Quote:
Originally Posted by racprops
{snip}I do not think in my life time we will ever see a used Electric car, sell for under $4000.00 and then be repairable for less than $2000.00. As the Battery packs will always be to major cost of repairing such.
I can see almost no DYI repairs on such cars. They will truly become the appliance car of the future, buy and drive…Paint and wheel and tires about all you can do to them.
On the other hand I can VERY little if no repairs needed with such cars, tires and wiper blades the ONLY service needed.{/snip}
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I suppose it depends on what you are trying to repair? Collision repairs for any vehicle will almost universally be more than $2000 because the cost of even cheap aftermarket parts, labor, and color matching paint is about that for even a basic car for something as simple as a bumper.
No DIY repairs? Electric cars have all of the same things break on them that a gasoline car does apart from the engine, fuel tank, exhaust, and transmission. Most of a cars expenses for a car over a 250k mile lifetime are usually suspension components, electronic parts, wheel bearings, CV joints, belts, pumps, hoses, bushings, and tires. Normally people scrap cars when they need a new engine or transmission because it's difficult to do this work for the average person and a shop wants a grand in labor on top of parts cost. I imagine the same will be true for electric cars, except there will be people scrapping crashed electric cars and that's the source for an EV battery. For someone with the skills and tools to replace an engine, it wouldn't be too much harder to replace the battery apart from a few extra tools to hoist or drop and lift the battery.
The key is to get a car that isn't like the Nissan Leaf where the battery isn't junk because great parts are cheap in junk yards because nobody needs them and terrible parts are expensive because everyone needs to buy one because the junk failed. It's basic math of needing less parts than the quantity of people crashing their cars or having different parts failing taking them off the road.
I've put quite a bit of thought into this and I generally buy cheap used cars. My current car is a 2000 Honda Insight, bought it for $2999 and have put 126k more miles on it than it had when I bought it a decade ago. I've replaced a belt tensioner, stabilizer bar that snapped, two wheel bearings, a set of brakes, a bunch of fluids, and I'm on the third set of tires. I've probably spent $1500 on all that and most of that expense would also have been a factor for an electric car. The largest expenses for my car over it's lifetime have been the fuel, purchase price, and insurance(liability only), in that order. If the car has a higher market value and costs a lot to fix collision repairs, insurance becomes a massive factor in costs. For a Tesla it would be more than my repair costs for just 126k miles of tires, supercharging is more expensive than buying gas for my car on a road trip, 'preheating' the car, cabin heating, and battery tending costs add up significantly for a MN electric car. It's cheaper for me to drive on gas for fuel costs. ..if not a single non-warranty covered repair would easily put it over that edge because Tesla parts are extremely expensive and there isn't much of an aftermarket for the commonly failing and expensive parts yet and they make it difficult to buy parts and even see service information for a DIY person. I'm not convinced an electric car would be cheaper in the long run, including purchase price, than a fuel efficient and reliable gas car when basic maintenance is done by the owner. ..for a Tesla I'm convinced it's universally going to be more expensive because I don't see those cars ever being sold cheap even when they are 20 years old and I wouldn't want a car with $1500 door handles anyway even if I could buy it for $5000.
My point is: People who buy Teslas have money, they aren't doing it to save money. The only way the "$25k" Tesla will see long term success into the 10+ year high mileage used market as a great car is if they get their reliability issues in check, repair costs down, and open themselves up to aftermarket parts and service. Right now they are fighting tooth and nail to keep people from repairing their own cars and having their favorite shop down the street do the work. The reality is people who buy $35k+ cars don't care and are happy to bring their cars to dealers(..or Tesla shop/rangers, same stuff different marketing), people who buy a $5k used car almost universally either do the work themselves or take it to a much lower cost corner shop. People with 5 year old cars or about $10k cars are probably a mix.