Very few people replace their car battery. Like very few people replace their car engine. It happens, preferably under warranty, but it's not really something you consider when you buy a car.
If the battery degradation makes the car unfit to your needs, it's a bit weird because it would mean you were on the limit, but anyway it's more economic to sell the car as it is and buy another car. Someone will enjoy the old battery.
There is a big difference between replacing a car engine vs replacing a car battery. The hardest part is lifting the heavy battery out and putting the new one in. With a gas engine, there is belts, timing, oil, and lots of other things I am not even aware of.
Almost all of those things -- all you mention, and most of the "lots of other things" -- are within (or firmly attached on the outside of) the engine itself, and are swapped out as integral parts with the engine.
I recall this article about the total maintenance costs of a Model X cab with 400k miles. It’s a very interesting look at total cost of ownership over time.
That is, unfortunately, anecdata. Everyone keeps telling me that electric cars have fewer moving parts and have such low maintenance costs that they cost 90% less to maintain, at which point I turn around and ask why Tesla doesn't offer a bumper to bumper 20 year warranty, because they can benefit from the law of large numbers. If the repair costs are so much better, this should be easy to do, right? That's the point where my interlocuter usually walks away as they have no answer.
One way you can try to estimate what the real maintenance cost is in the first X years is to look at what automakers set aside for warranties. In that case, (the last I looked), Tesla seemed in the middle of the pack vis-a-vis major ICE makers. But then you have the 20-X years of service, and the dirty secret is that those years are also paid for by new owners except they pay those repairs forward as depreciation when they sell. So then you look at depreciation curves, to see if Tesla is holding up much better than ICE vehicles due to lower expected maintenance costs and there, too, Tesla appears to be right in line with other major producers. So bottom line, I can't find any evidence for the thesis that getting rid of all these components will significantly reduce lifetime maintenance costs, while the battery costs remain a big unknown.
Now part of this is just not having enough data. In 20 years, we'll have a lot more data, and then maybe the warranty policies and depreciation curves will look very different. But this goes back to my point which is why isn't Tesla insuring the buyers against this risk by selling massive 20 year waranties to stand behind these claims of long service life and very low maintenance costs? Why leave people searching for anecdata in a new car whose service costs they don't have the data to estimate?
For most people a car is a major portion of their net-worth and they tend to be conservative in making this purchase. Sure, for high income buyers, they can afford to take risks but most buyers can't. So why doesn't Tesla do more to insure prospective buyers against this risk? It seems like such a no brainer, and yet many companies insist on pushing risk onto the customer. This isn't just an issue with Tesla, but I see it in many industries, where the producer is the one who has the survivorship data, they benefit from the law of large numbers, and they have financial backing, they are in a position to sell insurance, and people would buy the insurance, but the insurance just isn't being offerred, and if it is offered, it's on absolutely terrible terms, rather than as something to remove purchase frictions.
But if you think Tesla is averse to taking on risk, how much more risk-averse would the customers take on? Tesla has the law of large numbers and technical data available to them. They are in a position to arbitrage that and get (expected) free money by selling long term insurance to buyers for whom the insurance is a lot more valuable than what it costs Tesla, so why wouldn't they do that?
If indeed the EVs are so much more durable and have such lower maintenance costs but are surrounded by a cloud of doubt, why not remove that cloud? Even if Tesla doesn't ramp up production faster, the increased demand would allow them to command a higher price until production was ramped up.
So if indeed the market is wrong and depreciation curves are too steep, Tesla can arbitrage that. Why they don't should raise some questions, at least it does to me.
I'm not finding a hole in this argument. It's especially interesting because Elon has a reputation as a risk-taker, so I would expect him to steer Tesla in this direction if it were possible and profitable.
Even if it’s not 90% less maintenance cost, I can tell you in the 2 years since I’ve owned my Model 3 (20k miles) I’ve brought it in for maintenance items zero times. In an ICE car that would have been like 6 annoying oil changes by now? That’s more than enough to convince me.
In Europe, on a modern (diesel but gasoline wouldn't be much different) car, lubricated with semi-synthetic oil that would be 1 oil change at around 30,000 km or at the most two (first one at 15,000 and second one at 45,000, or similar).
As a side note, it depends, but "no maintenance" unlike many people think, is not such a good idea, overall, I'll try to explain myself.
Many years ago, fully synthetic oils came out, they were awfully expensive but guaranteed something like 80,000 km on diesel and 120,000 km on gasoline without any change, you only had to refill to level and change (at double the normal interval, usually 15,000 or 20,000 km x 2= 30,000 or 40,000 km the oil filter).
And, people with older cars might remember this, lamps burned out much more often than modern leds, non-electronic distributors needed maintenance, as well as carburetors and spark plugs (or on diesel pumps/injectors), and to this you add the (normal for mineral oil) 10,000-15,000 km oil change.
This meant that every three to six months your car was normally put for one day in the hands of a professional that - besides doing these maintenance chores - tested your car, made sure that brakes and suspensions were in an efficient condition, could notice and repair minor leaks, loose bolts/parts, could (much better than what you normally can do) "feel" if anything in wheels, suspensions, steering wheels (and its servo)was fine, etc.
The adoption of fully synthetic oil meant that the car, unless you found yourself an issue/defect, was seen/tested by a professional mechanic once every 1 1/2 to 2 years, and this was not a good thing, for the overall "heath" (and safety) of the car.
Ive always been told I need oil changes every 3-5,000 miles, if that’s not true it’s news to me. Also, my state mandates annual inspections so I assume a professional is checking for those things during the inspection.
The manufacturer is the one that knows (obviously) the most about the engine so you should stick to the recommended type of oil and recommended oil change interval, doing it more often than that is simply a waste.
Depreciation with an electric car is driven more by advancement in batteries, and other new technology that is advancing relatively rapidly compared to ICE cars.
How much do replacement engines cost for ICE cars? I bet you don't know that or think about it when getting an ICE car.
Engine replacement rates will probably be historically higher than battery replacement within standard car lifetimes. It's possibly that a battery car will last longer than an ICE due to less moving parts, but even then I think long-lived EV cars will be relegated to city car duties with reduced ranges.
Batteries usually degrade rather than catastrophically fail (exempting the dramatic but rare battery fire which I believe happen less than ICE fires).
Batteries usually degrade. That's why people ask this question. We have all been carrying around phones with batteries that start to perform badly enough after a couple years that we end up buying a brand new phone.
Not everybody wants to buy a new phone every couple years, and not everybody agrees what a standard car lifetime is.
Generally, if something fails in the battery it is individual cells and those can be replaced separately. It is rare for the entire battery pack to fail at one time.
