Ford Says You Can Never Own Leased EVs (thetruthaboutcars.com) 257
schwit1 shares a report from The Truth About Cars: Ford Motor Co. will be suspending end-of-lease buyout options for customers driving all-electric vehicles, provided they took possession of the model after June 15, 2022. Those who nabbed their Mach-E beforehand will still have the option of purchasing the automobile once their lease ends. However, there are some states that won't be abiding by the updated rules until the end of the year, not that it matters when customers are almost guaranteed to have to wait at least that long on a reserved vehicle.
The change, made earlier in the month, cruised under our radar until a reader asked for our take over the weekend. Ford could be wanting to capitalize on exceptionally high used vehicle prices, ensuring that more vehicles make it back into rotation. The broader industry has likewise been talking about abandoning traditional ownership to transition the auto market into being more service-oriented where manufacturers ultimately retain ownership of all relevant assets. But it may not be that simple as this being another step in the business sector's larger plan to maximize profitability by discouraging private vehicle ownership.
[...] While leasing customers will not be able to buy their EV, Ford Credit will allow them to renew an expiring contract in exchange for a brand-new model. Amazingly, the manufacturer is trying to frame this as environmentally responsible. But it smells like planned obsolescence and desperation from where I'm sitting. Ford knows that electrics require far less labor to produce. By also retaining/recycling the most-expensive component (the battery) it can effectively maximize profitability on a three or four-year turnaround. For now, the updated leasing scheme is limited exclusively to all-electric products (e.g. Ford Lightning or Mach-E "Mustang") sold in 37 individual states. But the long wait times for new EVs and Ford's desire to expand the plan through the rest of the year effectively means it'll be national by the time most people take ownership.
The change, made earlier in the month, cruised under our radar until a reader asked for our take over the weekend. Ford could be wanting to capitalize on exceptionally high used vehicle prices, ensuring that more vehicles make it back into rotation. The broader industry has likewise been talking about abandoning traditional ownership to transition the auto market into being more service-oriented where manufacturers ultimately retain ownership of all relevant assets. But it may not be that simple as this being another step in the business sector's larger plan to maximize profitability by discouraging private vehicle ownership.
[...] While leasing customers will not be able to buy their EV, Ford Credit will allow them to renew an expiring contract in exchange for a brand-new model. Amazingly, the manufacturer is trying to frame this as environmentally responsible. But it smells like planned obsolescence and desperation from where I'm sitting. Ford knows that electrics require far less labor to produce. By also retaining/recycling the most-expensive component (the battery) it can effectively maximize profitability on a three or four-year turnaround. For now, the updated leasing scheme is limited exclusively to all-electric products (e.g. Ford Lightning or Mach-E "Mustang") sold in 37 individual states. But the long wait times for new EVs and Ford's desire to expand the plan through the rest of the year effectively means it'll be national by the time most people take ownership.
Like the GM (Score:3, Insightful)
They're taking a cue from the GM electric car, the "EV-1". When GM made the EV-1, they didn't sell any of them, they only leased them. That way when they stopped making them, they called all the models in and junked them to make sure that there were no electric vehicles left on the road.
Re:Like the GM (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not like that at all. The EV-1 was always intended as a research project, and it was fundamentally unprofitable. GM would have been continually losing money on just supplying parts for it, which they would have been legally obligated to do if they hadn't terminated it. Granted there probably could have been some way for them to weasel out of liability, but it would have been a huge hassle. Also, they weren't very good cars overall. That isn't to say that the owners didn't like them, but more that they would have been something that detractors could point to and laugh. It's still very sad that GM crushed them, but it did make a certain kind of legal sense.
This on the other hand is likely just Ford capitalizing on current used vehicle prices, as proposed at the top of the second paragraph of the summary. They will get a lot more money by putting these vehicles back on the lot than they will by letting lease holders buy them out for the remainder of the MSRP of the vehicle. In fact, they might well be able to sell them for over MSRP right now, even off-lease. This is a sign that says that Ford is expecting component shortages to persist for longer than a lease period, keeping used vehicle prices high.
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Also I might add that Toyota did the same thing with the RAV4 EV as GM did with the EV-1, and generally for the same reasons, but to me that's an even sadder story because those were actually fully practical vehicles. Only the powertrain differed from the normal RAV4. On the other hand, a small number of those actually did wind up in the hands of private owners.
Re: Like the GM (Score:2)
Kind of like the first generation Honda Insight except they aren't jerks like GM and I privately hold the vehicle.
The entire vehicle is made out of aluminum. Has forged aluminum control arms like a high-end vehicle. Electric motor and Battery paired with a manual transmission and a very efficient 68 horsepower 1 L gas engine.
Most of the vehicle is hand welded aluminum. It was built next to the NSX supercar at a special plant due to the vehicles aluminum properties.
I average about 75 miles per gallon in mine
Re: Like the GM (Score:4)
The cost of each vehicle was around $60,000 but Honda was in a rush to beat the Prius to Market so they sold it here for less than 30k.
It's hard to know what it cost GM to build each EV-1, but it's fairly safe to say that it was more than the Insight.
There's absolutely no reason why GM had to take the ev1s guard them with police and crush them.
Well, there are in fact some reasons, which I've discussed. The program didn't make any money, was never going to make any money, and would continue to cost money. It just didn't make any sense for GM to continue it. If you don't like it, blame capitalism. GM is a for-profit entity and has to make decisions which promote profit to survive.
Re: Like the GM (Score:4, Insightful)
I think Tesla proved that EV can be a profitable thing. However the Traditional Car makers didn't want to pay for the expense in changing their whole business model around. They all basically for decades kicked the can down the road hoping it will be someone else's problem, and quench any interest in EV with a basic FUD Campaign.
Tesla was first to make Good electric Cars, while the likes of the Leaf was out, they were initially super limited in range and not really good for the average driver.
However those Tesla drivers kinda showed the public how the ICE makers were just talking Shit about EV.
So the ICE makers GM, Ford, VW and other ICE companies reversed merged into separate EV companies (Live Volvo to Polstar) to Start to actually work on making EV as part of their profit centers. However, they are at a disadvantage for the first time, because making an EV isn't like converting a sedan into an SUV It requires new engineers, and updated software developers. As well new manufacturing processes, and parts where there may not be a big set of suppliers to provide.
Also we have other set of startups who can compete for the first time with the Traditional Auto makers, because they are all starting at step one again.
If GM pushed and expanded the EV-1 and started to get production at a good level back in the early 2000's they may be in a much better place now. They might had avoided bankruptcy in 2008,
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You can't compare the Insight and EV1 though. Insight: Made to ordinary production vehicle standards, with lots of commonality to other Hondas. Built in basically unlimited production for 6 years. They made 17,000.
EV1: Handbuilt prototypes, about 1000 were built. No commonality. Liability laws being what they are in the US, I have no trouble believing GM wanted to get rid of the problem instead of being required to support these vehicles for 15 years.
Re: Like the GM (Score:2)
No it wasn't, it had a unique all aluminum frame. It had an engine unique that was not shared with other Hondas. The transmission is similar to the one in the Civic Hybrid but with extra Machining done to reduce weight and a slightly different casting so it too was unique.
Had a unique automatic climate control system not shared with other Hondas. No cruise control which others had. And multiple battery management computers that were unique. Window up/down switches are unique and part of the dash.
The only pa
Re:Like the GM (Score:5, Informative)
The EV-1 was always intended as a research project, and it was fundamentally unprofitable. GM would have been continually losing money on just supplying parts for it, which they would have been legally obligated to do if they hadn't terminated it.
EV-1 was to fill an obligation to California. GM could have invested in battery development to reduce their cost but chose to not do so as funding actual R&D would cost money and thus reduce profits.
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EV-1 was to fill an obligation to California. GM could have invested in battery development to reduce their cost but chose to not do so as funding actual R&D would cost money and thus reduce profits.
The R&D cost for the EV-1 was something like $150,000 per car already. Bob Lutz estimated that if you divided the final program costs to GM by the number of cars you'd come up with a quarter million dollars each.
Re:Like the GM (Score:4, Interesting)
> GM could have invested in battery development to reduce their cost
The rechargeable lithium battery basically didn't exist outside laboratory environments until 1991, and the EV-1 came out in 1996. They were nowhere near ready for larger battery packs, let alone automotive use, so GM went with lead batteries. Most of these were recalled for their tendency to catch fire.
The best tech at the time was NiMH, which Chevron owned the patent on so that wasn't happening - Toyota/Panasonic managed to strike a deal but that pushed automotive NiMH batteries back a decade. The last year the EV-1 was produced used NiMH packs licensing the tech but by then the car was already obsolete and too expensive/restricted in use to compete.
That they were rounded up and destroyed is bullshit, but you really can't fault GM for discontinuing development. It would be nearly a decade before lithium batteries really got their chance.
=Smidge=
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Except that Ford can't use this change to capitalize on the current used vehicle prices, since it doesn't affect leases coming to the end of their terms right now. This only applies to new lease contracts, which won't come to the end of their terms for another 2-3 years.
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Except that Ford can't use this change to capitalize on the current used vehicle prices, since it doesn't affect leases coming to the end of their terms right now. This only applies to new lease contracts, which won't come to the end of their terms for another 2-3 years.
Right, so why would they do this, unless they expect the used vehicle prices to stay high for more than 2-3 years? And they will, because it's going to take that long for more production to come on line, and then even longer for the backlog to be filled. Remember, EV demand is rising, and the manufacturers cannot meet current demand. Both IC and battery production need to be increased substantially for that.
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Supply Chain (Score:3)
They leased them because they didn't know if they would be able to make money on them. That was dependent on sales and the advancement of battery technology. The original EV1 used lead-acid batteries, which were never going to be acceptable for general vehicular use (there's a reason they only leased them in California - lead acid batteries suck in cold weather.) The second gen used NiMH batteries, which still had thermal and self discharge issues.
If the program was a failure, which it was, they didn't want
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It has a bonkers drivetrain, with completely independent front electric and rear ICE power plants, which is causing them all kinds of problems.
Parallel hybrids aren't actually all that bananas an idea. BMW just isn't good at the control stuff because they don't make their own control units. All of the Germans get all that stuff from Bosch. That's where the know-how lives, such as it is. Sadly, Bosch quality dove sharply downhill in the eighties someplace, and never recovered. Consequently, the same happened to the reliability of German electrical systems, where all of the modules are made by Bosch.
The modern Honda NSX is a parallel hybrid, as were
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The modern Honda NSX is a parallel hybrid, as were the first two generations of Honda Insight
The major difference here is that most other, if not all other, parallel hybrid systems share a drivetrain. My Volt works that way, the engine and the two drive motors share a gear system that can drive the front wheels. The i8 has a completely independent drive system between the front and rear wheels, with the ICE motor driving the rear wheels and the electric motors driving the front. A computer system keeps the wheels synchronized, there is no mechanical linkage.
I don't think any other mass-produced pas
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Not really. You can still BUY the car if you want. This is only for people who LEASE the vehicle. I suspect there is a lot of leasing going on these days because of the expectation that residual values will remain high for a while. That lowers the financial bite to the consumer since they only finance the delta between the new cost and the residual value when the lease is over.
Best,
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Re: Like the GM (Score:2)
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Not quite... You can still purchase your Ford EV, and keep it. However a lot of people normally choose to lease cars, because it is lower monthly payments, then when you normally buy the car after the lease, you can pay the deprecated price. Under normal conditions the Car Maker makes out.
However with the high resale of EV in general, The Car Makers are not making out ahead, but giving the car away for less then if you were to purchase it (or via a car loan)
The EV-1 that GM did was a Lease only option. A
Seems like a click-baity story! (Score:5, Informative)
You can still BUY the car. This just means the are no longer offering buy outs at the end of the lease.
And that was almost NEVER a good deal, folks! If you want to OWN a Ford EV, do it! Buy the damn thing. If you want to LEASE a Ford EV, do it. Lease the damn thing and turn it back in 3 years down the road.
Re:Seems like a click-baity story! (Score:5, Informative)
You can still BUY the car. This just means the are no longer offering buy outs at the end of the lease.
And that was almost NEVER a good deal, folks!
Well, it depends. You probably wouldn't normally have saved anything on a lease buyout. But depending on the particular case you probably wouldn't have lost much compared to buying it new, either. And meanwhile you know whether or not you've got a lemon by the time it comes off lease. Right now though, since decent used vehicles are selling for outsized prices, Ford may well be able to sell these lightly used vehicles at or above MSRP, meaning the full profit from the lease is gravy.
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Ok, yes, that is a good counter argument. I could see "knowing what you have" on a leased car being a reason you might buy out the lease.
I still think it is almost always a better deal to buy it outright at the beginning, but during a three year lease, plans can change.
I don't think this is the "big brother panic" moment the original article made it out to be, though.
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Though that's *probably* a short sighted thought, 3 years after now the market probably won't be in this shape.
This instead seems to be a mindset to keep people on the lease treadmill, keeping their choices either "get a used car, but *not* the one you've spent 3 years in to know well, instead one that you have no idea how it has been behaving/treated", "get a new car for more than it would have cost to buy out your lease", or the low-friction path of "just keep paying your lease payments, and you'll get re
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Though that's *probably* a short sighted thought, 3 years after now the market probably won't be in this shape.
I think it will. There's no sign that component shortages will end before then. That's what's so spectacularly wrong about all this JIT bullshit, ripple effects. It's like a car wreck on the interstate, it backs up exit after exit until people nowhere near the incident location are affected.
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Maybe, maybe not. Neither prediction is necessarily stupid.
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This change is a "house always wins" change for Ford and it makes leases less attractive.
With a lease, as a buyer, you have to predict how many miles you will do during the course of the lease. If you go over your contracted miles, you must pay. If you are significantly under, the car would be more valuable than the buyout price, so you could exercise the buyout and sell privately. Now Ford benefits if you are either under or over your contracted miles.
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Re:Seems like a click-baity story! (Score:5, Interesting)
And that was almost NEVER a good deal, folks!
People don't do lease-to-own because it's a good deal, they do it because their monthly budget is stretched so tight that they can only afford the vehicle if they first lease it, and then buy it for the depreciated value at the end of the lease. It's yet another example of why the less money you earn, the more expensive everything becomes. It's called the Boots theory [wikipedia.org], which ironically has nothing to do with pulling yourself up by your bootstraps so you can afford to buy a better pair of boots to start.
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You can still BUY the car. This just means the are no longer offering buy outs at the end of the lease.
And that was almost NEVER a good deal, folks! If you want to OWN a Ford EV, do it! Buy the damn thing. If you want to LEASE a Ford EV, do it. Lease the damn thing and turn it back in 3 years down the road.
Worse yet, this is Ford admitting they know that the residual values of electric cars are going to nosedive. So it's better to get the money out of renting them out, then renting you a new one after that.
That is the reason leasing is cheap, because at the end of the lease they know the 2nd hand value is going to make a profit.
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I don't accept the rental model for my software either.
manufacturers retain ownership = they cover repair (Score:4, Insightful)
manufacturers retain ownership = they should cover repair and up keep costs.
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manufacturers retain ownership = they should cover repair and up keep costs.
Some do, at least during a typical lease period. BMW, the Koreans and Mini offer 3 years of free maintenance. Honda, Toyota/Lexus, and VW give 2. Jag gives 5.
But I agree that dealers should be responsible for maintenance on cars they own, that would be a good consumer protection law. Frankly I don't think leasers should be liable for rock chips and such either. If the owner (the dealer, manufacturer or whoever) doesn't want rock chips, they should install a clear bra on their car.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Yes the way to get your car serviced faster is by being a cunt to the people you expect to do the work on it.
It's worked for me so far. Try it, you'll like it. It works in restaurants, too. Nobody coming to the register? Start fucking with stuff on the counter, fiddling with the hanging plants... they'll show up.
Guess what buddy, there is a big line of assholes who need their shit fixed too.
The assholes are the fuckheads at the dealer who schedule you for an appointment and then don't do the labor at the appointed time. The guy who does the oil changes isn't also doing head swaps or transmission services or whatever, and he's likely got a dedicated bay, so there's no excuse for them to not pe
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Nobody coming to the register? Start fucking with stuff on the counter, fiddling with the hanging plants... they'll show up.
Yeah, they'll give you free special sauce with your food, and you won't even have to ask. Now that's service!
If it's a sit-down restaurant where that's an issue, and I'm at the register, then I've already eaten. Are you new?
Why (Score:2)
Why is the title bar blue?
Re:Why (Score:4, Funny)
It's a warning. The article is about cars, so anyone using car analogies will cause the thread to self-destruct and implode from being far to meta to possibly exist in the universe.
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If you used car analogies they would actually make sense for a change, so you're supposed to make computer analogies.
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Re:Why (Score:5, Informative)
Why is the title bar blue?
Because it's Posted by FirehoseFavorites [google.com]
The only other one google could find is also blue.
Re:Why (Score:5, Informative)
Note from Slashdot: the blue/purple bar means the story was posted automatically from the firehose without a Slashdot editor selecting it. This happens when a story gets a huge amount of upvotes in the firehose.
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The best is when you follow Found On Road Dead with Driver Returned On Foot. It works forwards and backwards, unlike a Ford
Implies an overpriced lease I think (Score:4, Informative)
You are suppose to enter a lease with a lot of the similarities of actually buying a car... negotiate the price not the monthly payment, for example. The higher price the person giving you the lease can get for the car at the end of the lease *should* make the lease cheaper for you. Generally the numbers would be the purchase price, the interest rate and the estimate of what it will be worth at the end of the lease, with limits of mileage and reasonable wear and tear, of course. And this all is intentionally obfuscated by the car dealers so it isn't all that easy to figure out. But in the end my gut feel is that this implies an overpriced lease and that maybe you should negotiate a cheaper lease or maybe try to do a third party (non-dealer) lease.
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It does. But part of the equation is much longer useful lifetime of EVs and most customers are not equipped to understand that. Hence they expect to pay the same per month for classical and EV.
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At this time there's still a lot of FUD floating around about battery replacement prices, battery degradation, charging availability, etc. So some buyers are still going to be unsure if this EV thing is going to pan out. There's also always the concern that some group of politicians beholden to the auto industry will retard EV proliferation somehow in order to protect legacy industry profits. I can see why some potential owners would choose to lease, although this announcement by Ford may well curb their en
The spin is real (Score:3, Interesting)
>Ford knows that electrics require far less labor to produce.
Reality check: they require far more labor to produce. They also require far less maintenance. I'm guessing that to get to those mental gymnastics of "less labor to produce", they're trying to pretend that the only labor that matters in manufacturing is assembly. Everything else such as building the components, or mining and refining precursors is ignored because it would spoil the narrative entirely.
The issue with long term for electric cars is that a very large part of recent increases in revenues and profits of automaker giants has been by making cars more difficult to repair at independent shop. This is forcing people to do maintenance and repairs at the much more expensive manufacturer licensed shops who then kick back a part of the difference back to the manufacturer via licensing fees plus purchase only the officially licensed parts. A large chunk of that is likely going away with EVs, which is why companies like Tesla are trying to force all maintenance they can feasibly force to be done at licensed shops to salvage at least some of that income stream.
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> Reality check: they require far more labor to produce.
I think it depends on how they're spinning the counting of the labor. By eliminating the ICE, you can claim to eliminate all of that labor, because ICE are vertically integrated. Now say you decide to buy engines from a supplier. All of that labor disappears, because it's not your problem; you're only buying a component.
The "legacy" manufacturers are going vertical with batteries, it seems, although right now most of them source batteries. Based on
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To assemble all the bits to the body after its painted takes the same number of heads.
Yes, but an ICE has thousands of parts, and an electric motor has only a few. A transmission has hundreds of parts, but a reduction drive has only a few. The rest of the car may take just as many hands to assemble, but these are whole production lines in themselves which have dramatic headcount reductions, as well as massive equipment reductions. The big expensive machine that torques all the head bolts at once doesn't exist, for example... Nor the man who operates it.
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I don't know that your "reality check" is total reality either though?
Electric vehicle production is still so new, it's just going to take time for independent repair shops to learn how to work on them. The original manufacturers have some valid concerns about encouraging your shade-tree mechanic to start tearing into them to try to do their own repairs, simply because high voltage is involved. Same reason it's discouraged to do things like upgrading your own electrical panel at home, vs hiring a profession
Maximizing Value (Score:3)
If I can't maximize the value of my car because I can never pay it off, then I would simply like to pay taxes and have a chauffeur take me where I need to go either by train, bus etc. Maybe even some nice foot and bike paths. We could even use eminent domain to take land and maximize it's value for everyday people by building out public transportation. Similar to when a foreign company wanted to build a pipeline down the middle of America to ship oil from Canada to the global market and only create about 300 permanent jobs.
But we all know if Democrats do it and it only sustains itself, it's communism. If Republicans approve it for a private company and the company runs it into the ground for a profit then it's good ol' American patriotism.
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We don't even need to take a bunch of land for public transportation. What we need is to come up with a workable standard for elevated PRT, which can share not just existing roadways, but pathways as well. PRT is literally insane when done with rubber tires on dedicated roadways because then the vehicle has to steer, and roads are expensive to maintain and have a heavy footprint so the whole idea is stupid. When you get it off the ground it takes very little more in the way of initial costs even in the wors
Why buy it? (Score:3)
Frankly, it's an electric vehicle. If you're leasing it, you'll want to trade it in anyway.
In fact, you never want to buy an electric car unless you're a rich car collector that likes lighting money on fire, and this will never change unless a industry wide universal "drop-in" battery solution is developed. And that will never happen.
Electric cars are not ICE cars. The battery has a finite life span and the expense of replacing it is typically 1/3 to 1/2 the price of the car when you bought it new.
Once you hit 8 years or 100000 Miles on your Mach-E, Car resellers will avoid buying that car like the plague for fear of getting burned like they did with bad battery Tesla's and Nissan Leafs. The only way you'll be able to sell it is on Craigslist or Facebook marketplace in the hopes that someone who doesn't know better takes the car off of your hands.
This is one of the reasons why so many car manufactures are building electric cars now. The only green they care about is money. They know that these cars have a guaranteed extreme back end high cost, and they can use that as leverage to keep you on the lease bandwagon.
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Frankly, it's an electric vehicle. If you're leasing it, you'll want to trade it in anyway.
This is patently false. The vast majority of EV leasers throughout history have wanted to buy the vehicles, even given the drawbacks. This has been true for literally every modern EV, including the two that were crushed: The GM EV-1, and the Toyota RAV4 EV.
In fact, you never want to buy an electric car unless you're a rich car collector that likes lighting money on fire, and this will never change unless a industry wide universal "drop-in" battery solution is developed. And that will never happen.
I agree that will never happen, but not that it means you never want to buy an EV. The idea that you cannot cost-effectively replace or refurbish existing EV battery packs is an ignorant one. It is literally being done to a number of models now, notably i
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Those are all good questions, and I've wondered about some of the same things as you have, but since I don't own one and am not in the market for one right now, I haven't bothered to find out. All I know is that the swaps are being done.
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The idea that you cannot cost-effectively replace or refurbish existing EV battery packs is an ignorant one. It is literally being done to a number of models now, notably including the first generation leaf. Upgraded replacement battery packs are actually available, not only restoring the vehicle, but actually improving its range beyond what the new vehicle had as originally sold.
Googling "first generation Nissan Leaf replacement battery cost" just turns up a bunch of content mill garbage sites, so I doubt the prices are accurate. It seems anywhere between $4,500-$7,000 is what people (likely with no experience in the matter) are guessing it costs. The problem is, most people don't have that kind of money sitting around, and that's not the kind of purchase you really want to be paying high credit card interest rates on (assuming you even have that amount of revolving credit limit,
Re:Why buy it? (Score:4, Interesting)
This is patently false. The vast majority of EV leasers throughout history have wanted to buy the vehicles, even given the drawbacks.
I didn't say that car buyers don't buy electric cars, I said you don't want to.
This has been true for literally every modern EV, including the two that were crushed: The GM EV-1, and the Toyota RAV4 EV
Totally different time and era. The EV-1 was not only one of the first commercial EVs, it was the first you would want to drive. People loved them. The problem was that GM was doing it just to flex off their techno-muscle and get some sweet Government Cred and Green (as in money) and had no idea what they had, how good it was, and refused to experiment with longevity studies of the vehicle to see if customers were loyal to it past the lease. The second the government money dried up they killed it faster than you can say concept car, and they specifically designed the leases so that they wouldn't have to deal with them after they killed them.
And frankly, if you could buy one, where are you going to get the special lead acid batteries to replace the dead ones in the EV-1? Then who's going to put them in?
The idea that you cannot cost-effectively replace or refurbish existing EV battery packs is an ignorant one. It is literally being done to a number of models now, notably including the first generation leaf. Upgraded replacement battery packs are actually available, not only restoring the vehicle, but actually improving its range beyond what the new vehicle had as originally sold.
An 8 year old Nissan leaf retails for $8137 as of today. https://www.kbb.com/nissan/lea... [kbb.com]
A battery for a Nissan leaf ranges from $5500-9500 depending on size https://www.recurrentauto.com/... [recurrentauto.com] (not sure of source, but prices sounds about right.)
If you're a gambling man, sure buy an older Leaf, just keep in mind you're practically buying another Leaf if the battery goes flat, which at that point, you might as well lease a new one, trade it for another one when the lease expires, and never have to worry about a surprise battery bill.
Re:Why buy it? (Score:5, Informative)
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A battery for a Nissan leaf ranges from $5500-9500 depending on size https://www.recurrentauto.com/ [recurrentauto.com]... [recurrentauto.com] (not sure of source, but prices sounds about right.)
Many Nissan outlets say they last from 8-12 years depending on mileage (100k to 150k on average) and abuse. Here's a dealer blog. https://www.downtownnashvillen... [downtownna...nissan.com]
And I know that Nissan is saying they last much longer, but only if you recycle them for solar chargers and things other than powering your car. https://insideevs.com/news/35 [insideevs.com]
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Nissan Leaf is 10+ year old at this point, as are its batteries which are notorius for fast degradation due to lack of a good thermal management system.
Meanwhile the modern batteries in Teslas with LFP chemistry are going to last at least 1 000 000 miles (1 600 000 km). At that point it is more likely the car will fall apart before the battery needs replacement. Heck, it is more likely the battery powers atleast two cars before it is retired as a powerwall.
Not all companies are like Tesla though so the trut
Battery Degradation (Score:2)
From what I've read battery degradation in electric vehicles as a problem has been overhyped. Take this guy's one car experiment with a Model 3 https://insideevs.com/reviews/... [insideevs.com] . A hundred thousand miles of very above average wear and tare doing daily charges on fast chargers and literally racing with it and the car only lost 10-11% battery capacity.
I don't think anyone is going to have a problem reselling a used electric vehicle if the battery capacity is only 10% diminished.
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That doesnt change the fact that battery degradation is only a very minor concern for new electric vehicle owners.
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> I have a 1999 ICE vehicle that has lost 0% of its range.
I bet that's not true.
Specifically, I bet the overall fuel efficiency has diminished and a tank of gas no longer gets you quite as far as it did when brand new.
=Smidge=
Lease? (Score:2)
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That’s a dumb question. Some people like having a new vehicle every few years. For BMW or Land Rover you’d be a fool to buy one and keep past three years. BMW with their plastic valve covers and oil pans and Rover with their complex electronics that fail. There’s no such thing as a cheap used Land Rover.
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I don’t have the faintest clue what you’re babbling about. EVs hold their value pretty well. Check used Tesla or Taycan prices for the example. Companies lease cars because people are willing to accept and pay for the deal. No big conspiracies here it’s simple economics.
I’d buy a Kia EV tomorrow but I’m not in the market. Can’t beat 250 miles of range for $7 of electricity.
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If EVs are as good as they say they are, there should be hardly any depreciation.
Well, that [actually] begs the question, will depreciation be less on EVs if they are good? Which leads to the question, why do vehicles depreciate? Is it all because of maintenance costs, or are there other reasons? Are the maintenance costs of older vehicles all about the powertrain, or are there other components that degrade?
Vehicles depreciate about 20% when you drive them off the lot, so clearly maintenance costs are not the entire story, and we only have to determine what percentage of depreciation is
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Most people don't buy things just because they are new.
That is literally the opposite of the truth [lifehacker.com]. Most people do in fact buy specific things over other things just because they are new: they both think newer is better, and are "wired" to like new things. And then this promotes the desire to buy still more new things [jamesclear.com].
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Well I'm Canadian. I do know that America is much more into that than we are. Pretty sad.
We've historically had more buying power. And the people with money here still do, although the number of have nots is growing.
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For me, that extra doesn't outweigh the cost. But others might take a different view - the tech moves on, so people might want to follow it.
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> If EVs are as good as they say they are, there should be hardly any depreciation.
The used car market as a whole is upside-down right now, because supply is down thanks to a jacked-up supply chain. EVs hardly depreciate, so the situation is even more bizarre.
I have an EV on lease, which is up next year. If the market is still the same then as it is now, I could buy out the car for the residual value, turn around and sell it as a used car for roughly the total value it was worth in 2020. I'd have basica
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I thought nothing ever went wrong with EVs and they lasted for 200,000 miles and 25 years? Why would anyone ever want to lease them?
this is why [quora.com]
It has nothing to do with whether things go wrong with them, really. It has to do with people with money tend to change out their cars frequently, and if you do that, it's cheaper to lease. If you replace your car every 3 years, and it's warrantied and offers free service for 3 years (which several brands do) then you're insulated from paying for (or dealing with) high dollar problems. And you would have to keep a car for around 6 years to break even. The average age of the US fleet is around 1
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The word you're looking for is (Score:2)
Rent-a-Car.
OK, 3 words.
Next step (Score:2)
You'll own nothing and like it (Score:2)
Except that if you look closely at your expenses throughout the year (start using Quicken if you want to know [yes, that's ironic]), you'll discover that most of your income goes to "paying rent" on something. You're literally leaking money continually and those recurring fees keep going up even though the thing you're using isn't any better than it was when you started.
The unintended (or perhaps it's really intentional) consequences of being herded into an all electric vehicle world is that it's going to
Re: You'll own nothing and like it (Score:3)
You can have the exact same dystopia with an ICE vehicle as an EV.
No surprise (Score:2)
EVs have a very long useful lifetime compared to old-style carbohydrate guzzlers, mainly because of simpler mechanisms and electric motors generally keeping much, much longer than the internal combustion variant. Also no or much simpler transmission and braking. Hence they lose value much slower and the leasing model does not work or would need a lot of adjustment. As typical customers cannot do math, that is not a real option though, so they do this, expecting (rightfully) that customers cannot do math and
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there is no problem (Score:2)
People who lease want to change the car they drive frequently. Any whiners can buy a Ford EV, you're not the intended market for a lease anyway. Any assertions about "planned obsolescence" are nonsense since the vehicles can be purchased.
Rent seeking. (Score:2)
It seems they are learning the Everything As A Service model*
* We're still not responsible for anything and you have to pay all the maintenance costs while owning nothing - like a triple net lease on property.
Subaru seemed to do the opposite (Score:3)
I looked at a subaru WRX plug in hybrid, a fantastic car, but I was nervous about buying it because the tech is so new so I thought I would lease it, until I saw that the residual they were offering was so low that I would almost be buying the car over the 3 year lease period.
That was a red flag to me, I like to keep my cars for a decade or more and it did not seem that Subaru felt the car would live much beyond the lease period.
Maybe there will be better options in a couple of years
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That changes everything (Score:2)
A conventional lease implies some sort of ownership of the vehicle. This new directive by Ford means that you will only ever be a renter of their vehicles. So if that is the case the "lease" payment should be adjusted accordingly downward. That's not going to happen of course so you're not going to see me at a Ford dealership anytime soon.
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As a buyer, I flocked to my Tesla performance model because it is VERY fast. It's much faster than the sports car it replaced, is cheaper to operate, and now I've got 4 doors and a usable trunk. Don't give a fuck if it's green or not.
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So you don't care about the environment with respect to cars but you do when talking about video cards:
https://slashdot.org/comments.... [slashdot.org]
?
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Re: When you rent something (Score:2)