[PrideRed]

No two words that Electric cars are the mobility solution of the future for both enthusiast and non-enthusiast. In India we have limited availability at the moment in the guise of Kona, E20,Verito, Tigor etc. XUV300 and Nexon will join the bandwagon soon. Kona has 8 year warranty on battery and the Nexon is touted to have same. This gets me worried. First, if the battery fails at say 4th or 5th year, do I get replacement free of cost, or will it be depreciating reimbursement like the current car batteries? Is 8 year warranty an indication of the life span of battery? If 8 Year is indeed the battery life, what about resale? Most users keep car for 4-6 years. If I am to sell after 5 years, the buyer will be able to use only for 3 more years and then shell out 4-5 lacs for battery replacement. Considering this I doubt if a 15lac electric car can fetch anything more than 5lacs after 5 years. This resale price is for a car that has proved to be successful in the market. For a flop model I might be looking at something like 2-3lacs?

[coolkurt]

The same will lead to people selling their cars faster. Maybe after keeping the same for 5-6 years. As a buyer, when I'll reach the 7-8 year mark, I'd think , why should I pay 25% of the purchase price and extend the life of an old model for another 5-6 years ( if an oem battery lasts 8 years, I'm sure a replacement won't last that long) and keep to for 14-15 years?

[Storm2.0]

I think soon there'll be subscription based leasing for batteries too. This might remove botheration about effective battery life. You see every new industry gives rise to several other associated industries.
Eg. Mobile phone industry gave rise to phone repair shops, phone accessories shops etc
Like that we can see for car batteries also.
The best option I feel is to have the system of quick and replaceable battery packs. These will be faster than charging at a station and should be more economical.
It will be something like how some people used to drive cars with lpg cylinders. Once over, it was replaced with an already refilled one.

[JayKis]

Originally Posted by PrideRed

No two words that Electric cars are the mobility solution of the future for both enthusiast and non-enthusiast. In India we have limited availability at the moment in the guise of Kona, E20,Verito, Tigor etc. XUV300 and Nexon will join the bandwagon soon. Kona has 8 year warranty on battery and the Nexon is touted to have same. This gets me worried. First, if the battery fails at say 4th or 5th year, do I get replacement free of cost, or will it be depreciating reimbursement like the current car batteries? Is 8 year warranty an indication of the life span of battery? If 8 Year is indeed the battery life, what about resale? Most users keep car for 4-6 years. If I am to sell after 5 years, the buyer will be able to use only for 3 more years and then shell out 4-5 lacs for battery replacement. Considering this I doubt if a 15lac electric car can fetch anything more than 5lacs after 5 years. This resale price is for a car that has proved to be successful in the market. For a flop model I might be looking at something like 2-3lacs?

The battery charge loss on a Tesla Model S over 5 years has been less than 10%. The typical battery loss at 160,000 miles is less than 10%. Hence the depreciation should be far lesser than a ICE car.

https://www.greencarreports.com/news...ta-show-so-far

[Thilak29]

Customers in matured European markets too seem to have similar anxiety. Renault recently launched Zoe with battery lease option, the effective price of car reduces and derisks owner from battery ownership.

https://www.renault.co.uk/renault-fi...tery-hire.html

This ZOE offering allows you to buy the vehicle and lease the battery, reducing the purchase price and providing maximum peace of mind.

You only pay for what you need - we personalise your battery hire monthly payment to your requirements
Battery performance guaranteed to at least 75% of original capacity, or we’ll repair or replace it
If you decide to sell your ZOE, your obligation will cease once the new owner takes over the agreement
No worries - complete 24/7 roadside assistance, even if you run out of charge

[longhorn]

The million dollar question is why do these cars cost more than their ICE counterparts when they have far far lesser moving parts ? I see no reason for the same. A typical EV has just one or two electric motors connected to a battery. Manufacturing, maintenance and running costs should be far lower than a similar ICE vehicle.

[coolkurt]

Originally Posted by longhorn

The million dollar question is why do these cars cost more than their ICE counterparts when they have far far lesser moving parts ?

The battery. Everything revolves around the battery, which is extremely expensive at the moment. When more players enter the segment and there's competition, it'll get affordable.

[srini1785]

It is the same point that i had also mentioned in another post. That one concerned the Hyundai Kona. To put things in perspective, Mahindra E2O costs like what 7.4l and battery alone costs around 3-4l with warranty of 3 years if am not wrong. So approx 50% of the cost of the vehicle is battery alone. So see any value for money?. In this case , it makes some sense in battery leasing as some members have pointed out or better still lease the whole vehicle itself. In Mahindra's defense, they do offer a battery buy back scheme, the details of which are now not in my memory, but i had done some calculations in which it was pretty clear that the cost of EV is almost the same (or costlier) than the equivalent ICE. However, since the EV have considerably lesser number of parts than the ICE, service costs, IMHO, should also be lower than equivalent ICE.

Again, these are nascent stages of the EV and battery tech and is bound to be costly. Remember, the first gen mobiles (90s) were the size of a walky talky and we had to pay for incoming call too .

[Jeroen]

It is an interesting topic.

Depreciation is not just about the technical life span of a product. It is very much about the second hand market perception.

Jaguars, believe it or not, here in the west depreciate at phenomenal rates. You can buy a five year old XJR / XF with 100.000 km on the clock for less than 10-15% of the original price. At that age/mileage still perfect cars. You will motor in splendid comfort and blistering speeds with utter reliability for another 100.000 km.

Why does it depreciate so fast? Because in general Jaguars still suffer from a bad reputation when it comes to ownership cost, high repair bills, unreliability issues, poor FE etc. People are apprehensive, based on rumours, myth, and (perceived) history. Not facts.

Simply put depreciation is more a function of how much demand or appetite there is in a market for a particular car/model than technical life span of the car, as such.

I think the same is happening with EVs. The public at large is very weary about the life of the battery and the cost associated with replacing it. The question is, whether those are valid concerns. From everything that I have seen, not really.

A friend of mine has been running, very successfully, a business, buying up EV’s usually from lease companies and or first owners. He looks them over, fixes what needs fixing and exports them. Mostly outside of western Europe. EVs are in high demand, people in other countries do not seem to be to concerned about batteries.

He keeps records on these cars and checks out the batteries and he rarely finds issues with the cars/batteries he purchases. These tend to be 3-4 years old, 100-125.000 kilometres. He has a number of partnerships and business interests in the various local companies that sell his second hand EV into the local market. On most he will provide warrantees. Very few problems, if any on the battery. We are talking EVs and hybrids, for Prius to Tesla and anything in between.

Of course, it is a fact that a battery does have a life span and its ability to hold a certain charge dimities over time / number of charging cycles. But there is a difference whether that is a real problem or not. If you use your EV to commute in Moscow or Warshaw and charge it every night at home, range and therefor battery condition is simply not an issue.

As long as the perception around battery live / replacement cost persists, depreciation will be a lot/fast. A bit of a deja vu, similar to IC engine cars. Bad if you want to buy new, good if your in the market for a second hand!

Jeroen

[PrideRed]

Originally Posted by Jeroen

Of course, it is a fact that a battery does have a life span and its ability to hold a certain charge dimities over time / number of charging cycles. But there is a difference whether that is a real problem or not. If you use your EV to commute in Moscow or Warshaw and charge it every night at home, range and therefor battery condition is simply not an issue.

As long as the perception around battery live / replacement cost persists, depreciation will be a lot/fast. A bit of a deja vu, similar to IC engine cars. Bad if you want to buy new, good if your in the market for a second hand!

Jeroen

I haven't explored much, but how does a car battery long so last? Is it the technology,regeneration that helps? Why hasn't these been witnessing in mobile batteries, which are much smaller and easy to implement? Most of the mobile batteries lose performance significantly post 3 years. Is it because phone anyway is intended to be replaced after 3 years, hi tech batteries doesnot make economic sense?

Does this mean the battery in say Hyundai Kona would last for 12-13 years? May be with 10-20% drop in performance? The bright side I see with EV, once battery is replaced its a much newer car than IC!

[GTO]

Let us simplify. Resale value matters only until the car is 8 - 10 years old. Post that, all of them fall off a cliff or are too low for the 3rd / 4th owner of the car to bother. Now, we've already seen that high quality batteries are still performing well at the 7 - 8 year mark (e.g. Tesla), while manufacturers are also rolling out 8-year battery warranties (e.g. Hyundai). Hence, as long as you're buying from a manufacturer of repute, I'm really not worried.

Resale value is also a component of demand. Rather than the battery, it is this factor that is unclear. Will Indian customers flock to EVs? Will enough people want them for residual values to stay healthy? If no one wants it, there will be no resale value for it (and vice versa).

[Thilak29]

Car batteries are expected to last much longer than 8 years with technologies available today, they also become excellent energy storage devices for other less critical purposes even after decommissioned from the car, so reuse use cases exist. The traditional mindset of life of car holds less relevance when car is no longer emitting and has less moving parts. That also means we will begin looking at resale value curve in a different paradigm.
With changes in ownership models, this debate is only getting ever interesting. We are in a convolusion point and witnessing some really interesting changes in motoring.

[sri_tesla]

I did not read the fine print of battery warranty of Kona in India, but many companies across the world are providing the same warranty (8 years and 1lakh miles/1.6 lakh kms) on battery of EVs. If the batteries fail during this time, they will replace them under warranty. Few companies also guarantee minimum 70% battery life at the end of 8 years or 1.6 lakh kms. It means for example, if a car has 300 kms of range initially, then at the end of warranty, the range should be above 210 kms or more under warranty.

I am not sure how it pans out here in India, but there is huge demand across the US and European countries for used EVs over the last 1-2 years. Tesla resale value is higher than the petrol/diesel counterparts from german luxury brands like Mercedes, BMW, etc... Low resale value of few earlier generation Evs are mainly due to no liquid cooling (ex: Nissan Leaf) or low range. Most of the older generations have much smaller batteries and lower ranges. Latest generations of the same models have much bigger batteries and priced at the same as old one causing drop in used car prices of older models.

While this is an interesting thread, I wonder about the resale value of petrol/diesel cars as the EVs gather market share.

[NICHE]

What is the expected life and cost of EV's engine/motor. Will it be overhauled as in the case of ICE or needs to be replaced

[dhawcash]

What is the battery pack you replace after 8 years has better energy density and actually improves the range of the ev? Wont that make the vehicle more desirable? (Spends less time charging, reducing load on infrastructure)
Totally achievable judging by the rate of improvement in battery tech (they - the replacement batteries-may be a totally different chemistry as well after 8 years)