What Will Classic Electric Car Ownership Be Like In The Face Of Battery Degradation?

It’s the year 2048. It’s Sunday morning, and you’ve just finished a delicious brunch of vat-grown sirloin orbs with your polycule. You feed the now synth-meat-juice-soaked bio-organic plates to your feli-canine hybrid dogcat, ironically named Covid, and turn off the holovisor because you’re sick of listening to President Skrillex’s campaign speeches. You’re going to meet some friends at your local Cars and Coffee, which now all start no earlier than noon thanks to an internationally-agreed upon binding UN mandate. You climb into your prized 2023 Renault Megane RS Ultime, which you just got, as it’s finally 25 years old and able to be imported, and you’re very excited to show it off. Now, here’s my question: Will you see any cool old electric cars at this event?

I ask this question because I was talking to our own David Tracy, who, as he has reminded all of us multiple times, is the proud owner of a 2014 BMW i3 electric car. Both David and I agree that the i3 is a fascinating car and has all the makings of a future classic: interesting technical design (even if, or maybe especially because, it was a dead end), novel and distinctive styling, historic significance, and so on. It’s absolutely the sort of car I’d like to see at a Cars and Coffee in 25 years. But will I?

It’s pretty uncommon to see people collecting vintage EVs now, and I think the main reason for that is there just aren’t that many that people actually want to collect. Sure, there are really old ones like a Detroit Electric that may be in museums, and some people have been collecting Crap Era EVs like the Citicar, but those use widely-available lead acid car batteries, and as such are relatively easy and cheap to keep going.

But something like an early Nissan Leaf? No one really cares, and, even if they did, getting replacement battery packs would be an expensive and difficult undertaking, costing between $5,000 and $10,000 depending on the age and size of the battery. Does anyone really want to drop that amount of money into a Leaf?

That said, there’s actually a lot of current EVs out there that should, by almost any definition, become future classic and collectible cars. Whatever you may think of Teslas, there is no question that Tesla ushered in a new era of EVs, and cars like the first-generation Model S have gobs of historical significance. In the year 2048, a well-preserved Tesla Model S should have as much gravity and relevance as, say, a well-preserved 1965 Mustang or a 1959 Mini or any number of other collectible cars. Tesla has a huge following of wildly brand-loyal enthusiasts, and it’s quite easy to picture a 2012 Model S owner in 2048 polishing their Tesla, maybe with those weird creepy little kid dolls leaning up against the car, desperately hoping you’ll ask them some question about the car that will trap you in a tedious conversation that ends with a reminder that one day Elon will return, his Starship wasn’t actually lost on the way to Mars like everyone said, and he will deliver all his believers unto paradise.

You may back away, but you’d never question why that car was there, being shown. Because it deserves to be there.

And yet, as David and I were talking about this, we realized that keeping and enjoying a really old electric car may prove to be a much more difficult task than doing the same thing with classic combustion cars. As you have probably already guessed, the problem is with the batteries.

EVs Lose Their Usefulness Over Time, Gas Cars Don’t

Right at this moment, my daily driver, a 1990 Nissan Pao, is technically a “classic car.” It’s 33 years old, and still performs just as it did three decades ago: slowly but reliably, and it goes as far on a tank of gas as it did in 1990, at generally the same speeds. And, it does all this with pretty routine piecemeal maintenance and repairs. Sure, I had to do a lot of work on it when I hit a deer, but even with the difficulties of getting hard-to-find parts from Japan, it wasn’t really all that expensive or difficult to get back on the road.

The same goes for my other archaic shitboxes that I love so: my 1973 Beetle had been my daily driver since I got it when I was 18, and keeping it going has never been very hard, really. There’s a huge base of support, and parts are plentiful. My Yugo is, well, a Yugo, but it can be fixed with hose clamps and a rock, if needed. And, of course, my 1989 Ford F-150 will pretty much run forever, and you can find parts for that thing in convenience stores, practically.

All these cars are just as useful when 40 years old as they were brand new; they get the same range, they make basically the same power, and they take just as long to fill up. EVs, on the other hand, because less useful over time, and that’s interesting to think about in the context of classic car ownership, especially when you realize that mending that loss of utility means replacing what will then be archaic batteries.

But let’s think about a car like David’s i3 or a Tesla Model S that’s over 30 years old [Editor’s Note: I really don’t know that this discussion is as relevant to the Model S. For one, its batteries seem to hold up reasonably well (they seem to lose about 10 percent or so over 200,000 miles and 10 years based on what I’ve read), and two, it’s got so much range that even if it lost 50 percent after 50 years, you could still take it to car shows and even commute with it. That’s not the case with the i3 or Leaf. -DT].

Sure, EV battery life has proven to be better than many anticipated years ago when cars like the first Nissan Leafs started to hit the market, but they’re not magic, and they’re still subject to the laws of chemistry and physics. There’s a reason why David was able to get the battery in his i3 replaced for free when he bought it, and that is because California mandates that the high voltage batteries of plug-in hybrids be guaranteed for 10 years or 150,000 miles, which is more generous than BMW’s own eight-year guarantee. After just nine years, the battery in David’s i3 was, charitably, garbage, with a displayed range of under 50 miles. In short, not very useful. And just imagine if the car were 20 years old and had driven over 250,000 miles; yikes.

If David had to change that battery pack himself, pay out of his own rust-filled pockets, he’d be out at least $16,000, according to the SAE. And, that’s pretty much about average: battery replacement costs for Teslas like the Model S or Model X or Model 3 are around $13,000 to $16,000, for example, and those are still currently being made, of course. What about when these things are old enough to be classics? Will there be an industry for making very old legacy EV batteries? Maybe! Will there be aftermarket companies making modern batteries that could be retrofitted into old cars? How complex will that integration be? How expensive? Will the new batteries play nicely with the rest of the electronics?  Maybe there will be innovations that make these batteries cheaper and easier to use? But it hasn’t happened yet.

The problem is batteries just aren’t like other car parts, in that they will fail over time, no matter what. Batteries decay over time, and it’s not an if, it’s just how it is. If you find a 57-year old 2012 Tesla Model S in a barn in 2069 (nice) and you want to drive it again, there’s really no way to get around the fact that the entire battery pack may need replacing, and that’s a monolithic cost – it’s one unit, one part, and the car won’t work if you don’t fix that, even before you address anything else about the car. (Of course, the Model S would likely have been easier and cheaper to maintain over its lifespan than an equivalent ICE car, given how few moving parts are in an EV powertrain).

Conversely, if you found a 57-year old combustion car in a barn today, say a 1966 Iso Grifo, you could get that thing up and running pretty easily, swapping out the Chevy V8 used in there with a used one or even a brand new crate motor, complete with carb and distributor and everything, for about $6,000. Sure, there’s other stuff you’d need to fix, but it’d be mostly parts that you could get one at a time, at whatever pace you needed to do.

Now, the Iso example is maybe a bit of a cheat, because it has an engine that is still being made, in some compatible forms. but even if you found something like a Corvair or another car decades out of production, you can still find plenty of used parts to get that going again, even whole used engines that have been sitting for decades. But unlike a battery, you can get an engine that’s been sitting for decades going again. And you can take your time doing it, buying parts you need as you can afford it.

So, really classic EVs will face two major battery-related issues: batteries will go bad over time and to replace them, it will require a significant one-time infusion of cash. And then there’s the issue of who will actually be building obsolete battery packs? There could be a thriving aftermarket for this, if there are enough people collecting cars of a particular make and model, but if not (and it’s very possible that during the “danger period” of a car — that is the period after it’s lost its novelty and before it’s become classic — these cars will just be junked, especially if range is already compromised) what could you do? Could you assemble your own battery packs using some sort of off-the-shelf cells and a used housing, connectors, and electronic control equipment? Maybe? I don’t want to say no, but it does seem like an order of magnitude more complex than a current-day classic car owner who may just need to install a new intake manifold on an engine or something. Especially when you consider how many new EVs are using structural battery packs, where the battery pack forms an integral part of the car’s chassis. [Editor’s Note: The modules are usually replaceable, however. And they each have certain characteristics that could be replicated, in theory. The integration with the electronics/cooling system could be tricky, however. -DT].

Currently, pretty much anyone who wants it enough can have a vintage car that is drivable and usable. Sure, it takes money, but there’s a lot of options for non-rich people, myself included. If every vintage car I looked into getting would definitely need one part that cost over $10,000, before any other work on the car was done, could I be in the position I am now, with a driveway full of old cars, both in drivable and project car status? Hell no.

Some Cars’ Batteries Won’t Last And Will Need To Be Replaced, But By What?

I don’t know for sure what this means for the future, for a future where the hobby and lifestyle of collecting and using and enjoying old cars is still viable and within the reach of many. Sure, there will still be many combustion cars that can be collected and enjoyed, but they’re getting older and older and older. Is it realistic to think that a car show in 2050 will be filled with tons of 80 year-old cars? How many informal car meetups have you been too that were mostly 1930s Hupmobiles or early 1940s Packards? Are we currently building cars that are truly disposable, and don’t even have the option to be kept as classics decades hence?

Will David have to get rid of his i3 in 10 years, when the battery has degraded again? I’m not sure.

I know that a solution to this would be something I’ve long thought the whole industry should go to for electric vehicles: standardized and swappable batteries. Batteries that are unique to a particular model and integrated into the structure of the car are pretty much the standard for mainstream EVs, and that’s why used EVs and then classic EV ownership is going to be such a huge slice of clusterfudge. If batteries came in standard sizes, with standard connectors and output, they could be changed and upgraded as new developments in battery chemistry occurred, and a thriving and competitive aftermarket of battery manufacturers could develop. Then when you pull a 40-year old EV out of a barn, you know you just need to add in some number of affordable standardized battery packs to at least get it mobile again.

Of course, that’s not a direction the industry seems interested in going. And that’s why I’m so uncertain if any of the currently produced EVs on the market will ever be viable classic cars to own when our kids or grandkids decide they’d like to get into vintage cars, and want the vintage cars they grew up with, just like how Boomers collect Bel Airs or how the Radwood and Litwood collector movements started.

I’m worried about i3s, because if David’s battery died after 9 years and 134,000 miles, how many of these things cars will even be left in 30 years?

I think it’s something worth discussing, at the very least. BMW/third-party shops aren’t going to stockpile new old-stock i3 batteries like they could engines, for a number of reasons including battery longevity and safety. For certain cars, there will definitely be companies that step up to provide solutions, and maybe there will be technological breakthroughs that render all of my hand-wringing moot. I sure hope so. Because I’d hate to see this whole passion and interest in old cars become something only for rich people who can either afford to own and maintain incredibly aging combustion cars or who can be willing and able to drop large chunks of cash on bespoke EV battery packs for their vintage EVs.

Maybe I’m missing some key element here. Maybe we can have EV classics in the future. Maybe one of you in the comments has a solution. I sure hope so, so let’s talk about this.

[Editor’s Note: I’ll reiterate that I think modern Teslas (and other modern high-range EVs) will be fine even after 50 years. Per the company “Even after 200,000 miles of usage, our batteries lose just 12% of their capacity on average.” Obviously, time is a factor, and the company only warranties batteries for eight years:

But owners have reported sub-10 percent range losses after 10 years, so that’s good. And with over 300 miles of range, many Teslas will still have useful utility in 50 years even if they do lose one percent per year (which seems plausible). But it’s the earlier EVs with lower range that I’m more concerned about.-DT].