High Depreciation May Slow Electric Car Acceptance 354
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."
Texas (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
DVD (Score:5, Insightful)
Wait, that makes no sense (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Electric isn't ready... (Score:5, Insightful)
10% in 5 years? (Score:5, Insightful)
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?
How much? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Electric isn't ready... (Score:5, Insightful)
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?)
Charging can't work, so what are the other options (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Electric isn't ready... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Electric isn't ready... (Score:3, Insightful)
> 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.
Re:Charging can't work, so what are the other opti (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Electric isn't ready... (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Electric isn't ready... (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Electric isn't ready... (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Electric cars should be cheaper (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:10% in 5 years? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is modded funny, but it should really be insightful I think.
Also according to this, I will be able to buy a 5 year old Nissan Leaf for $3000. By the article's own assertion, it has 3 years of battery life left. That means for the lost cost of $1000/yr plus insurance (had to pay this anyway, I can get basic coverage though on a $3000 car) minus fuel cost savings (I spend $1000/yr now to drive to work with my 30mpg car) I get to drive a 5 year old car. My car is already 5 years old!
This sounds like a hell of a great deal. I can't even buy a 5 year old chevy aveo manual transmission for that much right now. Who cares if the batteries only last 3 years? I'll just sell the car for a few hundred dollars worth of scrap and buy another one.
Re:Huh? High depreciation? (Score:3, Insightful)
That's why this article is so great! Just buy a 5 year old Leaf for $3000, drive it until the batteries die to the salt kills in and then throw it away! You can just buy another one for a mere $3000! Who cares if they last, at that price they're quite disposable.
Re:Electric isn't ready... (Score:1, Insightful)
Only really silly or foolish people believe that a car is unsave because I cant accelerate fast
Only ignorant opinionated fools believe that. The cars that do accelerate fast are the safest on the road, they have uprated breaking, chassis and suspension. They hold the road better and the stop in less distance. Try doing some tests before voicing an incorrect opinion. A few minutes on a driving course using different vehicles will teach you the actual facts.
Re:People are just now realizing this? (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Depreciation is for lesses and car-swappers (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
Re:not as bad as it sounds (Score:1, Insightful)
When looking at the price of electric cars, you also have to include the savings in fuel over those years.
Especially in the Netherlands where todays gas price has dropped to just: 7.35 U.S. dollars per gallon.
Why don't people keep cars longer? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:DVD (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, current batteries are way better than those available 150 years ago. Hell, current batteries are way better than they were just 10 years ago.
Re:I get only an advertisement from the NYT link (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Re:Electric isn't ready... (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Re:Wait, that makes no sense (Score:5, Insightful)
The point of leasing isn't just distributing the cost, but it is also about remove the personal ownership of the battery. If you don't own your battery, but just have a contract for the electricity, it is possible to build a refill station that will just swap out the empty battery against a full one, allowing you to refill your EV in a minute, instead of recharge it for multiple hours. If you would own the battery, you simply couldn't do that that easily. It of course also removes pretty much any need to worry about wear and lifetime of the battery, since you always have a fresh one and not drive around with the same for ten years. It also allows to use the car batteries as backup storage for the powergrid, again something that would be a bit more tricky to implement if you would own your personal battery.
The whole EV car thing is basically a solved problem on paper, all its need is putting the plans into actions, which of course is tricky, the car industry had quite a few decades of head start, so it will take time till you have enough refill stations in the wild and the manufacturers have standardized on their battery tech at least enough that you don't need a special battery for every car.
open standards to avoid lockin and depreciation (Score:1, Insightful)
If the car companies use an open standard it will remdy this early adopter issue:
1. Battery module to conform to standard so that when swap out stations are available your covered.
2. Car Management system open. So that owners dont get screwed finding a provider to service them later. The car companies would love to do this, but the franchise model prevents it because all those car showrooms make MORE money from the servicing contracts down the line than they do from the initial sale of the vehicle.
Tesla has completely fixed this model because they do not have franchise model. So they have an open servicing and parts model. And they can have an open vehicle software API model.
This is also why the cars are a bit more expensive, because they know they dont make a fortune off all the servicing as much.
The point i am highlighting above is the CRUX of the issue everyone !!
Once you understand the constraints then you can understand a way to work around the system.
Ford tried to change their franchise model 5 years ago to also fix this inherent problem, but they were sued by the franchise holders ( the retailers ). This is why Tesla thought ahead :)
So the only remedy now is to only buy from a car maker that has this model. The only one is Tesla and so you should vote with your wallet by waiting for the Tela models i think-
Sorry to sounds so fixed, but they other car companies have screwed it all up and are trapped in their franchise models.
psychological difference (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
It's the battery, st00p1d (Score:3, Insightful)
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...
I'm a future LEAF owner... (Score:3, Insightful)
... 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.
Re:Electric isn't ready... (Score:1, Insightful)
DUH. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:DVD (Score:4, Insightful)
That number is bullshit. Sure, the theoretical energy density in gasoline is pretty high, but you can't just drip gasoline onto the wheels and make the vehicle go...
Once you account for all the weight, cost, and repeated conversion losses with gasoline, well, it's no wonder that electric vehicles like the LEAF have about 1/3rd the range, even though the batteries contain "a 50th the amount of energy" (in theory)...
You want some bullshit numbers? Calculate feeding the atoms of the batteries into a working fusion reactor, and tell me how much "energy" you get out of them...
All that matters is range. You can get 100 mi (160 km) on a charge in a Nissan Leaf. Nothing you can say about the benefits of gasoline is going to change that simple fact. Electric vehicles are already competitive with gasoline powered cars. It's just a matter of time.
Re:How much? (Score:3, Insightful)
Since we're arguing about some dude's speculative model of future battery life and cost, let's speculate about gas costs 8 years from now, shall we?
I'll start the guessing at $6 / gallon.
Re:Charging can't work, so what are the other opti (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Two things: (Score:4, Insightful)
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.