“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.
No-one reports that their car didn’t need maintenance. See also, Toyota, Prius.
I had to dig deep to find this:
an average EV battery degrades at 1.8% per year, it will still have over 80% state of health after 12 years, generally beyond the usual life of a fleet vehicle.
You still have to assume they’re using average fleet vehicles use as their comparison, but at the same time also that they’re using 80% battery as comparable.
I’ll buy an electric car when
A) it won’t spy on me and
B) I won’t have to sign away my soul and first born to whatever car company I’m buying from
I hate to break it to you, but nowadays neither of those are exclusive to electric cars. Just sounds like you might never be buying a new car again.
It’s still easy to disconnect the cellular antenna if you’re fine with losing features like self driving and map updates.
It would be good to know which car companies don’t give annoying/intrusive warnings for doing the disconnect.
Plus I’d be concerned about gotchas regarding warranty and liability - GM just issued a recall for brake fluid level software not working, I don’t want to be on the hook for causing an accident just because I didn’t update my software.
I’m sorry. Do you think that gas cars don’t spy on you. Literally every car manufactured since 2000 has its own GSM/CMDA radio that is constantly connected and sending telemetry data to private corporations contracted by car manufacturers.
Those companies are constantly having security breaches too. Constantly
Get a Dacia Spring. Its like a classic car but BEV. And has a manual button that switches off all data transfer to the cloud.
Probably just stores it until you turn it back on. No way a company is going to just throw money away.
At least some companies let you use the data too (eg https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/bmw_connected_drive/). Mainly European companies.
Buy one from China, The only people spying on you then will have a miniscule impact on you, ever.
Chinese car companies sell their data to anyone who will pay. Including American companies who then resell your data… and so on. There are no protections and all your data is it out there
I agree with your terms, and would add one more:
C) when they don’t all weigh 6000+ lbs
Nope. My car had not mechanical defects at all but cost $23k to repair when the battery failed.
People who constantly drive new cars are fucking psychos. Why would you ever get rid of a car just because it’s 10 years old?
“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.
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)
$23 grand for a battery plus the cost of the car? I don’t think they would have spent more on gas and maintenance.
$23 grand for a battery plus the cost of the car? I don’t think they would have spent more on gas and maintenance.
I love how you’ve added the capital expense with the operating expenses on only one side of the equation but not the other. You know we can see that, right?
Your math falls apart when people, like me, have long drives. I could make my daily commute with an EV especially since my work has charging stations, but the 100000 mile warranty kills it for me. I do that in three years. I spend $50 a week in fuel which is $7800 for three years. I haven’t even come close to spending another $14000 in maintenance during that time. I also expect to get at least another 3-5 years out of this vehicle.
Long commute > 50$ a week in fuel
Eh… You don’t have a long commute buddy and I doubt you drive over 100 000 miles in 3 years!
Talk about my maths all you want, yours doesn’t make sense.
Also you’re acting like your battery will need to be changed after 100k miles for sure but you certainly don’t take into consideration that your gas engine could blow up after your warranty expires and it’s no cheaper than an EV battery! The difference is that the EV will require much less maintenance over its lifespan and is much cheaper to drive day to day.
Assuming $3/gal, $50/week for 3 years is 40mpg. Averaging that is damn impressive for an ICE car.
Just saw somewhere else that you are driving a golf. TDI or gas? I’m not doubting you. That’s just impressive. I can get the mid or upper 30s on my 55mi one-way commute in my gas Passat…if I’m lucky enough to not hit traffic. But that takes me trying to drive for efficiency, and almost all highway. I’d be happy to average at 30.
Corporate sponsored study finds in favor of corporation.
Stay tuned for the news at 7.
Yeah wtf. The steel frame is going to last an order of magnitude longer than the batteries
MG started offering a lifetime warranty for the battery and drivetrains in Thailand.
It confirms what the article is saying, manufacturers know with their experience that the rest of the car will break before the battery or the motor does.
How long does MG consider to be a lifetime? I’m daily driving a 32 year old car.
Edit: Ok, I looked it up. It’s an unlimited-mile warranty for the first 12 months. After that, it lasts up to 80,000 miles or 7 years, whichever comes first. This is less than the battery warranty for many other brands. This kind of advertising should be illegal, but they placed “lifetime” in quotes, so I guess everyone’s cool with it. Actually, it looks like that might be the old warranty, effective in 2019. I’m having trouble finding the actual terms for the new warranty, but I wanted to correct myself first.