But what does that number even mean? There are also 278 million vehicles registered in the US and only 233 million registered drivers, so I’m betting a lot of those 16+ year old vehicles aren’t people’s primary mode of transportation. I spend 2-3 hours commuting on the freeway and certainly don’t see 1 in 4 being 16+ years old. My own car is 10 years old now and I would say it’s on the older side of what I typically see.
Comment on EV Batteries Are Dangerous to Repair. Here’s Why Mechanics Are Doing So Anyway
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 9 months agoSure, except 25% of all vehicles in the US are over 16 years old, and most that aren’t is due to accidents.
CmdrShepard42@lemm.ee 9 months ago
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 8 months ago
I have three working vehicles. Four if you count my motorcycle. Two are 16 years old. A prius and a sienna. One is 18 years old. A mazda tribute. My motorcycle is 28 years old. A Suzuki bandit. I don’t even own a vehicle newer than 16 years old. Did just junk an 18 year old Nissan altima because my 16 year old kid blew up the engine after way over filling the oil.
Chances are you aren’t seeing 1 in 4 vehicles on your route that are over ten years old. But part of the reason (but not all the reason) is the same reason you never noticed how many of the vehicle you drive were out on the road until after you bought one. You’re never looking around and thinking about it.
Also your location and what you do for a living. You a white collar going into a nice office area at 8 am or so? Newer vehicles. Go head to the old or run down portion of a city and you’ll see 20 year old vehicles abound. My area has several well off rednecks that drive old fixed up diesel pick up trucks just because they don’t like all the tech and tracking and Def fluid requirements on the ones from the past 15 years. One of them is currently thinking about buying an early 90s dodge Cummins for like $30k he looked at.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 9 months ago
You’re making my point for me. The likelihood a car, any car BEV or not, is going to make it to your (unproven) theoretical point of being a problem is 1 in 4.
If your premise is that BEVs are good up until the 200k mark, then you’re making a bad bet on your ICE or Hybrid needing to survive to the 200k mark to be worth it. With your numbers I have a 75% chance of being right, while you only have a 25% chance, and that’s even if I agree with your premise (which I think is a bit suspect).
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 9 months ago
When you wreck a vehicle your insurance gives you enough money to buy a similar replacement vehicle. So if you crash your ten year old EV and become part of the 75%, you have the option of either spending thousands more to buy a newer one, or getting another 10 year old EV. That’s how the numbers drop with age and you still end up with an EV that’s on the verge of going tits up.
Right now the price of older EVs is higher than it should be. It’s because people are uneducated and naive about the batteries and how assuredly a well built one will still fail and pretty soon the general population will wise up to it and old ev prices will dive.
There is no getting lucky with an electric car battery beyond it not having any large defects in any of the cells, because every ev battery has so many cells in it there’s no “getting one that was built just right”. The only thing you can do to help is keeping the battery between 30 and 80% charged at all times and not using level 3 or faster chargers on it, and keeping it garaged and not living in a place with extreme heat. That’s going to be the the factors that will make the battery last closer to 20 years than 12 years. That also cuts way into your range and where you can go, of course.
partial_accumen@lemmy.world 9 months ago
Gotcha, so we’ve exited the discussion on proven fact and you’re well into your personal speculation. Thanks for the discussion up to now. Have a great day!