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High Depreciation May Slow Electric Car Acceptance
Hugh Pickens writes "The New York Times reports that as cars like the Nissan LEAF and Coda Sedan become available, one question that may give electric car buyers cold feet is bubbling to the surface: How much will these next-gen vehicles be worth a few years down the road? According to a report from the UK's Glass Guide, unless manufacturers properly address customer concerns regarding battery life and performance, the new breed of electric vehicles (EV) soon to be launched will have residual values well below those of rival gasoline and diesel models, with a typical electric vehicle retaining only 10% of its value after five years of ownership, compared to gas and diesel-fueled counterparts retaining 25% of their value in that time period. According to Andy Carroll, managing director at Glass's, the alarming rate of depreciation is a function of customer recognition that the typical EV battery will have a useful life of up to eight years and will cost thousands of dollars to replace. Carroll added that manufacturers could address this problem by leasing the battery to users."
These batteries don't like heat. Simply leaving them in a hot place for a year can rapidly degrade their performance. 8 years sounds like a stretch to me. Is this using once a week and storing at 55 degrees ( Fahrenheit )? What happens to the battery in a black car left in the Texas 100+ degree sun every afternoon?
Do any of you guys remember how much the first DVD players cost and how good the quality was compared to the ones available now?
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
I mean if you buy something you pay up front and get it cheaper. If you lease it you basically rent over time and end up paying more. I mean really are they saying the want them to hide the cost of the battery by making it "separate" and making you pay for it separately? (And making you pay more for it? You're going to pay for the battery one way or another.)
Did you know 80 to 90% of the moderators on slashdot wouldn't recognize a troll even if one dragged them under a bridge.
Toyota RAV4 EV's sell for more than their original MSRP 10 years ago right now on eBay. Residual value is a matter of supply and demand, this 'analyst' sounds like he wants to mess with the demand part.
So in 2-3 years, I should be able to pick up a used Tesla Roadster for about $10K? I can't wait!
You get the feeling that 90% of these statistics are made up?
If batteries wear too fast, the cure should be a better technology, not another business plan.
Unless there's a subsidy somewhere, a short battery life should have as much impact on leasing costs as it has on devaluation.
It is truly difficult to conquer a technology that has been refined for 200 years. Electric cars have been all-but-abandoned for most of that time (British milk floats a fairly honourable exception). The amount of money and infrastructure behind petrol cars is staggering - consider the investment in roads, garages, cars themselves, mechanic training, vehicle design, the odd political manipulation (we won't mention any bribery to get "trolleys" off the road, now will we?)
So it will be tough. Petrol is a magnificently concentrated form of fuel. That's hard to beat. Can we get anything like that density of energy into anything else at the moment - er, no.
But really, can we continue pumping oil out of the ground (or into the gulf of Mexico, not to mention much of Africa) and burning it, generating CO2. Er, no.
So things have to be done. Changing over to using electricity generated in very efficient plants, using 1/10 the energy and possibly allowing CO2 capture (yes I know it's hard, but not as hard as on the tailpipes of a billion cars).
It's possible it will not be as convenient as petrol cars. It's possible we will have to go without the vroom, vroom of big V8s, It's possible people might even have to ride bicycles a bit. Oh dear. Maybe they'll get thinner and healthier - that'd be a bonus.
But it beats the heck out of everyone dying.
So let's get on with it.
Electric cars don't need to compete with every petrol car in existence - they don't have to be faster than a Ferrari, go further than a .. um, diesel Golf. Covering basic commuting would be fine - and that's 90% of what people do (lacking better public transport). You want to go skiing - rent an appropriate vehicle.
A good start would seem to be delivery vehicles - predictable loads, distances, always park at the same place. Sounds ideal. And indeed this is being done - I reckon they will be a huge success (there are some excellent hybrid diesel vans starting to appear already).
I'd be surprised if a great deal of people would not be pleased at the possibility of a small simple vehicle for commuting - quiet, quite fast, fairly small, easy to park, amazingly cheap to run. And very low polluting. What's not to like?
So let's get on with it. (Hang on, didn't I say that before?)
"Cats like plain crisps"
You can't charge a car fast enough to match gasoline. It's like a car full of DVDs in the trunk. It might be low tech, but it's higher bandwidth than anything we can run over fiber. Moving the storage medium, gasoline, is too fast. To recharge a car fast enough, you'd need refuel stations that provide as much power as a medium electrical plant. It just isn't practical.
But, if the makers agreed on a standard tech. Standard sizes. Then you'd not do a charge. You'd do a swap. And the batteries would be conditioned, tested, and recharged with every use. Charge them overnight or other low periods at lower cost. And, when the batteries are old and dying, they are retired at the charging station so that a portion of the charge cost goes to replacement, hiding/spreading the cost.
If the government wants to toss out subsidies, then getting the infrastructure in place for this, getting car makers to agree on quick-change layouts and compatible battery technologies (perhaps even a choice of regular or premium batteries at differing costs for "cheap" lead acid batteries vs whatever premium battery technology is adopted (NiMH, Li, or perhaps some mix of the popular ones so that no single resource is overstressed).
Aside from that, I don't see any way for there to be a 5 minute or less charge of a car with a 400+ mile range, like we do with gasoline. If anyone else has an idea, I'd like to hear it. And the plus of this plan, it eliminates the problem with depreciation and battery replacement people fear. Hide the cost (it really isn't that much per mile anyway, but writing big checks makes people cry) and make the replacements fast and safe (maybe even homogenizing the replacement procedure so much that it can be done in 30 seconds or less with robots), and electric will be much more interesting. People in the US hate it because they can't drive cross country. Not that they will, but for the same reason SUVs are popular. They don't go off road, but they could. So you have to make it appeal not to rational people, but to the actual people, who we recognize aren't always rational.
Learn to love Alaska
I know it isn't a popular opinion but electric cars just aren't here yet.
You here attempt to use a technique of propaganda: you paint yourself as an oppressed class when you are indeed in the mainstream. It is the popular opinion that EVs "just" aren't here yet.
The batteries hold too little power and age far too quickly
This is a logical fallacy, the unsupported comparison. Far too little power for what? Far too quickly for what? It's also the unsupported conclusion; we don't know how long they last. Finally, "age far too quickly"; are we now time travelers that the batteries will be moving faster through time T than the rest of us? The assertion should be that they "wear out" too quickly; then I could simply say [citation needed]. Which I do say.
there is no economical reason to drive electric.
[citation needed]
While hybrid cars do solve the distance issue and also mitigate the second issue by having far less batteries (which reduces its economic cost).
No, it doesn't. A hybrid costs more to build because it has to carry two powertrains. It has only one transmission, but it's twice as complex to support two motors. The LEAF is projected to be cheaper at launch than the Prius was.
I would love to drive electric but unless I am just burning money - I won't.
That's very evocative, but you have still failed to support any assertion.
Oh and please don't post a link to a research project and suggest electric cars are almost ready since they managed to make an insanely light car with batteries that cost $100,000 wholesale
We discuss the LEAF in the summary. You have reached a whole new level of deliberate disingenuousness.
The issue is that no company is making a road car that is economically justifiable.
Your FUD against EVs is noted. I can see that you are either a shill or a troll. Please include citations in your next comment, or don't bother.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Toyota RAV4 EV's sell for more than their original MSRP 10 years ago right now on eBay.
I don't want to hear about the auction of a curio on eBay. I want to hear about used car sales through local dealers.
If EVs fail, it won't be because of lies about their resale value. EVs are in fact likely to have HIGHER resale value because they eliminate so much that can go wrong with the typical auto.
Indeed.
Also, I don't know why anyone hasn't brought up "Prius Resale Value" yet as a case in point. Or the expected versus actual battery life in'em; they've been around over 10 years now.
-- This
1) If the battery really is fully functional per the test stand at the battery swap out place, I don't really care what it looks like. It's not like I'm going to be looking at it all that much.
2) The battery swap-out model is usually discussed in the context where you lease rather than own the battery. So you turn in a brand new one and get one that's two years old (and presumably has less remaining life). Who cares? You're going to be turning it in pretty soon anyway for a replacement, fully charged one.
I really don't see this as a serious objection to the battery swap plan.