The Used EV Timebomb
By Paul Homewood
h/t Dave Ward
Money Mail can today reveal a timebomb looming in the second-hand market for electric vehicles (EVs).
Our investigation found that many EVs could become almost impossible to resell because of their limited battery life.
Experts said that the average EV battery guarantee lasts just eight years. After this time, the battery may lose power more quickly and so reduce mileage between charges.
Many EVs will lose up to 12 per cent of their charge capacity by six years. Some may lose even more.
Yet the cost of replacing an EV battery is astonishingly high, our research found.
A five-year-old Renault Zoe costs £9,100 but a new battery will set you back £24,124
In some cases, the cost of a replacement battery is as much as £40,000. For certain EVs, the cost of replacing the battery could be ten times the value of the vehicle itself on the second-hand market.
That means used EVs have a limited lifespan — which makes them a bigger and bigger risk as the years go by.
Research into EV batteries is yet to be conclusive and the second-hand EV market is new, given the first popular EVs were rolled off the production line in 2009.
Last night, one motoring expert said customers should be wary of buying a used electric car beyond its warranty (typically eight years), as after that timespan there is no easy way of measuring how much the battery will degrade before it needs replacing.
This may mean you end up needing to pay for an expensive new battery.
Motor expert Shahzad Sheikh, who runs the YouTube channel Brown Car Guy, said: ‘With a decaying battery, the range will be poor and you may find it becomes increasingly hard to resell the vehicle after eight years.
Buyers will know that they’ll only get a small amount of life out of the car so will pay only a small sum, if anything at all.’
This problem is exacerbated by the fact all new cars coming onto the market by 2035 will be electric and motorists will have to get used to paying around £10,000 more than it’s petrol equivalent, for a vehicle which is not built to last as long.
Take a new petrol-driven Renault Clio — it costs around £20,000, while its all-electric opposite, the Renault Zoe, costs closer to £30,000.
While you can drive a traditional petrol or diesel car for around 200,000 miles over 14 years before the engine needs fixing or replacing, by comparison a new EV is typically guaranteed under a warranty for 100,000 miles over eight years.
Should your petrol engine need replacing you can expect to pay around £5,000, but replace the battery on your EV outside warranty and you’re looking at an eye-watering £13,000 to £40,000, depending on the make of your car, if you fit a manufacturer’s new unit.
And there are external factors at play with battery degradation — including use of fast chargers and even a colder climate.
The high cost of EV batteries is a result of it being difficult to mine metals such as nickel, cobalt, lithium and manganese that are used in the lithium-ion batteries.
They are also in demand for the production of other electronics, including mobile phones and laptops.
In the most extreme cases, such as with a 12-year-old Nissan Leaf that cost £2,000 to buy, you can pay as much as £24,000 for a brand-new replacement 24kWh battery.
However, most owners would upgrade to a newer 40kWh Nissan battery costing £12,780 before garage installation fees of around £2,000. This later battery has a bigger capacity but can still be fitted into older models.
These high costs to maintain an electric car do not bode well for a fledgling second-hand market believes Shahzad Sheikh, who points out: ‘Early adopters have already bought electric cars while the next wave of buyers are looking for value for money — and struggling to find it.
‘The second-hand market might seem a natural place to look for an EV but unfortunately it is fraught with danger as the batteries are worth more than the car. If the battery stops working, the vehicle becomes almost worthless.’
Vehicle trading website AA Cars agrees and says that nearly half of all potential second-hand EV buyers are put off because of concerns about battery life.
The situation is even worse than the Mail thinks.
This is not just a problem for eight year old cars, because it will cascade back up the supply chain.
For instance, if you buy a 5 year old petrol car now, you can reasonably assume you will still get a couple of thousand back when you trade it in in three years time. Buy a 5 year old EV, and and you probably won’t get a penny back. That in turn therefore devalues that 5-year old EV, as buyers cannot afford to buy one otherwise. And so on up the chain.
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NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT 
Yes, but what hasn’t yet penetrated the commentators heads is that is going to be a very large charge for “scrapping” the used batteries. Maybe another 10k on top of buying a new one.
Right now there is no economic way to recycle them so they will have to be stacked up into a lethal heap. I suspect lots of people will set them on fire in country lanes!!!!
You make a very valid point on the cost of disposal. It will be high and the owner will not longer be able to sell it for scrap or even give it away. Saint Elon’s marvelous Tesla are even more difficult. His recycle method is to freeze the car in liquid nitrogen and grind it up.
Not exactly easy to do and very very expensive. I have been voicing this concerns for 2 years.
His recycle method is to freeze the car in liquid nitrogen and grind it up.
Vehicle scrapyards work well for recycling and sustainable motoring, although you might not want to live next door to one.
There was a time when it was possible to have a Ford four cylinder engine reconditioned for less than a week’s wages (about £200 at the time), including fitting.
Depreciation has always been a major cost of car ownership. Should be no surprise to anyone buying an EV that the second hand market is somewhat dependant on the battery condition, as for the mileage of conventionally fuelled vehicles.
I wonder how one can judge the remaining user life and operating efficiency of a battery.
That’s the whole point, it’s very difficult so the resale value takes that into account.
Often a battery condition function somewhere in the menu
Wow, who in their right mind is going to actually purchase a new BEV, I have aways bought second hand cars, but a second hand BEV looks to be even more of a risk. Nothing going for them at all.
My own 2009 Ford Focus 1.6 Petrol recently started flashing up “Engine Malfunction” and going into limp mode. It is valued at £1360 by we buy any car, but not with this fault. The auto electrician plugged in his computer and diagnosed it was the dashboard array carrying the speedo and tacho, common fault. Replacement from Ford dealer about £1000 plus fitting plus VAT say £1500 so it is scrap.
So the part was bought second hand from a scrapyard for £65 and installed and set up by the auto electrician, using some sophisticated computer devices to match the car keys and change the mileage. It cost a £150 for a few hours work. So fixed for £205.
It got me to thinking about the immense stock of spare parts for ICE vehicles in scrap yards (re-cycling centres) at reasonable prices. What is the situation for EVs, it is too dangerous to store the batteries, so what happens to a written off EV, do the drive train and electronics get re-cycled?
I scrapped a focus a little while back for exactly the same reason,the owner in this case being reluctant to spend the money as the car was not the best example.
Although I am retired I still get involed with repairing cars, the main and most awkward repairs now are normally with the sophisticated electronics that even buget cars are cursed with, (unless you have a modern german car with a diesel engine).(or a Land Rover).
Spare parts are also becoming an issue with many manufacturers as well if you need anything bespoke to a car.
I see the dwindelling supply of ICE cars as another problem in the future for this reason, so look after what you have!
Govenment agenda?
🤔.
There are several firms who carry out repairs (and often, upgrades) on your own part or module. This has the advantage of 1) knowing it’s good, and 2) not requiring any “recoding”. So the repaired part can be put straight back on the car, and all the other modules will “talk to it” just as they did before.
Yes indeed, a service I have used over the years with varying degrees of success, but I have found more modern cars have ecus that are often unrepairable.
Progress I suppose?
In the US, car manufacturers are required to keep parts available for 10 years. After 10, they may not have your ECU. There are aftermarket makers, who may or may not have what you need.
Ford has been using the same ECU for decades. No worries.
My Dodge truck crapped its ECU. No longer available from Dodge. Repair shop was able to locate one in aftermarket, saving my truck. Lucky? Don’t know. But as the years roll by, technologies from some periods won’t be available.
We took the tape machines out of our computer rooms decades ago.
Gamecock
Comonality of parts has allways been a big plus for american cars and trucks over the years for sure.
You are indeed right about the 10 year thing and in europe there were always gentlmens agreements to continue past that if demand was there.
However I have noticed in recent years this has fallen by the wayside and many of the larger manufacturers are now actively (deliberately some would say) engageing in not supplying parts past that 10 year period, and I have found restricting some parts supply for vehicles prior to that.
Should your petrol engine need replacing you can expect to pay around £5,000,
If you buy a 2nd hand engine and get it fitted by your local bush mechanic then it will cost considerably less than that.
eBay is full of spares or repair cars of all ages. Bush mechanics will become increasingly common.
Part exchange engines is the most likely way to proceed where you get an engine that has been refurbished in return for yours. Metallurgy has improved the quality of most components and production processes have too so the main point of wear will be piston rings and cylinder bores. If you have a wet liner engine then a rebore is easy or even just replace the liner and keep your pistons.
gezza, see my reply to glen that I typed before seeing yours…great minds think alike!
I was thinking along the lines of the lowest cost option.
Back in the late 70’s I had Renault 4 which had an engine originally designed with “wet liners” for very lengthy marine use. You could do a full engine overhaul with the engine still in the car using a purpose made kit that included all parts, O rings, shells etc.
After over 200,000 miles on the clock (and heavily blowing blue smoke out the exhaust) a friend and I managed to refurbish it to as good as new in a single day. Labour aside (ours was free) I doubt the kit would be over £350 at today’s prices.
Regarding the eBay issue, my son has an immaculate Mark 1 Mazda MX5 (flip up headlights etc) that originally started life as 3 separate “scrap” vehicles bought online.
An R4 would be a great choice for today’s potholed roads.
Given the CO2 required to build an EV (along with all the environmental degradations), if you drive up to 10,000 miles a year in an electric car it will take 5 years before you break-even with the CO2 emitted by a combustion-powered vehicle. That would be about 1/3 of vehicles. Does this mean that most EVs will be net CO2 emitters when they become worthless?
For those of us who don’t believe CO2 is evil, we couldn’t care less about CO2 emissions, in fact, we need much more emissions
Non of this is news to anyone who has been paying attention.
This bit caught my eye as well:
“If the battery stops working, the vehicle becomes almost worthless.”
Almost worthless? Completely worthless is the phrase that you are looking for I believe.
I’d say the vehicle becomes a liability. You will have to pay someone to take it away. I often read that the minerals in an EV battery are worth a lot, but it all gets a bit vague when trying to find out how much it costs to extract those minerals.
“Completely worthless” – Possibly not if you’re stateside. One of Elon’s former engineers now repairs & rebuilds damaged Tesla’s, and he’s managed to install a 6.2litre V8 into one. It fitted surprisingly well, and what’s even more amazing is that he’s got the original electronics to interface with the dedicated engine ECU! But even if that link fails the car can still be driven.
We’re going to end up like Cuba with ancient ICE cars endlessly repaired and recycled!
They will ban Petrol and Diesel sales, so a black market will be set up, Speakeasys for Fuel. I also think there will be a ready market for illegal BEV charging, like the cannabis farms bypassing meters. Life is going to be interesting when the inevitable uprising occurs.
I think it unlikely as we all know using batteries to power all our transport is not remotely feasible and it is just how long it will take for this to be understood. Just today the Mail has a report of the losses made by the European car makers due to battery cars.
As well as importing used cars from the likes of Japan and any other countries that still have proper cars. In the past I saw used German cars being trailered into the Czech Republic, soon they will be on trailers coming here.
Dead right.
It’s part of the globalist plan, to restrict mobility of the proles
If the battery stops working, the vehicle becomes almost worthless.
I dunno: remember those old photos of Romanian peasants having their cars dragged around by a nag? At least the car keeps the rain off whatever it was they were transporting.
Good Heavens! I mean Good Heavens Alive!! The Money Mail had woken up to a calculation that has occupied sites like this for ooo I don’t know- five years?
It looks as though the eco-nuts who decided that we should aim at pure EVs rather than hybrids made a big mistake. Japan is already pushing the plug-in-hybrid. I’ve got one to reduce my benefits in kind taxation: sorry all here but you will be helping my retirement pot! On a serious not, the hybrid averages about 56 mpg even when not used in plugged-in mode, and will have more second hand value than an EV; in addition there is no range anxiety,
Money Mail can today reveal the bleeding obvious.
Fixed.
I won’t have a new one, never mind a used one
Is there a case for picking up a cheap EV and then parking it on your drive and use it like a powerwall ? Making use of cheap rate night-time electric is the only way to make a smart meter work for you.
I have seen it suggested that rather than scrapping or recycling the EV car batteries they could be re-purposed as small/ medium scale battery storage. Having a less efficient battery isn’t so much of a problem for fixed use as it is in a vehicle with range reduction. There may be a fire risk with older batteries and maybe mixing ones from different manufacturers is a lot harder than it first appears.
Maybe I’m unadventurous or too old but I simply cannot envisage driving an electric car with this permanent anxiety about range. It would gnaw away at you and shorten your.life.
Range is a faux problem for most EV owners. They drive it locally, plug it in when they get home. <100 miles would work for them.
Range is marketed heavily, to people who have no EV experience. The potential buyer has some notion that he can go somewhere distant in his EV. “320 miles,” says Mercedes. Some distance traveling in a Tesla is possible, with their charging network and careful planning. MOST owners wouldn’t try it. Hence, they have no range anxiety.
Maybe some depreciation anxiety.
I suspect most of the current EV owners have off street parking. Distance traveling isn’t the problem I live in the UK on a suburban Victorian street which doesn’t have off street parking it would not be practical to go to a public charger more than once a week. 12 miles a day in winter could easily bring you to less than 20% of your battery after 5 days if the range is only 100 miles. God help the poor sod who gets caught in a snow storm & saying that just being stuck in a traffic jam in January when it is below freezing outside on Friday presuming you charge the car on Saturday or Sunday.
BWTM:
https://www.breitbart.com/economy/2024/05/01/tesla-backtracks-on-supercharger-expansion-plans-after-firing-entire-charging-team/
So we currently have a viable ICE secondhand car industry, coupled with extensive recycling of write offs, end of life- steel, spare parts etc: so in many cases a existing ICE vehicle recycled today could realistically go on forever, especially the steel content.
The BEV has a limited lifespan with a recycling problem, just where are they going to store “dead” BEV’s given the fire risk from Lithium Ion batteries, hazardous and poisonous chemicals and fumes make the fire a ecological nightmare- hmmmm, something you don’t get with ICE vehicles, yes they have there own hazards but looking at the chemical schedule released in a BEV fire, I know which I would prefer.
The BEV is sold as environmentally friendly, low CO2 emissions during build, but if a ICE vehicle can last easily up to 30yrs, given that a BEV lasts only 8yrs, no matter how low your BEV emissions are, unless zero, they will easily surpass ICE, and let’s be honest, if we, the great unwashed, can see this, then why cannot the “experts”……..unless, no, I am a cynic, I was going to say, unless there is something in it for them, but, no politician is that shallow.
BEV; NOT ZERO
This sort of thing makes my heart burst with joy.