Replies

The only way I will ever own an Electric Car is if someone gives me one.

It is very possible that at some point someone may give you an electric car. Without a decent battery after 8 or 10 years most of them have basically no market value because a replacement battery costs far more than what the car will be worth with the replacement battery installed.

Who knows what type of solutions will come up when there are large numbers of worthless electric cars on the market in a few years. In China there are junk yards filled with newish looking electric cars that are worth nothing and have been abandoned. The technologies have changed and retrofitting is financially unfeasible.

Well, Tesla will replace the battery under warranty for up 8 years/150K miles if it has less than 70% capacity. That means used Teslas in the 8 year old range would tend to have batteries with at least 70% capacity. To me that’s still a vehicle with some value. Even a vehicle with only 50% capacity could still be a used as an in-town commuter vehicle, it would seem.

The Tesla model 3 went on the market in 2018 so the oldest ones are around 5 years old now. I just checked eBay and the ones in that age range with around 100K miles seem to sell for $15K - $20K.

It’ll be interesting in the coming years to see how the market values EVs that have moderate loss of battery capacity. Will they be considered worthless bricks or will they still retain some value?

It’ll also be interesting to see how the falloff in battery capacity really works in the real world. Will it decline gradually to a certain level and then fall off a cliff? Or will it kind of level out so that it stays fairly constant for a number of years? Or will it decline steadily along a sloping line to zero?

Your picture foretells an environmental disaster in progress caused by electric vehicles.

A lot like that filled with abandoned EVs would eventually be a Environmental Superfund site as the batteries slowly corrode and leak their toxic contents into the ground, polluting the ground water for centuries to come.

Billions of dollars would be needed to clean up a site like that.

If it could be done at all.