True that. Just got hit with a 2k maintenance bill for my 20 yo vehicle and looking to pivot to an EV. It helps that I don't drive much and work from home but I'm certain that my wife would prefer to drive the EV to and from work rather than her hybrid.

This is like asking whether you would like more money and saying no.

Its like spending more money on a depreciating asset with the assumption of crashing it and needing the value to be high. Its the weirdest financial choice since the 2008 financial crisis. Hell like the 2008 crisis this is borrowing in such a stupid way that you are expecting failure.

People can not afford new cars, at all. Financing a car is always a losing proposition. And buying a car based off its potential payout in the future is very very odd. Even at 6 million crashed a year in the us, there are 297.5 million registered vehicles there as well. That is a 1/50 chance to have your car in a crash if you are average, and since I know of people who are crashing every year or two the mean driver should be above that. Are you crashing a car more? We are talking about a expected 20ish year lifespan of a car with those numbers, why are you acting like people are naive for not buying into this odd view?

If you are not a car salesman, maybe you should talk to less of them in your life? Since this sounds a lot like the sort of crazy koolade passed out at a consumer cult.

I just had a muffin for breakfast. Quite delicious!

Not quite.

If you math that, it's actually $882

If you live in a cold environment a level 2 charger can be beneficial because the battery heaters that need to be on when charging don't have to run as long

In 2019 I bought a 2003 Mercedes for somewhere between 5 and 10 percent of its sticker price, I guess pretty close to 5 if inflation is accounted for. Maybe even less.

It had 380k km on the odometer, but it had been through Lithuania so some of the modules showed 700k km when interrogated. Previous owner also told me that there's no way the 380k km is original.

I did have to do maintenance on it, but the only thing that really let me down was the steering rack. It failed and then a reman replacement unit failed too. Only reason I got rid of the car, otherwise I'd still be driving it. Bulletproof engine and transmission.

Unfortunately the Ariya is something I find completely uninspiring. Somehow the interior seems even more dull than Tesla's. For the same price I could have a Mercedes EQC. For even less, I could have a Jaguar I-Pace, just have to go a bit older with those.

If the fuel crisis goes on, I may just get an early I-Pace in a few months though. Otherwise I was planning on waiting a few more years till slightly newer luxury models are similarly depreciated, preferably something non-crossover.

The Arya was overpriced and way too late in the first place. Nissan blew a huge lead.

That's not entirely true. There's still risk of sudden battery failure. Otherwise these guys wouldn't have a business. Fortunately: Those guys do have a business and many others exist. For a couple grand at most you can get many battery packs repaired to their former glory. On a car where the battery pack is easy to remove, it should be fairly cheap assuming they can get cells somewhere (like other dead battery packs). The one in the video was done for 1€ as a joke, but that may very well be the true material cost of repair for an early Tesla battery since their cells are roughly the same as in an e-cigarette, 18650.

It IS increasingly rare with newer EVs, but it's a failure mode where the dealer will tell you to fuck off and pay anywhere between 20 and 70 thousand unless in warranty and for some manufacturers (Mercedes) the warranty terms have been updated to say that if the battery is more expensive than the residual value of the car, warranty will only cover it up to the value of the car.

All lithium-ion cells die one day. Majority will live a long happy life, but lifetime is not predictable on an individual level, only on the level of hundreds or thousands of units. I used to refurb laptops. I have the most experience with Macbook batteries, which I find to be very high quality for a laptop battery. I've tested at least a thousand of those, maybe 2-3 thousand.

Apple says 1000 charge cycles is what one should last - if you manage to get over 1000 cycles within the warranty period and it drops under 80% capacity, bad luck, you're not getting a warranty replacement. If it's under 1000 cycles and within the warranty period, it's covered. I've seen one or two that had above 80% capacity on as many as 2800 charge cycles. Many that were over 1000 but still good, many that had dropped barely under 80% in 200, 500 or maybe 1500 cycles... But I've also seen a couple that were in double digit cycle count and had <=30% capacity left. Usually those were also swollen.

It's just impossible to predict longevity on a single battery pack with proper accuracy.

Hey if it works for her, that's great. I've said it elsewhere in the thread, but battery lifetime is completely unpredictable on an individual level. You COULD develop a bad cell even very early in its life, effectively completely disabling a battery pack that hadn't even really degraded much yet... Or you could also get an absolute peach that lasts 3x longer than the average battery of its kind before the device (vehicle) it's in gets retired with the battery still functioning. Anything in between could happen too.

And my experience with non-car lithium batteries which I've touched a LOT of, has been that on average, degradation does tend to level off. For Macbooks it was around 80-90% capacity where it would usually level. Meaning with that Leaf being as old as it is, I would expect degradation to have slowed down on that.

Oh no, you're not getting me, I love depreciation. Re-read the first sentence.

Yes, it’s a good thing for buying a very used car.

Depreciation doesn't stop after 2 years. If you're the second owner of a lightly used car you intend to sell before the battery and powertrain warranty is over (as most do with EVs, at least here), you still get a fuckton of depreciation happening in the next few years with an EV, less so with ICE. If you're looking at something older, the extra depreciation benefits you a lot.

Personally I'm waiting for good 7-8 year old EVs to exist that are not Teslas. We're just a few years out from that for many popular models, at which point you can have the car of your dreams for 20k. For cars that were 100k new. If you get one that's 2 years old, it might still be 60-70k. Once that 100k car is around 20k, there's so little left to drop, you give no fucks. Even in my country there are now EV shops that will repair battery packs instead of replacing them so a few years of warranty isn't worth paying tens of thousands more for a car if you can probably get a battery pack repaired for <=5k in the very unlikely event that it fails. I'm not talking about gradual degradation, that's natural and not a big deal IMO with modern battery packs, I'm talking about actual sudden cell failure that leaves the car as a paperweight.

I've been looking at Jaguar I-Pace as I consider these sufficiently depreciated (can have one for ~15k), but I'm not a huge fan of crossovers and I dislike that most have no tow hitch and even if they do, they're rated to tow only 750 kg.

And to clarify while normally under "very used" I would mean 15 years or so, which is about what it takes an ICE vehicle to become properly cheap, for EVs this is slightly less, as you can get them super cheap at, like I said, ~7-8 years already.

I just meant that buying one that's 2-3 years old is still hella stupid because the next few years will continue to be brutal.

The best ones have heavily depreciated

Yes, like I said, actually used cars. Not something that's 2-3 years old. Those still have a ton left to lose.

I would argue no one should be buying a car with the intention of selling it later, because all cars depreciate terribly

They all do, but unless you want to be stuck with the same car until it literally dies, you're selling it. If you're buying a fairly new car, you're likely not planning on keeping it for 20 years, because if you're ok with driving a 20 year old car, you should just buy a 10 year old car and drive that for 10. And if you are planning to sell in about 5 years, which is what most people keep their cars for, used or not, wouldn't you want the one that loses 30-40% of its remaining value in that time, over the one that loses 60-70%?

The warranty does not care about the value of the car, it’s only for parts and repair so what you said doesn’t make any sense.

Unfortunately it does for some manufacturers of nice heavily depreciated EVs I'm eyeing ctrl+f "current value". I'm sure others will be following suit. Guy on reddit got told to piss off by dealer because battery replacement was going to cost 60k pounds and car worth 40k or less. Basically put up 20k of your own money to get a warranty job done, ridiculous. This with the manufacturer deciding the price of the battery in the first place because LG or whoever sure as shit doesn't charge them anywhere close to that amount.

No one should be buying a car they can’t afford, and definitely not with a loan they can’t safely afford.

And yet most people do. So when you've got 15k left to pay on your car and get laid off with only 6 months of income saved up (which is about 100x more in savings than the average person in some countries like the US) and have no idea if you'll get a new job in 3 months or 2 years, would you rather the market value of your car be 20k or 12k?

There's always refinancing

Yes, pay even more money by extending your loan. On something that's already underwater. This is why Americans for example are so fucked with vehicle debt. Many of them roll negative equity into their next loan, and the one after that and... you get the point. Soon the loan principals get much bigger than the cars are worth. Made worse by ever longer loans terms that are designed to sucker you into exactly that.