I've had my current ICE vehicle for 15 years and it hasn't given me any problems yet. With any luck I can get another ten years out of it. Im not sold on the reliability of EVs yet, but hopefully by the time my vehicle dies reliability won't be an issue any longer.
Toyota ? Doesn't need maintenance is an under-reported significance.
“Actually the battery will probably lose the exact amount every year, and nothing will ever go wrong with any parts of it, and also they’ll also break the rest of the car at the same rate as a gas car, which is 20 years, which we’re going to call 15 years. Which means in 12 years the car will be useless, but the battery will still be at 80%. MATHS.”
Fucking. What.
Doesn’t need maintenance is an under-reported significance.
Nope. My car had not mechanical defects at all but cost $23k to repair when the battery failed.
And you saved more on gas and maintenance than the cost of that repair if it happened outside of warranty (which is 10 years on batteries)
Your battery wasn’t still under its 10 year / 100000 mile warranty?
"fall apart" is a very careful choice of words here.
The battery may fail, individual cells may fail, but it will still be one unit.
I wish evs were just as reliable and repairable as gasoline/diesel cars are on average.
Are they not as reliable?
They're actually more reliable and money saved on gas and maintenance is much more than the price of changing the battery every 10 years.
I mean, depends on the car you have. Outside of purchasing the vehicle, I haven't spent 15k in the last decade of car ownership and that's in AUD, so like 10k us. Pretty sure a new battery could cost more than that. Definitely the case for some though, especially if you have cheap electricity.
Why would you worry about the battery when it has a 8-10y warranty on it on average? The only reason to replace it is if it has a manufacturing problem and that's why there's a warranty. Don't void the warranty and you'll be fine.
You don't have to change the high voltage battery on EV nowadays.
Source: I own a Polestar 2.
Cars last more than 8-10 years so the warranty wont always help. For example I have never in my life owned a car that is less than 10 years old, my current '08 is the newest by almost a decade. Being concerned about replacing the battery is a long term thing.
Very true. Although out of warranty doesn't mean the battery needs replacement. There are many Teslas out there (because there are not many other EV that old yet) that have 700 000 km and more, some even closing in to the million km, and on average their battery SoH is still over 70%.
Again as the article says, the car will need replacement for pretty much everything else (suspension, steering, etc) before the HV battery.
Again, the battery is not something to be concerned about, even long term.
Gas + maintenance, you haven't spent 15k? I call bullshit unless you drive so little that you don't really need a car in the first place...
My last car I had for just over 2 years cost me $500 in services, $200 for a new fuel tank (new is a strong word for an at the time 22 year old car), and then its just fuel and rego, fuel was like $80/month and is the primary expense, rego might actually put it over 15k for a decade because that's like $700/year on nearly any car i've had (where i am its mostly based on cylinder count, and i haven't owned a 4 cyl car since like 2017, at least my performance car doesnt cost more because 6 cyl is 6 cyl regardless of power output).
I don't drive a whole lot, but enough that I'm not in the bottom bracket of my insurance, car is required due to not even living in a town. Not even remotely interested in walking the 4km to work because 6 months of the year minimum are way too hot for that.
The only issue I've ever had with my Ioniq 5 in 2 years was running over a screw and had to get the tire sealed. There is no oil to change, so the only regular maintenance is free tire rotations at the dealer.
It is a relatively new car though, if anything severely broke on it you'd probably be pretty upset, same with a new ice car. You probably have cabin air filters that should be changed at some point, but that isn't different to an equivalent ice car anyway. At least for EVs in my country, maintenance seems to be about 2/5ths the cost of an ice car, or at least of the ice cars i've owned. If you have solar or live somewhere with cheap electricity compared to fuel it's probably saving a respectable amount.
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