What will happen to all the ten year old electric cars?

[Theeaglesoared]

I'm thinking of buying an electric car. The price of second hand EVs has plummeted in recent months so I could now get a 1-2 year old EV for the same price as its petrol equivalent.

All well and good but it got me thinking: the batteries in EVs wear out after 100,000 miles or 10 years. A replacement battery is currently around £8000.

But will owners really replace the battery? On a 10 year old car? I can't see it happening. So are we going to see loads of cars effectively dumped in 10 years' time?

It seems massively bad for the environment but I can't find the answer to this anywhere! It probably won't put me off buying an EV (I don't want to lease for various reasons) but I am interested, because I assume my car will be worthless in a few years.

If anyone out there is in the car industry I'd love to hear your views.

My partner and father work for National Grid and they are more concerned about how everyone having electric vehicles is going to impact the grid given that it struggles now.

My partner has worked on countless wind turbines and says they are often turned off because there's no infrastructure in place to get the power to where it needs to be and you can't store electricity so it's just a waste.

Throw in fitting chargers at home for everyone and it's a disaster. I live in the South Wales valleys and it's a miracle to park on your street let alone outside your house, we have no drives and there's going to be cables trailing over pavements everywhere.

@StillWantingADog How about the drivers who queue for over an hour for a Tesla charge on trips away with their, this may not be your personal experience but it is for some. You must accept that sometimes chargers don't work as widely reported. Some cars are not able to use the rapid chargers etc.

I believe there was a short term issue with teslas last summer. In my lifetime I recall several incidents when there were petrol shortages, mostly caused by people panic buying in case there was a shortage.

chargers and charging are most definitely but are rapidly improving all the time, as are the EVs ability to charge quickly.

It’s pretty unusual.
I have experienced more petrol shortage queues than I have queues for a charger.
The only charger issues I have ever had are due to the fact that the infrastructure isn’t joined up so for each supplier you need a different app and they tend to work differently as well

Have you see Giles Corey's article, he gave up his £65k EV because it was so unpractical. There is an Electric only charging forecourt near me which invariably has a queue to get in then you have to wait 20 minutes just for an 80% charge, no thanks...

I think its fine to have better for the environment options. But I don't think it's necessarily the right thing to do to force this on everyone.

We do not have the infrastructure to support this in the first place, and cars are only a tiny slice of the issue. There are much more important things that could be addressed that would make much more of a difference. But it's easier to force change on the little people.

He gave it up because it was impractical for his needs.

I gave up a Land Rover because it became impractical for my needs.

Just because a car doesn't suit everyones needs doesn't mean it has no future in the marketplace. Small cars are everywhere but wouldn't suit a family of five etc in the same way a £65k EV might not suit someone who couldn't regularly charge at home overnight and does hundreds of miles in a week. It doesn't make it an impractical car, it just makes it unsuitable for him.

Ours does approx 550km per charge. It’s absolutely fine. That’s a good 4-5hrs driving depending on speed.

We have a toddler. I’m never going to be driving 5-8hrs without stopping.

We have recently driving down Austria- Italy- Slovenia- Croatia and back in loop. Only had to stop max once a day to charge, most days didn’t need to. Just stopped somewhere convenient where we could have some lunch, toilet, and let Ds run around a bit before continuing. On a fast charger we are good to go within 30mins.

On a fast charge, cars can now be charged within 17mins. And that’s from 0-100%, nobody is stopping on 0%. I would like to challenge you to be able to stop, get a 3 year old to walk into service station, toilet everyone, buy a coffee and wander back to car at toddler speed, strap everyone in, snacks given, all within 17mins.

Ours is used on steep snowy mountain roads all winter and it’s no problem either.

@Caspianberg
us EV converts seem to be in a minority here. Depressing how much rubbish gets spread about isn’t it. Dead impressed with your road trip

I’m with you @Caspianberg and @StillWantingADog ! Our Mini doesn’t go as far but that’s fine for now. When the time comes we will swap our VW for an electric van - the first ones are out there now, we are hoping in 5 years or so there will be some secondhand on the market by then. For no-fly holidays (which is a whole other bun fight, but we stopped flying in 2019).

EVs need high quality batteries with minimal performance degradation in order to maximise mileage. They last increasingly well and are improving all the time - much as petrol cars have over their decades of development.

Once batteries are less suited to this purpose there are other uses - to support home to grid / solar generation and storage, and of course to provide power in areas of the world where mains electricity is still a pipe dream.

The technology is still very new and all these developments are happening, but it does take time.

To anyone talking about the lithium, cobalt etc, do some research on the quantities used by the lifetime of a petrol vehicle - and consider the same technology is in every device you've ever accessed Mumsnet with - what happens to all those old devices, there are hundreds of millions of them.

How are you going to sell the car without the battery.