ElectricCar Bone Yard - France
This is a bone yard near Paris, Francewith hundreds of electric powered cars. Mind you these are only cars used bythe City of Paris and not personal vehicles. All of these have the same issue... the battery storage cells have given out and need replaced. Why not justreplace them you ask? Well two reasons. First the battery storage cells costalmost double what the vehicle cost new, and second no landfill or disposalswill allow the batteries to be disposed of there. So these green fairy taleelectric cars are all sitting in vacant lots while their batteries drain toxinsinto the ground.
Still think we need to go green???
Nissan Leaf $33,000 battery bill
When parts prices go out of control, andAustralian Consumer Law is treated as if optional - this is the kind of thingthat happens
Phillip Carlson bought a Nissan Leafin August 2012, which cost about $53,500. Its seven years old today, and it’sworth maybe $12,000 - if you can find someone dumb enough to buy it. Let’s lethim tell the story.
“I bought anelectric car from Nissan with 5 years warranty on the battery. They claimed175km range. From new I only ever got 120km. Now I can BARELY get 35-40kmduring winter or even 25km if I use the heater. The warranty says the batteryis bad if it drops to 8 out of 12 bars, which mine has.
“I took it in and they claim the battery is totallyfine and there’s nothing wrong with it and gave me a $33,000 invoice for a newone!!!!! Nissan just won’t listen and I’ve run out of all hope. I paid $53,500for this car and it’s pretty useless now.” - Phillip Carlson
The $33k quote
Here’sthe official battery replacement quote from Lennock Motors in the ACT. $750 toreplace the battery, an incredible $29,600 for the battery, you Nissan chumps.Plus GST: that’s $33,385 in total. On a shitheap worth $12k, on a good daytoday.
I note Nissan and other carmakers bitching and moaningabout the lack of government support for EVs in Australia. And I’d suggest thatif you’re a carmaker like Nissan, seemingly hell-bent on taking your smallgroup of EV first adopters to the prison shower in this way, then you simply donot deserve any taxpayer support. You short-sighted mother-lovers.
And I say thisbecause that kind of behavior ignores the fact that the easiest guy on earth tosell a new Leaf to is the satisfied owner of an old Leaf.
Thisextortionate conduct hardly screams: ‘We’ll take care of you.’ Maybe it does -in a Bill Cosby way.
So, let’s thinkabout this, and what it really means, because the conduct of organizations tellsyou more about them than the statements they make.
This is a tacitadmission by Nissan that the Leaf is a disposable car. A $50,000 disposablecar. Which doesn’t seem very environmentally sustainable to me.
Obviousconclusion on the f*ed-up cost of replacing this battery: For $30,000 youcould buy about 20,000 litres of petrol. Which is enough to drive a Leaf-sizedconventional car about 400,000 kilometres.
So if you arebuying your Leaf EV to save money on fuel, even if you are getting yourelectricity free from a fat rooftop solar array, every day, you better hope youget 400,000 k’s out of the battery. #unlikely.
If you don’t,you’re just kidding yourself. And the leaf is about $30,000 more expensive thana Leaf-sized conventional car. So make that 800,000 K’s - to break even,financially. In what universe does that sound like a sound financial plan?
If you’resaving the planet, with your Leaf, it’s even worse: Consigning the Leaf tolandfill at seven years of age because it’s grossly uneconomical to repairseems to me like a fairly unsustainable use of the earth’s limited resources.So does throwing away the old battery and replacing it with a new one everyseven years.
This is a vitalpoint. EVs and internal combustion are in a race to reduce CO2. And there’s noquestion: Internal combustion starts off ahead because EVs are filthier toproduce - that’s mainly the battery. So, in other words, on a lifecycleassessment basis, EVs start filthy and get cleaner over time, while internalcombustion starts cleaner and gets filthier as the K’s mount up.
An ADAC report out of Europe from April 2018 found that equivalent EVs and petrol cars broke even onCO2 (on a lifecycle basis) at about 116,000 kilometres, and after that, EVscrept ahead. That’s based on Germany’s grid composition.
(Australia’sgrid is filthier, admittedly - so it takes a greater distance to reach thispoint of emissions equivalence.)
This means EVscleaning things up is - at best - a long-term proposition. And if you’rethrowing the vehicle away at 88,907 kilometres, which is where Mr Carlson’sshitbox Leaf is at right now, or if you’re replacing the battery, your EV isnever going to be cleaner than an equivalent small petrol powered car.
