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What drives salvage production EV battery prices ?

1096 Views 4 Replies 4 Participants Last post by  brian_
From the UK...

Hunting around for a 10kWh pack and it occurs to me as I trawl the breakers, apart from us DIY lot (relatively not that many), who is going to buy a less than 5yr old salvage battery (or motor or inverter) ?

With a 5-8yr warranty on the battery, battery leases and ultra reliable motors and solid state electronics, who are the customers?
Either someone is driving up the prices (artificially) or there are some dreaming sellers basing their scrap part prices on what it costs to manufacture.

It's not like you can put a dent in it and need a new one, or damage it in a way that would not destroy the rest of the car.

There are static applications but I can't see the cost/benefit of a (e.g) Tesla pack over modern wet cells

In 8 years if someone's EV battery is dead (seems unlikely if there is an 8 year warranty but...), the original battery technology in the car is going to be so far outdated that it is unlikely to be replaced with the original spec.

If my thinking is correct as more EV cars on the road means more hitting the wall/each other, the price of these packs is going to plummet and shortly.

Any (on topic:rolleyes: please) thoughts?
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House storage usage will climb as well, and well-treated EV banks still have some life left in them for that.
With a 5-8yr warranty on the battery, battery leases and ultra reliable motors and solid state electronics, who are the customers?
In the UK Tesla cars have a 4 year 50,000 mile warranty. If you have a problem after those milestones you either pay Tesla to fix the car or you are on your own (Tesla will not sell you parts nor provide information so that you can fix your car). What is happening today is that a small number of breakers are importing Tesla's from the US to order so that people can repair their cars. What's left over from these efforts are often the parts you see on the open market here.

Tesla parts are also readily available from Norway, Germany, and Lithuania. Norway and Germany are expensive because they have a very active home market in spare parts. Lithuania is cheaper but the cars are less likely to have reliable histories :rolleyes:

DIY solar battery storage is very active in the UK and very few batteries come to the open market as a result. I recently sold a couple of hundred Leaf cells without even offering them for sale beyond mentioning it to a few colleagues.

I believe supply will get easier as more cars come off warranty and demand for parts and expertise increases... certain items however will probably get even more expensive - 'large' Tesla motors for example are beginning to excite people in the motorsports industry :cool:
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House storage usage will climb as well, and well-treated EV banks still have some life left in them for that.
Well the big benefits of HV car batteries are size, weight and life. If half the life is used and the other two are not really as important in a static environment then the price will have to come down considerably to make a real market (which again will be relatively tiny anyway)

In the UK Tesla cars have a 4 year 50,000 mile warranty.If you have a problem after those milestones you either pay Tesla to fix the car or you are on your own (Tesla will not sell you parts nor provide information so that you can fix your car).
That's pretty harsh - but then like new Porsche/BMW/Merc's if you can afford the large amount of cash to buy one upfront then you are less worried about dealer service cost.
What Tesla's policy would do in a traditional car market though is kill the used market for older cars - but in the EV market that is already being killed by the rapid advance in battery technology.
In the UK Tesla cars have a 4 year 50,000 mile warranty. If you have a problem after those milestones you either pay Tesla to fix the car or you are on your own (Tesla will not sell you parts nor provide information so that you can fix your car).
What Tesla's policy would do in a traditional car market though is kill the used market for older cars - but in the EV market that is already being killed by the rapid advance in battery technology.
That appears to have happened in Canada. Overpriced "luxury" brands depreciate steeply compared to more reasonable cars, but among the only 88 Tesla examples in the whole country currently listed by AutoTrader.ca, the price plummets for anything older than 2016. Some of these owners (with the low odometer readings) have probably spent $3 in depreciation (plus all the other operating expenses) for each kilometre driven since new. It would be cheaper to take a limo everywhere. :rolleyes:

Even if I won a multi-million-dollar lottery, I wouldn't pay even half the new price for a Tesla with only a year left on the full warranty.
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