Quote:
Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard
Tires and wiper blades are on all vehicles. Costs that matter are the ones that don't offset because both EV's and ICE's have them.
|
True enough, but you keep saying ZERO maintenance costs.
Quote:
|
So, the entire ignition system in an ICE is a MOVING PART?
|
Well, it wears out, doesn't it? That's why I have to replace my spark plugs every 105K miles.
Quote:
|
By that same hair-splitting "logic", an ICE would have to include the billions of moving gasoline molecules, and in the billions in the exhaust gasses, too.
|
No, because you "maintain" those molecules by getting new ones. But that's aside from the point I was trying to make, which is that batteries (and AFAIK all batteries) degrade over time, because the chemical reactions (in which the atoms are the "moving parts") are not perfectly efficient.
Just for a concrete example, take the battery in the computer I'm using to write this. Doing cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/info (if you run Linux) gives
design capacity: 84240 mWh
last full capacity: 68190 mWh
so despite a very light use cycle (99% of the time it's in a docking station, running off A/C) the battery has lost capacity over the years.
Now with an IC vehicle, when it wears enough that performance degrades, I can fix it with relative ease. (Though my two current vehicles, 1988 and 2000 models, are still going strong as far as engines are concerned.) Can't (again, AFAIK) do something similar with an EV: when the battery degrades too far, the only fix seems to be a complete replacement. Which, if current usage patterns hold, means that 1) people will junk otherwise perfectly servicable vehicles; and 2) people who'd buy inexpensive 20 year old IC-engined vehicles will have no options.