The Expert Podcast

Here's another good reason to make sure that you get your battery checked out on any electric vehicle that you're going to buy as a used car. Just like you would on a gasoline car, you're going to check brakes, shocks—that kind of thing. You normally wouldn't think of checking a battery, but on an electric vehicle, the battery is the most important thing.

Here's a poor buyer that bought a 2014 Ford Focus with 60,000 miles on it. That's not high mileage. They paid $11,000 for the car—it was a used car, right? It's very, very common.

So what happened after they bought it? Well, they found that the car stopped working, and it needed a new electric vehicle battery. That’s going to cost $14,000. But it gets worse than that. The car was fine at first, according to the person. In March, it started giving an alert, and then it just stopped running. In the middle of the trouble, they found out that it's a very common issue. They brought it to a Ford dealer, and the Ford dealership advised that they would have to replace the battery.

It would cost $14,000 for the battery. The problem is that this quote didn’t even include installation, and they found out the batteries aren’t even available. So it didn’t matter—they couldn’t get one anyway. And here’s why: batteries on electric vehicles are not an interchangeable part when you buy a car.

I mean, this car is only seven years old. The engine in a gasoline Ford Focus from 2014 is probably very similar to the engine in the 2020 Ford Focus or 2021. The engines in a gasoline vehicle are used in different vehicles. Batteries in electric vehicles, however, are integral to the structure of the vehicle. The car is built around the battery, so the shape and size of that battery only work for that vehicle. In many cases, you can't just swap it out from another car.

Since they don’t make that model or that body style of a car anymore, the battery is not available. A vehicle usually changes its style every two or three years, right? And when you have a car that's three or four years old, it doesn’t look like a new car anymore because a new car has different sheet metal and a different structure. The engine in a gasoline car stays the same—they just change the sheet metal.

But when you change the sheet metal on an electric vehicle, you have to change what kind of battery goes in it because the shape of the floor where the battery is located is going to be different. The width, length, and height are all going to be different, so the battery might not work anymore. That’s why they stopped making these batteries.

Well, the dealership offered to buy it from them for $500. They had only had it for a few months. This doesn’t mean electric vehicles are necessarily bad—they might be, they might not be, who knows? What it does mean is that it’s very important to evaluate batteries in advance before you buy a used electric vehicle. You need to make sure you’re not going to be faced with a huge five-figure repair bill for a battery right after you buy the car.

And it’s not just this kind of car. It’s not specific to this type of vehicle. If you’re buying a new one, you have to really look to see if there's no used market because manufacturers are not supporting the cars. They’re not making parts for these vehicles. It’s almost like cell phones—once your cell phone is used up, you basically just get a new one.

Do your research before buying electric. That’s what the guy says. Well, obviously, they weren’t. It may cost you more than you realize.

Electric vehicles are very different from gasoline vehicles, even though they look the same—four wheels, windshield, steering wheel, right? They look the same, but the underlying technology is different. That means your use of them will be different, but also the repairs and lifespan of different parts will be different.

Many electric vehicle batteries will last longer than 60,000 miles. Granted, not every car is going to fail at 60,000 miles, but depending on how it’s used—whether it’s in high heat, cold, or fast-charged too many times—issues can happen, as it did here.

$14,000 for this person. Let us know what you think in the comments about electric vehicles in general and whether or not this is something that could be a problem for the market of electric vehicles.