Looking at a slightly used model 3 and wondering just how long batteries are actually lasting? What else is a big replacement item at the 300k km mark? What does the efficiency trend look like with that many kms on a used EV?

I’m going out on a limb, but a battery swap on any EV sounds about as expensive as a full engine swap.

  • psaux_grep@alien.topB
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    10 months ago

    We don’t know yet. Age plays a huge difference in cars, more than mileage, and as such your question is very open ended.

    Do you mean what happens at 300k after 20 years of averaging 15k each year, or what happens at 300k after averaging 40k for 8 years?

    Or what happens at 300k after averaging 60k for five years.

    Those are all going to be different answers, and so far we don’t even have enough statistics to answer the latter one.

    Suffice to say, most ICE vehicles don’t reach 300k. I did have an Audi that passed 400k though.

    And as others are pointing out, LFP batteries are likely to last longer as they have about 3x the cycle life of conventional EV batteries.

    But battery packs are more than the sum of their batteries. BMS boards could fail, mechanical connections could fail, fuses can blow, etc.

    EV’s are full of electronics and I wouldn’t be surprised if at a certain age electronic components reliability is going to favor reselling the cars for battery pack extraction vs. being a used car.

    Battery storage could easily use a 15 year old battery pack for another 10 to 15 years, if not more.

    As such used prices are likely to hit a cutoff threshold when they reach a certain age where the used market will be 1:1 with the repurposing market.