EVs don’t just lose charge – they lose value – and at a rate that will take your breath away.
If you bought a Lucid Air Grand Touring back in 2022 for $154,000 can you guess what its worth today? According to Kelley Blue Book, this EV’s current market value is $44,800 – meaning it has depreciated to the tune of 73.2 percent over the course of four years. Kelley says a four-year-old Tesla S – which listed for $101,190 when it was new four years ago – is currently worth about $42,000. Then there’s the Audi e-Tron GT, which listed for $103,895 back in 2022. According to Kelly, this device is currently worth $38,300.
It makes a time-share seem like a good investment!
It is also a kind of commentary on the sickness of affluenza. It was once a general truism that the way to become wealthy was to not fritter away wealth; one tried to avoid losing money, in other words.
This EV business takes it to a new level. If you break it down into annual losses, the buyer of a 2022 Lucid Air lost about $25,000 each year over the course of four years on his “investment.” Looked at from another angle, the Lucid buyer could have bought a brand-new Accord sedan every year (just about; the base price of a new Accord is $28,395) and thrown it away at the end of the year and then bought another – for four years. Another way to look at it is to consider how much gas $25,000 buys. Even at Orange Man prices, $25k would keep the tank of the gas-guzzliest vehicle filled for years. $100k would keep a small fleet filled up for decades.
These losses can also be seen as the smaller-scale iteration of the losses incurred by the manufacturers of these devices. Lucid has never actually made money. Losses so far are estimated at $11 billion. The value of Lucid stock has declined by almost 90 percent. The company has been on the razor’s edge of bankruptcy since its founding but somehow (so far) manages to find more “investors” willing to lose money to keep the doors open. There appears be some truth to PT Barnum’s dictum about a sucker being born every minute.
Ford has admitted to having lost $20 billion selling EVs. It at least had the sense to cut bait on the Lightning pick-up, which apparently cost Ford something like $20,000 for each one it sold. GM has lost a similar sum on its “investment” in battery powered devices. Normally, the thing to do would be to stop making more such “investments.” Instead, Ford is about to introduce a new electric truck. It will be smaller and cost less to buy than the Lightning – but it’s probably still going to cost Ford a fortune.
Slate is another such “investor.” It is on the verge of trying to sell the little electric truck it initially said it was going to sell for about $20,000. The price has risen to about $27k, which is probably going to cost the people who “invested” in Slate a lot of money since it’s unlikely many people are going to want to buy a stripped-down, micro-sized electric truck with a best-case driving range of about 150 miles when for about the same money, they could buy something much more practical, like the Ford Maverick hybrid (which starts around $28k and has a driving range of 600 miles and comes standard with a stereo and power windows, both optional/extra-cost with the Slate).
There is an upside to all of this. It is that you can buy a four-year-old EV that cost six figures when it was new for about a third what it sold for when it was new. This of course assumes you don’t ask why it is that a vehicle that sold for six figures when it was new – only four years ago – is only worth about a third what it cost when it was new after only four years.
The reason why is that a four-year-old EV has a four-year-old battery – one that may not have another four years of useful life left. It might. But it might not. Much depends on how the battery was treated by its first owner. If the battery was subjected to regular bouts of “fast” charging, its useful life has probably isn’t much longer. It is something like how an engine was treated by its owner but also different in that most of the time, a four-year-old car’s engine has another 10-15 years still ahead of it. The odds are not as favorable when it comes to batteries – and the cost of replacing one is so high it is not worth replacing it. For example, a new battery pack for that massively depreciated Lucid Air costs $15-$25k.
And now you know why a four-year-old Lucid Air that cost six figures when it was new is only worth about $44k today.
Imagine what it’ll be worth four years from now.
. . .
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Is Michael Saylor, the CEO of Strategy, which owns the biggest chunk of Bitcoin in the world, running a Ponzi scheme? And there is an even bigger question, is Bitcoin itself a Ponzi? Think about it, BTC has gone up and up and it is not even a real thing, it’s value it based on how many dupes bought into it to make it more “valuable”.
ZH – “Strategy cultivated the image that its Bitcoin treasury was effectively untouchable. Michael Saylor repeatedly framed Bitcoin as something to accumulate, never distribute”
Saylor became an icon in Bitcoin’s rise. But now he is selling to pay his preferred stock investors. Smells like a Ponzi to me, he said he would never sell a single BTC, but now he is.
Goolag Ai says: Why Critics Call It a Ponzi
“Bitcoin does not produce cash flow, dividends, or physical goods (unlike real estate or stocks). Therefore, for an investor to make a profit, someone else must buy it from them later at a higher price. This reliance on the “Greater Fool Theory” leads critics to compare its price mechanics to a speculative bubble or a Ponzi structure.”
No matter how high BTC (or any crypto ) goes it ultimately only has value so long as another fool is willing to buy it. Thus, like any Ponzi, the crypto pyramid can come down in a big crash if someday it loses appeal. All Ponzis eventually run out of steam, exponential growth always has a limit.
The biggest outrage of this BTC scam was how they used Terrawatts of electricity to mine bitcoin, nation-state levels of real electricity was burned through to mine a completely fake thing, which does not exist, which ultimately has no value. For instance, if we had a nuclear war, all crypto could go to zero instantly. The grid must exist for BTC to have value.
Today Cuba has no electricity. What good is crypto to any Cuban as Trump readies forces to invade?
Can Bitcoin go to zero? It can, and here is the primary reason why. BTC costs huge amounts to mine.
“Bitcoin uses more electricity than many countries—around 91 terawatt-hours annually.”
Gold can sit hidden in your basement forever, rent free. BTC can only exist so long as someone is willing to pay the massive amounts electricity to mine it, store it, etc. If the political situation in the United States is becoming increasing volatile, where Bitcoin would be needed, what prevents the state from outlawing it? Future POTUS Zohar Mandamni might outlaw Bitcoin to run his communist government.
Goolar Ai – Yes, Bitcoin could effectively go to zero. In an all-out nuclear war, immediate survival needs (like food, water, and shelter) would supersede financial assets. Without functional power grids, communication networks, or internet access, Bitcoin would lose its liquidity and utility, rendering it untradeable and locally worthless.
Lucid Air Grand Touring 2022 for $154,000 depreciated 70% in four years when including the $7,500 tax credit
Maserati Quattroporte 2022: By year four, it routinely sheds 60% to 65% of its value.
So many nice cars and so little money and garage space. Some times I wish I was Jay Leno or Elon Musk. Too bad my teachers in school never told me how important it was having a lot of money. Yes I know they all said “money cant buy you love”. My dad had two years of formal education so was of little help. All the teachers told me is how important it was to have a vocation. Which is funny because suppose I wanted a vocation like washing dishes or sweeping floors. How many cars or garages would those jobs get me. Thanks fucking teachers for keeping me in the dark.
Little discussed on this forum is the importance of low weight to efficiency. Take a bicycle for instance, a typical road bike weighs about 18 lbs. The one I ride, a town cruiser, weighs around 30. Bicycles can easily carry many more times their weight, that is one big reason they are so efficient.
When is comes to cars, I’ve never owned a car that can carry anywhere near its curb weight. Few cars could carry (useful load) anywhere near 50% of their weight. My Civic max GVWR is only 32% of what the car weighs. More efficient is a 2015 Mirage which can carry 1200 lbs but only weighs 2,000 lbs. That is 60%. That is extremely good! Almost twice that of a Civic or Corolla.
Let’s compare that to a Tesla.
“The useful load (payload capacity) of the Tesla Model X Plaid is 1,116 pounds. When compared directly to its curb weight of 5,434 pounds, the useful load represents exactly 20.54% of the vehicle’s empty weight.”
That is extremely poor. So how can a Tesla be more efficient than a gasoline powered econo car? I say it ain’t based on simple physics. More mass = less efficiency.
I do not believe Eric has ever discussed high EV weight to useful load. I hope he comments on this. To make a car really efficient I think we need to approxiamate a bicycle not a tank.
Hi Jack,
Yup. EV battery packs are horribly inefficient as storage mediums. A typical EV battery weighs 800-1,000 pounds (equivalent to the weight of a fully-dressed big block V8 engine) and holds the electricity equivalent of about 10 gallons of gasoline, enough to give the typical EV about 250-300 miles of driving range. Gasoline weighs about 6 pounds; a typical gas tank holds about 15 gallons. If the vehicle can go 30 miles on a gallon, that means it only takes about 60 pounds of gas to propel the car for 450 miles. Also, the weight goes down as the gas is burned. A discharged EV battery always weighs the same.
One way to understand EVs is deadweight.
The F-35 has three models, the conventional takeoff and landing variants (the A and the C) and the vertical/short takeoff and landing variant, the B-model.
The B-model has a lift fan located in fuselage behind the cockpit that is driven by a driveshaft from the turbofan engine and is only used for takeoff and landing.
In regular flight, it is not used and is the reason why the B has smaller weapons bays, range and needs an external gun pod rather than an internal one,
The fan in regular flight is like a discharged battery in an EV in that it’s not contributing to movement and is a drain.
When a gas tank in an ICE car becomes emptier, it becomes lighter.
Eric, check your math there; looks like a typo?
6 pounds/gallon * 15 gallons = 90 pounds (not 60 pounds)
Thanks, Strait – yup.
Electric Vehicles (EVs) are substantially more efficient than Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles.
Total Well-to-Wheel Efficiency
ICE
15% to 20%
EV
35% & higher
(An electric vehicle, due to an extra 1,000 lbs. weight, does result in 4% to 9% decrease in wheel-to-wheel efficiency
from carrying the weight of the batteries at all times)
Ford F-150 (ICE):
Weighs around 4,500 to 5,000 lbs empty, but can carry a payload of up to 2,000 to 3,300 lbs.
Ford F-150 Lightning (EV):
Weighs over 6,000 lbs empty due to the battery, which caps its payload closer to 1,500 to 2,235 lbs
While EV motors have incredible torque and can tow semi-heavy loads, doing so drastically cuts their driving range, sometimes by 50% or more, due to the energy required to move that combined mass
Richard,
EVs are not more efficient. Your “analysis” leaves out generation/transmission losses. You really ought to stop slurping The EV Kool Aid!
Eric,
People who STILL cling to the narratives on EVs aren’t much different from those who STILL belieeeeeeeeeeve the narratives on COVID vaxxes. You’d be surprised how many people STILL think nobody died from the COVID vaxx but MILLIONS DIED from a virus that was 99 point some percent survivable for healthy people under 70 years of age.
Consider the SOURCE of said electricity used to charge the EV’s batteries. If “fossil”, typically COAL, the generation losses per available BTU make it less efficient than an ICE.
Nuclear, Hydro, or Wind/Solar make the issue more of a cost than a direct comparison of energy input versus work done in propelling the vehicle.
In the automotive and energy industries, a Well-to-Wheel analysis measures the total efficiency of an entire energy pathway—from the point of fuel extraction (“the well”) to its ultimate consumption by a vehicle to move forward (“the wheel”). Do some research on the well to wheel metric.
EVs are MUCH more efficient than ICE.
Well to Wheel: Under standard fossil-fuel grid mixtures, EV roughly double the efficiency of a gas vehicle overall. as a professional auto reviewer, you owe it to your readers to be more accurate.
I’ve never promoted the purchase of new EV’s, but I also try not to publish (or ignore) disinformation about them.
If you want to tell your readers EV’s are less efficient (Well to Wheel), and the battery packs will not last a lifetime, you can do that until the cows come home, but you’ll be wrong every time.
saying nothing good about an EV is just as wrong as saying nothing bad about an EV. This either or choice is called the either-or logical fallacy, also commonly called a false dilemma.
Agreed.
I’ve crunched the numbers too.
Per-mile, EV’s are much more efficient, all-in. The efficiency comes from two main areas; electric motors are far more efficient than ICE, and EV’s, due to lower energy capacity, are much more aerodynamic. A third factor is regenerative braking recapturing some energy, but it’s not as big of a gain as the other factors.
The manufacturing cost in terms of emissions (co2 mostly) of an EV is far higher than an ICE car. Given more efficiency per-mile in an EV, the curves cross. Each mile driven, an EV offsets some of its extra production cost. In a state with a very solar and wind heavy grid, like CA, that breakeven point was about 80k miles a few years ago. In some coal-heavy states, like parts of the rust belt, the electricity is dirty enough, that there’s no break even. The average case in the US is primarily gas generation, which had a break even in the 120k mile range.
This means that if you drive your EV for less than 80k miles in CA, or 120k on the east coast somewhere, you actually polluted more than buying an efficient gasoline car.
You can legitimately argue against EV’s on cost, or complexity, or lack of service options, but the argument that they’re always dirtier is false. They’re usually cleaner, sometimes dirtier if you have very coal biased power.
In terms of miles per gallon, lower weight improves efficiency because a lighter vehicle loses less energy heating the brake pads, the tires, and the road surface whenever the brakes are applied (regenerative braking in EVs can reduce brake pad heating, of course) — energy the engine had to supply to get the vehicle up to speed. And a lighter vehicle will have less tire rolling resistance. (There are some other less direct effects as well.)
However, the ratio of load carrying (payload) capacity to vehicle curb weight is not a meaningful metric. What is meaningful is payload-miles per gallon, in cases where you want to carry a bunch of stuff (say people or pallets of pineapples) from point A to point B. As an example, a Greyhound bus could haul 57 people from Gnaw Bone, Indiana to the Grand Canyon more efficiently than 12 Toyota Camrys could. That is, the Greyhound bus would use less fuel than the 12 cars’ total fuel.
If you’re just driving to town to go to church, then neither the ratio of your car’s payload capacity to its curb weight nor its (maximum) payload-miles per gallon spec is directly relevant to fuel efficiency.
The fast depreciation of luxury cars was previously a buying opportunity, however, with EV’s, there’s the risk that you won’t be able to keep it running for a reasonable cost. Where I live, where we don’t have harsh winters, EV battery pack longevity seems pretty good. That $45k Lucid still has upwards of 95% of capacity remaining, and the capacity degradation happens most quickly in the first year, so not too bad. I’d not touch one with a ten foot pole, though, due to no aftermarket support or non-dealer mechanics willing to work on it.
Over the years, I’ve bought lease return luxury cars as a way to drive something nice for entry level car prices. For example, I’m currently driving a 520HP V8 Cayenne Turbo. This was a $185k car in 2017. I bought it for $55k in 2021. It lost $130k in 4 years. I’ve since put 100k miles on it. Best damn road trip car I’ve ever had and it tows as much as an F150. These days, I’m eyeing a V12 Aston Martin Vanquish. This will be older, but $40k gets you a buttery smooth V12.
Granted, I spend lots of weekends wrenching on over-complicated systems which break.
For the climate alarmists who fear CO2, buying an EV isn’t necessarily good. The upfront carbon footprint is so much larger for an EV, it will take about 60,000–70,000 miles of driving to make up for it, according to the 2021 Volvo study
Yes, that is true, but also factor in disposal cost, rate of disposal compared to ICE cars. If EVs have half the shelf life of a piston car, because they are not economic to fix, that means all that energy to produce an EV vs. ICE must be factored in.
One metric I personally use to judge the value of a car is how long it lasts on the road and stays licensed. One such car is the Toyota Tercel. I see many of these pre-EFI cars still in use. Not only did they get superior fuel economy at the time, they were cheap to fix, and are infinitely fixable.
Mechanics love them, a simple Toyota, easy to fix, parts easily available, parts relatively cheap, small tires, etc. What is the value of an EV when the parent fly-by-night company folds?
I see no reason why a car should not last a lifetime.
an industry that recycles old EV batteries doesn’t exist yet because very few EV batteries have been retired so far. Storing an old electric vehicle (EV) with its battery pack intact in a standard junkyard or municipal dump is highly dangerous and generally illegal. Potential problems from disposal of old batteries, solar panels and windmills are one of many reasons I’m opposed to all three
Ironically, the greatest expense for cars is their manufacturing cost.
The most logical approach would keeping them running for as long as absolutely possible.
Even in instances where repairs cost more than the cars retail value, if the only other option is to buy a more expensive vehicle, as it usually is, it make sense to do repairs to keep a car running.
I’ve done this myself, to be more economical, still saving money in the long run, and delaying buying another car.
YMMV….
And at the expense of Asian CHILD LABOR.
EVs are not the only commodity that are becoming a total loss, even worse is TRUMP coin. Have you heard the stats of how believers in Trump and his crypto coin have cost his supporters?
“Nearly 1 million investors have lost a combined $3.81 billion on the official $TRUMP memecoin, according to a July 2026 data analysis from cryptocurrency analytics firm Nansen.”
“The coin plummeted roughly 97% to 98%, trading at $1.76 down from its peak of $75.35”
Of course of Orange man did not lose, Orange con artist made over a billion on his fake ass coin. This was not obvious until recently, when it was discovered Trump was making fake public announcements while he traded the oil markets.
Hi Jack,
Yup. Barron – all of 20 years old – is now worth $150 million, apparently. I understand why Communism sells.
I call him Robber Barron.
I do not like them
in them in the white house
I do not like those money sucking louses
I do not like them
here or there.
I do not like them
anywhere.
I do not like them Trumps or their scams.
I do not like them, Sam-I-am.
As far as I’m concerned anyone stupid enough to “invest” in anything Trump related deserves the fleecing they get.
Trump made a 4th speech of our nation being winners. But there were few “winners” with his own meme coin.
764,000 lost money on Trump meme coins, while 58 profited
“Of the 2 million accounts that have purchased the $TRUMP coin, 764,000 have lost money on it, according to data that blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis shared with CNBC. Most invested in smaller amounts of the token, the media outlet reported.
Fifty-eight accounts — known as crypto “wallets” — made more than $10 million apiece, totaling roughly $1.1 billion in profits, per CNBC.”
Moral lesson. Never trust a lover of Israel or a con artist like Trump. I do not understand how anyone can be foolish enough to buy these make believe crypto fake money thingies. There are now millions of crypto coins and IMO probably 99%+ are headed to the dumpster of history. We are in a speculative fever of epic proportions, and once it breaks the fallout will be on a Biblical scale of a catastrophe.
Speculative point – the original crypto was Bitcoin, which is currently in a big downtrend. If it breaks again a new much lower level, that could spell doom for all the millions of meme coins. I expect most cryptos to go to zero in the near future when this speculative age comes to an end.
The current live price for the OFFICIAL TRUMP token ($TRUMP) is $1.69 USD
Official Melania Meme ($MELANIA) token:
$13.05 peak to 8.2 cents now (down 99.37%)
However, buyers got this free picture which has some value:
https://media.gq-magazine.co.uk/photos/5d138cdfb6fee943dfc9d65f/16:9/w_1600,c_limit/Melania-Trump-06-GQ-7-Nov16_Antoine-Verglas_b.jpg
Melania had a coin, also? Geeeeeeeeez. Trumps are cleaning up. MAGA repugliclowns are getting what they deserve trusting those cons.
Such cars are purchased primarily by two types of people: Those who have so much money that they don’t care, and can consider an expensive new vehicle as a disposable (Which they now truly are); and those who are pretending to be rich while squandering what could truly make them rich on worthless status symbols.
I knew a pretty rich guy. He drove an old, beat-up Mercedes 300D that he got from a salvage auction. The A/C didn’t work, and it had some dents. The irony? He was in the car business!
My older brother would tell you (from experience) that another good way to lose $100k in four years is to buy a condo in Florida.
Read a meme this morning, Eric, from one of my regular newsletters: “You will be told this Summer to lower your A/C usage to stop overwhelming the electrical grid. While being told to drive electric cars”. File this under the “You Cannot Make This Up” file.
Hi Shadow,
I don’t know if you heard, but in France, there was actually a politician who tried to blame Americans’ use of air conditioning and President Trump for global warming and a recent heat wave in the country. It sounded like a variation of the bull shit claim a few years ago that we were in a “Pandemic of the unvaccinated” and that the “unvaccinated” were prolonging the “COVID pandemic”.
Aaah yes, I read that, and could only laugh at the absurdity of it all. But then again, this IS the nation of France we are talking about so….
The trouble with Ev’s.
1. Range anxiety.
2. Explosion fears.
3. 60% depreciation.
4. Elon Musk’s connection to Jeffrey Epstein.
5. Exploited Third World child labor.
6. They brick in cold weather.
7. Insanely high insurance rates due to repair costs and the liability of exploding batteries.
8. Insurance companies writing off ev’s in a minor crash.
9. Ev battery replacement up to $60,000 or more.
10. Inadequate charging stations powered by diesel generators.
11. Non eco-friendly emissions in a fire and during the manufacturing process.
12. Ev’s chew thru tires like a drunken sailor.
13. Tire and brake pollution.
14. Suspension failure.
16. Ev’s chew thru brakes like a drunken sailor.
17. Pushed by the WEF.
18. No ability to charge EV if you live in an apartment.
19. Having to wait for EV to charge.
20. Charger point vandalism.
21. Collapsing electric grid cannot cope.
22. Lose charge range in cold weather.
23. If the manufacturer goes out of business, now you have to junk your EV, because it has become worth absolute zero.
24. Absolute nightmare to put out EV fires.
25. Electrical, electronic, and software problems will leave you stranded.
26. Toxic gas vapors from EV explosion will kill you.
27. Not suitable for road trips.
28. Rapid battery degradation over time as miles rack up.
29. Ev’s too heavy for crash barriers (guard rails).
30. All Ev charging is paid for with digital currency.
31. Copper thieves are targeting EV charging cables and wind turbines.
32. Ev’s are causing double the road damage.
33. Gaslighting from EV manufacturers is pouring gasoline on the fire of EV rejection.
34. EV parking bans in parking decks and enclosed parking spaces due to fires.
35. Swasticars.
36. EV’s are death traps!
This isn’t my list but find it amusing.
What the heck is a Swasticar? 😀
Swasticar? Is that a reference to Tesla EVs? Once upon a time, $#!+ Libs LOVED Elon Musk for his Tesla EVs but flipped & started calling him a NAZI and even spray painting swastikas on Teslas after Musk, for a short time, joined DOGE in the Trump 2.0 administration.
As for EVs & the bull shit excuse of cliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimate change being used to justify pushing them on the masses, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are governments STILL pushing “EVs for all!”.
Ahh as in Deutsche Fallschirmjäger and cohorts. 😉
Do not forget: Utterly unreliable if you live in a state that has real Winters (aka, long and cold).
I’ve recommended hundreds of anti-EV articles on my website.
This is the longest list I’ve ever seen. But …
Electric vehicles (EVs) often have brake pads and rotors that last 2–3 times longer than those on a similar‑weight gas car, thanks to regenerative braking
“Ev battery replacement up to $60,000 or more”
No
EV battery replacement is very rare outside of crash damage
A full battery pack replacement for the Model 3 Standard Range (60 kWh) runs approximately $8,000–$12,000 for parts, with $1,500–$2,500 in labor — bringing the total to $9,500–$14,500.
“Rapid battery degradation over time as miles rack up”
No
Typical battery will lose about 20% of range in 20 years when
keeping charge between 20–80% to avoid stress at extremes
That’s not rapid … Research show that keeping your EV’s battery between 10% and 90% state-of-charge (SoC) can be just as good for long-term health as the more common 20–80% “sweet spot”. Then you would lose 20% of advertised range, instead of 40%
Based on Ford testing in 2022 with the outside temperature of zero degrees F., the range will decline by forty to sixty percent for a typical EV.
Parking your EV in a very hot climate, such as in Florida, and doing a lot of fast charging will both reduce battery life. There’s no good reason to buy a new EV. some used evs are bargains due to the fast depreciation, but new EVs had a lot more quality problems than ICE vehicles when they were new. If I ever bought a used car, I’d want one whose brand had a great track record for reliability. No EVs would meet my standards
Thanks for posting this list. I will repost it on other sites. Worse than I thought. That is a long list.
“Not suitable for road trips” is a recent disadvantage I have recently discovered for Prius hybrids.
I talked to a lady in Medford who bought a used “Prius C” in Portland. I was seriously thinking of buying that car, so I went out of my way to talk to owners around town.
After one year of use the car suddenly went tits up as she was taking a friend to her doctor’s appointment. She told me the car went completely dead. Her friend missed her appointment. She had it towed to the Medford Toyota and they replaced the hybrid battery – she said it cost her $4500.
So what really happened is the previous owner unloaded the Prius near the end of the battery life. Apparently the Prius is not designed to function without the big battery. Thus this car, used, is not a good choice for road trips, like the annual family vacation. If it dies on vacation you will have a big problem on your hand and might ruin your time off.
Toyota Prius hybrid and plug-in EV batteries typically last between 150,000 and 200,000 miles, or about 10 to 15 years, before needing a replacement
My former next door neighbor had a 2005 Toyota prius which still had the original battery pack in 2024 when he traded it in and bought an EV
Is there a way to test the battery pack before purchase? I am very interested in getting a Prius C and doing hypermiling, like in this video, Darin of Ecomodder website posted this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAocwToZWVQ
The most accurate and widely trusted DIY method to measure a used Prius hybrid battery’s capacity is using a Bluetooth OBD2 adapter combined with the Dr. Prius mobile app.
The test procedure is very strange, and I have doubts about whether it is really that accurate
The Toyota Prius has proved to be a well-engineered vehicle, like most Toyota products. One thing I wonder about is DISPOSAL, once they’re no longer repairable. I had heard that few if any wreckers will accept them, and those that do charge for it. Any truth to that?
“34. EV parking bans in parking decks and enclosed parking spaces due to fires.”
And for causing them to collapse, for being too damned heavy!
EVs spontaneously catch on fire and cause cargo ships to burn and sink in the Pacific Ocean.
I would also be concerned if the battery pack had been damaged in any way in the four years the glorified golf cart was on the road.
Or by means of the battery jusr being four years older.
If so, that car is a ticking time bomb because if the battery pack cells are damaged, you can have thermal runaway and a fire hotter than those in hell that will require 30,000 gallons or more to extinguish.
Can’t say that about an ICE car.
And let’s not forget the poor Porsche Taycan with ~50% depreciation in 3-4 years. That’s a feat no other Porsche can claim.
Yet, you still have people trying to polish the EV turd. Sad.
“The reason why is that a four-year-old EV has a four-year-old battery – one that may not have another four years of useful life left.” EP
WRONG
Modern EVs (2022 and newer): Studies from EV data firms like Recurrent show a battery replacement rate of just 0.3% outside of manufacturer recalls.
“If the battery was subjected to regular bouts of “fast” charging, its useful life has probably isn’t much longer.” EP
WRONG
An electric vehicle (EV) that relies on 10% high-power fast charging can expect to retain roughly 88% of its original battery capacity over an eight-year period … compared to 88% for an EV that primarily uses lower-power AC home charging
Roughly 80% to 90% of all EV charging occurring at home or work. Buying a used EV for a bargain price would make no sense if you couldn’t charge it at home.
Richard,
You keep posting garbage stats from garbage sources that are nothing less than EV apologist sources. That University of Michigan one, for instance. It is like quoting the WHO and CDC about the “safety” and “efficacy” of (cough) “vaccines.”
You go on to defend a 12 percent loss in charge capacity over eight years, as if that were not a big deal. Come again? Any manufacturer of gas-powered vehicles that sold gas powered vehicles that suffered a 12 percent decrease in originally advertised mileage over eight years would be massively sued – rightly so.
Most EVs tout a driving range of 250-300 miles under optimum conditions. A 12 percent loss would be a significant reduction in driving range, especially when you factor in the need to keep enough charge/range in reserve ( at least 20 indicated miles remaining) as a cushion to make sure you make it to the place you’re planning on charging and also to compensate for the loss due to very cold or very hot ambient temps. An EV that touts say 250 miles of best-case driving range probably only has a practical driving range of about 200 miles. Subtract 12 percent from that and you have about 175 miles of range.
You apparently think this is no big deal. My 25 year old truck hasn’t lost any of its original driving range. That is prolly why it is still worth about two-thirds what I paid for it almost 15 years ago.
EVs suck the tailpipes they haven’t got.
And the covid vaccines were “safe and effective”.
You can cherry pick “data” to justify damn near anything.
…and Bill Clinton told the truth (bwa ha ha), when he famously said, “I Did Not Have Sex With That Woman”. See, new definitions for just about everything!
Or corporate media running stories during COVID with headlines like “Large study proves face diapers stop the spread of COVID”, but if one actually read the story or the study being cited, it showed that when it came to “The spread of COVID”, any difference between areas WITH face diaper mandates and areas WITHOUT such mandates was miniscule.
Hi Shadow!
I remember the Mizz Lewinsky stuff like it just happened yesterday. I was working up in DC at The Times back then and it was the talk of the town. Republicans were certain Clinton would have to resign. It turned out he didn’t – because pretty much no one else cared.
Hi Eric,
The ironic thing about the Clinton impeachment was, if Bill Clinton was actually forced to resign as president at the time, we would have ended up with Al Gore as president, and who knows what he might have tried to shove down Americans’ throats under guise of “Fighting global warming/ climate change”. As you may remember, after he left office as Vice president, Gore made a ton of money himself off of the whole cliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimate change scam and even made a film pushing climate change hysteria laughably called “An Inconvenient Truth”, as NONE of the predictions that I know of made in that film or by Gore himself have ever come true.
The film should have been titled” a convenient lie”. The green grifting cunt made lots of sheckels off that little project. Hopefully he joins John Mccain in hell, rumor has it , warming occurs there.
Amen, Nova –
I loathe these multi-millionaire pricks who preach “sacrifices” for the “environment” they never make. I believe Gore owned a Cadillac Escalade at the time the film was made. I know he lives on a large estate and sacrifices nothing for the “environment.”
Eric, the ironic thing about these multimillionaires lecturing to the masses on “Sacrifices” for the “environment” is that not only do these super wealthy elitists not make ANY sacrifices themselves, the same people who uncritically regurgitate the narratives pushed by them tend to be people on the Political Left who constantly claim to hate the super wealthy.
Well said Nova. I don’t know if you already knew, but Bill Gates, who himself was a BIG pusher of cliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiimate change hysteria for years, actually admitted last year that “Climate change” WASN’T an “Existential threat to humanity”. Some have speculated that he did that because he sensed he could no longer grift off of climate change but make MORE money off of his other years long grift, that being VACCINES.
Nope, no one cared, because (sadly), Bill Clinton stated “It’s The Economy, Stupid”. Ole Bill was right. That is all it took for Bill to get away with selling everything to China. His version of bread and circuses.
any statistics you don’t agree with are immediately dismissed as garbage, like the Donald Grump “it’s a hoax” style?
The 12% decline of EV range in the eight years is not a big problem simply because there are other range problems that are bigger.
If you keep the charge between 20% and 80% of capacity, you automatically lose 40% of advertised range. With 10% to 90%, you would lose 20% of advertised range
You will lose range in very cold weather
32 F. -20% to -30%
0 F. -40% to -60%
With heavy fast charging the decline in eight years could double to 24%, rather than 12%
When you compare the advertised EV range with 100% charge v. the actual range that owners get, a 12% range deterioration in eight years is not such a big deal.
age related battery range deterioration has a declining trend that is worse in the first few years
There’s a saying, Richard, about not being able to see the forest on account of the trees.
When Richard -EV apologist- Greene addresses the list offered by “That AMC Guy”, posted above, then maybe I’ll lend him a smidgen of validity.
I did address the list with a few corrections. My climate & energy website has recommended hundreds of articles that are anti-new EV, with not one article promoting buying a new EV. I prefer accuracy rather than automatically agreeing with every anti-EV claim. … I oppose EV’s, battery “farms”, solar energy, wind energy & Donald Grump … but I do love CO2.
I would politely remind everyone Richard also defended the MSM false narratives around CO2 heating the atmosphere, even as a weak global warming gas. Uh huh. Prove it. If CO2 is actually doing something in the way of heating, and it is minor, how do you prove it? How can you seperate the human caused warming from what the planet is already doing all by itself. The current warm phase started 18,000 years ago when the last glaciation receded.
Top 10 Climate Change Lie #2 Exposed: CO2 Causes Dangerous Global Warming
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH5ATcpMJQo
I found his rebuttals irksome because he refused to admit the CO2 could not force temperature. CO2 is not causal to temperature swings – and this can easily be demonstrated by studying ice core data: CO2 is always at the highest levels (in the ice age cycle) when the planet cools, and CO2 is always at the lowest level when the planet warms. CO2 has nothing to do with what the sun and planet are doing.
The very premise of CO2 as the temperature driver is patently false. Richard REFUSES to admit this. (If this is not true, I hope he posts a rebuttal)
At no time in the past 4.5 billion years has CO2 ever forced temperature on earth. Al Gore’s claim was wrong. Of course Al Gore is a political stooge with no scientific training. But Al Gore, a slavish Rothschild whore, successfully bullshitted the world audience into believing complete falsehoods with his movie.
Once again, the Jews behind the AGW scam, have inverted reality. Al Gore, the Goyim stooge, did their bidding not even knowing it! They did it with the Torah, the NT, and the Holocaust, not to mention 911 and the Oct. Hamas attack. What people think and what reality is are two different things, and Jews are the negative force creating that dichotomy!
The basic premise of man made Global Warming (AGW) is that man made CO2 emissions are causing runaway Global Warming. That claim is patently false. Destroying the world economy over a false premise should be exposed, not defended.
People really need to figure out any narrative being pushed by scumbag politicians, the WEF, the MSM is probably false. Lies is how the elite and the learned get control of the population.
“CO2 is always at the highest levels (in the ice age cycle) when the planet cools, and CO2 is always at the lowest level when the planet warms.” YJ
The opposite is true
In the ice core era CO2 in the atmosphere is inversely related to CO2 in the oceans
Warmer oceans = more CO2 in the atmosphere, while colder oceans = less CO2 in the atmosphere
“The basic premise of man made Global Warming (AGW) is that man made CO2 emissions are causing runaway Global Warming” YJ
WRONG
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) does not predict human CO2 emissions will trigger “runaway warming”.
Earth did not have runaway warming when CO2 in the atmosphere was 4000 PPM. There is a natural negative feedback that prevents runaway warming. It is called the Stefan–Boltzmann law (as Earth gets warmer it becomes more efficient at cooling itself by sending heat toward outer space)
Thermal radiation increases dramatically with even a small rise in temperature, a warming Earth sheds heat into space at a highly accelerated rate, creating a powerful negative feedback loop that stabilizes the planet’s climate.
There is nothing dangerous about the past 50 years of global warming since 1975
Unfortunately, it’s inflation and things like “cash for clubkers” that keep the value of your pickup at 2/3 of the original nominal price. What would that retail price be in TODAY’S inflated dollars?
Hi Douglas,
Yes, there’s truth in that. Still, according to the government, $14k in 2002 (the price of a new Nissan Frontier regular cab 2WD that year) is about $26k today. I agree it’s all beyond obnoxious. If anything, a 2026 version of my ’02 truck ought to cost less than $14k due to all the tooling having been amortized and so on. It’s sick the way we’re being silently screwed. Inflationists are criminals and ought to be punished accordingly.
‘An electric vehicle (EV) that relies on 10% high-power fast charging can expect to retain roughly 88% of its original battery capacity over an eight-year period … compared to 88% for an EV that primarily uses lower-power AC home charging.’
‘88% … compared to 88%.’ Something is wrong with these numbers, or the sentence structure, or both.
Aren’t you overdue for an over-the-air update to squelch these embarrassing logical lapses?
Both rounded to 88%, so the difference was statistically insignificant. I said that in an awkward way.
‘An electric vehicle (EV) that relies on 10% high-power fast charging can expect…’
They live!
Chevrolet Bolt EV / Bolt EUV (2021–2023): This is widely considered the ultimate budget EV bargain. You can frequently find them under $20,000
If the author claims the lifespan of a used EV will require a new battery pack, don’t listen to him
RG
Resident Contrarian
The truth is that we don’t really know the shape of the battery degradation curve. In your other post, you referenced 0.3% on basically new batteries and then provided a guestimate for the future, eight years out. We will have better information in the next few years. In the meantime, all we have is guesses.
We have good data for eight years of use
It’s the 20 year data that has to be extrapolated from cars with fewer than 20 years of life.
Post it
https://www.geotab.com/blog/ev-battery-health/
“Low DCFC frequency: Vehicles where DCFC constituted less than 12% of total charging sessions experienced an average annual degradation of 1.5%.”
8 x 1.5% = 12%
“High DCFC frequency: Vehicles that exceeded 12% DCFC usage saw a full percent increase in average annual degradation of 2.5%.
8 x 2.5% = 20%
Your link is low on actual data, high on presumptions and projections, but a decent guide for customers to understand charging and usage. What would really be revealing is actual r/1000 data by time in service, for each manufacturer. Something we will never see.
That link has far more data than a typical article (I read over 70 articles a week, 52 weeks of the year)
When new tech comes along, and you don’t have money to burn, then waiting for it to prove itself may be a good idea. I love the idea of a car in which I do not have to buy gasoline, but EV’s have yet to prove their economics and reliability for me to switch.
The one big thing I do not like about EV’s is their weight. A Tesla car weighs as much as 3.5 geo metros. That is really heavy. I’ve own full sized trucks which weigh less than a Tesla. All that mass to move around makes me believe the EVs being offered can not be very efficient.