I’m also curious about resale. Batteries degrade and a good portion of the vehicle’s value is the battery. Right now the resale is quite good on EVs, but I don’t know if that’s attributable to the novelty of EVs or some other factor that won’t last ten years. Perhaps someone who knows more than I do could weigh in?
Tesla Model 3 has 100k miles warranty for battery with guarantee that battery will have at least 70% capacity remaining. Actual numbers indicate that degradation usually is significantly less - closer to 90% battery capacity at 100k miles: https://electrek.co/2020/06/06/tesla-battery-degradation-rep...
I suspect the fall off is non-linear. I would be curious to know how they fair in the next 100k miles.
I have never bought a car with less than 100k miles on it and I drive pretty nice cars. There are a whole lot of ice cars on the road with more than 100k miles because the last decade has produced very reliable ice vehicles with very replaceable parts.
I suspect that tesla modified the drop by giving you a battery which has a higher capacity than advertised and then borrowing from that extra capacity as the battery degrades. This works until it doesn’t and you run out of extra to borrow from. I wish the mechanics of how the battery is managed long term was more open.
The same article I linked discusses model X that had battery replaced under warranty at more than 300k km. The reason for the replacement was not battery degradation. Here's another article showing graph for up to 200k miles. Looks like Teslas holding capacity quite well even beyond 100k:
>Perhaps someone who knows more than I do could weigh in?
I'm pretty sure that's me, but take everything I say with a grain of salt.
>Right now the resale is quite good on EVs, but I don’t know if that’s attributable to the novelty of EVs or some other factor that won’t last ten years.
IMO it's because 1) the majority of EVs were produced recently (not surprising when the scale of production is increasing exponentially), plus 2) there's generally a lack of cheap ICE-comparable EV options to suck demand away from the used EV market.
Predicting the prices of used cars in 2030 is inherently a little political, so excuse me if I step on toes here.
EVs will be at price-parity with ICE cars by 2024 and will utterly crush them by 2030. As ICE cars are replaced by EVs, things could go one of two main ways:
1) the massive existing supply of ICE cars, plus the massive drop in petrol usage due to EV replacing ICE cars, will mean that second-hand ICE cars and petrol drop massively in price for a while. This causes people to reconsider their EV purchases and a stalling of EV adoption until the ICE-car surplus drains away. This keeps the ICE car infrastructure around for longer than otherwise.
2) (the political bit) ICE cars currently have a certain political protection due to their ubiquity - politicians are often unwilling to raise taxes on cars or petrol, even if it's warranted due to e.g. air pollution or climate destabilisation. A high enough popularity of EVs (e.g. once 30% of cars on the road are EVs) could change the political scene, resulting in a surge in support for getting rid of ICE cars entirely - people are encouraged to have their ICE cars junked in exchange for whatever incentives, and petrol doesn't drop enough to be a complete bargain. ICE cars are relatively rare and people aren't confident in their future, so they keep dropping. The faster they drop, the less political resistance to simply banning them outright. Eventually ICE cars are dead, or as good as.
That said, there are a TON of different factors that are hard to predict the impact of. For example:
* Regardless of scenario, the drop in ICE cars will reduce the revenue of petrol stations, resulting in more of them closing. Fewer petrol stations will exacerbate the switch to EVs, just like the rollout of superchargers and workplace/on-street chargers. It's entirely possible that once we hit e.g. 50% EVs, there's simply no money in petrol stations and several stations have to shut down, causing a feedback loop of fuel stations being less convenient and more expensive, encouraging more EV adoption.
* If petrol stations start closing then there might be a switch to buying fuel deliveries online, which will (IMO) likely result in 'boutique fuels' and customisation. I have no idea what effects that will have, honestly. Either way, the main reason I think this is viable is because this isn't new; when cars were first invented, petrol stations didn't exist and people bought their fuel at the local chemist in cans/bottles.
* It's unclear how far hydrogen will go, but if hydrogen vehicles are common then they may keep petrol stations around for longer than otherwise, as hydrogen stations will likely also be petrol stations. AFAICT Hydrogen vehicles will primarily be trucks, as basically nobody else needs the range that hydrogen offers and hydrogen requires far more up-front infrastructure investment, which requires scale.
* If EVs truly require less maintenance, then we might see a lot of mechanics out of jobs, and as a result we could see lower maintenance costs, making ICE cars comparably more appealing after the initial EV boom but before the surplus mechanics retrain and move into different sectors.
* There may be short-term resource squeezes on EV production - for instance, IIRC lithium mining takes ~7 years to set up a new mine (likely far less to scale up existing mines, mind you) and when you're scaling up exponentially, a small underestimation today will result in a large shortage in 7 years. A stalling of battery production could result in a spike of EV prices, which would encourage a second wind for ICE cars.
* Places that import a ton of energy, like Japan and Korea, might be sticking to fuel cars for a while longer than places with cheaper electricity. In particular, if Japan ever imports a ton of hydrogen, then directly fueling hydrogen cars would make far more sense than Battery EVs charged from a hydrogen-powered grid. If they adopt Hydrogen EVs, then that keeps the R&D ticking along to keep hydrogen in the game elsewhere.
* The politics for ICE cars are heavily tied to the climate - if there's any major political seachange for climate action, well, the reality on that is that ICE cars have zero future and need to be gotten rid of ASAP. So unified demand for a step-change on climate = ICE cars are flat-out dead by 2030.
