The concept that Americans would suddenly buy more electric cars on a steepening curve was one that made little sense when considered alongside the realistic limits on EV ownership. This problem was made worse by the hype, which encouraged automakers to launch a bunch of overlapping models. It’s a water-water-everywhere situation, with a market that’s been flooded by electric cars that few people want to drink/buy. At the same time, there’s surprisingly little choice in the electric car space.
AAA released another annual survey of buyers, and fewer people are interested in electric cars than at any point in the last few years. Some of the reasons why are entirely reasonable, though the biggest concern doesn’t make as much sense to me.
Would you like a hybrid? The Morning Dump will continue to bang the hybrid drum. Both the specter of tariffs and the desirability of hybrid vehicles have propelled Hyundai and Kia to a strong May. You know who did even better? Ford! Ford sales were up massively year-over-year. Will tariffs imperil those gains? Will Ford shy away from electric vehicles? Maybe. The company’s Vice Chairman John Lawler gave a long interview last week and he says the company has a plan for both.
The ascendency of YouTubers continues, this time with a rumor that a certain YouTube celebrity might go racing full-time for the potential RAM return to NASCAR. That would be cool.
62% Of Americans Are Worried About High Battery Repair Costs
There are so many practical reasons why many Americans would not want to own an electric car, but battery repair costs aren’t something that I considered to be a huge issue. Is it expensive to replace a battery pack? Absolutely. Is it something most EV purchasers will have to do frequently? Probably not.
AAA is out with its latest survey measuring EV purchasing intent, and the interest in buying new electric cars is starting to fall as consumers take a look at what’s actually available for purchase. This is a bad sign for EVs. Usually, when more car models in a particular class hit the market, it’s a sign that demand is rising quickly. While it’s possible more EVs are sold again this year, it’s not likely to be a huge increase unless gas prices rise dramatically.
According to AAA’s survey, only 16% of potential consumers are either “likely” or “very likely” to purchase an EV, the lowest rate since 2019. Maybe equally as bad, 63% of respondents now say they’re either “unlikely” or “very unlikely” to buy an electric car.
What’s going on?
High battery repair costs (62%) and purchase price (59%) are cited as key barriers to go fully electric. Other top concerns identified in this year’s survey were the perceived unsuitability of EVs for long-distance travel (57%), a lack of convenient public charging stations (56%), and fear of running out of charge while driving (55%). Thirty-one percent of those undecided or unlikely to buy an EV have safety concerns, 27 percent reported challenges installing charging stations at their residences, and 12% cited the potential reduction or elimination of tax credits and rebates.
A few things to digest here, and most of them make sense to me.
Electric cars are too expensive. With few exceptions, hybrid or gas cars are generally more affordable than their EV counterparts. Some of this is the underlying costs associated with the development of completely new types of automobiles and battery material/construction costs. A lot of this is the industry’s fault. Rather than focus on offering affordable EVs, car companies clearly hoped to be able to more quickly amortize the development of EVs by appealing to the market that Tesla created. This was the wrong approach.
There are too many expensive two- and three-row crossover premium SUVs and not enough small, affordable electric cars. The success of the Honda Prologue and Chevy Equinox EV, to me, shows that there are customers at the right price point.
All the range-related concerns are legitimate as well. Public charging has gotten much better, and fast-charging has dramatically improved in just the last 18 months. While most people don’t regularly take long road trips, Americans hate to compromise on capability. It’s why so many people own trucks and rarely carry out tasks that couldn’t just as easily be accomplished with a Corolla.
I’d love to have an electric car, and I think roughly half the market could switch over to EVs and be quite happy. The inability to charge at home is real, though, and I live in a place where I cannot easily charge overnight. For me, that’s basically a deal-breaker.
Car battery replacement? It’s strange to me that this is the biggest issue. Yes, a battery pack is usually the single most expensive part of an electric car, but so is an engine. While early electric cars did have battery pack degradation issues, many owners got free batteries under extended warranties. With smarter charging protocols and improved battery health monitoring, it seems like batteries are keeping a decent percentage of their total range as they age. For instance, Recurrent says only about 1.5% of EVs they monitor have needed a replacement:
Car batteries are the same sort of battery as those found in your phone or laptop, but they are designed, built, and maintained so that they last. We generally see 1-2% range degradation per year, with slightly faster degradation over the first 50,000 miles as the car settles into its long term state.
Even at the more extreme 2% end of the spectrum, that’s a vehicle with 80% of its capacity after 10 years.
The other irony of electric car demand is that the more people buy electric cars and hybrids, the lower the demand for gasoline. The lower the demand for gasoline, historically, the lower the prices. The lower gasoline prices get, the less attractive EVs and hybrids seem to people.
Ford Sales Up 16.3%, Hyundai/Kia Up As May Was Another Strong Month For Car Sales
I was all ready to write about how Hyundai and Kia continue to have strong months by selling affordable cars with a mix of powertrains (ICE, EV, BEV, PHEV), and then Ford plopped a huge number on the table. This May, Ford’s sales increased by a whopping 16.3% compared to last May.
What moved? The full roll-out of the F-150 certainly helped, with an improvement of 14.9% compared to last May (or more than 10,000 more trucks). Ford continues to sell Broncos at a rate that implies the purchase of one of the SUVs will make all the hair relocate from your lower torso back up to the top of your head. The new Expedition and redesigned Ranger helped, also.
Hybrids? Yup. Hybrids are still popular, with sales up 28.9% year-over-year, presumably led by the Escape, Maverick, and F-150 hybrids. Electric cars are mostly down, although the Mach-E had another good month. The Lincoln brand continues to grow as well, jumping by 39% thanks to a new Navigator (that frankly looks amazing).
This isn’t to slight Kia. The brand was already high-fiving angels last year, and this May’s increase of 5% is as much a measure of the current product mix as the ongoing popularity of the brand. Personally, I would credit the success of the Carnival Hybrid for all of the brand’s growth, but it’s the attractive and reasonably priced K5 that makes up most of the increase. The EV9 took a massive hit from 2200 vehicles to just… 37. Why? The guess around here is that the switchover from CCS to NACS charging ports might be a part of the delay, especially since the SUV is built in the United States.
Hyundai was also up, and the single biggest sales winner was the Hyundai Venue. Sales for the affordable little Hyundai were up 74% year-over-year, which makes sense as it’s one of the cheapest cars for sale right now (about $23k out the door).
Is there a tariff impact? Probably. Ford has been doing employee pricing alongside Stellantis, trying to quickly move cars that are not impacted by the tariffs as it hopes to make up some market share. Will this negatively impact the company’s bottom line, though? I think so. Ford’s Q1 revenue dropped about 5% while its net income dropped from $1.3 billion to just $500 million. Obviously, May sales are in Q2, but heavy discounting doesn’t usually correspond with an increase in margin.
Eventually, though, all of these companies will face varying tariff impacts. Buyers, being thoughtful, are rushing to get deals before cars get potentially a lot more expensive.
Hyundai and Kia kept prices static in May as well, but we’ll see what happens later this month.
Ford Thinks It Has An Idea Of How To Lessen Tariff Impacts
Of all the automakers selling cars in the United States with any volume, Ford is probably the best positioned to weather tariffs. About 80% of the cars it sells in the United States are built here, and more are built within the USMCA zone. Still, the company today said it expects a $1.5 billion earnings decline due to tariffs and suspended its own guidance for the year.
Vice Chairman of the company John Lawler talked to analyst Daniel Roeska at a conference, and I thought this was interesting, via the Detroit Free Press:
“We’re continuing to leverage our competitive advantage in our footprint to try to identify opportunities for us over the next 12 to 24 months where we can take advantage of the shifting environment,” Lawler said.
Lawler did not provide specifics on what Ford is doing to leverage its competitive advantage, but when asked whether he believed Ford could take action that would reduce the impact tariffs will have on the company’s costs, Lawler said yes.
“Part of that is when you look at the parts, pushing more of those parts to be USMCA-compliant, that’s a tack that we can take,” Lawler said. “We can onshore parts that aren’t onshored today, although a large percentage of our parts are. So those are different tactics that we can take working with the supply base to minimize some of that impact.”
The USMCA compliance issue is interesting. One of the positive outcomes of the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement was that for a company to be USMCA compliant, it had to meet certain labor standards, which is an especially important detail with regard to Mexican production. Raising the conditions and costs of labor in Mexico is good for Mexico and good for American workers, as it makes it harder to undercut them on price.
There was also some talk of “top line” adjustments, so expect some price increases as well.
And what of EVs?
Lawler said Ford’s long-term views on EVs has not changed despite any of those possibilities. He said the demand for EVs has softened in the past 12 to 18 months and Ford, along with the rest of the industry, has adjusted to that by reducing the cash it invests in EV development.
Something is brewing in California, and we’ll see it eventually.
Cleetus McFarland To NASCAR Trucks?
YouTube star/internet weirdo (in a good way) Cleetus McFarland already made quite the splash in the ARCA series, which is a first step towards NASCAR for many drivers. With rumors of RAM returning to NASCAR trucks, is it possible that McFarland could be one of the drivers?
According to Sports Business Journal, it’s not that crazy of an idea:
While McFarland has yet to detail his plans for next year, people familiar with the new Ram team’s plans have identified him as one of the potential drivers, suggesting he could graduate to the sport’s third division next year. A document viewed by SBJ listed McFarland as one of the names slated to be part of the program as a driver and brand ambassador. It was unclear if the document was final, and it’s possible that McFarland’s plans could change. It was unclear whether he’d run partially or full time. Nonetheless, the team is expected to lean on celebrity partnerships and potentially ownership to grow its presence quickly.
I mean… hell yeah!
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
I love Blondie. Just the way Debbie Harry says “Wall” and “Hall” in the first 20 seconds of this song is insane. It’s so New Jersey, and I absolutely love it. I can’t believe I missed the Talking Heads-Television-Blondie era of CBGB. Also, can you believe that “Heart of Glass” was only like the 5th single released from this album? Crazy. Also, this song was originally recorded by the Nerves, but I can’t imagine it without the Jersey girl accent.
The Big Question
Do you worry about battery degradation?
Top photo: Tesla/Duracell
The price of EVs is more of a deterrent than battery degradation. I do worry about batteries degrading, but also understand that newer battery management systems make a huge difference. But at the same time I own relatively new ICE vehicles, and it takes way more gas than I use on my daily 12 mile commute to make buying an EV cost advantageous over my paid-off daily driver.
That is the problem, fuel savings over many miles can defray the added expense of an EV, but for the people it makes the most sense, those with short commutes, it doesn’t make cents.
I think if you have a short commute and a multi-vehicle household, a used low-end EV like a Leaf can make a lot of sense.
Honestly, any new car is going to look pretty bad financially when compared to a paid-off car you already own. Maybe useful to distinguish between “I might replace my current car with an EV soon” vs “some day, far in the future, when I replace my daily drive it’ll probably be an EV”
I think the battery replacement issue is extremely overblown, especially in comparison to modern ICE cars.
This of all the proprietary sensors and emissions equipment on modern ICE cars necessary for them to pass emissions, how many of them are designed to be rebuilt?
Basically none of them, and I doubt there will be enough demand for them to stay in production. In most of the country when your car stops passing emissions you’re SOL.
Making a replacement battery is simple in comparison to getting a modern ICE car to pass emissions with aftermarket emissions equipment.
The EPA requires major emissions related parts be warrantied for 8 years or 80,000 miles.
Exactly
FWIW, while it can be a huge pain in the ass, California does allow non-OEM emissions equipment when there is truly no OEM part available. When I was looking at FC RX-7s I recall this being a thing.
It being allowed, and it being as good as the OEM emissions bits, are two very different things.
It’s easy to improve early emissions systems with modern offerings, but current emissions systems? Good luck. If you can’t get OEM but you can somehow manage to get it to work, it’s lifespan will almost always be worse than OEM. You got CATs on the market that last half as long as their OEM variants which owners cannot buy anymore.
Once the OEM emissions system goes on your new car and you can no longer buy OEM replacement parts for it it’ll only get worse from there.
I worry about battery degradation when looking at 10 year old used EVs. New EVs are too expensive to consider for a city/errand running car.
I don’t want to live in a house because eventually I would need to replace the roof.
This is a very real thing. There are many people who won’t purchase because of the costs of ownership. So if it applies to a house, it can apply to a car.
Luckily, ICE vehicles never require maintenance or repairs.
I’ve been doing a lot of things wrong for years, then.
You’re confusing “live” with “buy”.
If a landlord replaces a roof, the tenants either have or will pay for it.
Or you could have my house, where you have to replace the roof, the gutters, redo a bunch of foundation work, etc etc.
I guess in this scenario I’m replacing the battery, the frame, wheels, etc.
I am there, or will be very soon on most of those items (house, not EV).
I’m with ya there. No roof yet, but gutters, AC, water heater, sump pump, and now foundation stuff in the near future. Not to mention “luxury items” like a front porch that is being swallowed by the earth. Makes me miss my old landlord.
I have no concern over battery replacement. EVs are fine for the vast majority of people. EREVs can get us to the point where people finally see that. For people that tow an EREV gets rid of the range limitations when doing so. Everything should be electrified.
People overblow the battery failure rate vs failure rate for parts in ICE vehicles. My concern for any car is that critical parts won’t be made and I could not get it repaired or repair it if I wanted to.
The issue for me is the bottom of the market and used stuff. I like to have a rotation of like 2 sub 15k cars at home. the Under 15K market of EV’s… is sad. but under 15 I can get all kinds of exciting money pits like old Jags and Old BMWs..
Not right at your price range, but 2 year-old Model 3s with ~50k miles are commonly listed around $20k.
When all these leased Ioniq 5s hit the used market, the prices are going to be great.
yeah I am all over an Ioniq5.. it will just take some time. For now i will keep this E46 on the road best as I can.
I snagged a ’22 and am loving it 9 months in especially compared to our XC40 Recharge lease prior, but this every 40k service for one coolant loop on the ’22-’24’s are $500-$1k damper to the ownership costs. I’d rather have CCS charging for now vs the ’25+ NACS, but the elimination of that extra coolant loop on those may be worthwhile on its own. Not sure when the Ioniq6 did away with theirs, but consider it if you’re looking at an Ioniq5!
that was a lot of acronym
Yeah, I had the afternoon off so I stopped by Duncan Imports to just look around and drool. TONS of stuff that’s reasonably priced and potential money pit/smile machines. Especially that cream MGA for under $20k. Or the red over black 944. Or, or, or…yeah. Old stuff that you can repair, unlike EVs unless things rapidly change.
Cleetus being a Ram Ambassador only makes sense if he owns a team, not as a driver. I could see him working with a smaller truck team, maybe CR7 or Freedom Racing, to bring in sponsors and maybe even run a handful of races at the Mile or less tracks. Hell, bring the trucks to his track for an exhibition race before the Freedom 500? Would be cool to see him bring in more eyes and support to NASCAR’s lower series.
The EV battery cost thing has always been a problem when trying to get folks into EV’s. Shitty meme groups on Facebook still share images from 2012 of Chevy Volt replacement batteries being $30,000 and saying “SEEE! AN ENGINE DOESN”T COST THAT MUCH WHEN IT GOES BAD!!1!” It becomes the norm for people to cite those sources and use it to affirm their thinking.
Same thing with EV fires or issues with Autopilot. People want their prejudices confirmed, not challenged. More people need to try EV’s, if they did they’d find them to be enjoyable and much easier to use than an ICE vehicle in most cases.
I once heard of it as the “Air Fryer Problem”. No one knew what an Air Fryer did or why you’d want one on your counter, until your friends got one, showed you what it did, and suddenly it was a magical appliance you had to have. A lot of people I’ve shown EV’s to or had them drive my Volt in EV mode love it and understand completely why it’s better. One day at a time folks will come around.
The EV battery cost is real though. A 10 year old EV battery replacement will cost more to replace than the engine in almost any comparable 10 year old ICE car. There are high performance and low volume engines that will cost more, but not many.
Except over the 10 years, the EV will have needed it’s coolant replaced once, maybe twice. Add up all the stuff needed for a 10 year old ICE. It’s gonna be roughly a wash or more. The spare battery industry is just starting to get going. Getting a spare motor at 10 years is likely going to be a used motor, so less value.
My point is we don’t really know yet, but it’s not as bad as you may suggest.
I agree about the future. We are bound to figure out some ways to get a secondhand battery market moving.
However, I am confident in my statements about today. I work in an industry that gives me access to repair data on thousands of repairs and their costs, going back years. So I can see what battery replacements cost this quarter on 10 year old Teslas vs random other daily driver. And today, the battery cost differential is real. It may not be true in the near future, but it is accurate today.
Let’s look at 2 comparable vehicles, a Tesla Model S and a BMW 5 series.
Just hopping around google, a Model S with a 90kwh battery pack would need a new pack with a cost around $12-15k with $2500-$5000 in labor. Pricing seems to be split between Tesla dealer pricing and Greentec, a 3rd party EV battery replacement company. So we can see a replacement cost between $14.5k to $20k depending on where you go and what labor costs.
A previous generation BMW 550i, according to this forum user, was quoted almost $30k USD from a BMW dealer for a new engine. The poster did source a used engine with 75,000km on it for $10,000 USD and estimated labor of $4-5k USD for replacement. After all the ancillary parts were replaced, it came out to a little over $21,000 for an engine replacement (at current exchange rates). This all after failing at 88,000km.
Now the thing is, EV batteries are lasting longer than we expected with better performance and longevity than estimated by their manufacturers. I know I’m posting anecdotal evidence here, but it seems that expensive repairs in the luxury world are equal to BEV repairs at this point. Add to the fact that BEV’s have less regular maintenance costs currently, it’s not far off to say they are equal in ownership costs with similar powerplant failures.
If we were comparing say, a Model 3 to a 3 series? Absolutely the 3 series would win, no doubt there. But it won’t for long.
A couple points on the AAA survey:
List items are Kinja’d just for old time’s sake.
With an EV or hybrid, you want to hope the battery fails within the 8-year, 100K-mile federally mandated warranty (10 years and 150K miles for California and some other states)…because then it’s covered at no cost to you.
But if not, it will likely mechanically total the car, so that is a cause for concern, yes.
True, but I have to imagine a 1-2kWh battery in a hybrid is going to be tremendously less expensive than a 25+ kWh battery in a BEV. For all the early fears about Prii batteries becoming paperweights, it’s been surprisingly rare. I think that’s why if I do buy a hybrid of PHEV (which is likely), Toyota is very high on the list. They’ve just had so much time and volume for ironing out issues.
I seem to recall that a very significant number of those Toyota hybrid battery failures were very likely caused by blocking/clogging of the battery cooling air intake filter.
I’ll admit it’s based off of my memory of fairly anecdotal data, but it is a sort of obscure maintenance item that people will likely neglect…
+1 just for that little gem. It was my second throwback of the day, earlier I had a winking emoji turn into three question marks right after the edit window closed…
Surveys aren’t worth much of you don’t know more about the sample and the methodology. Is the sample limited AAA members? That alone would raise questions.
I have access to a lot of auto repair data from the last few years. The cost of car to major failure cost isn’t great for a 12 year old Tesla. Those batteries are $12K replacement costs right now. A 12 year old Tahoe is a much cheaper replacement cost with only a slightly worse frequency of occurrence. But a 12 year old BMW M series will probably cost more than the Tesla to repair.
I’m no Tesla apologist…but keep in mind that 12 years ago, Tesla was just getting its footing with the then-new Model S. It didn’t have the infrastructure or volume that it does now, and it relied a lot more on outside suppliers (who often go out of business or stop manufacturing parts). So I don’t think a 12-year-old Tesla is a great indication of how much support there’ll be for future Teslas or for other EVs.
A better bet might be to look at data on the 2017 Model 3.
A new Model S battery is currently manufactured on those high volume infrastructure lines your are referencing. They aren’t replacing them with NOS batteries from 2012. They are replacing them with new batteries off their current lines. You can’t even get the 60kw battery, you get a higher powered battery that they then lock out with software to your original capacity. So the cost of the repair is currently dictated by those advancements you reference (and due to those improvements has come down thousands in the last 5 years).
Who did AAA survey? If it was AAA members, then that data is coming mostly from Boomers and older. AAA still markets products to its members by sending them sheets of return address labels, just to give you an idea of the demographic.
You can immediately tell a car is being driven by an elderly person by the presence of at least one AAA sticker. They are never applied level, always crooked. It’s like a law.
I agree that it is a big pill to swallow when looking at replacing the battery but as someone looking at costs for a new engine in my truck (5.3 GM so only a billion of them out there), new or even reman units installed are still going to be $5-7k probably. What about a transmission? These are all pretty big costs but also likely overblown in actual frequency.
I think something to consider is that the EV drivetrain seems to have limited number of failure points due to the general nature of motors vs engines (I’m purposely ignoring all the advanced techno BS added to EVs because, cool).
And lastly, I think in general, most all cars will succumb to other failures regardless of the drive trains at a higher rate (rust, suspension parts, etc). So these very specific concerns likely even out in the end.
*I feel I have to note that I’m not saying EV are the be all end all, just that while there are many valid comprises to be made with the current state of them that as mentioned in the article, the situation is overblown in some areas.
I will say part of the problem is the perception, whether earned or not, that an EV has an inherent shelf life. Like a hard, guaranteed planned date of being unusable.
That’s something that’s generally just not thought of for ICE cars; and the handful of exceptions that are “known” to be time bombs no matter how you drive them and maintain them (RX-8s, M96 Porsches, Northstars) are similarly extremely depressed used.
Well my 20+ yo SUV still gets the same mpg and thus range as it did when it was new. The fuel tank is still the same size. On EVs the “fuel tank” does get smaller over time.
I had a 1980 Corolla in the mid 90s that lost over 60% of its range. I’d have to put in 3 gallons from empty, anything more would just leak out, and the rest of the car was so rusted out that a replacement gas tank would’ve been worth more than the car.
Ha, ha, you got me there, but then again I’m not from the rust belt so I don’t think about rust. That SUV does have a plastic tank though so even in the rust belt it would still have the same capacity.
Can confirm, my 39 year old diesel Mercedes with 318k miles still gets 22-30mpg (city/highway) and the tank still holds 90 liters. Original engine and tank.
“Car battery replacement? It’s strange to me that this is the biggest issue.”
Hey, when people see AAA, they think batteries – it’s only natural.
We went all-electric a couple years ago and I don’t regret it for a second. I’ve purchased one used EV (2012 FIAT 500e) and I’m leasing two others (Polestar 2 and Nissan Ariya) and, as a consequence, I don’t worry about battery replacement at all. I sold the FIAT for close to what I paid for it after 2 years of ownership but only because we wanted something larger – otherwise it was great. We just did a 1000-mile road trip in the Nissan and it was flawless. No problems with range or charging at all. My bladder can’t make it more than 200 miles at a time, so even with a moderate range of around 280 miles, the Nissan is just fine. I’ll probably end up buying the Nissan at the end of the lease period and I won’t worry about battery replacement then, either, for all the reasons others have mentioned.
However, I do get that not everyone is ready for the full EV lifestyle, and that hybrids will be a better fit for most folks in the US. I just hope the industry is able to weather this insane tariff-storm and can continue to offer all three choices (fuel, hybrid and EV) for the public to buy and lease and enjoy.
I do, but not in car propulsion, only the starting battery. I worry about battery degradation in my laptop/phone batteries, power tools, and battery backups for things like my sump pump.
I’m a die-hard enthusiast and I decided to take the EV plunge this year as an experiment. I have to say I really enjoy daily driving an EV on my commute in the city. I have a 10 mile each-way trip to work through residential and urban streets. I think EVs are ideal city cars, and the cost of “fuel” is 20% of what I was paying for gas/diesel. I still have my diesel SUV for the weekends and longer trips, but the Ioniq5 I have gives me plenty of range to only necessitate charging once every 10 days or so. 250-300 miles of range is plenty.
The only way to have an EV is to lease it with incentives, otherwise there’s no economic use-case that makes sense because they are abhorrently expensive. I think my Ioniq 5 was like $57k retail before incentives. $57k for a glorified Hyundai hatchback with a cheap-ass interior.
Leasing removes the worry about a battery going bad and protects you from changing and improving tech and horrific depreciation of EVs. My state (CO) is particularly generous with the EV incentives stacking on top of the federal ones, so a lease on an EV is cheaper than an equivalent ICE car. Without those things, an EV is just a fun but expensive toy.
I jumped at an Ioniq 5 lease almost a year ago. It’s my wife’s commuter and does about 50 miles round-trip three days a week. She absolutely loves it.
The interior is disappointing, but it’s not a terrible place to spend some time. It’s our first EV and I’m not opposed to another one if the numbers work out. I certainly won’t be buying this one when the lease is up, since these things are going to be coming off-lease like crazy and I’ll probably be able to get another one for less than my residual.
Well, not really, since I’m not likely to buy a BEV.
I’m not likely to buy a BEV for the anecdotes of cars bricking, dashboards simply going black, cars going on fire, cars accelerating with no reason, can’t open the car doors cuz electric not mechanical, etc.
I’m curious because I agree that there is a ton of unnecessary crap added to EVs for the sake of “being electric” that it creates concerns of points of failure. I think this is a common issue on ICE vehicles as well. What if an EV was offered without all that (Slate might be closest in spirit even if use case isn’t the best), would you consider it then?
Plenty of modern ICE cars also have electronic door latches or actuators. I remember being stuck in my 2016 535i M Sport when the driver-door actuator failed during an ice storm, forcing me to crawl over the console and through the passenger door.
If AAA presented a list of potential EV ownership worries as boxes you could check off, and battery replacement was on that list, people are going to check it even if it wasn’t at the front of their mind going into the survey.
Yeah I’m sure a lot of people were like “no, wait, should I be? So maybe yes, no definitely yes”
Problem: battery repair costs are too high.
Solution: extremely aerodynamically efficient(< 0.35 m^2 CdA) and lightweight(< 3,000 lbs) electric cars that can go far on a small/inexpensive battery, with the battery in an easily accessed location for repair/replacement, and no proprietary bs to prevent independent repairs. If it needs more than 1 kWh to go 6 miles at 70 mph, it’s back to the drawing board when 10 miles per kWh is possible.
With a small enough pack(30-40 kWh), the cost of replacement should be not different than rebuilding an automatic transmission on an 80s/90s car, and the cost of replacing bad cells or sections much cheaper still.
$80k massive trucks/SUVs/CUVs with sealed off 100+ kWh packs that require dealer-exclusive tools to replace are entirely the wrong application for this tech. The smart move is to make a RWD economy car(sedan or hatchback) that can also double as a performance car platform to make an inexpensive 2-seater Miata-like halo car off of, and maybe also a Slate-like small/cheap work truck with short range. And each vehicle should come in at well under $30k MSRP when built with 1st world labor.
Smaller battery but can still go far? Have you tried, an EREV? No, you haven’t. CAUSE THEY WON’T FUCKIN’ SELL ‘EM TO US.
More cost/complexity to have two methods of propulsion.
EREVs have a wide appeal, but an efficient EV that does 200 miles highway range on a 30 kWh battery doesn’t have a need for a range extender. A small work truck that gets 100 miles range on the same pack, definitely could use it though.
According to Scout Motors the EREV version will be cheaper to build than the full EV thanks to the much lower cost of the smaller battery.
The Scout needs a large battery to go far. For something like a Aptera, the economics would be very different.
As does every other vehicle the majority of people actually want to buy.
Sometimes you just have to meet people where they are. If we were willing to compromise for the sake of efficiency, a LOT more 1st Gen Insights would’ve been on the road.
This is a really great example of the complexities of vehicle production. As it sits, the expertise and economies of scale for building ICE engines is so vast, that despite the engineering and manufacturing complexity, it’s more cost effective to replace a significant percentage of the batteries in an EV with a fuel tank, engine, and extra motor to work as a generator. The sweet spot varies widely by the efficiency of any given vehicle and it’s packaging, etc, but it’s also a much more compelling option for some people due to the difference in energy density of gas versus batteries.
ICE engines are definitely complex, but they have a century of refinement behind them that keeps the cost low.
Batt tech will be there one day, but supplemental generators are our best “goldilocks” scenario at the moment.
Worst case, they end up basically never using the range extender. Which means lower emissions, and lower environmental cost to build it in the first place vs. the large pack they would’ve inevitably bought.
Truthfully the older I get the less I believe the BS of ‘it has to be heavier/less efficient’.
If it’s legally required I can believe that because there are a lot of idiots who are in charge of passing laws, but practically speaking no.
I hope Aptera will be successful so that other automakers start doing the same.
“heavier/less efficient” = the operator spends more money
That is why things are the way they are.
https://www.theautopian.com/this-is-how-to-make-a-16000-electric-car/
Made many good points, #1 being a Standardized Battery Module that is easily replaced, upgrade-able, only carries what you need. Battery tech is continuing to advance, and if a EV makes sense for your use case, I only recommend leasing, as depreciation is brutal, and current offerings are built to be replaced like smartphones.
I think part of the concern over battery degradation is warranted, people got burned on Nissan Leafs and other compliance EVs with air cooled packs. Most EVs have active liquid management, but there is something to be said about the unknown, the Bolt had cell issues, Tesla is known to be variable in quality and longevity, and early Model S can have pretty serious degradation. I think a lot of this is on the automakers to fix, show some data on what you can expect, better explain warranties, and make battery health more transparent on every EV.
Reducing replacement costs would be great, but ultimately, this is a new thing that nearly nobody knows how to adequately assess. Add in a 5-figure price tag should it go wrong, I can understand why someone without any technical knowledge could be scared about battery replacement. Ultimately the problem will resolve itself as battery health and degradation is borne out by data and common knowledge, but it will be a while until that happens.
I’ll say it again: The issue isn’t air cooling, the issue is THE LACK OF ACTIVE COOLING.
Passive air cooling is simple, lightweight, has no issue with leaks, nor debris ingestion.
However it’s cooling capacity is extremely limited.
I own a 2025 Leaf, and a purpose built passively cooled PC that has an i9-9900K and a 4060 in it.
Said PC was having issues getting hot while I gamed on it (it’s not built for gaming but with those components I was going to use it for that). I finally bit the bullet and got a couple 120mm fans from Noctua and ducted them to work with the system. Even at max fan speed they’re quite quiet and the PC hardly gets warm when gaming, and when using chrome it’s at ambient temps.
Just adding (a) fan(s) to something like a Leaf would massively improve cooling.
I think the way to design any cooling system, whether it be air cooled or liquid cooled, is to figure out the fluid dynamics to maximize the flow of the coolant naturally, then add cooling fans. You don’t want a bunch of coolant not moving in the coolant loop leading to hot spots, whether it be liquid coolant or air.
The reason that liquid cooling is the de facto answer for current EVs is to solve that fluids issue, water is incompressible, while air is highly compressible. What this means its that the fluid calcs for water cooling are fairly simple, losses are easily accounted for, and pumps can be sized (relatively) easily. The problem with air cooling is you run into cases of stagnation, hot spots, and runaway cells much more easily than on liquid loops. On a similar note, coolants ability to absorb and reject heat easily is leaps and bounds ahead of that of air, making liquid cooling far simpler to package for it’s cooling loop.
The last thing that is often not talked about that is actually very important is battery temperature itself. EV batteries regardless of chemistry actually like to operate at fairly low temperatures, actually in the 70-90 F (20-30C) range, meaning a liquid cooling loop can actively bring up battery temps in colder weather by actively diverting waste heat from the motors, inverters, and other Power Electronics systems, as these are often on the same cooling loop, and the coolant systems can actively manage and divert coolant as needed for things like battery preconditioning. which is actively impossible on an Air Cooled system.
Editing to add: The other challenge air cooled packs face is that you have limited cold air intake options and locations, and batteries tend to run the length of the car. This can easily lead to a temperature gradient over the length of the vehicle, causing a delta between the front and rear of the pack. Coolant loops have the ability to be plumbed in whatever configuration the engineering team desires, meaning you can plumb every bank of cells separately, reducing the size of potential temperature gradients by up to an order of magnitude.
Liquid cooling is definitely easier to do, but not necessarily the best option for all applications. A big part of the reason I went with the Leaf is less thermal mass.
While you are correct that you can use the waste heat generated by the motors, inverters, etc. for battery heating, it’s not enough to get the battery up to temp from ambient temps. The systems are so efficient they hardly generate any waste heat, and a liquid cooled battery pack has a ton more thermal mass than the passively cooled battery pack in my Leaf.
Where I’m at currently I have to street park and charge off of 120v AC, and while the Leaf is awful in the heat, it does great in the cold.
A means of “preconditioning” the batteries on an air cooled battery pack is fairly simple, though it’s likely not needed due to the lower thermal mass meaning the batteries get up to temp quickly and have no problem staying at temp vs below freezing liquid coolant.
Seems as though any damage to a battery pack means the car is totalled, particularly if the cost of replacing a battery pack is three times that of a gasoline motor replacement. Until that changes, I don’t blame buyers from shying away from electrics.
Yea, that’s been an interesting detail of the EV sector: how much damage is too much damage to a battery pack? If you can’t answer that question, your pack needs replaced to avoid different issues down the road. So now, what used to be fixable, minor-ish incidents total a car.
I didn’t see that coming, and hope there’s progress on that front quickly!
Bodywork is still much more likely to total a vehicle than battery damage, but having that big battery as the underside’s first line of defense does add a new way to write off a vehicle.
I would bet adjusters start by evaluating the battery condition on an EV. If that’s damaged there’s really no reason to keep checking the body work.
I wonder how AAA handled the survey respondents that already have an EV? Could the number of EV curious people be declining because some of us have bought EVs?
We are an all EV household. One car has LFP batteries and should last between 1 and 2 million miles. The other EV has NMC batteries and should last 300k – 600k miles. It’s likely that the batteries will outlast the cars in both cases. I have 0 long term concerns.
I also have battery operated yard equipment. I store the batteries inside and I haven’t noticed any degradation after three years of use. Those batteries should last 10+ years. If the batteries are stored in a garage or shed and see temperature extremes, they last 1-3 years.
I think this is an underrated part of it. Many of the people who are willing to put up with the inherent compromises of this generation of EVs (high cost, low range, limited charging) already have. The remaining population is more skeptical or less willing to sacrifice the advantages of gas vehicles.
From reading on their website they don’t mention the type of the current respondents vehicle, so I’m betting they didn’t handle it at all and it included people who already own an EV who of course may or may not be intending to purchase another EV.
Or the survey was limited to people thinking about buying a new car in the next year. People who bought a new car in the past few years may not be getting the survey. Most of the EVs on the road were sold in the past few years.
Maybe they had a part about do you plan to buy a car in the next 6 months? 1 year? 2years? and then didn’t factor in those with intended longer time frames but I doubt it.
Does the yard equipment include a riding mower? I am curious about those, but I am not kind to my yard machinery. It usually takes me about 2-3 hours to mow and about an hour of that is spent running through brush (I have about 4 brush areas and I hit one every week, taking on about a month of growth each time). I often have to run back ‘to the pits’ for some mid-mowing adjustment and repair.
Push mower only. The riding mowers are very expensive compared to the gas powered versions.
Yeah, that’s why I need to know it’s fairly abuse-tolerant. I’m probably expecting more from my present one than it should be expected to deliver.
It took me a while to figure out what the gold thing was flying out of that trunk.
This country is so cooked
Full of dumb
I travel a LOT for work, often 20,000 plus a year and tend to drive if under 10 hours and 2 connections. My hybrid is about ideal in the current situation, many of our company locations are in areas without guaranteed charging. I top off the tank, drive 500 or so miles at 40 mpg, rinse, repeat.
I think people are used to thinking of batteries as a part of their consumer electronics. Most people have had phones or laptops where the battery was essentially toast after a couple years. It’s not surprising people are apprehensive. Even though not every modern engine will be failure proof (looking at you L87) they are more of a known quantity to most. It also isn’t helping that there is a large amount of fear mongering about battery replacement costs on EVs.
My coworker just said that his laptop that is a year old won’t take a charge after having it plugged in for 24 hours.
He didn’t need it when he bought it a year ago so he left it in the box. Yesterday he decided to finally use it and he can’t because of the battery.
He doesn’t want to even hear the letters E V.