Random EV thoughts.....

Lets be honest the main reason most will buy an EV is to save money, its cheap to run on night rate electricity, no real maintenance, solar, they are frugal people etc but if it's depreciating by 15k in one year, you ain't saving €300 a week on diesel/petrol and the whole reason to buy an EV is now gone out the window and then you have its drawbacks like having to stop every 2 -3 hours on the motorway to charge the thing.

If the savings aren't there, what's the point, better to keep your older diesel/petrol

The word is out alright and the bubble is burst it seems and it would be all fine and the same as ICE but except for 2 big factors ( warranty and crashes )

When the Tesla is out of warranty and the ICE is out of warranty, they are not equivalent at all, your not going to find someone easily in many parts of the country that will fix your battery cheaply and check the 7000 cells for a bad one if its given issues, you'll probably just have to buy a whole new battery from Tesla in most cases, ditto the inverter, electric motors, transmission and all those parts, the skillset isn't here for now like ICE mechanics, it will be one day but its not now

Other big factor is if you have a tip in the Tesla, the cost to repair an ICE if you have a tip can be pretty reasonable, lots of experience around, the cost of repairing a crashed EV is more often than not a new car, understandably with high voltage, leakage, chemicals, fire risk etc very few want to work on them and the ones that do that are highly skilled ain't cheap, and then know one likes to deal with insurance companies here when you got to tell them your car has been written off and its your fault.

The incentive to buy an EV has always been low running cost to most and if that's gone with depreciation, its hard to know what's going to happen now, something will have to change to make them more attractive

I want an EV myself, but only thing stopping me is price and warranty. Price is almost there, we are very close to getting a Golf size car for 25k with a 60kWh battery. If I buy one, I want one that will do me for a long time and thus warranty is a big issue, 8 years/160km is way too low. I would do that 160km in 5 years and I ain't risking the repair bills of an out of warranty EV. Sustainability wise they need to offer 10 years/300k km warranties or the like, have people keeping cars for a long time, but then manufacturers run out of people to sell them and go out of business. The government facilitate that throwaway car mentality with the grants too, it should be a once off grant, not as many times as you want like now and people trading up perfectly good cars every 2 -3 years, but they do that in part because of warranty.

Maybe independent electrical engineering places go to that level, but Tesla don't in my experience. I know 2 people who got new packs ( Model S + 3 ), they didnt pay because it was under warranty but out of warranty it was 10k+ for the 3

Why didn't Tesla just change the modules if that was so easy?

I'd be the same but then you got to find that independent specialist, none around me that's for sure.

Anyone know of these specialists that can refurb packs and how much does it cost/how long does it take for a modern Tesla?

Yep and most cars are now/will be using the BYD blade battery, which is also a nightmare. Due to direct integration into the battery pack, replacing a damaged Blade Battery requires dismantling the entire pack as well. These blade batteries are integrated into the base of the battery pack, eliminating traditional modules and improving space, all good until you have to fix them. If a single cell unit is out of order in them, the capacity loss will be much more than a traditional battery pack. The cost of changing or fixing the blade battery might be unacceptable to a lot of people. Getting the price down on battery packs, density and packaging of course has to have its disadvantages.

And then you've go the software side, which is supposedly even more tricky, like fort knox on some EV's, totally locked down.

EU really have to look at this in my opinion, the right to repair laws are not good with modern cars in general, just look at that battery pack from Tesla you posted, who will want that job 🤣.