Oh yeah, my daily driver is a 20-year-old vehicle. It has cost literally just a couple $thousand in maintenance/repairs in the time we've owned it (probably around 10 years? I forget). It's getting kinda rough, but like... at least it doesn't have a battery replacement looming around the corner that would cost more than the entire price we paid for the vehicle.

I want an electric vehicle, but I'm not willing to pay the insanely high prices they go for. I typically don't want to spend more than $10k on a vehicle and I only have once (and that one got totalled in an accident literally a month or two after I finished paying off its loan). The times I've found a used EV in that price range, it's old enough that it will need a new battery soon, instantly ~doubling the price of the vehicle for me.

I'm in the same boat, or was until I finally caved last year and got my wife a 5 year old vehicle, everything else has had >150k miles and >10 years.

I will say that my '03 Pontiac Vibe GT, at 280,000 miles, no longer has all the horses it did when it was younger. There's still a kick from 6000 to 8200 RPM, but I'm increasingly reluctant to hit that redline once a month to "keep it fresh" like I used to. The gradual compression loss and increased leak-down rate aren't that bad, but it might be 25% fewer horses, I guess. Man, I love that car and that engine. I ought to get it a new set of rings, get the cylinders bored out smooth, and give it fresh bearings. Sadly, the rust that's appearing on the body like a cancer probably makes that not worthwhile...

The good news for electrics is that those older motors will remain almost exactly as powerful as they day when they were new for decades.

Obviously, the fuel tank is still the same size it's always been, but range is not as much of a concern on a gas vehicle because gas stations are everywhere and you can fill up rapidly.

I personally hope that this becomes less of a concern as charger density improves year over year - in particular, as EVs become ubiquitous, landlords will start including L2 chargers in apartment parking complexes. Once everyone can charge in a garage overnight, range anxiety is hugely less important.

This. We have two cars.

One is 8 years old. That's old right? The other is 18 years old.

Neither have had major issues.

TCO is way important than range. You'll likely spend thousands less on maintenance on an EV.

The few oil changes on my recently out of warranty 2021 Toyota have already cost more than the entire maintenance spend on my 2017 Bolt.

The warranty doesn’t suggest the battery will be at 70.00001% on the first day of year 9. It says if it goes below 70% it will get replaced.

That 8 year old Toyota you bought came with a 6 year/60k mile warranty. If you are comfortable driving that to 2.5x the initial warranty then a used Tesla should be good to 250k and 20 years.

Fuel efficiency on an ICE can drop up to 30% after 10 years... the end result is the same. But that's not on anyone's mind when buying a used car.

Batteries are getting cheaper, and I think there is a perception issue here as well as perhaps a real issue of used parts availability.

A brand new Model 3 battery pack, for example, is in the neighborhood of 10 or 11K installed. Or at least it was about a year ago, I don't closely track prices. Blow up an engine, and you won't be far off that in an ICE car. I know someone who just dropped $18K because they blew up both the engine and the transmission in a single shot. Oops.

But the ICE car has cheaper used options, for sure, where you can probably fix a 15 year old car by dropping in a reman or used engine for under five grand. Options for used Tesla battery packs definitely exist but are nowhere as plentiful. Yet!

You're going off the minimum for a warranty replacement, which is pessimistic. Most Teslas with 125K miles have not lost anywhere even close to 30% of the capacity. Typical will be more like 15% or a bit less. And even less than that for the LFP cars, IIRC.

Some cars I expect to do much better, due to manufacturer decisions. Ford, for example, put a pretty big battery in my Lightning, and then made the top 10kWh or so unusable. So far, this means that Lightnings with 100K miles (there aren't a huge number of them yet, but they do exist) often have 0 apparent degradation, or very low single digits.

100k is a regulatory minimum. E.g. Toyota had to certify the original Prius traction batteries for 100k because they were considered part of the emissions control system.

A Prius with only 50% of its battery capacity available is in much better shape than a Tesla with only 50% of its battery capacity.

That's never been my experience...

I just got a repair on my 2023 Camry that I bought used. It was covered under the 36,000 mile bumper to bumper warranty.

I have had previous cars repaired under manufacturer warranty and I always buy used.

I just take it to the nearest certified dealer for that brand of car and they take care of it.

That must be a US specific thing, because that sounds demented.

> Can you even buy one?

I would like to think 1) that the answer is yes and 2) that the price in fact come down over time as battery tech gets cheaper, markets of scale, etc.

Maybe some startup needs to go into the battery replacement market for specific popular models of 8+ year old EVs.

Average lifespan of a car in the US is 16 years, warranty covers half of that.

Given the lowest acceptable threshold for capacity under some warranties (70%) and assuming linear degradation, a 16 year old EV would have 40% capacity (worst case). Given a typical range of 250 for EVs today, that would put you at ~110 miles on a charge.

Seems like it would be a fine car to me given the age. I'd also expect battery swaps to become more common as the industry ages, which will drive prices down.