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Comment by nicce | Hacker News Reader

The value drop is huge and makes EVs pretty much never better economically. There are some edge cases but then those cars don't have range. Or don't survive in winter.

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Of course the flip side is that nearly-new low-mileage EVs can very good value economically.

> makes EVs pretty much never better economically

Then buy one of these “huge” depreciated ones and end up massively better economically? Why is this even an argument?

Because the car is worthless after the battery dies.

Just as an ICE is “worthless” when the engine dies, I’m not sure where the argument is here unless you are going to claim they fail quickly in which case I’d be asking for data to back this up. Note that the data will have to show them lasting more than 8 years / 100,000 miles since that is a standard warranty these days.

Engine lasts usually longer than many other parts in the car.

100 000 miles is like 4 years of driving for anyone who drives a bit more. This is about 70% battery capacity in most cases. Your car is already useless in winter.

With reduced capacity the cold hits even harder. And only way to fix it is to buy a new battery for a one-third price of the new car.

> 100 000 miles is like 4 years of driving for anyone who drives a bit more. This is about 70% battery capacity in most cases.

Are you just making stuff up?

https://insideevs.com/news/723734/tesla-model-3y-battery-cap...

> According to Tesla's 2023 Impact Report, the average battery capacity loss of the Model 3 and Model Y Long Range versions after 200,000 miles is 15%.

And this isn’t even LFP, which will get 2-3x the number of cycles.

> Your car is already useless in winter.

Yep, hate my scheduled pre-heated, defrosted car that’s fully charged every morning at 1/5th of the price per mile and does all the journeys I need. Wish I was spending 5x to stand at a pump once a week. Totally useless.

> With reduced capacity the cold hits even harder. And only way to fix it is to buy a new battery for a one-third price of the new car.

Battery prices are falling every year. You will not pay today’s prices when you might need to replace it after 200k miles.

Sorry, the 70% generic capacity was information from bad sources. But currently I personally still consider the battery as too high risk for an used EV vehicle that does not have warranty left. 85%-90% seems to be closer to reality among all brands.

The issue is that we don't have actually that much data available to say anything for sure for the newest cars. Variance is too high for battery failures: https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/how-long-do-ev-batter...

> Yep, hate my scheduled pre-heated, defrosted car that’s fully charged every morning at 1/5th of the price per mile and does all the journeys I need. Wish I was spending 5x to stand at a pump once a week. Totally useless.

This is kinda too big generalization. Not everyone has access to heated garage nor charging station with personal electric plan.

EVs bring out the strangest comments. People who normally buy 3 y/o cars and keep for 3 are worried about 8 year old cars. People who normally couldn’t care less about anyone else start to worry about others people garages, or people who live in flats, despite themselves having a viable charging option. Not saying you fit this personally but I’ve seen this countless times. People find reasons that don’t apply to them as reasons not to like them.

Anyway, I don’t have a heated garage and I couldn’t see evidence of a “high variance” in battery failures in the article.

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