Posted on 03/20/2023 10:19:59 AM PDT by McGruff
For many electric vehicles, there is no way to repair or assess even slightly damaged battery packs after accidents, forcing insurance companies to write off cars with few miles - leading to higher premiums and undercutting gains from going electric.
And now those battery packs are piling up in scrapyards in some countries, a previously unreported and expensive gap in what was supposed to be a "circular economy."
"We're buying electric cars for sustainability reasons," said Matthew Avery, research director at automotive risk intelligence company Thatcham Research. "But an EV isn't very sustainable if you've got to throw the battery away after a minor collision."
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.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Governments will still mandate EVs just like Fake COVID vaccine
Electric vehicles never made any sense.
It’s why they never took off, even after they were the first motor vehicles on the market more than 100 years ago. But, like socialism, people who don’t learn from the mistakes in history, are doomed to repeat them.
Tesla might be owned by a good guy, but, Must has to diversify in order to stay relevant, which he has already started doing. Maybe a new Amazon or a new Apple or Microsoft? How ‘bout taking over one of those? Twitter is small potatoes compared to what Musk could do with his money and time and experience and management style.
True that. When my wife and I take our EV on a trip, which means stopping at charger locations for 10-15 minutes and meeting other EV owners, we often ask each other what we think about the EV and swap tips and such. I ask what their projected payback period is for extra costs vs. gas savings and such. It's very rare I get an answer besides they don't know. Not once has a Tesla owner say she had it calculated. Not not one. (Typed in my best Psalm 14:3 and Romans 3:10 voice. And yes, with Teslas I see more women than men. Maybe Larry Summers was right. LOL) I tell them that my payback period is about 12 years for the overall EV and solar project. They usually talk at me like I'm nuts for even doing a financial plan without going all in to save the world from cow fart warmageddon. It really is a cult.
That was the way I thought it was going to work - sort of like propane tank exchanges. Hard to see how to make it work. Maybe if we could come up with a fuel source that could be put into a vehicle in a matter of minutes, and used in any year or model vehicle. I may be crazy, but I'm sure we could think of something ......
Well, my wife’s car goes about 500 miles on a tank of gas (roughly 17 gallons). I’d say just about anyone would be hard pressed to find an EV that can drive 500 miles, stop for 10 minutes to refuel and do it all over again in the dead of winter, or any time for that matter.
“sort of like propane tank exchanges”
That’s what I was thinking as well.
“Maybe if we could come up with a fuel source that could be put into a vehicle in a matter of minutes, and used in any year or model vehicle”
That’s crazy talk! LOL!
Are EVs the new Ford Pinto (aka the Cherry Bomb)?
………And the marks AGAINST electric cars keeps climbing.
Sounds like an entrepreneurial opportunity here.
I would think even $10K to $12K for a replacement battery - sans warranty - is too much to put into a used vehicle that is otherwise also well-worn.
They could be used for cook-outs assuming you don't mind getting some hydrogen fluoride and/or hydrofluoric acid on your burgers or dogs.
“very few Tesla buyers are capable of assessing the actual cost of ownership”
I find very few literal kooks who understand numbers or budgeting. How else can you explain the utterly insane proposals to pay black people in San Francisco $5 million each, pay then $97,000 per year forever, and give them homes for $1?
I know there is a push now for racing with E Vehicles (Open wheel already has a program) So the fueling pit stops are going to take 30 minutes? That would be almost like watching Professional Soccer.
True that. And in my case we're talking about in the future (say 9 years from now) and inflation would make it cost more.
But then there's the other option, which in my case isn't good either. And that's replacing a used ICE car. Why used and not new? Because new cars to us aren't worth the extra cost (as us church financial small group leaders tell our groups). Until we got the EV my wife and I drove nothing but used cars in our marriage and were happy to drive nothing but that the rest of our lives. We had to replace them on average every 7 years (times 2 since we each had one, but now that she's retired and I'm quasi-retired we do most of our driving in one EV car though we still every once in a blue moon drive the ICE pickup). Call it now replacing one car every 7 years and the other car lasting a lot longer now that we don't often put wear on our ICE pickup.
So how much to replace a used ICE car every 7 years? When it was time to replace her car last year, instead of the usual $6K-ish it was going to be more like $10K. Hmmmm.... I don't know if used ICE cars will still be sky high 7 years later (the average for us on replacement of used cars), or if it'd be the same price but higher from a reasonable amount of inflation (say 3% annually). Part of the math with getting the EV instead of a used ICE car was, either way I was looking at spending $10K-ish down the road, and the EV might prolong that a few years (replacing the battery at an estimated 10 year anniversary vs replacing the ICE car on an estimated 7 year anniversary).
Maybe that's not the case with other people's situations. Maybe they spend more for used cars (i.e. lower odometer readings) but get more years out of them. Ironically, you'd think that in our low cost of living area that used car vs EV battery would favor used cars being lower (because EV battery cost is probably more of a national market than a regional market like used cars often are). But those were the numbers I was looking at for our situation. That plus installing solar and trying to be mostly independent on energy to give our retirement planning some cushion against the Dims' stupid energy policies. I wish I could drill and process my own fossil fuel energy because those are more dependable and efficient than solar power. But I can't access those good energy sources cheaply without the Dims getting in the way. The one thing solar brings to the table, and this is what makes it very valuable to me, is no bureaucrat regulates it. The only 2 "regulators" are God blessing us with sunlight, and me converting that sunlight into electricity and managing it (i.e. power the house, put excess to home solar batteries and charge the EV). The EV extends the use of solar into our transportation (at least local driving, and if we take it on a long trip the first 200 miles are usually cost free).
When the Dims keep making various energy sources hard to come and too expensive to use a lot of, it'll impact our retirement investments only a portion as much. I wish the Dims weren't like that. I'm all about fossil fuel use and I like driving the ICE pickup (though admittedly the EV is pretty fun LOL). But they've made it clear that they're going to use their energy polices to try to control us and also make voter fraud a regular thing to make it harder to get them out of power and replace them with energy independent minded leaders like Trump. Fine. Just like Trump made us mostly energy independent at the national level so other countries had less leverage over us, I've made our family mostly energy independent so that the Dims have less leverage over us.
It’ll be electric powered by a gasoline generator in the car.
All the public servants in my town have Teslas as their work cars.
they are dark colored and have Police stenciled on the side in such a close shade of that color you have to be in sunlight to see it. (that really should be illegal in and of itself, unless the car is considered unmarked)
they sit and watch mostly for minorities and people driving cars that are worth under $3k and then try to shred their tires as they do full throttle launches pretending they are doing public service.
The dirty little secret is when the batter goes dead you have to throw away the car.
How Dare You!
Pintos were no worse than some other small cars out there, but the way Ford handled the gas tank issue is what really sunk that model. To be fair, it did have about a 10 year run, which is pretty respectable.
I replaced one of those on my truck last year. About $100 in parts.
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