It’s happening rather earlier than I thought it would, but the recent announcement from GM about replacement batteries means that if you own a Spark EV you are royally screwed and your car now has an expiration date, I think we are reaching the point where we have to realize there’s more considerations to the overall environmental impact of an EV than even the replacement batteries.
It’s interesting to see the twists and turns in this new chapter of the automobile. And in this particular twist, we’re reaching the point where there will be a significant used BEV market. However, many of those BEV’s will need a refreshed battery. Now, evidently GM has decided to pass on this, but they are hardly unique on having issues when the inevitability of battery wear. Tesla is charging over twenty grand for some replacement batteries. Nissan Leaf owners are fortunate enough to have an aftermarket that will provide them with new, higher-capacity batteries, but all of this is just kicking the can down the road. The can being “We’re going to be throwing away lots of perfectly usable cars”.
The average age of cars is increasing. Although many people point at this as an indicator of the economy going down the tank because boomers/millennials/zoomers/$scapegoat , if anything it’s just an indication of how mature cars are and the fact that for many people even an old car is better than “good enough”. To the point where they consider the repair and slightly increased upkeep of keeping them on the road acceptable over just throwing them away and buying a new car. This is great, less people buying new cars means more reuse and the CAFE standards mean that most of the vehicles in circulation are actually very efficient and can continue to run indefinitely (providing there’s a parts supply). EV’s have an expiration date. All of them. Battery and manufacturing tech advances on the last 20 years leave the old BEV’s in the dust, but until engineers and scientists crack the nut on the wear-less battery (or at least, one that will not appreciably wear for a decade or two), that expiration date is on the annoyingly early side of the average vehicle age.
Worse still is that most of us are uncaring. So, when the battery on our BEV dies, and we see the price of a reputable manufacturer replacement (assuming it exists, unless we decide to go for standardized battery packs you will be at the mercy of your manufacturer or the aftermarket, neither of which can be reasonably expected to build replacements forever) we’re much more likely to throw away the car. The one that is still perfectly functional apart from the dead battery. It’s utterly opposed to “Reduce” (because you will have to buy a new item) and “Reuse” (because there’s a chance you won’t be able to and the thing you’re throwing away has only one consumable item wrong with it)
It’s weird when I get to note that something isn’t completely GM’s fault, but I guess when I do find one, it naturally is the one where the only way they could’ve fixed it is by upending the fundamental laws of physics.
