Hacker News Reader

Comment by sokoloff | Hacker News Reader

> while a car lasts only 10-15 years

While it might be the case that today’s EVs will not be economically longer-lived than 15 years, the overall average age of a car in the US is 12 years, and most of my cars have been bought with 10 or more years on them as it makes for very inexpensive motoring (no need for collision or comprehensive insurance, no financing interest, and nearly no depreciation).

I bought my 2015 LEAF new and suspect it will not be economically viable in 2030 while our 2005 Honda CR-V is 16 years old now, still going strong, and most likely will still be in service in 2030.

View on HN

The 2015 Leaf has the worst battery degradation of any EV. That's Nissan's fault.

However, battery prices are going drop further. Your Leaf has a 24kWh pack. At the current $100/kwh price, thats $2400 for a completely new battery. In the future I'm sure you could get an even higher capacity replacement.

That might have been an intentional choice if they knew either they'd sell to suckers and leave them on the hook for the new battery, or have to subsidize a new battery in 5 years, knowing it would be cheaper, like writing a call on batteries.

The battery had literally zero temperature management, no heating or cooling. They literally could've added a 12 volt chassis fan to make it not suck so bad.

Rapidgate was a thing, the battery heated up when driving, you stop to recharge -> battery heats up even more -> overheat -> limiters engage and you're charging at hand crank levels of power.

The LEAF has a battery heater. It does suck for having only passive cooling.

The funny thing is their electric vans do have thermal battery management.

The Leaf was built with Japanese climate in mind, where peak temperatures are usually not as high. I always found that strange, given that automotive components are usually tested for outlier conditions.

A Korean car company made a car with the Japanese climate in mind? Perhaps you meant the Korean climate?

Are you under the mistaken impression that Nissan, maker of the LEAF, is a Korean car company? (They are a Japanese company.)

Is that historical or recent Japanese climate? It's gotten worse lately - Tokyo at 35C 100% humidity is still not Death Valley but it's unpleasant for humans and presumably batteries too.

AFAIK, it also overheats under CHAdeMO charging in very cold temperatures. I don't think it was the climate, just saving $$.

In the future? Talk about the present http://www.dalasevrepair.fi/

The main reason the leaf had bad degradation was the 24kwh battery size. People charged them to 100%, drove a good portion of their capacity each day, and cycled the battery often.

In comparison, a tesla could charge to 80%, never drain to below 20%, and charge weekly instead of daily.

> no need for collision or comprehensive insurance, no financing interest, and nearly no depreciation

But you need to maintain it and have it inspected instead!

And you're also paying with your safety - ten years is a very long time in safety technology these days!

Surely you jest. What safety features on standard vehicles became indispensable in the past 10 years?

Note: things like collision avoidance and adaptive cruise are still luxury features and the OG poster wouldn’t have bought those anyway.

Collision avoidance is now standard tech. Subaru has been making automatic breaking/adaptive cruise control a standard feature of all new model designs. Legacies MSRP at 22k, and the 18k impreza is due for a redesign in 2022. A quick google shows that the 2021 versa may be the cheapest car with automatic breaking at $16600 MSRP.

https://www.subaru.com/engineering/safety.html https://www.nissanusa.com/shopping-tools/build-price?models=...

My 2008 Outback 2.5XT has Eyesight adaptive cruise control including automatic breaking! Cost me US$6k a year ago with 55000 miles. Thirteen years old!

Collision avoidance, speed limiting, adaptive speed limiting, adaptive headlights, lane keeping, blind-spot warning, ISO-FIX anchors, far stronger pillars, reversing cameras, lane exit monitors, SOS buttons and GPS reporting, far more air bags, door-cyclist collision warnings, seat-belt pre-tensioning, some have pre-collision suspension raising, etc, etc, etc.

I just went from a 2009 Land Rover to a 2020 Land Rover, so almost exactly 10 years, and one of the the main reasons I did it was safety features. They weren't standard on my model before and they are now. It's night and day.

Don't forget TPMS! Probably one of the best safety-to-dollar-spent advancements in the last *13 years

Interesting. What makes you say that?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firestone_and_Ford_tire_contro...

"271 fatalities and over eight hundred injuries in the United States with more injuries and fatalities occurring internationally" and would have been detected by a TPMS which costs a few dollars.

A few dollars times tens of millions of cars.

Blowing out an underinflated tire at high speed is probably a reasonably common cause of accidents.

Does being under inflated increase the risk? I always figured it was debris or just worn out tires?

Underinflation adds to sidewall flexing which increases the heating and wear on the tire, which increases the risk. A few psi isn’t the issue, but seriously under-inflated tires are a safety issue for traction and blowout risks.

That was federally mandated in fall of 2007.

How do you people leave out ESC - it saved my life at least once or twice and it’s obvious how well they work.

What leaves me even more fumbled is how easily RWD Tesla’s spin out and crash with regen and snow. Take the gas pedal of and you’re going off roading. With normal car you’d struggle to even trigger ESC, let alone loose it.

My 2005 Honda has ESC (Honda calls it VSA-Vehicle Stability Assist) so it’s probably similar to ABS in these conversations: widely present and not a last 10-years’ addition. I think Toyota had it on all passenger models since 2004.

> What leaves me even more fumbled is how easily RWD Tesla’s spin out and crash with regen and snow.

Where did you get this info from? This is contrary from everything that I've heard from my local Tesla owners group. To the point that they don't even have to swap to snow tires during winter.

Some video examples:

[1] https://youtu.be/v_bfRm5hGN4?t=203

[2] https://youtu.be/v_bfRm5hGN4?t=272

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aSokMC3fncs

Have a look this guy videos - collected from crashed Teslas - https://mobile.twitter.com/greentheonly/status/1359639313424...

There’s more than one and obviously we don’t know the state of tyres, but even with bald ones seems any car with ESC should handle such manoeuvre...

Also things like eCall (1) that became mandatory a couple of years ago without much fanfare: Fully automatic call/report to emergency services in a serious accident.

I think passive safety of modern cars has significantly improved too - they periodically up the ante on what it takes to get full scores in EuroNCAP for instance (2). A "top rating" car from 10 years ago would probably now be scarily-bad compared to the latest requirements that new models ace.

1 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECall

2 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euro_NCAP

I have heard horror stories about the mechanical/electrical reliability of Range Rovers.

The number one complain has been the powertrain. I know the automatic transmission is the weak spot in most vehicles, but I have heard of complete failures before 100k.

Could you give your evaluation of the vehicle?

There's an Australian expression, "If you want to go into the bush, take a Land Rover. If you want to get out of the bush, take a Land Cruiser."

Your special forces still use Land Rovers on operations!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Australian_SOTG_patrol_Oc...

Negative, Ghost Rider. American spec ops prefer, and often use, Toyota Land Cruisers and HILUXs, for the very reason behind the Australian proverb! :)

> Negative, Ghost Rider

Australian, not American.

And I've literally seen it for myself, and I just also linked a photo of them doing it!

> Your special forces still use Land Rovers on operations!

I'm not Australian!

The context was their use in Australia though.

Not a Range Rover, sorry, a Defender.

I wouldn't own anything else to be honest. I've always driven one, and I also work professionally with a fleet of them and I don't have any problems at all. My last personal one never needed any work at all over ten years. Even if they were unreliable, if it's the kind of form factor you're after I don't think anything really challenges them on the market.

I think they're also a uniquely egalitarian vehicle - if you see someone driving a Land Rover it could be a farmer, a teenager in their first car, a parent doing the school run, an Army unit on exercise, a professional footballer, literally the Queen, or anything in between. You can drive the same car to the rubbish dump and to Royal Ascot and it looks completely appropriate in both cases! I don't think there's any other vehicle even remotely like that.

My 2008 Subaru Outback 2.5XT (JDM model) has camera-based adaptive cruise control, lane departure warning, lead vehicle start warning ("stop looking at your phone"), and pre-collision braking. Also AWD, 265 HP turbo engine. I bought it for NZ$10k (US$6000) in May last year, with 87000 km. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EnuwXA6VcAAH9MJ.jpg

Maintenance beyond consumables (brakes, wipers, and tires) costs less than the difference in excise tax ($25 tax per $1000 of imputed value every year). All cars are inspected annually here.

At 4K miles per year (my average pre-COVID), if my risk is average, I’d expect to be in a fatal accident slightly less than once every 22K years. I’m OK without the latest driver aids at that low level of risk.

> I’m OK without the latest driver aids at that low level of risk.

Driver aid, ok. But passive safety?

I have a 10 year old vehicle. The current model has the basic advanced safety features (auto-braking, adaptive cruise control). But, no, I wouldn't get a new vehicle just to get those features. And this is coming from someone who does generally buy new cars.

I expect I’d get more passive safety improvement from buying a 5000# 2011 car/SUV than a 3500# 2021 car/SUV, but if I move my risk from once every 22K (or even 20K) years to once every 25K or 30K years, it’s not clear that’s meaningfully different.

I’d probably be much better off to take less stress at work over car payments and/or lose 5 pounds on an all-risks basis.

If you look at some people dedicated to testing EV’s - Tesla’s phantom braking has become huge driving factor away from their cars.

4k miles per year isn't really anything, no point in getting anything more than the bare minimum.

According to most studies EVs are more eco-friendly after around 50-100k miles depending on each individual country's energy production profile.

At 4k miles per year you'd need to drive a brand new EV for over 12 years to break even CO2 wise.

Time will tell but I've got my fingers crossed that in 15 years time any backstreet garage will exchange your battery on a car of that age for a cost proportionate to the fact that you could reasonably expect another 10 years of trouble free motoring. With luck with a 50% increase on its original capacity.

They already do. A battery swap/refresh/replacement for a Leaf is 5-10k€ over here, depending on how bad shape the original is and whether you want a larger battery in there.

It's kinda sorta doable by yourself, but it's a HVDC circuit so you _really_ need to know what you're doing.

Actual brand-name shops are slowly able to replace individual failed cell packs instead of just swapping the whole battery.

The big problem is that batteries aren't really failing and because of that the manufacturers don't really have a process in place for replacements, each operation is a custom job.

> Leaf is 5-10k€

Those are pretty wide error bars, last time I looked at used Leaf's they were selling for somewhere in that range. Admittedly first gen leafs with the 24KWh battery.

The new Dacia Spring has a 27kWh battery and costs only 12k€. In the electric car market, the situation is evolving extremely rapidly.

> "I bought my 2015 LEAF new and suspect it will not be economically viable in 2030"

Why not? There are already companies who specialize in replacing early-model LEAF batteries with new, higher-capacity ones. By 2030, I imagine this could be a pretty widespread industry - perhaps even rebuilding/remanufacturing OEM battery packs with new cells.

And so long as the battery still works, that LEAF will always be "economically viable" because unlike combustion vehicles, there are practically no ongoing maintenance costs.

Because it will cost around $2-3K for the battery replacement on a car chassis that’ll be worth around $2K to get back to a range and set of features that won’t be competitive with the then-current (no pun intended) EVs or other $5K cars.

If you want to spend $5K on a car in 2030, you’ll have way better options than a 75 mile range, 6kW charging (20-24 miles per hour) 2015 LEAF (CHAdeMO will be fully dead by then and most 2015 LEAFs don't even have it.)

I wish a battery replacement was 2 grand. Try like 8 if you can find one.

A $5k, 75-mile used EV still offers a lot of utility and value because it will cost almost nothing to run and maintain.

No doubt you’ll be able to buy great $5k combustion cars in 2030, but ongoing fuel and maintenance means their true cost is a lot more than that! And in some parts of the world, increasingly stringent emissions controls mean that combustion cars become more expensive, or even illegal, to drive in cities.

You’re right about CHAdeMO, but anyone buying a 75 mile EV isn’t going to care too much about fast charging anyway. And by 2030, someone may have come up with a retrofit and/or adapter to make old LEAFs compatible with CCS?

A 2018 model 3 or X might be a sub-$5K (in 2021 dollars) car by 2030. If they are, very few batteries will be replaced in old LEAFs. The faster that new EVs mature/evolve, the less comparative value older ones have meaning they will be getting scrapped when the next battery replacement is needed.

I do all the maintenance on our cars (ex- tires, body, and warranty/recalls). The LEAF has already had one battery repair under warranty (at around 17K miles, out of service for several weeks and likely a $2K+ repair at future independent rates-was 2 techs for most of a day plus pages of special sealants and consumables)

Other than that it has needed wipers and windshield fluid and that’s it. If that pattern keeps up, they’re still headed to the scrapyard en masse, I think.

I think there will be a secondhand market offering battery upgrades for older EVs. So they just won't install the exact same battery, but a bigger one or a smaller one (lighter, but same capacity).

10 years of R&D on batteries by some of the biggest corporations in the world should provide some new innovations.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com