The Expert Podcast

Here’s another reason why it’s crucially important to evaluate the health of an electric vehicle battery if you're buying a used EV. This is a repair estimate for an electric vehicle that was purchased by a customer who very shortly after the purchase needed a new battery. The battery cost twenty-six thousand dollars, with labor and taxes totaling around twenty-nine thousand dollars, which we’ll round off to thirty.

So, how old is the vehicle? Well, look right here at the mileage: 70,000 miles. You might say, "Well, wait a minute, don't these cars have a warranty on the battery?" They do, but the battery warranty normally expires at a hundred thousand miles or eight years. Well, guess what? This car is a 2014. It’s past the eight-year time frame. So now, in order to have this car working again, you have to pay twenty-nine thousand dollars. The car’s probably not even worth that much. In fact, you could probably buy a new Chevy Bolt, Chevy Volt, or a new EV for not much more.

So the question is: are electric vehicles going to go the way of cell phones, where once a battery wears out, you just get a new phone? You don’t replace the battery in your cell phone, and you don’t replace the battery in your electric vehicle. What’s that going to do for the car market? Is that going to change the way people buy and sell cars? Is it going to make it more expensive for someone who buys cars and keeps them for a long time to lower their automotive expenses? Is that going to throw a new expense into the mix? Put the comments below and let us know what you think about the future viability of used electric vehicles.