It really depends on where you live. There are some parts of the world where environmental factors like ocean humidity or winter road salting will cause a car’s frame to rust through in a few years if you’re not careful. Look up the Rust Belt for an example.
On the other hand, if you live somewhere warm and dry, your car’s frame and body will outlast its original mechanical components.
“Rust Belt” isn’t literal, it refers to an area of the US where industrial manufacturing declined significant in the second half of the 20th century. It’s called that in part at least because its previous moniker was “Steel Belt”.
I think you’re talking about batteries from nearly 15 years ago, which did degrade significantly with age and/or use. There has been a significant and noticeable improvement since then. The person you were taking to did say today’s batteries.
When did you last lose a car to engine failure? Electronics, gears, suspension, stuff like that, but not the engine. They have to over engineer the battery because the earlier popular electric cars had bad batteries and they have to over-compensate. Hence today’s batteries.
Yes. The person I was replying to thought it was somehow bad for the battery to outlast the car. I was making the point that that’s fine. In response to your point about the cost of an engine, I should say that batteries are a far bigger part of the cost of an electric car - it’s really just not very complicated apart from that - very few moving parts indeed compared to a combustion engine. That’s why the car companies aren’t very keen - unless they make their own batteries, they’re not adding as much value when they manufacture them. They prefer to push the hybrids which have the complexity of both and a lot less battery capacity (but very much don’t have the advantages of both for the driver).
Personally, I tend to buy something one to three years old so that it’s already dropped 10k off the new price, then run it for ten years or so until it starts getting unreliable then move on to the next one. It then costs me about 3k to 4k a year to have a car with no problems at all. I honestly don’t know when my electric car will start to get unreliable, but I’m not going back to noisy, smelly and slow ever, I’m sticking with quiet, clean and fast and never using a petrol station again in my life. My partner was a bit more sceptical at first but has very much come round and in a few years we’ll be a two EV household.
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It really depends on where you live. There are some parts of the world where environmental factors like ocean humidity or winter road salting will cause a car’s frame to rust through in a few years if you’re not careful. Look up the Rust Belt for an example.
On the other hand, if you live somewhere warm and dry, your car’s frame and body will outlast its original mechanical components.
“Rust Belt” isn’t literal, it refers to an area of the US where industrial manufacturing declined significant in the second half of the 20th century. It’s called that in part at least because its previous moniker was “Steel Belt”.
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I read about a survey that found Tesla batteries were still at an average 85% health after 250k miles. Not bad at at all
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I think you’re talking about batteries from nearly 15 years ago, which did degrade significantly with age and/or use. There has been a significant and noticeable improvement since then. The person you were taking to did say today’s batteries.
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When did you last lose a car to engine failure? Electronics, gears, suspension, stuff like that, but not the engine. They have to over engineer the battery because the earlier popular electric cars had bad batteries and they have to over-compensate. Hence today’s batteries.
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Yes. The person I was replying to thought it was somehow bad for the battery to outlast the car. I was making the point that that’s fine. In response to your point about the cost of an engine, I should say that batteries are a far bigger part of the cost of an electric car - it’s really just not very complicated apart from that - very few moving parts indeed compared to a combustion engine. That’s why the car companies aren’t very keen - unless they make their own batteries, they’re not adding as much value when they manufacture them. They prefer to push the hybrids which have the complexity of both and a lot less battery capacity (but very much don’t have the advantages of both for the driver).
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Personally, I tend to buy something one to three years old so that it’s already dropped 10k off the new price, then run it for ten years or so until it starts getting unreliable then move on to the next one. It then costs me about 3k to 4k a year to have a car with no problems at all. I honestly don’t know when my electric car will start to get unreliable, but I’m not going back to noisy, smelly and slow ever, I’m sticking with quiet, clean and fast and never using a petrol station again in my life. My partner was a bit more sceptical at first but has very much come round and in a few years we’ll be a two EV household.