While most cars have an Achilles heel, it’s not common to worry about a 10-year-old gas-powered car having an issue as profound as a bad battery in an electric car. For all the talk about how cheaper it is to service an EV, the flipside is that a huge chunk of the value in an EV is in its battery, and the replacement costs can be existential.
It’s been about a decade since electric cars reached enough of a volume in the United States and Europe to make what happens to older second-, and third-owner cars suddenly interesting to people. Guess what? There’s a race between startups to be the first to solve the used EV battery problem.
Happy Monday, y’all. Well, not so happy, because I stayed up last night to watch the Astros drop another home game in the playoffs. In addition to battery health startups, I wanna give you a UAW strike update, share a cool little bit of tech from the Tokyo Auto Salon, and talk about the unlikeliest of new car companies.
The Battery Health Startup Race
Successful industries create new industries. Just think of the iPhone and then all of those businesses that exist to fix the screens of iPhones. Electric cars create charging networks and charging companies to fill the batteries, and now companies are vying to be the ones to tell you how healthy your battery really is.
Today’s story must be near and dear to our own David Tracy, who had to go through hell and back (i.e. LA-to-San Diego traffic) in order to determine if the i3 he wanted to buy actually did have a functioning battery. The dealership wanted to charge him real money to test the battery.
Eventually, the battery test was done and the car failed, which led to David getting a new, free battery. That’s the least likely outcome and is due to quirks in California law. David also just bought a used Nissan Leaf and its battery is about half as useful as he thought it would be with little recourse in sight.
If you want to know if your car has been in an accident and cared for, you get a Carfax. What do you do if you want to know if the battery – which could represent 80% of the value of the car you’re buying – is good?
That’s where a handful of startups like Battery Quick Check, Recurrent (shown below on Cars.com), and Altelium come in, offering estimates of battery health.
Reuters has an article covering what’s at stake here and how it works:
Until recently, there was no way to measure battery health, hampering used EV sales. But that is changing as companies rush to scale up EV battery tests – some of which take just minutes.
One of them is Altelium, a UK startup that has a developed an EV battery state-of-health test and certificate launching this year in more than 7,000 U.S. car dealers and over 5,000 UK dealers through dealer service providers including Assurant and GardX.
“If the second-hand car market doesn’t work properly, the new car market doesn’t work properly and the electric transition won’t happen,” said Alex Johns, business development manager at Altelium, which says it has received interest from other markets including China. “We’re in an implementation race.”
There are a lot of these companies and they use various methodologies and testing/tracking procedures to either make inferences or directly measure how a battery is functioning.
Just for fun, I ran David’s car through the Recurrent system to check what it thought the battery would do. Here’s what that looks like:
Obviously, the range is incorrect! The actual range is more like 20-25 miles on a good day, downhill. This goes to show the real challenge involved here. David’s car, at that age and mileage, in a more temperate climate probably would have that sort of range. In California though? That battery is blasted. We’ll dig into thees services a bit further, and report back in another article.
It’ll be interesting to see which company can become the generic brand for used electric car batteries. There’s a lot of potential value there.
GM And Stellantis Seem Closer On Wages, UAW Strikes Stellantis Anyway
The strike rolls on and both GM and Stellantis have moved significantly in the last week.
Here’s an update from Automotive News:
The strike wasn’t expanded on Friday, but then this just happened:
BREAKING: 6,800 more autoworkers just joined the UAW strike.
These workers have walked off the job at Stellantis' largest plant, Sterling Heights Assembly in Michigan.
40,000 @UAW members are now on strike.
— More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) October 23, 2023
That’s a big escalation, though, curiously, if anyone seems on their back foot it’s Ford. The company seemed in decent shape at the beginning of the strike and has since slid to the back.
One of the big sticking points in negotiations is over the future of battery plants, which are primarily joint ventures. Both GM and Stellantis are planning to work with Samsung SDI. The Detroit News reached out to the Korean battery maker to see if it had been working through UAW issues and the response was: NOPE.
That seems like a smart strategy. Stay out of it.
Toyota Shows Off NEO Steer, Motorcycle-Style Cockpit
Hand controls for drivers with lower limb impairments are not new. Hell, Robert Wickens, who was paralyzed from the waist down in an IndyCar wreck, just won the IMSA Michelin Pilot Challenge championship in a car with hand controls.
Historically, these types of controls are generally retrofits. Toyota’s NEO Steer concept, to be unveiled at the Tokyo Motor Show this week, shows what an OEM-built system might look like.
Here’s how it’s described:
A sweeping field of vision made possible by the steering wheel’s irregular profile, and the roomy pedal-free floor space, enable an unrestricted driving position along with smooth entry and exit. The NEO Steer will help foster greater love for cars, and deliver the joy and excitement of mobility for all. Also offers safe, intuitive hand-operated driving for users with lower limb impairments.
Inspired by motorcycle handlebars, this seems like a no-brainer, especially with EVs utilizing more drive-by-wire systems.
The Return Of TWR
I was not expecting to write about the return of Tom Walkinshaw Racing as a “bespoke constructor of automobiles” but here we are.
The company, to be called TWR, will be run by Tom’s son Fergus and will, according to a press release:
“[S]et out to become a world-class constructor of bespoke high-performance automobiles that aim to push the envelope of performance engineering, while also working with class-leading brands to maximise the potential of their own products.
In a rapidly evolving landscape where so many modern performance cars are governed by their electronic systems, TWR seeks to preserve and perfect the analogue driving experience. By blending the best of modern materials and innovative design concepts with traditional engineering, TWR aims to craft vehicles with a perfect balance of performance, style, functionality and quality.”
I’m not sure what any of that means, but TWR is responsible for some of the best race cars in history, including the Bathurst 1000-winning XJS, Volvo 850 Estate British Touring Car, and a bunch of Holden Commodores.
TWR was also responsible for the existence of the Renault Clio V6, Aston Martin DB7, and the Jaguar XJ220.
Am I worried this is another company coming back to life to make another super expensive EV toy? Yes. But with a history like TWR has I’m willing to extend a whisp of a benefit of the doubt.
The Big Question
Tom Walkinshaw’s son Fergus walks up to you and says “We’ve made some of the best race cars ever and it’s up to you to help us pick our first-ever vehicle as a manufacturer. What should we build?” You’ve got all of TWR’s wild history you choose from or, if you want, just make something entirely new. Go! (Alternative question for you non-racing folks: How concerned are you about buying used EVs? Is the battery state of health something you absolutely must know prior to purchase?).
The best solution, is to mandate standardized, replaceable battery packs.
But around here, that’s like saying the Pope ain’t Catholic.
Which he isn’t, actually. But let’s not bicker about Latin Mass.
Electrons have mass? I didn’t even know they were Catholic!
Just a little electricity/Catholicism humor
EM waves have lambda. Catholic priests join NAMBLA.
That’s horrible. But I loled.
When kiddie diddling was the second worst thing they did in the past century….
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-57592243
Good lord, that’s a tasteless, horrible and disgusting joke, I loved it!
I had to Google that, and now I’m pretty sure I’m on some sort of list.
That’s not as feasible as you would think, unless you have multiple standards for multiple vehicle types/applications. You’d probably need 20+ different standards to cover 90% of vehicle types.
Pretty sure my 90’s Sony Sports boombox had standard “c” batteries. It can be easily done. Need more juice, just add more batteries. Standards are helpful when companies work together.
A car has much different requirements than consumer electronics.
Maybe if we went to low-voltage battery architecture with a single series string of high-AH LiFePO4 cells. Otherwise, you’re going to need a BMS. That complicates things. And different vehicle applications will need different battery sizes. That further complicates things. Then they will need to share the same voltage and thus use controls/motors that operate at that same voltage, further complicating things.
Another tactic that might work would be to sell batteries as 12V nominal modules, each with their own BMS, and then just use as many as needed. Swap one out when one fails, without having to change a whole pack.
The problem is that one size does not fit all with ground vehicles. This is why such standards haven’t come to fruition. The needs of a supercar are different from the needs of a subcompact city runabout which are different from the needs of an SUV which are different from the needs of a cargo van.
The day that such a standard is arrived at is the day that battery swap stations become viable. I don’t see that happening.
They already have battery swap stations in China. It is possible and works. It’s also a problems with solutions that don’t require new technology, just regulations and standards.
I don’t expect it to be possible unfortunately, since corporations want profits and regulations take way too long to enact.
I’ve been saying that for years. We have standards for battery sizes like AA, AAA, C, D and others. The fact that these packs are made up of 18650 style cells in many cases just shows that it *could* be done. Just mandate a standard dimension and plug. Done. Need more juice, make a space for more then one pack.
“The best solution, is to mandate standardized, replaceable battery packs.”
Nice idea, but it’s not gonna happen for the same reasons why we don’t have a standardized 4 cylinder engine (as one example).
You have way too many vehicle types and too varied cost/design/performance objectives for that to work.
Hell… even Tesla doesn’t even have a standardized battery CELL… let alone modules or packs.
And the reason is exactly what I said… different vehicles and even different trim levels have different cost/performance objectives.
I’d think I’d rather trust Tom Sellick or Ice T to tell me how good a battery is at this point. Crack pipe.
“That’s where a handful of startups like Battery Quick Check, Recurrent (shown below on Cars.com), and Altelium come in, offering estimates of battery health.”
Have you ever seen the movie The Big Short about the 2008 financial crash? There’s a scene that I think will be very relevant to these battery health startups. Our protagonists are at Standard & Poors trying to figure out why clearly junk subprime bonds were still getting AAA ratings. The response they finally get is “If we don’t give them the ratings they’ll go to Moody’s right down the block. If we won’t work with them, they’ll go to our competitors. It’s not our fault, it’s simply the way the world works”.
Dealerships will very quickly figure out who gives the best battery ratings, go to them, and then all those startups will be in a race to give better ratings. They’ll make sure to have all sorts of “this is an estimate only” legalese to cover themselves and the only thing that will have changed from how things are now is – at least for a while – some people will be fraudulently soothed about the state of the wildly expensive battery in the used EV they’re buying.
Reminds me of buying a house around 2015. The appraiser was hired by the bank. Hrmmmm.
I’ll indulge my inner cynic.
Even if there was a convenient way to accurately test and label a used EV’s battery health, does this really help the purchaser of an old high-mileage EV find an affordable and repairable car that would drive as far as expected? I can already picture fraudulent battery health reports circulating between dealers and becoming the EV equivalent of odometer rollbacks.
Perhaps a standard threshold of battery degradation should be established where a used EV is considered totaled and issued a salvage title until or unless someone is bold enough to pay big $$$ for a battery replacement and/or a thriving aftermarket is created for lower cost battery replacements. Will replacement battery packs even be possible for some models due to obsolescence, proprietary technology, and limited parts availability?
Just wait until the insurance industry gets a hold on this. It will be a nightmare scenario.
“we were going to offer you 10k for your totaled car but we found your battery was degraded so we will only offer $3k”
Disappointing toe dip for that title. I expect better from you. EV holistic analysis should have been addressed long before any incentives were granted. As far as I have been able to discern, they are NOT a win environmentally. Still much better to buy from Gossin’s.
EV holistic analysis should have been addressed long before any incentives were granted.
Cui bono?
It is wrong to cynically speculate that the EV Industry started with government backed loans, of which say 10% went to the “Big Guys” who then boosted the EV market with buyer incentives, almost all of which went to people buying $80K+ luxury EV’s?
The pitch is that it benefits the environment, thus all. I am not anti-EV in principle, and hope that standardized battery modules come to be. The execution has the expected massive growing pains and the manufacturers have incorporated planned obsolescence, and control of usability/serviceability by proprietary systems that will not only demand monthly payment to keep current, but will spy on you while doing so. Disposable products are not a net win environmentally.
Standardized battery modules would be nice. But easily removable/replaceable modules would be a big help, even if not standardized. At that point, third party refurbishers will be able to deal with them, and repair or replacement should become available for at least popular models, and possible for just about all.
Yeah, standardized within a manufacturer is probably the best we can expect. You can’t easily use a Ryobi battery in a competitors mower. That would still go a long way to drive down replacement cost, and help balance justification.
The power tool battery ecosystem scam is utter bull. Ryobi makes certain tools well, Dewalt is better at others, etc. Now I have 4 chargers and 6 batteries when I really need 2 chargers and 3 batteries. So you have to settle for either shittier tools to share batteries, or get the better tools but pollute more.
There oughta be a law.
I wonder how the EU deals with this.
This is absolutely necessary, but I doubt any of these are going to work without access to the car itself. As your assessment of David’s Leaf showed, you can’t realistically estimate remaining battery life in a vacuum. You need something that plugs into an OBDII port and watches battery behavior throughout a drive cycle, probably including some hard acceleration and braking to stress the battery charge and discharge ability.
I leased the original Leaf for 36 months, the Alabama heat cooked the battery within 14 months and it was replaced under warranty. By the time the lease was over the new battery was done for. It was so traumatic I have not had an EV since lol
Worth trying again. Every (and I do mean every) single other EV out there went with active cooling for batteries and doesn’t have the degradation issues the Leaf does. The Model S is the only thing that’s been around over a decade, and there’s probably some survivorship bias in the data from excluded early failures, but it looks like in most cases the battery’s still OK after a decade and a couple hundred thousand miles.
So y’all know about Greentec Auto, right? They’re a nationwide chain of EV/hybrid battery rebuilders, there’s one in San Diego even. I’ve been meaning to talk to my local branch about getting cells to rebuild the pack on one of my motorcycles.
I don’t know about that specific one, but rebuilt batteries are generally just the best of a bunch of old cells packed together. They’re still old cells and won’t last nearly as long as a new battery. Unless you’re willing to deal with installing a new rebuilt battery every few years they’re not a great option.
I can’t think of a more benign climate for an EV than California, especially southern California.
That said, I expect there to be a real rush of EV battery re-builders in the aftermarket – either that or people who convert EVs to ICE’s!
I mean, scrap the whole car because the battery is done? Seems like terribly inefficient use of materials and labor, not to mention money.
The Leaf lacks liquid cooling for the traction battery. Cali is far too hot for a large uncooled battery pack. Hence why you see Leafs down there have their batteries degrade far quicker than more temperate climates.
And FWIW EV to ICE swaps are illegal anywhere that follows CA smog rules. Probably more states than that, too.
If you think Cali is “hot”, come to SC in August! LOL!!! An EV with an uncooled battery pack like the Leaf makes ZERO sense here. California is one of, if not THE, most temperate states in the union. If a Leaf can’t survive long term there, it can’t survive ANYWHERE. I guess that’s a moot point though… we all know that’s ancient tech and exactly NOBODY else is still producing an EV with an uncooled battery. I can’t believe Nissan plans to continue selling the Leaf through 2025!
California is “temperate” because it’s so big that NorCal and SoCal somewhat cancel each other out. Western WA and Western OR are far more temperate than SoCal. The ambient temp that batteries like is in the 60-65 range. That describes 75% of the time in WWA/WOR.
But yeah, it’s all kind of moot because the Leaf’s battery solution was so poorly designed from the get go.
There is zero fiscal sense in an EV to ICE swap.
The battery is worth more than the chassis. Used EVs will be constant searches for people with bad batteries hoping a car gets totaled without damaging a good battery. Like organ donation, just without a constant supply of helmetless motorcycle riders to meet demand.
Maybe not fiscal sense, but it would make for a great article if David swapped in some random lawnmower engine in his leaf.
Maybe make a Rex or even a 4×4 with the gas engine on the unpowered axle.
David already has an EV with a lawnmower engine – his BMW I3
Call it Project Nissan Leafblower.
I would have TWR build a three row economy crossover. For the lulz.
Obvious answer for TWR is to copy/paste the first gen Nissan Leaf (no changes what-so-ever) and sell them only in LA.
Why isn’t there a standard metric for battery health that’s simply readable with any generic OBD reader?
At the very least, charge cycle count should be freely readable from battery units. It’s just as basic data as the odometer reading.
Until this is solved and there is a massive amount of solid data available showing how long a typical unit can be expected to last, I’d be very hesitant to buy a used EV.
Perfect first question for the industry. Also, easy-freakin-peasy info to log and provide.
That would be nice but, unfortunately, is not part of the OBD spec. OBD systems are technically only required to monitor emissions. An electric vehicle isn’t required to have an OBD system and standardized 16 pin connector.
They may not be required to provide an OBD-2 connector, but they still do, since it’s a common connector and protocol. The only thing that is not (presently) standardized is EV DTCs. That would be simple enough to amend in the specs. Until then, model-specific software is required to read the DTC codes from the reader. The reader itself does not have to be model specific. For instance, in the H/K community, we use EV Watchdog in conjunction with *insert cheapie Amazon Bluetooth OBD-2 reader of the week here*.
There are 3rd-party tools like LeafSpy and EVBatMon to check battery health on specific EV models, probably someone clever could come up with an app that covers a range of makes/models.
I had LeafSpy when we had our Leaf. Needed it to reset the TPMS system twice a year when swapping winter tires – battery monitoring was just the icing on the cake.
Hmmm, a new TWR. How about a midsize crossover with a 2.0L 4 banger and CVT. And it only comes in grey!
That has one too many cylinders!
“What should we build?”
Toecutter’s fever dream.
“A 50-lb recumbent with 500hp and negative Cd”
I think it’s funny to think that in the future when you buy a classic EV you’d want to avoid hot climates due to battery degradation, but also cold climates due to rust. What place does that leave for prime EV car buying, Seattle?
Too wet?
All I can think of is Southern California, near the coast. Rarely gets super-hot or cold, and it’s mostly dry as far as humidity and precipitation are concerned.
This is also the peak climate for me, however I can’t even dream about being able to afford it.
Hey, keep your mitts off our old cars, mister! *turns haughtily away and drinks smoked salmon latte*
Washington DC
David’s Leaf may be repairable for not too horrendous of a cost. He’ll have to fully charge the car, then take the pack out and bench test each individual battery. Find an average percentage capacity for all of the cells. If the pack is being brought down by a few bad cells, he’ll be able to buy 2nd-hand Leaf cells for cheap, swap them in, and then replace the pack into the car.
It’s possible that for under $1k, he could get this pack back to half its original range. It’s also possible doing this could be a massive waste of time and effort. He won’t know until he takes a look. Each parallel-connected series string of batteries is only as good as its weakest cell.
David could bring the ‘shadetree EV’ into the mainstream. I know some people do work on their own EV’s, but by and large they’re seen as ‘dealer only’ unfixables by the majority of mechanically inclined types that I know. The wrenching community could use a bridge between carburetors and points and BMS modules and HV contactors. If the Autopian could fulfill that niche that’d be a real accomplishment.
The steps I listed won’t work on more modern EVs where the BMS, thermal management, and fusing is integrated at the cell level and the pack sometimes structurally integrated into the car itself. The early Leaf’s were much more simple in this regard.
Great points. Been waiting for the DT horror story for months now.
“I tried to fix my cheap ass electric car and now I’m in the ER!”
Guess there is still time.
Well one would hope, with DT’s engineering background, he would learn what is needed to do the job safely. Just like we all learned to chock wheels, use jack stands and spring compressors (etc. etc.) there are similar ‘thou shalt always’ safety rules for EV specific work – we just need to get them out in to the people who need to hear them.
Agreed 100%. Actually wanted to make a Torch Chainsaw joke, but someone beat me to it. DT is great, and also an easy target. And he’s nuts.
I still have no idea why the Autopian bought a dead Leaf.
Showing my ignorance here, but how safe is it to start wrenching on a fully charged batter pack. If you touch the 2 wrong things with a wrench, do you get fried?
If you know how circuits work and take precautions, very safe. Arguably safer than working on ICE.
If you, say, use a socket drive with an un-insulated handle and end up shorting across multiple batteries, it could vaporize the drive into gaseous metal and catch your pack on fire. If you’re wearing glasses and short across a series of cells, you’ll melt them and leave burn marks in the shape of your glasses on your face.
I used insulated tools, took off any metal items(watches, jewelry, chains, glasses, ect.), and paid attention to what I was touching when I worked on my Triumph GT6 EV conversion. While I worked, the pack itself was disconnected from the controller. Hazards ARE ALWAYS present.
I kind of get what you’re saying here, but I can’t quite agree with telling randos on the internet it’s safe to work on a fully charged battery pack. Hell, it’s not that much safer to work on a discharged battery pack. Even discharged there’s going to be 250V and an arbitrarily high amperage available. If you’re working on anything that’s de-energized when the battery’s safety disconnect is pulled… yes, safer than ICE.
But for the pack itself… I know what I’m doing better than most anyone not directly involved in pack design & manufacturing and I think I’ll probably never open one. The risks are too high, a very simple mistake could have very big consequences for me, the car, or both – ranging from instadeath to delayed fireball.
To be honest, there are a fair number of internet randos who shouldn’t work on ICE vehicles because they’ll stick their fingers in the blades of a running alternator to “check something”. My son took auto shop last year and gave me a lovely story about another student mistaking a high pressure fuel line for a vacuum line, and spraying fuel all over the (thankfully cold and stopped) engine of the car they were working on.
It would be interesting to know what percentage of people hurt themselves working on a high voltage battery versus how many get hurt by a car falling off improperly placed jack stands (or no jack stands at all). I would bet the latter is much higher.
There are a lot of internet randos (myself included) who have successfully worked on hybrid battery packs. There’s a thriving market for third-party batteries that are DIY installs. Yes, you need to have some basic knowledge of what you’re doing, but even if you don’t the design of the batteries makes it extremely hard to mess up badly enough to kill yourself.
ChrisFix has an excellent DIY 2nd gen Prius battery replacement video. Though I’ve never done a hybrid battery myself, I’ve worked on both cars and computers, and I would be confident I could replace it safely watching that tutorial.
(And yes, I do have a “YouTube Certified Mechanic” sticker on my garage PC.)
I very briefly had one of those on my car until I washed it and half of the letters came off. 🙂
I only recommended charging it first so that you save the time of having to top charge all cells individually before running a discharge test/
If someone can learn how to safely work on something as complicated as an ICE car, they can certainly learn how to work on a relatively simple EV like the Leaf. The more complicated cars being sold today is another story, although if someone creates a process to follow, it may not be so bad regarding safety to work on the battery pack.
The preferred Autopian battery pack repair procedure involves a chainsaw rather than a wrench.
Haha yes. Why didn’t I think about that. Just remember, when you start chainsawing lead acid batteries, to squint so no acid gets in your eyes.
COTD, IMO.
Which is why the modules in future BEV’s should in fact be a banks of rechargeable Milwaukee 24 V packs, lol. then the stealerships could still charge 500 to swap one out safely and the rest of us could quickly see which one did not hit the green and replace it.
How much is a new battery??
$8,000. IMO, not worth it.
The rest of the car was in pretty good shape. Not that I want a Leaf, but even $8k seems like an okay deal if the car will last another 10 years with it.
Over the 10 years or so the pack will last, it will be significantly cheaper than the cost of gasoline + maintenance of a similar ICE-powered car.
The problem is that if you ever have to sell the car soon after the pack has been installed or if the car gets totaled in a wreck, it most likely won’t be worth $8k.
Given how long electric drive systems can last, the way EVs are valued today could change in the coming decades if a methodology to efficiently/inexpensively repair battery packs and/or integrated touch screen systems comes to fruition. They could go from depreciating rapidly, to holding their value like modern Toyota Camrys.
IMHO, this is the next gold rush.
Munro and Associates already seems to be pursuing it.
By that stock now.
When the HV battery in my ’06 Prius was going south, I purchased a Dorman HV battery. It lasted one day for the first one, 6k miles for the second, returned it for full refund. Found a used Toyota replacement which worked great.
Even though the Dorman was supposedly a direct replacement in terms of capacity and available power, it was decidedly not. It did not accelerate as well by the butt-feel testing. And that was comparing it to the original dying Toyota HV battery. Proven by the installation of the used replacement.
So, there is yet another piece of data that whatever “report” on a used battery should be able to provide. How does the power availabilty compare to a new original battery?, not just the longevity of power.
Dorman parts are sorta like the WishDotCom of automobile parts. The fact that you got 6K miles from the second one indicates you got lucky.
That’s good to know. My go-to for a Prius replacement pack would be car-part.com where you can get good used packs and there are places there that will sell refurb packs with a warranty as well.
Having owned a Prius since 2006, other than gas and oil, I will always use genuine Toyota parts. I tried brake pads, but the non-Toyota didn’t come with all the fiddlybits needed. Just buy Toyota parts is my advice. Even a used Toyota HV battery was better than a new replacement non-Toyota battery. Although I did install an Optima 12v battery.
“Over the 10 years or so the pack will last, it will be significantly cheaper than the cost of gasoline + maintenance of a similar ICE-powered car.”
I don’t think so. Where I live PG&E’s EV1 rate starts at $0.28/kWh ($0.53/kWh at peak with rate hikes on the way) and a gallon of regular is currently running about $5/gal. That works out to $2.38/25mi assuming only off peak at home charging vs $3.02/25 mi for a 41 mpg used Honda Civic hybrid or Prius. The Civic/Prius will also need to be smogged every couple of years but I expect no major ICE specific servicing will be required and the other miscellaneous consumables will be comparable.
Over 10 years and 150k miles the energy costs of the Leaf will be $14,500 vs $18,000 for the Civic/Prius. Add in an outrageous $500 for the smog and the difference is about $4000, or half the cost of that new battery pack so its unlikely the energy savings and potential lower maintainence of the rebuilt Leaf will make up for that initial cost. That’s using the cheapest electricity option. At the mid EV1 rate of $0.35/kwh the energy costs are a wash. I dunno how much public chargers cost but I expect its more which would tip the scales to the Civic/Prius whereas if one can always charge at work on the boss’s dime the Leaf will come out WAY ahead.
My point is its best not to assume EVs will always be the cheaper option energywise.
Plus who’s to say that Leaf won’t be ready for another battery rebuild in 10 years? Probably not but it also may be down a few bars making it a lot less useful than the Civic/Prius. The flexibility of being able to drive 500+ miles without stopping even once much less having to stop several times to spend an hour each time to charge along the way and worrying about just FINDING reliable places to charge every 50 miles is worth a lot.
EV costs do indeed vary widely depending upon location. Those electricity rates you pay are extortionate. Where I’m at, I pay $0.11/kWh. Gasoline is about $3.60/gallon. It would make a lot of sense to install home solar panels at the rates you pay, if that is an option. My friend who owns a broken-down Leaf has solar panels and used to charge it with them when the charger still worked. His range was down to about 30 miles when the charger failed, and the battery had over 100k miles on it, but it was an original 1st gen battery with all its issues.
The closest comparison to a 1st gen Leaf would be an older Nissan Versa. The EPA rates the 2011 Versa at 28 mpg as an average over all options.
That $8k figure is for a 24 kWh Leaf pack directly from Nissan(my friend was quoted a price of $7,800). The original 1st gen Leaf battery was hard-pressed to last more than 100k miles if you didn’t abuse it, but the new “lizard” battery is also an upgrade from what originally came in the car and 150,000 miles life sounds about right if you decide replace it when it begins to deliver less than 70% original capacity.
The 1st gen Leaf consumes about 0.34 kWh/mile according to the EPA. The examples I’ve seen in the real world were significantly less thirsty, but I was using this figure as a baseline.
Using these parameters, we get $0.0533/mile for batteries, and $0.0374/mile for electricity for the Leaf. Nissan Leaf maintenance costs are $738/year according to Edmunds, which at 15,000 miles/year driven is $0.0492/mile. Total: $0.1399/mile.
The aforementioned Versa will cost $0.1286/mile for gasoline. Plus there’s maintenance cost of $456/year, or $0.0304/mile at 15,000 miles/year. Total: $0.1590/mile.
In this case, over 150k miles, this would be $2,865 in savings.
This won’t be the case for everyone, everywhere, as you’ve noted. The roles could easily be reversed. A used Prius or Civic Hybrid begins to make a lot of sense by comparison. The caveat is to make sure the traction battery is in good shape on any car that requires one.
It would make a lot of sense to install home solar panels at the rates you pay, if that is an option.
It should but my neighbor who put up PV panels a few years ago is regretting it. His main beef was with the terms of his lease so as with everything YMMV.
Personally my dream is to get a pair of identical vehicles with MASSIVE batteries and V2H capability. Commute to work with one, charging it from empty to full using the company installed solar array over the parking lot whenever possible and grid power when not all on the boss’s dime while running the home off the other.
PG&E can suck it!
The closest comparison to a 1st gen Leaf would be an older Nissan Versa. The EPA rates the 2011 Versa at 28 mpg as an average over all options.
Depends on your metrics. In an absolute sense the Versa is the closer benchmark as its the same manufacturer, class and similar purchase price.
I used the Civic Hybrid/Pruis as I consider those the closest gasoline powered benchmarks as far as $/mi, purchase price and class.
according to Edmunds
Those annual maintenance costs seem awfully high to me. My cars don’t cost anywhere near that to maintain. Of course I’m a do it myself kind of person so my oil/filter changes run $25, not $100 or whatever it is a shop charges these days.
“Where I live PG&E’s EV1 rate starts at $0.28/kWh ($0.53/kWh at peak with rate hikes on the way”
Those electricity rates tell me there is a great case for you to get a solar install with a battery buffer. Your base rate is higher than my peak rate up here in Canada.
And there are already youtube videos that show how it’s done:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTiFEapky8s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVaCMbXKrd4
“If you want to know if your car has been in an accident and cared for, you get a Carfax.”
Which itself is fraught with peril. Carfax makes plenty of mistakes:
https://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2012/06/when-carfax-gets-it-wrong.html
In our experience refuses to correct them even when presented with the police report showing the correct VIN of the vehicle involved.
Clickbait headlines aren’t usually a thing around here.
This doesn’t “solve” the biggest problem in buying a used EV at all. Sure, a buying decision requires knowing the battery condition but what would “solve” the problem is a reasonably priced way to replace the battery.
I think the biggest problem with buying a used EV is not knowing the actual battery condition. I think the biggest problem with owning a Used EV is a reasonably priced battery replacement, but those are two different things.
I see your point but a – let’s say – 10 year old EV, even with fairly good battery condition report will still need replacement in the not too distant future. Absent a cost effective way to do that, as W.C. Fields said in the “Bank Dick” :The resale value of this car will be nil…”
Battery health is an absolute must for any used EV. Interestingly I have a hunch that honest private sellers may get more for their used EV’s than dealers. If they can demonstrate good battery health and history like limited fast charging or not consistently driving the pack to 0%, that is.
Anecdotally, extremely high mileage in a short time is at least a good if imperfect measure of DCFC cycles. A 2021 Tesla that’s done 120k miles sure didn’t spend a lot of time L2 charging. I’d love to find out about that battery and its health.
While information regarding the condition of the battery on a used EV is incredibly valuable information, I’m not so sure I’d say it “solves” the degradation problem. Yes, it may help buyers avoid buying a car with a severely degraded battery, but if the test comes back bad, what about the car? It’s still functionally useless and would cost more to repair/refurbish than it’s worth.
It’s like saying that the obesity problem is solved by scales.
Solved by a random number generator running on a raspberry pi in England, based on what those companies seem to be doing.
Used EV battery testing may end up as another area where fraud is rampant and scams abound. A used car EV battery testing seems a bit more advanced than used car shopping with your weird uncle with the compression tester of days past.
Condition of the battery is an absolute must. Without the battery the whole thing is useless.
Would you purchase a car without checking the odometer? At minimum, I’d need to plug into the OBDII port and read the battery stats.
OBD scanners tell you the state of charge and cumulative energy, which can be used to calculate state of health if you know the original net capacity. They also typically report maximum and minimum cell temperatures and voltages, which are useful for spotting faulty packs.
They basically give you everything but internal resistance.
Just make Fergus president of Jaguar. Job done!
TWR Made the Jag XJR-15, and XJ220, and some XJS variants, it ONLY makes sense that they should finally fix the injustice of the CX-75 never reaching production.
Or perhaps considering that some seem to be making business around remaking old land rovers into internally modern equivalents, let have TWR rebirth the best of the jags as modern ICE since the Jag is now supposedly going to be BEV only. Maybe They can make a reliable and fast inline six and 12 for the newly bespoke TWR JAAAAGGGGS