francovendee wrote:Certainly not sure about used EV's. I have a friend who bought a new Nissan Leaf and was delighted with it when he first got it. After 2 years he noticed the usable range had really dropped so he sold it. Someone buying it would already have a car that is losing range and I'd guess it would continue to worsen.
He told me he'll buy another, not just yet. I feel the same way, I like the idea of EV's but it's too soon to put my money into one.
I wonder if EV's where you rent the battery (Renault?) may be the way to go.
I'm glad some people are pleased to be guinea pigs while the network and cars are improved.
If the range really had dropped so much why did he not just go back to the dealer and get it fixed?
A single duff cell can take out a whole module resulting in a fairly large drop, but even out of warranty there are a growing number of places that can find and fix such a module in a few hours for not much more than the cost of a cam-belt on an IC engine.
I was looking at an 8 year old Leaf for someone the other day, 75k on the clock and 11 bars on the battery. Leaf-spy showed the battery to be 84% which seems fairly typical for a Leaf of that age and mileage.
The early Leaf had small batteries (24KWh) so they do get hammered, charged almost daily and worse they're not liquid cooled.
Cars now come with minimum guarantee's on the battery. 7-8 years 80-100k miles is fairly typical for a guaranteed minimum state of 75%+
Depending on how long you think you'd keep it then it's worth making sure the range minus the stated minimum is still within your needs.
The good news is modern EV's have even better battery technology, the batteries are also bigger which means they get less hammering, the BMS are better and they're nearly all liquid cooled now too which helps longevity. Pretty much the reason the manufacturers are happy to hand out long warranties on them.
Tesla's show the way forward here, their cars report the health back and it's looking like even with mileages approaching 200k and nearly 10 years old lots of them are still in the mid 90%'s.
Battery rental has died a death.
Renault was one of the last but I think it's pretty much stopped now. I don't think they'll swap the battery until it's dropped below 75% so it's a fairly rare event, in the meantime you're paying £60+ a month to rent it.
On top of that they're not that easy to shift second hand. Who wants a 'cheap' car that means they have to find £60 a month for the rest of its life?
Even if the battery dropped under 75% as long as it still had the range you needed then you may as well continue using it, worst case part swap the battery for a newer one.
IMO you'd be better sticking £60 a month into a savings account.