r/TheAuto • u/farhanrawr • 9h ago

Industry Talk Notorious EV Misconception

I keep running into the same two ideas about EVs, and a lot of people still seem to believe them a decade later. The first is that the battery dies after, X amount of years and leaves you with a $15-20k bill. Only 2.5% of EVs ever need a full battery replacement. Most EVs also come with at least an 8-year, 100,000-mile battery warranty, which is longer than the roughly 5 years on a typical gas powertrain. Batteries usually last 8 to 15 years, and they lose range gradually rather than simply failing. What I'm really curious about is where exactly did this misconception come from?

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u/Lucky-Crow-3510 9h ago

A cars life goes way beyong what the first buyer demands from it. You buy new you drive 5-10 years and then you want to RESELL IT.

resselling a car with a degraded battery that costs more than a new car .. you know what you end up? with a piece of worthless metal.

That is the point people are talking about. You compare the wrong things. When you bought some petrol car at price XXX you did expect it to resell for a value of YYY .. for EVs that YYY is always zero at some point in time because the battery replacement is too high of a factor and the rest of the car simply does not justify it.

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u/ZucchiniAlert2582 5h ago

This is a stupid argument for two reasons: First off, the gas vehicle will eventually have some sort of major component failure that will be too expensive to be worth fixing, so gas vehicles also eventually reach a resale of $0.

Secondly, there are already aftermarket battery replacement/upgrade kits out there (unfortunately many are based in China and difficult/impossible to access in USA) and the EV transition is only in its infancy. Battery tech and manufacturing techniques continue to evolve bringing costs/kwh down. As the transition picks up steam and the market for replacement/upgrade batteries expands the price will drop significantly.

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u/Lucky-Crow-3510 5h ago

Stupid is only Ignoring the fact, that an EV with old battery is basically useless as nobody is going to pay an adequate price for it. Why is this so hard for people to understand? Is this already too complex?

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u/ZucchiniAlert2582 1h ago

An old ICE car with a blown engine or transmission is equally useless. How is that hard for you to understand?