A change of topic today. For the past year I've been eyeing used BMW i3s. My employment situation severely changed my commute and so I was considering a change in vehicle. At one point I was looking at an 2015(?) i3 REX. Black of course. I knew that the battery range meant I could get to work on the battery (at least in decent weather) but I would be on gasoline on the way home.
But I was wary of the battery. I've had phones, earbuds, and other things with lithium ion batteries and I know that its only a matter of time before they go bye-bye. This particular model was ~19k at the time. I passed on it and went on with my life.
A few weeks ago, I saw an article online where people who recently purchased an I3 discovered they needed to replace the battery. The replacement cost would be between $30k and 70k. More than the vehicle was purchased for. More than the vehicle was purchased for NEW. I said then , that once word got out how expensive the battery is, Nobody in their right mind would pay for one of these vehicles. It is literally a wallet destroying time bomb.
Lo and behold, I took a gander at Autotempest.com and saw that the bottom has fallen out from under the i3 and prices have dropped into the mid to upper 4 figure range. It was bound to happen and it underscores a major thing that needs to be addressed if EVs are going to be suitable replacements for gasoline and hybrid vehicles:
The Battery Problem.
Imagine you purchased a car and every year it lost power. Doesn't matter how much maintenance you do or how many miles you do, the engine would lose power. Eventually you'd get in the car and it wouldn't start. Now some people would get lucky and get 300k before that happened but on average, it would hit people at 100k (I'm making up numbers here for effect). Imagine then, you had to replace the engine on this car to the tune of more than the car is worth. Imagine even worse that if you wait too long, there will be NO ENGINE for you to replace it with!
Imagine the second hand market for such a vehicle. Yeah, me neither.
Yeah, battery tech will get better in the future (and hopefully far less exploitative of child labour) but there needs to be a widespread development of third party battery services and suppliers who can provide cost effective replacement batteries for old(er) EVs. If not the environmental waste that will be "old EVs" will be massive.* There needs to be an ability to put new batteries with better range and BMS into older vehicles as well. There is absolutely no reason that an I3 battery cannot be replaced with an upgraded one from a 3rd party. These are carbon fiber vehicle with mostly aluminum appendages. These can go for years. We already know the industry is going out have to move on from Lithium Ion tech. There simply isn't enough of it to replace all gasoline propelled vehicles and the environmental impact is huge (we just don't see it). When that transition happens, all the current vehicles will be dead if they cannot be retrofitted and nobody in their right mind would pay more than a few bucks for a used one knowing that the battery will go to sleep on them in short order.
So the problem, at least A problem I see that needs to be addressed quickly is the battery replacement problem. I believe the range problem will eventually sort itself out with tech (and not weight 4 tons), but in the end, it is simply not feasible to expect people to dole out 5 figures for a replacement battery or purchase another vehicle (and putting yet another one in the EV graveyard) when their battery degrades too much.
Meanwhile, I continue to look at a 120ah i3 REX (with sun roof) which I too can put a gas tank in the frunk and hope I don't rear end someone.
