Hacker News Reader

Comment by BillinghamJ | Hacker News Reader

This is the price to replace the entire battery pack for these cars?

These seem _dramatically_ cheaper than I expected. In my mind, I was thinking more like 3-5x this, though that was incl VAT/tax

View on HN

Apart from that question, most of these are still more expensive than all repairs I've had on a gasoline car in 10 years.

Post says "battery prices" so I assume that is for the material costs only. I expect labor costs to be a significant adder. It seems replacing an EV's battery would be similar in scope to replacing an ICE car's engine.

Not even close to the same amount of work. Replacing the battery pack in my PHEV, should it ever need replacing, which I doubt, involves removing 20 bolts and unplugging it. It drops right out the bottom of the car.

Ok, so stories like the guy who blew up his Model S because he was told a new battery would be $22,000 leave me not knowing what to think.[0]

Our official car dealer would happily try and charge $50 to refill the windscreen washer fluid during a routine service :) so maybe the actual cost of the battery unit is only part of the story here.

[0] https://electrek.co/2021/12/23/tesla-owner-blows-up-model-s-...

$22k for a Model S battery doesn't sound very wrong to me, but it's going to be almost all materials and not a lot of labor. The battery I mentioned lists for $5500 from Honda, and it is only 17 kW-h. A Tesla has a 50-100 kW-h pack, so I would expect the cost to be proportionately larger, with a slight discount given Tesla's large battery purchasing power.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com