Anecdote about battery replacement

I know someone who <insert random story about a bad experience a single ICE owner had which was very expensive>. Single incidents are a terrible way of making a significant financial decision.

I bet the battery needs replaced every 5 years too. And they have a carbon footprint 2 zillion times worse than a daysel.

Awful shyte yokes them electrical cars.

Most EVs take less than that, 30 second to plug in when you get home and the car is charged in the morning 😁

Also the price of fuel is only going one direction, up, and it's going that way faster and faster. That 2 minute refuel is costing several thousand a year for the privilege 😉

€14k sounds like a battery replacement, very rare they happen under warranty. That's equivalent to an ICE car needing a whole new powertrain, how often do you hear of that happening to a car under 8 years old?

You're right. It does take hours to charge.

Thankfully that's at night. When I'm asleep. At a quarter of the cost of diesel.

I've never been able to refuel an ICE car in 2 minutes. We currently have 2 ICE vehicles alongside our EV. A 7 seat VW and my old van.

The vw is petrol and seems to take an age to refuel, as well as having to go in and pay. The diesel is filled from 20l jerry cans so that takes an age too

It's a problem that has no short or medium solution. Local Authorities don't want to know about the issue either and Planning laws make no difference to existing dwellings.

The Climate Action Plan made no reference to it except for this beauty: "New Scheme for 200 on-street public charge points per year for electric vehicles". 200 per year - drop in the ocean springs to mind.

Until there is a credible solution to this issue then a sizeable number of households in this country will be locked out of EV ownership. Renters also locked out unless their landlord puts in a charger - not likely to happen.

Is there any figures on the replacement battery rate at 10 years of ownership. I suppose Nissan Leaf is what would have most available figures on.

I think we're having an argument while agreeing 😁

I meant there's no technical impediments to installing chargers for public spaces

There's a few people here who are renting or don't have driveways. A few have managed to install chargers. The general agreement with the landlord or management company is that the tenant will foot the bill but can take the charger with them when they move out. They're quite easy to remove, it's about 10 mins work for any electrician

I agree the council's are majorly dragging their heels when it come to public charging. It's a major problem for potential EV owners and it needs to be solved ASAP. There's some very simple things the government could do to change this.

My personal favourite would be to make it illegal to charge for parking or clamping on spaces where there isn't a minimum number of charging spaces. That number should increase every year until it's 100%

I'd say the councils would act pretty quickly if one of their main sources of income was under threat

Aha.. so we’ve gone from “I know a friend who had to pay €14k to change a battery” to “a friend told me who heard it at work”

very different statements! ;)

nothing to see here is the summary, I think.

Leaf 24 had a 5 year battery warranty, so loads of them are out of warranty now. Have yet to hear of many battery replacements. I can think of two documented ones that come to mind - both very high mileage where degradation meant the car no longer covered the daily use needed. The replacement batteries cost a hell of a lot less than €14k. And the rest of the car was in good enough condition to warrant the replacement.

Our 132 Leaf did have an issue where the inverter went kaput. cost the bones of €1000 to get it fixed.

In my previous car the timing belt snapped and that cost me around €1500 for a new top end.

In my van before that the timing chain slipped making a replacement engine the order of the day, at the time that cost me in the region of €2000.

In my last van I had to replace the clutch and recondition the gearbox, €2000.

In my current van I had to get the EGR replaced and a few additional bits that cost in excess of €1200.

Along with those big bills the ICE yolks have annual servicing costs, and the cost of fuel, which is only going one way.

In my case - all cars cost a lot of money to maintain - but EVs cost a hell of a lot less.

The leaf has cost me €1000 on a very unusual issue. Aside from that it has been serviced once as it was still under warranty when i got it, and has had a wish bone replaced. So all in, the EV is running about 1/10th the cost of the diesels - and that is not an exaggeration. Literally 10% of the cost of running the diesel annually.

And to top it off, I paid just under €10k for it 5 years ago, and it's probably worth around 8k looking at today's prices.

I have chosen to take that question at face value