV adoption in the future.

Also the fact that in 2022, recycling of Lithium-Ion batteries is not cost effective - it costs more to do the recycling than you get from the recovered materials - is a problem and another thing that is not discussed much. Imagine mountains and mountains of dead Li-Ion battery packs - each weighing over 1,000 pounds (can't throw it in the back of a pickup) - because that's coming. Lots of people think they can just use these dead batteries to provide backup power to their house but they had better clear that with their insurance company because they tend to catch fire. You don't hear much about that either.

[brush]

15. Yes. There's a lot of silence on these matters.

Still much development to be done, and EV power may not be the answer for IC cars after all.

[Thunderbeast]

6. Be careful with these EV horror stories.

The oil industry and Russian trolls have been very busy casting shade on EVs, windmills, and solar. They are in a very large doomed industry. Either we will replace fossil fuels, or we will all die miserably from the damage we have done to the fragile atmosphere.

Be sure to put on your "critical thinking" beanie!

[brush]

7. If the prices are what they are, people need to know...

Last edited Sat Sep 17, 2022, 11:57 PM - Edit history (2)

and begin to force the auto industry to adjust initial prices down for these cars as people know from decades of driving IC cars that engines don't degrade automatically, and even replacing one, which is quite rare, is in the 4-5k range not the 5-figure range.

There will have to be a shake out on the prices of these cars unless there are significant improvements in battery life and costs.

[Random Boomer]

11. Not all criticisms of "green" technology are oil propaganda

The emotional resistance to hearing unpleasant, unwelcome facts about wind, solar and EVs is just as dysfunctional as a defense of petroleum.

We need to face the harsh truth that it's our addiction to huge quantities of energy -- no matter where they're sourced -- that is the real culprit, and there's no miracle energy source that will feed our addiction cleanly. Every single high-tech high-energy source we've devised -- from oil to solar batteries -- wreaks havoc on the environment and unleashes new toxic chemicals. Wind and sun are renewable, but the equipment we build to capture that energy are all dependent on non-renewable resources.

At some point in the not-to-distant future, everything we've built since the start of the industrial age is going to crash around us. It is unsustainable. It has always been unsustainable. We will hit the limits of a finite world, and it's going to be massively unpleasant for everyone.

[Duppers]

17. Great advice

TY

[PJMcK]

8. We looked into solar panels for our house

The cost is astronomical!

The panels are expensive.

The installation is exorbitant.

The batteries are a small fortune.

When the batteries need replacing, guess what? More investment.

We chose not to make the investment primarily because our house is on the north face of a mountain and cannot receive enough sunlight to make a system work efficiently.

Meanwhile, we pay about $75/month for our electric bill.

The decision seemed simple.

[Caribbeans]

13. House batteries are toys for the ultra-rich

At least until the prices come down.

A Tesla powerwall costs ~$10,000 and stores around 13.5 kWh

At .11 cents per kWh that's around $1.50 worth of electricity and using the average daily kWh consumption figures (900 kWh/Month) that would power an average home for maybe half a day.

And by then, most power outages are fixed.

$10,000 for ~12 hours of power. Limited lifetime. It's not practical. Yet.

Soon hydrogen storage will offer better figures for all of the above, people are working on this every day.

Interested in spending $10K for a home battery?

Might want to scan this forum:
https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/forums/tesla-energy.159/

[NNadir]

9. And this would compare the cost of ripping up all the gas lines on the planet for hydrogen how?

The cost of trashing how much of the world's ecosystems to put in vast industrial parks for wind turbines and fields laced with semiconductors how?

Neither electric cars or the worse idea of hydrogen powered cars are sustainable. In fact the car CULTure is not sustainable. It's a bourgeois conceit for which history will not forgive.

We kill when we fail to acknowledge the laws of physics.

[Caribbeans]

12. "ripping up all the gas lines on the planet"

The idea is to use them for H2, and not throw away all that work and existing infrastructure.

NTT to study hydrogen transportation through existing pipelines
Green Car Congress.com | 26 July 2022
NTT Anode Energy Corporation announced a joint research and development project to study safety measures for the mass transportation of hydrogen through existing pipeline infrastructure. The study, being performed in collaboration with the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology and Toyota Tsusho is expected to contribute to the realization of a pipeline transportation model for hydrogen that could be implemented globally. https://www.greencarcongress.com/2022/07/20220726-ntth2.html

Many people think hydrogen cannot be piped - but they don't know history.

"Town gas" or "Coal gas"- which heated the UK and other nations before the North Sea natural gas fields came on line in the 1960's was ~50% hydrogen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_gas

You might be surprised at what you don't know about the current worldwide hydrogen energy revolution that is taking place right now while Americans bicker amongst themselves. And for the record, I'm not here to argue - especially with rude, arrogant, condescending, angry fan boys of a particular tech.

You talk of urgency to combat global warming, that's what I'm interested in.

Hydrogen can help. NOW. It's not the only thing, it's a part of a holistic approach.

And while the next rounds of nuclear plants are built, you can watch hydrogen fuel cells combat climate change. Or, you can ridicule the tech and those working on it. Your choice.

[NNadir]

16. Yeah. The Green Car Congress also declared the Audi A3TD diesel as "the car of the year."

Last edited Sun Sep 18, 2022, 05:22 PM - Edit history (2)

It involved the famous defeat device that measured its pollution only when it was being analyzed.

I really don't care what pop websites say about environmental issues, particular when involves car cult rhetoric.

There is no fucking "hydrogen revolution." There is a hydrogen collapse right now in Europe. They can't make hydrogen to manufacture fertilizers because Putin cut off their dangerous natural gas.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/2022-09-14/europe-fertiliser-shutdown-as-gas-prices-soar/101430708

Saying there is a "hydrogen revolution" is equivalent, to my mind, of MAGATS saying that Trump won the 2020 election by a landslide.

In materials science, "hydrogen embrittlement" is a well known phenomenon. The use of hydrogen already requires highly trained engineers; it's not something to be handled by badly educated consumers who don't know the laws of thermodynamics.

I'm sorry its not a cartoon or a smug marketing picture, but this paper from the journal International Journal of Hydrogen Energy indicates some of the risks: Federico Ustolin, Nicola Paltrinieri, Filippo Berto, Loss of integrity of hydrogen technologies: A critical review , International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, Volume 45, Issue 43, 2020.

Opening it, one might search the word "embrittlement." It appears 42 times in the article. Hard to liquify gases, and I include methane here, the prime source for hydrogen, should really be prevented from use as consumer fuels, particularly when a safe alternative exists made from industrially captive hydrogen by hydrogenating carbon dioxide exothermically, DME.

As I've noted before, this journal which is dedicated to the idea of a "Hydrogen Economy" has been in continuous publication since 1976; I recall reading papers in it for well over 20 years.

Despite 46 years of prattling on the subject, almost half a century, there is no hydrogen economy, and anyone who thinks it's something new simply hasn't been paying attention.

The money squandered on this fantasy, just like the money squandered on "the solar and wind will save us" fantasy is being charged to future generations.

History will not forgive us, nor should it. We've had our collective heads up our asses.