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World EV Sales Now Equal 18% Of World Auto Sales
(cleantechnica.com)
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
It'll be interesting as these batteries have to be replaced. How will people handle needing to pay a car's price to replace the battery. Pretty daunting as the owner and destroys selling it as a used car.
Battery prices are dropping rapidly, and recycling cells is actually economically viable.
True, but they have a long way to go to be economically feasible for most people. People aren't going to drop $10k on a car repair, and people aren't going to buy a used car they'll immediately have to spend $10k on.
For reference I was looking at Chevy Volts recently. Granted it's a hybrid but it does have a larger battery than other hybrids. The car itself costs $8k to $10k on average and most likely due to the age of the vehicle the battery is on its way out you'll need to spend $5k to $7.5k on a rebuilt hybrid battery. You're almost buying the car twice.
When youre dropping 50-70K per vehicle, an extra 10k 15-20 years down the line isn't really a big deal. Also the average life of a vehicle is around 12 years. Most of these people will be on to their 2nd or 3rd electric car by then or whatever propulsion is popular at that time...