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.
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.