… has taken on a whole new meaning when new electric vehicle owners get their first repair bill following a simple fender bender. The Wall Street Journal reports that a San Francisco resident got in a minor accident with his electric truck. He thought that repairs would be “a couple-thousand-dollar bill from the repair shop and to be without his truck for a couple of weeks.”
AdvertisementInstead, the first-time EV owner was shocked to get a $22,000 bill for repairs that took 2 1/2 months.
The Biden administration has a goal to have 50% of all new cars on the road in 2030 be electric vehicles. That’s about 48 million cars and trucks. Owners are going to need chargers on the road, mechanics to service them, and parts to repair their vehicles.
@SullyCNBC: It’s one reason – along with low resale – that Europe’s biggest car rental company just dumped em
Instead, the first-time EV owner was shocked to get a $22,000 bill for repairs that took 2 1/2 months.
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Think about what that means for re-sale (which is arguably a more lucrative aspect of car sales than selling them out of the factory). Dealerships try to lowball on the trade in….understandably. However, it’s flexible provided the trade-in is in relatively good shape. It’s a way to bargain the price of the replacement.
The dealer will clean it up and give it an inspection before returning it to the market. However, if minor body work and minimal mechanical work comes in over $20k…it pulls the bottom out of the market process. And, we’re not even talking about the cell battery (which is arguably the most expensive aspect of an EV). The cell batteries have a limited life span. So, if someone turns in an EV to purchase something new, and it has 90,000 miles on it, the battery is approaching it’s minimal lifespan (between 100,000 and 200,000 miles) , making the purchase of the EV (as is)…a very poor investment.
I’ll say it again. EV’s are not a replacement for ICE’s. They are a wedge to decimate the ICE industry as well as personal transportation overall. It’s why they are not upgrading the electrical grid to accommodate the “great influx” of EV’s. There is no need. You’ll be taking public transportation, after moving to the city or staying home (which was always the plan).
I agree with that theory – to eliminate the personal automobile. Perhaps those non conforming will go Mad Max with a fully underground economy in ICE vehicles as society degenerates into roving gangs. I think that a few hundred thousand armed civilians under a decentralized command could likely take over and or replace the entire deranged dominion in its present state. Another decade or two of woke-inspired decline and the state will be close to collapse from within.
John ten thousand could do it.
Agreed John. The bureaucratic State needs to die. Period. Until it does, our lives and my grandchildren’s lives will continue to decline. At some point we will have no choice but to fight the ridiculous edicts.
The New York State national guard could do it in a weekend.
Sometimes I wish they would.
Dealers are counting on expensive maintenance that can only be done at the dealership.
Factory parts only. No aftermarket. Its not that EVs are any harder to worl on…
Neighborhood shop won’t touch them cause they simply can’t get the parts
Just think of all the high-paying jobs our “green” future will create! Your mechanic will be driving an electric Rolls Royce … with caviar canapés on silver platters.
Eco loons should value the fact that ICE vehicles gently* drift down through the consumer market, satisfying somebody’s needs at every price level. Conservation!
* No Warranty Implied
I live in Queens. There is no way to upgrade NYC to accommodate the power needed for electric cars. The people who are coming here buy nice cars and trucks. Thy will be shocked at the bait and switch being planned for them.
More like Sucker Shock.
But watt do I know.
IOW, in a minor fender bender? It’s a write off.
That’s another aspect that I hadn’t even thought of. If the ACV on an EV is (lets be generous) $85,000. And “minor” repairs are over $20k. It’s a repairable vehicle…and not a friend to the insurance company.
The insurance rates on an EV must be astronomical.
“The fire hazard is especially acute because most rural and small-town volunteer fire departments don’t know how to put out a fire from a vehicle containing lithium-ion batteries. It will take a few years before the fire departments catch up with their urban counterparts.”
It isn’t a lack of knowledge, it’s a lack of resources… you can’t fit 30,000 gallons of water on a pumper truck
They put out oil well fires with dynamite. Might work on electric cars, too. At least it would make for good video.
Electric car fires are not really “fires” in the usual sense … think of them as runaway thermal events … they are just chemical reactions and the battery has it’s own oxidizer and therefore doesn’t need the oxygen in the atmosphere. Hence the difficulty with extinguishing the “fire” …. can’t be done and all you can do is cool things off so the runaway aspect of the “fire” is reduced to a less dangerous level and let it burn itself out.
You sure don’t want one of these bad boys in your attached garage IMO.
There is no appreciable oxygen released from a lithium ion cell undergoing thermal runaway. The thermal runaway event is a chemical reaction which can be triggered by different events, but it all comes down to temperature. Our LiFePO4 cells require about three hours at a temperature over 150 C to trigger one. Some other chemistries need about 30 minutes over 70 C.
Once the thermal runaway is triggered the internal reaction generates heat faster than it can be radiated, and so the battery temperature rises until thermal equilibrium is reached. The carbonate electrolyte (basically grease) then vaporizes and is emitted from the battery. This reaction continues until all the electrolyte is released. This can take hours.
If the emitted vapour is above the auto-ignition temperature (450 degrees or up) then it will immediately burst into flame upon contact with oxygen.
We recommend cooling the battery (with anything) but water is handy to keep the escaping gases from auto-igniting on release.
E/V fires have been known for years now. Yes small towns and some cities have a rough time putting them out.
More water is better.
Do they actually extinguish the fires or do they just cool down the immediate surroundings with a lot of water as you can’t “suffocate” the combustion by removing Oxygen?
the idea is to remove thermal energy from the fire, and unfortunately, the current method is use lots of water. One of the european fire equipment companies built a waterproof dumpster, you use the crane and winch to drag the burning car into the dumpster, close it up and turn the pumps on to fill it full of water to remove the heat, and then leave it there for up to 30 days… a solution I guess
JD
A lithium fire is essentially a metal fire, and water does NOT extinguish a metal fire. That’s one of the first things you learn when you take fire fighting. The Brits found out about metal fires during the Falkland war, as their war ships had aluminum conning towers, and when the Argentinian air force fired their unarmed exocete missiles their fuel tanks blew up and started metal fires. The Brits lost at least two destroyers because of that.
The issue was a magnesium-aluminum alloy. This did not burn as sometimes seen in magnesium fires but does have a lower melting point. This was not present on the British ships which had steel superstructures.
Also, the British ship was not lost due to this reason. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Sheffield_(D80)
Don’t point to Wikipedia as an authority.
People, of course, can do their own research. It is a very well investigated topic what with the lawsuits, potential courts martial, and public design papers, and not hard to find independent sources.
It was neat watching that car burn under water. it went afire while launching a sea-doo type of craft. Burning under water. Safe beyond belief eh.
I wonder who the car rental company in Europe is?
Ah, there it is — Sixt; they’re dumping their Teslas because the recent price cuts on Teslas have lowered their resale value. Sixt still claims they’re going to be 90% electric by 2030, though, so that’ll be the latest talking point for the EV-mongers.
I’ve stated elsewhere on SDA that I’ve rented vehicles since 2012 in Europe that were hybrids (I never requested a hybrid, that’s just what I was always given), and in every case, the electrical portion of the car was either non-operational or flaky.
Seeing as its probably illegal to tear the batteries down and sell off the cells in the west, I guess we’ll have to ship them to China or India and buy them back one cell at a time from them.
The other penny that should be dropping soon is the depreciation value. Since the vehicle has a limited lifespan (battery pack) then every month the value decreases significantly until it becomes zero or even negative if you have to pay to dispose of the toxic metals in your dead vehicle. Take a look at “The Macmaster” YouTube channel since he bought a Porsche Taycan in the UK and its depreciating at 1,000 GBP per month. Its worth less than his car loan at the moment so even if he sells it he takes a loss – and its only getting worse. Every time Tesla cuts their prices the current owners lose value. I think the lithium ion powered vehicle is a dead end since the supply of lithium is limited as are all the other rare minerals needed to produce them. Now that the world has heated up Militarily (not environmentally) the competition for those metals, all required for the Military Industrial Complex, is going to increase driving up the cost. Think I will be keeping my ICE vehicles for a while longer.
In 50 years, will we be like Cuba with thousands of old (gas) vehicles still running?
Cuba had that done to them, Canada is doing it to itself.
Cuba made choices, as well.
We’re all Cubans now … first we got their CRAP socialized medicine … now, we will all be driving 1974 Dodge Darts … with the indestructible slant-6 engines.
At the time, they were good dependable granny wagons. The best thing that happened to ICEs was eliminating carburetors and going to fuel injection. It virtually doubled their useful life.
+++John