Thinking about buying a used electric car? The cost to replace its battery could exceed the vehicle’s value. For a St. Petersburg family, that is the shocker when mechanics diagnosed its battery needed to be replaced. This 17-year-old was excited to get a car to drive herself to and from school. Her parents spent $11,000 on a used electric car for her. It’s a Ford Focus Electric. The car is a 2014 model, with 60,000 miles. Replacing the Ford Focus battery costs $14,000, exceeding the car’s book value! 😥
This family found out the hard way what a new battery cost for an EV. Video credit, 10 Tampa Bay News/Rumble
10 Tampa Bay News reports: Electric cars have become quite popular lately. And with gas prices and inflation, it seems like a great way to help the environment and save money in the long term. But, what happens when the battery needs replacing? And what happens when the replacement battery costs more than the car itself? For a St. Petersburg family, that is the exact position they found themselves in. Avery Siwinski who is 17 years old was excited to get a car to drive herself to and from school. Her parents spent $11,000 on a used electric car for her. It’s a 2014 Ford Focus Electric, with 60,000 miles.
It was fine at first, she said. I loved it so much. It was small and quiet and cute. And all of a sudden it stopped working. Avery had her car for six months before her dashboard started to light up with problematic symbols. In March, it started giving an alert, she said. And then we took it to the shop and it stopped running. In the midst of the car troubles, the family was dealing with tragedy. In June, Avery’s father died following a stage four colon cancer diagnosis. Her grandfather, Ray Siwinski stepped in to try to get the car issues sorted. Turns out, this is a pretty common problem for this particular car, Ray Siwinski said. The car has sat at Auto Nation Ford in Pinellas County for the last few months. Ray said he was able to get a quote on a replacement battery for the electric car. The Ford dealership had advised us that we could replace the electric car battery, he said. It would only cost $14,000!
Last month I blogged this article about Walmart’s new fleet of Ford E-Transit vans and the battery warranty is 8yrs/100k miles. The debacle may be the range and charging time and its estimated 100-mile range. It sat on the same spot for over a month before going into service.
Another interesting read, while you’re here, is about this Rivian EV Pickup truck that towed a car on a trailer across the country having to stop every 100 miles to recharge. In my humble opinion, the technology is not yet there to go all electric with vehicles. The charging time and range make the EV impractical for everyday use, like Walmart’s E-Transit vans being used for delivery in rural areas.
FidoSysop
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So they buy an 8 yr old ev & didn’t do any research, just bought it because it was cute? They deserve exactly what they got.
As it’s commonly said in the car business, there’s an ass for every seat. Should have researched it first!
I have read articles about how to get the most for your money when it comes to car use. The best strategy seems to be: buy a new car and keep it 20 years. Second best is buy a new car and keep it 15 years. The articles dealt with ICE cars.
Now I want to find some stats on cost of ownership and trade-in values of EVs as they age and lose their warranties. I have seen claims that total battery failure is very rare, batteries just lose range slowly as they age.
I’ve also read that EVs have a much higher incidence of being “totaled” in accidents than ICE cars.
Long gone are the days when cars were built to last. Chrysler went through this in the 70s. People were keeping their cars for 10-20 years. In the 90s they turned out junk just like the mark-of-crap GM with their crankshaft breaking, head bolt snapping Diesel engines!
In my opinion its better to lease a new car for three years or until the bumper to bumper warranty expires and turn it in and lease another. Considering the high-cost or maintenance and repairs it could get expensive with no warranty. Beware of after market extended warranties that have lots of exclusions. Say for instance, the a/c compressor is under warranty but not the receiver-dryer, accumulator, liquid line or expansion valve is not.
Going back to my younger days in the used car business I remember batteries dying on the first cold snap of winter. Then there was the Sears Die-Hard batteries that did just that die. There were six cells generating two volts each. They were connected in series making twelve-volts. When one of those internal cell connectors opened up there was no warning and no jump starting the car either. Happened quite frequently too.
Former Wind Energy Professor here.
The grid cannot handle the loads. The amount of mining of copper and aluminum necessary for the more than hundreds of times of demand in residential areas, is simply mega-huge-ginormous. Think about the number of homes within two blocks of you in a city. Those wires have to carry a LOT of current now for AC, hot water, etc. Add the energy of two cars per house. Your neighborhood is not specified to carry the addition of the capacity for a steel foundry, every square mile. I might be exaggerating, but not by much.
It simply is not going to happen. You are ensuring the intermittency of power grid itself. And rationing from an inadequate grid for all uses. Talk about taking freedom away from being dependent on a single source of energy. If you don’t like the results of “lockdowns,” think about the results of everyone dependent on simple electricity. Now think about the brownouts, outages, and wipeouts the grid has every season of the year for different reasons. Mostly a result of federal one size fits all regulatory environments. What works in deserts, doesn’t work in forest, you ding-a-lings.
You’re talking about THOUSANDS of recharge stations in a fairly populous city, too, everywhere. The congestion of these for people waiting for a recharge. Not quite like pumping in portable, liquid, energy in a few minutes. Great spots for criminality, too. Besides the obvious multiplication of the grid’s physical size, on top of capacity concerns.
This is utter insanity. There is a complete dearth of people who can understand large numbers.
Yes, I’m a conservative I did ride a 10 million dollar ‘educational grant’ for a few years. Until the institution simply closed it down shortly after the money ran out.
Of course, my students reaped the real rewards. A $100k job in 1 year possible, with the 2 year degree. A lot of hot, dangerous work, though. They walked the stage making more money than I did. For 8 years, anyway. I do enjoy engineering challenges as a technician and I love teaching.
Wind turbines are fun, and they can have their place in the diversification of generation sources. For example, they survived Harvey and lowered the days to bring conventional generation online to one day versus 3 (to dry out their generators and perform mandatory safety checks.) So, a few farms CAN be instrumental in the reliability and flexibility of the grid, but they always have to have their output backed up with conventional.
Natural gas IS the real ‘sustainable’ option for main generation, and it can ramp up and down to meet load requirements in virtually no time. It burns clean. Its sin is that it is a second cousin to what they erroneously call ‘fossil’ fuels.
Solar is a nice idea and useful in small or remote applications. But their limited life, hugely toxic manufacturing, clean use, and destructive disposal ‘methods’ by the public make them NOT green, even more than the wind blade disposal problems of the scaled up wind energy boondoggle.
Not to mention the actual expense to the public through taxation and living with the toxic waste of dead solar panels. The toxic waste of dead batteries, multiplied by hundreds of millions of cars… The ‘environmentalists’ want to destroy this planet, as well as its people. They need to go tour the Yellow River in China before they speak on my factual analysis. I, for one, understand how to use exponents in math. So many don’t. Ignorance and un-true, shallow scientific ‘beliefs,’ are going to be our downfall.
If I were in this girl’s shoes I’s contact the Ford US Headquarters and their customer relations department – give them the whole story, and that it really is plain wrong and unfair that this “new technology” is being warrantied like conventional internal combustion cars. Also mention how they’d prefer not make a public show of it of go the legal route.
You’d be surprised how these car manufacturers will bend over backwards to make it right. If they offered new batteries and you pay to install them is not unrealistic…I’ve had sucess in the past. with Nissan, but they all are the same.
Try it…nothing to lose!
Great idea Mike. As it is now an EV is a part’s car when the battery dies. In my opinion as a former car dealer and mechanic, buying a used battery is probably not a wise idea either. Junk yards will sell a bad core battery in a heartbeat if they have one.
Publicity may help out in this situation. Kindly share this post wherever possible to help get the word out!
I have a friend who has a hybrid, the battery is approaching the end of its 10 yr warranty. He thinks he’s going to trade it in on a newer one. I think he’s in for a surprise when he learns the value of an EV with a battery about to go out of warranty.
Some folks with EV trades will wind up further in the bucket if they they have good enough credit to finance the negative equity.
Cadillac is marketing an EV thats not available yet. Guess if they get enough orders they will produce the car. Otherwise give those credit toward another GM vehicle.
Ignorance is not bliss it can send you to the poor house. The old battery also creates a toxic problem which adds to the growing pollution problem!!!!!
And the cobalt required to make the battery comes from China. Hunter Biden did a deal selling an African mine where the batteries cobalt come from to China. That deal was worth millions and how much did the big guy profit on that deal?
Electric cars will never make the grade. If the government were successful in switching us to electric they would have then changed our biggest issue to being the power grid, then next, the environment issues caused by increased electrical needs. Government is trying to grow continually and there is no future in that. We need 1/4 the government we have, or much less even. We need most of the federal government removed down to the Constitution topics and issues handled at the state level. That has a huge benefit of removing much of the corruption, which could well be over half the federal budget when you look at the deeper issues.
There isn’t an honest approach out there yet that’s better than liquid fuels.
The electric grid would be the biggest hurdle in my opinion. Next the charging times are too long, and a road trip is pretty much out of the question as proven by the Riviar cross country adventure. Electric cars are being pushed by our government giving incentives to manafacturers and buyers. Walmart cones to mind with their E-Transit vans, wonder how much $$ the Biden Admin chipped in toward their purchase?
And yes on the corruption with Nasty Pelosi and her husband getting rich on Pfizer stock. Donald Trump had America turned around but they had to steal the election to put the liberal world order in charge. Kick those Rats Out!
Electric cars…dont lower CO2 emissions, dont cost less to run and have no resale value as batteries are a work in progress and will constantly be updated going forward….this is not a Ford thing, this is an electric car thing.
And should electric cars ever become popular…where is the electricity going to come from?
Am not from the US…but you could just about buy a new Ford Focus for $25,000 couldn’t you? I didn’t hear her talking about the expense of a decent charger so I guess she did that the cheapest way possible as well, thereby further diminishing the battery life…just dont get one, and vote for the Don…and everything will be OK.
The moral of this story is, don’t buy an EV, especially used!