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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."
Seems like the article is a bit late...
Maybe in the future you should link sites that work correctly when visited by the paranoid. But this is pure fud: "Glass's has developed a proprietary methodology that has enabled it to forecast EV residual values, taking account of specific battery ownership and warranty details, as well as factors such as supply and anticipated patterns of demand. This new methodology is being used by manufacturers to assist in their launch planning and business modelling across Europe" Or in other words, we made up some shit on behalf of big oil that will be used to spread FUD to attempt to prevent EV uptake. It won't work; there are always more pre-orders than can be filled. 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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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 anything, electric cars have much less breakable parts, they need less maintenance and have a real chance of lasting decades! Once battery technology improves, you swap out the batteries and the charging electronics - everything else stays the same. There is no more universal "fuel" than electric energy, which is agnostic to how it was produced, or where (i.e. you might have your own wind or solar plant at home, and the "product" will work just fine with the electric car).
Electric cars are, IMHO, truly future-proof.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
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.'"
OK, so the car was more expensive originally; and, after a number of years its value drops to, or just below, the price range of a similarly aged gas powered car... So, it appears to have lost more value.
Early adopters of any technology often find this is the case. They spend more to reap the benefit earlier. The price will normallize after some time and those that follow will reap the benefit of the experience gained in manufacturing and using the initial versions.
Let also look back at cars in the past for a moment: How many of you remember 40 years ago? (or were driving 10 year old cars 25-30 years ago?) The engines weren't as reliable. It wasn't uncommon to have to re-power a car (replace / rebuild the engine) after 6 or 7 years. We've gotten used to having cars with engines that will last 10-15 years. We've been spoiled, really. This technology will catch up, in terms of longevity and utility, eventually.
> Toyota RAV4 EV's sell for more than their original MSRP 10 years ago right
> now on eBay.
They are also a rare novelty item. Not predictive of what will happen when EV's become commonplace.
> Residual value is a matter of supply and demand, this 'analyst' sounds like > he wants to mess with the demand part.
He's just being realistic.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Which is why conservation is still key. What I never get in this whole alternative energy hype is why more people aren't calling for conservation and why people are obsessed with better cars when a much simpler solution is to use the current cars less. The government really should be exempt (almost) all 2 wheel vehicles from sales taxes. Considering most trips are at most a couple of miles, bicycles are the obvious choice over cars, but even motorcycles get at least 3x as much per gallon as SUVs do, sometimes up to 5x as much(and motorized scooters, which are great for residential zones, get even better mileage). Plus making an electric motorcycle would require a much smaller, and thus cheaper, battery.
Now I know there are times where a car is more convenient, and most people, at least in the US, should keep their cars, but just because something isn't an panacea doesn't mean it is totally worthless.
Monstar L
EV car batteries are currently HEAVY. Very heavy.
Sane cars dont need to do 0-60 in 4.2 seconds. Only really silly or foolish people believe that a car is unsave because I cant accelerate fast... Honda Civic is a slow car, it's safer than any Mustang GT. It's more about uneducated drivers and really bad driving habits and far less about power and speed. Power and Speed only come into factor when you are pulling weight or racing. If an electric tops out at 70mph on the highway, it is perfectly safe you will NEVER need to overtake a car doing 70. It's all ego talking there... I'm important I deserve to do 75-85.....
In fact hybrids and electrics are NOT really for the united states in general. WE have more people that commute 30 miles on a highway to work daily than we have that live within 10 miles of work, have public transportation available or can walk there. So 30 miles 70mph means a car like a honda cvic wins for efficiency. My 2007 2dr coupe gets 44mpg on the highway regularly. This is better than most hybrids, and is very close to what the Civic hybrid gets. If I were to slow to 65mph I would get the same gas mileage as the Civic hybrid. and only add 2 minutes to my commute, if there was no traffic or slowdowns... Real world driving give me large time losses as the traffic congestion the last 10 miles would remove all time saved if I drove 90mph the whole way.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Yes, and taxis should be a good second step for electrics. They never drive too far from the base and run mostly on congested inner city traffic, where running idle becomes an appreciable percentage of fuel consumption for gas or diesel vehicles.
Slow speeds also benefit electric taxis since they can recover energy from regenerative braking. It's only when speed is high enough that wind resistance becomes appreciable that electrics start spending energy they cannot recover.
How would leasing the battery change the cost of replacement 10 years later? It'll still cost, no matter who owns the battery. I'm guessing the idea of leasing is to trick the buyer into not seeing that it costs the same either way, it's just spread out. Let's say the battery lasts for 10 years and costs $3000. That's a $30-$40 monthly lease payment, when you factor in overhead, on top of an already-expensive car.
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.
The government really should be exempt (almost) all 2 wheel vehicles from sales taxes.
Oh, I can't wait to hear this.
Considering most trips are at most a couple of miles, bicycles are the obvious choice over cars, but even motorcycles get at least 3x as much per gallon as SUVs do, sometimes up to 5x as much(and motorized scooters, which are great for residential zones, get even better mileage).
So what? My car gets 30 mpg on the freeway, and it's a 3475lb land yacht from 1982. I can transport four adults in comfort with better mileage than a pair of motorcycles. Most motorcycles get real-world mileage under 30 mpg because of the irresistible urge to twist wrist. But it's very few motorcycles actually on the road that are rated at more than about 30 mpg. Most motorcycles are operated with a single rider most of the time, just like a car. But motorcycles produce four to ten times the emissions per mile traveled of the typical car, and more than twice those of the typical SUV. If we replaced half our auto miles with motorcycle miles, we'd be choking on fumes.
Now I know there are times where a car is more convenient, and most people, at least in the US, should keep their cars, but just because something isn't an panacea doesn't mean it is totally worthless.
Motorcycles have long been available to the public, and the public has overwhelmingly voted in favor of cars. Most people simply do not want to be on a vehicle which WILL be crashed; ask ANY motorcyclist smart enough to wear safety equipment (squids need not apply) and they WILL tell you it's not if, it's when you will lay down your motorcycle. Further, there is a great deal we could do in the area of making smaller, more efficient cars; the Smart ForTwo is a prime example. Its spaceframe is supposed to provide impact protection superior to a much larger vehicle. And finally, a simple solution to having too many large vehicles on the road is to require that people have a higher grade of license before they are permitted to drive a heavier class of vehicle. We do this already in most to all states when it comes to commercial licenses, with higher grades of license required for heavier classes of vehicle. Surely this could be applied to consumer vehicles?
Indeed, the problem is one of government collusion. California is the most populous state and has the most cars both per capita and in general. We the people of California attempted to institute new emissions standards to force automakers to sell us the cars we want to buy: those which do not pollute unnecessarily. Japanese and German automakers were prepared to go forward in this environment, but US automakers claimed that they could not meet these restrictions. This is of course pure nonsense. The truth is that they wanted to sell us ever-more-inefficient vehicles, because luxury vehicles come with a cachet and cachet comes with markup. Japanese automakers responded by offering the more-efficient, less-polluting vehicles anyway, and then offering a bloated, inefficient edition to compete with the American cachet-based entries.
In any case, motorcycles have terrible emissions and wouldn't have such great efficiency (which actually is not very great! 3475lb at 30mpg, or 425lb at 35 mpg, pathetic!!!) with emissions controls which would make them more efficient than cars, and they have been largely rejected by the market. They work, in fact, for even fewer people than EVs. In short, they are not the answer we're looking for, or even a significant part of it. I would love to see motorcycles replaced with electrics though, since they are far worse polluters per mile than cars.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's not about making informed decisions anymore. It's all about being trendy, owning the newest shiny, and looking like I'm part of the crowd.
I just bought a new home for WAY WAY under appraised value because the sellers were downright desperate. I got the loan for $15,000 more than purchase price and still am $20,000 under what I could sell it for when the market pop's back.
What am I doing with the $15K? Replacing the furnace and AC with SEER 18 and >95% efficient as well as adding another 18" of insulation in the roof (walls are already good) as well as replacing the windows with triple pane LowE ($100.00 a window if you know where to get them)
The cost of living for my wife and I just dropped drastically. Mortgage will be $490.00 a month WITH insurance and taxes in escrow. After upgrades Heat and AC will be under $90.00 a month (Live in michigan) so that if we both were unemployed and worked at McDonalds flipping burgers at minimum wage we could afford to pay or bills.
What do friends say we should do with the cash? Remodel the kitchen with marble counters, add a theater room, Buy a Lexus or BMW, go on a vacation, etc... They are appalled that we are "wasting" that money on home improvements that are not visible. Things that are flat out stupid to do. People in general put a high value on things that are visible that others see and low value on invisible things that will pay back better than any Savings CD can ever hope to do. (I will make back that money in 5 years... 100% return in 5 years is something that everyone in wall street would literally kill for) Plus I limit my financial liability. Something that most people also do not understand.
I recently sold my SUV and bought a New Honda Civic, non hybrid. The gas saved is equal to the car payment at $2.90 a gallon, if gas goes up I save even more. Insurance saved is $30.00 a month. I'm net positive and also will have a lower TCO on the civic than the SUV.
The Cost difference between the Cvic and Civic hybrid is huge. So huge that it makes the car a net loss due to the insignificant increases in gas mileage compared to the Non hybrid civic. To this day I cant understand why anyone would buy a hybrid. The only hybrid I ever saw that made sense was the Honda Insight 1st gen. It got real gains, current hybrids get insignificant gains compared to the non hybrid same model.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
I buy a car and run it into the ground. This won't affect me at all. It also won't affect people who buy a car with zero down and high interest and immediately owe more than it's worth, they don't concern themselves with these things. If you have to have the latest and greatest every few years, you're going to have problems.
Electric cars are a long term investment, paying for themselves over time as gas usage is less. It's not for the buy-and-sell crowd. When they are the most common type of car on the road, this will change.
Article is garbage and author is myopic or a shill, or both.
I've never really understood this urge to trade cars in so quickly.... Even if a fully paid off ten-year-old car is costing you $1500 per year in maintenance (CV joints, timing belt etc.) you're still way further ahead compared to a $400 per month payment on a new car. Every time my friends say "I can't afford the upkeep on this car so I'm getting a new one" I roll my eyes...
You aren't looking at all the costs of driving petroleum fueled vehicles. Trillion bucks to be heavy in the middle east for decades, health costs especially in major urban areas with smog pollution, and now the gulf oil disaster.
I would actually look forward to much cheaper electric vehicles being on the car lots used, that's the only way I could get one anyway. I'd love to have a small electric truck for use around here, and I only need a 30 mile range to go to town and back, I wouldn't need a 100-300 mile range. And for just driving around the farm, I could keep a smaller cheaper set of batts charged with my solar PV panels.
As to range in general, the generator trailer range extender eliminates that "need" for the 100-300 mile range on pure electric. You could rent one of those for the occasional long trip. These companies could offer a base model with just the 30 - 50 mile range, with more batteries and/or the generator trailer as options. That would reduce the price considerably to just get into an electric ride of some sort.
It's not exactly the same, but presently hybrid vehicles depreciate far more slowly than vehicles solely powered through internal combustion with the exception of the few diesel cars on the road.
Personal nuclear power is the way to do this unless there is a ubiquitous grid accessible from almost everywhere. Nuclear power plant that is small enough to fit into an engine compartment, safe enough not to leak/blow somehow for any reason, including a catastrophic event like a car accident, something that cannot be used for weapons production, something that only needs to be 'recharged' once a month/year/few years, that would beat a current electrical or a current gasoline/diesel/natural gas car by economics alone, never mind the great reduction to pollution of air/water... This is what's needed.
You can't handle the truth.
There is a perceived difference between the old situation where we didn't know if we were getting a car that would soon cost us more money and the new one where we *do* know that the car's battery is about to cost us a fortune. I guess its really not just a perceived difference. With the gas-car its at least possible you aren't getting screwed. If electric cars are going to be viable we need to drive down costs of battery recycling. Scale will help some with that, but cheap lithium from places like Bolivia, and now Afghanistan, will make recycling less desirable, and we will be back in the same situation we are in now, fighting wars for resources, and polluting (but with heavy metals). Seems like there is always some battery tech a couple years out that will replace these terrible lithium things, but I'll just stick with a small efficient gasoline engine until they do.
refactor the law, its bloated, confusing and unmaintainable.
And the batteries would be conditioned, tested, and recharged with every use. Charge them overnight or other low periods at lower cost.
My Tesla Roadster already gets charged overnight. In my own garage. And takes zero time out of my day to do so. The Roadster itself recalibrates and rebalances the battery and in the morning, every morning I have a full "tank".
Why should I complain that I can't refill my car within 10 minutes like my gas powered car? Instead I do complain when I drive a gas car where I have to take 10 minutes out of my day to stop at a gas station, and likely end up getting gas on my hands. Not to mention sending my cash to terrorist sponsoring petro-dictators.
Never a problem with my electric car because it is always "full" when I leave in the morning. There is never a day where I leave my house in the morning and I do not know I plan to drive more than 200 miles that day. I am never "surprised" by running out of fuel, and never need a 5 minute recharge.
You don't "own" the battery any more than you "own" the gas cylinder in your camper-van or holiday home: it just cycles into the supply chain for refilling.
This will only work if all batteries use a standard box and fitment. OK, if you drive some highly specialist boy-racer rig, you use and pay for some highly specialist non-standard battery. Your choice. Once we allow the auto companies to get away with individual proprietary boxes and fitments, the game is over and you, the driver, are screwed for ever.
Imagine if every manufacturer of lightbulbs had their own proprietary fitting. We'd still be using coal-gas to light our houses...
... and I knew this was going to happen. Going into it, I know that in 3-5 years the battery technology will be much better than the battery in my car, making my car virtually worthless.
Compared to a gas car, however, I'll be saving $150 a month ($1800 a year) on gas, so $5400 in 3 years. That's not bad for a car that, in California, will cost me $20k.
The real reason I'm buying it is to help end our dependence on foreign oil. Without people making a few sacrifices to push this technology (and other green technology) forward, we will never break the stranglehold that the Middle Eastern countries have on us. And that needs to end yesterday. I'm just trying to do my part for a better US for my children.
electric engines have a larger torque range and more even torque over that range than ICEs so its top 10mph would most probably be better than your top 10mph.
The prices depreciate because people value it less. They value it less because its a piece of shit. Its a piece of shit because... well, it's a piece of shit. So what, we're going to stand around boo-hooing about how EVs are pieces of shit? I have better things to do. "Stuff that's worthless isn't worth much, details at 11." Yawn.
With the Prius (and other hybrids) that's taken care of for you. Even when the battery's capacity graphic says the battery is near empty (and the ICE starts up automatically to recharge it), the battery actually has more than half of its capacity remaining. Most of the capacity of the Prius battery is never used, just for this reason. No matter the habits of the previous owner, the battery is never deeply discharged (or otherwise abused -- the software controlling the state of charge of the battery is incredibly sophisticated).
This citation needed parroting of wikipedia has to fucking stop.
[citation needed]
We aren't here writing research papers or even encyclopedias. This is a little niche web forum and most everything we write here is forgotten within 24 hours and will be viewed thereafter only by robots, or in some search engine's cache.
That's a bunch of shit. I refer back to slashdot posts when I can find them on a regular basis. I have many bookmarked for later reference.
You, for instance, failed to include any citations for any of the assertions you made.
Anyone who is familiar with the subject is familar with the relevant citations. They're googled by name so often that they floated to the top of the results if you use a handful of words from the title as they predictably should. For example "a look back renewable" first result is http://www.nrel.gov/docs/legosti/fy98/24190.pdf, the link I want. There's places you can find it in other formats but that's what we want for most of what I had to say. Much of the rest is common knowledge. But I can provide citations if needed. So far I see no evidence that there is any (but chew on that one for a minute.)
I, for instance, rightly recognize, just as I did in the OP, that you are just some guy with some opinions you are stating based on your personal experience and beliefs and I would be capable of proceeding with the argument on those grounds, were I so inclined, without engaging in tangential games of demanding excessive investments of your time flitting through search results.
I am here to educate and be educated as well as entertain and be entertained. I often use citations, where they are necessary, i.e. when I am having a conversation and not simply engaging in enumeration of faults.
Also, you wrote a point by point rebuttal. Which is classic. HAND.
I'm a fucking classy kind of guy.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Because that means you can't hop in the car, drive to Colorado for the weekend for skiiing, stopping three times for fuel at a total of 15 minutes (30 if you stop to pee).
Right - but there is no way I would take my Tesla Roadster skiing (or on any road trip which requires a trunk large enough for luggage. Any more than I would take a Ferrari or a Lamborghini there. It doesn't mean I can't take a road trip - it just means for a trip greater than 200 miles, we take a different vehicle.
The point being that just because my Telsa Roadster is not the perfect car for all situations. (trips to the Home Depot for instance, or helping a friend move) does not mean that electric cars are not really really fantastic for most situations - far superior to gas powered transit. And the occasions where it is not the ideal transportation, it is trivial to work around.
The OP's complaint was that charging can't work as fast as refilling gas so we better stick with gas. But for the majority of the driving you do it is far better and more convenient to have an electric than a gas car. And for the times where it isn't (going to Hawaii, picking up a new washing machine, and yes... the Colorado ski trip) I go via a different vehicle. And I am not any more put out than when I could not drive my previous gas powered 2-seater to Hawaii. I didn't drive that one to Colorado either.
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.