Quote:
Originally Posted by Isaac Zachary
But... - How easy is it to do damage to a fairly new engine or transmission to the point that it requires the whole engine and/or transmission to be rebuilt or replaced? Would running over a piece of tire tread or similar and immediately pulling over and turning off the vehicle do that much damaged?
- Would it cost $16,000 to do that, to take apart a new engine or transmission and put it back together to fix one broken piece of plastic inside it caused from running over a piece of tire?
The point is that if it costs $16,000 to fix a battery that has perfectly good cells and perfectly good electronics and only needs a plastic fitting fixed, how much will it cost to fix the battery once the whole battery needs replacing?
It seems to me that our only hope is that the battery in our EV's lasts as long as the rest of the car and as long as an ICEV would last. Otherwise replacing or repairing it would be prohibitively expensive.
This also shows why insurance on EV's is so high. If manufacturers put a little plastic tube on the front of the car that costs $16,000 if it gets cracked your car is an expensive repair bill waiting to happen. |
Tesla isn't really a good benchmark.
A) They aren't focused on the ability to repair the car. (The giant new structural casting is another example of a stupid idea that makes a car very likely to be totaled instead of repaired)
B) They don't have independent dealers that can compete against one another and they don't sell parts to independent shops. Tesla wants to control every part of the ownership experience.
However the idea is that an EV battery will last the life of the car and then be repurposed into another use. Time will tell if that happens - we are only a decade into EV sales at any scale. With the exception of the Leaf battery life is looking good so far.