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."
I get only an advertisement from the NYT link (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
People are just now realizing this? (Score:1, Interesting)
Wow, I'm continually underwhelmed by the average intelligence of my fellow countrymen. I actually thought about buying a hybrid vehicle 3-4 years ago, but I ran the numbers and decided that even if gas was $5 a gallon, I would STILL come out ahead by buying a fuel-efficient gas-powered car. In the end, I just decided to keep my "old" car, which only has about 105k miles and can probably go for another 150k+. I kinda like keeping that extra $500 a month in my pocket! A car is not an asset, folks. Buy Japanese, and you can drive that bitch around for 15+ years if you want to. I see the overpriced shit American manufacturers turn out, and then I understand why so many people buy a new car every few years. What a colossal waste of money. And if I had to replace a $3000+ battery every 8 years (even on the Japanese-model hybrids)? Fuck that! Get that battery life up to $300k miles, and get the price of the car within a few hundred of its gas-powered cousin, and then I'll buy it. But I'm not going to run up $35k of debt just to so I can tell myself what a fucking great person I am every time I get in my car.
Huh? High depreciation? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Electric isn't ready... (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:How much? (Score:3, Interesting)
Well, you can think about
- returning old batteries for a lower battery replacement cost
- replacement with newer technology batteries or equivalent (fuel cell maybe)
- if electric cars become more popular and it's easier to recharge them battery capacity may go down as well as cost
Re:DVD (Score:3, Interesting)
Batteries are not DVDs. Batteries have been a stumbling block for EVs ever since EVs were invented in the late 1800s. It has not been for want of investment that batteries haven't managed to store more than a 50th the amount of energy that's in gasoline.
My hunch is that as oil supplies wind down we'll end up manufacturing hydrocarbons [lanl.gov] because of their energy density. Moreover, manufacturing hydrocarbons will mitigate the advantage that China has accrued in cornering the rare earth market. [nytimes.com]
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:How much? (Score:5, Interesting)
Did the article mention that people who buy second had gas cars worry about the transmission and whether the previous owner ran the engine in properly, always changed the oil on schedule and always warmed it up before screeching off down the street?
EV batteries bring new problems to the table but they also eliminate a whole bunch of other old-fashioned mechanical problems. If the study wasn't paid for by Big Oil they might have mentioned that.
Re:Electric isn't ready... (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Leasing battery won't change cost (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:10% in 5 years? (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, you will get a Tesla Roadster for that sort of money, But you will only be able to get it to the end of the driveway before the battery runs flat. It will cost about whatever the difference is between a Tesla Roadster and a normal car of that class to replace the dead batteries.
Re:How much? (Score:3, Interesting)
Prices increased because demand is rising too fast, and there aren't enough companies producing them. They'll come down quickly once more companies pick up that market.
By the way, didn't she tell him the current battery capacity before selling the car?
Comment removed (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Charging can't work, so what are the other opti (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Electric isn't ready... (Score:4, Interesting)
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 [nrel.gov], 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.
Re:10% in 5 years? (Score:3, Interesting)