Insane Cost of Replacing an Electric Vehicle Battery Exposed

What is going on everybody? Mike here with EV All Day. So you just bought a new electric vehicle, or you're thinking about buying a second-hand electric car. Well, have you considered the cost to replace that battery in the event that it goes bad or it's at the end of its life when you buy it used? Well, in this video, I'm going to show you the insane numbers it costs to replace an electric vehicle's battery pack these days, from a Nissan Leaf all the way to a Tesla. You might want to sit down for this. When you go buy a traditional vehicle, the first thing manufacturers love to boast about is their limited and powertrain warranties. With a standard internal combustion engine, you have two types of warranties you're covered with. Generally, what's called the bumper to bumper or full coverage warranty, which covers anything that happens to that vehicle, essentially from the front bumper to the rear bumper, is covered for generally 36,000 miles or three years, whichever comes first. And then depending on the manufacturer, so take for example a Ram truck, that powertrain warranty is 100,000 miles. Now the powertrain would be essentially that internal combustion engine, the transmission, the driveshaft, the axles, that driveline essentially, not the wheels, not the suspension, not the body, not the electronics, trim, any of that stuff. So you generally know what you're getting into with an internal combustion engine purchase and the warranties, but what about an electric vehicle? Well, it depends on who you buy them from, but Tesla themselves gives an eight-year warranty, and look at what they say, eight years or 150,000 miles. That's a good number. Now for a Model 3 rear-wheel drive, it's eight years or 100,000 miles, whichever comes first, with a minimum of 70% retention of battery capacity. On a Model S or X, it's eight years or 150,000 miles with that same 70% capacity retention remaining. When that time comes to replace a battery pack, it gets ugly. For example, now this family in Florida, their 17-year-old daughter had a Ford Focus EV. The battery pack eventually died, they went to get it replaced, and they were told, mind you, this was on a 2014 Ford Focus, they were told the battery pack itself cost $14,000. That doesn't include labor, and if any of you know anything about dealerships and their service centers, that labor is going to be through the roof. You're talking probably a $20,000 job. Check out this other example. This kid had a Chevy Volt, got to where the battery pack needed replacing, took it into the service center at Chevy, and was told it would cost $30,000 to replace that battery pack. Mind you, a brand new 2023 Chevy Volt right here on their homepage, starting at $25,600, and as configured in the image here on their website, $28,800. So you could literally, without any haggling at a dealership, go and drop $28,000, which would be less than replacing the battery pack in your old used Chevy Volt. It just doesn't make sense. But what if you don't have $30,000 to drop on a new vehicle, and your battery pack still needs replacing? You're going to be in a very odd predicament. What you can do is you can just go and look at a used vehicle, and if you were to search for a 2018 electric vehicle, a 2017 electric vehicle, for example, right here, here's a 2000, 2017 Nissan Leaf with 11,500 miles for $20,000. They just recently dropped the price $1,700, which means they've had it for some time, they're trying to move it, and I'm sure you could go in there and haggle that down even further and essentially be walking out of there. A full electric vehicle with 11,000 miles for roughly $18,000? Now according to this article from GetJerry.com, they did some research on all of the types of vehicles, at least the most popular ones, and the rough estimate cost to get these battery packs replaced for these specific vehicles, and they covered the Tesla Model 3 and the Model Arguably the best-selling EVs, at least in 2021. So according to them, the Tesla Model 3 or Model S, you can expect to pay between $12,000 and $15,000, but read this fine print, the battery itself usually costs about $13,000. So sure, that's the price of the pack, but again, factor in the labor cost, and you're going to be for sure at $20,000. The Nissan Leaf, the original quoted price they got was $5,000, but depending on the pack you get, you can get it done for around $3,500 to $9,500, and there was a few dealerships who were still charging $15,000 to replace it. But it looks like with a Nissan Leaf, if you do your homework, you do some negotiating, you do some looking around, you can get this done for a very affordable price, and when you factor in the average miles American drives per year, plus the gas they spend on it, this is kind of a no-brainer, especially in something like a Nissan Leaf or a Chevy Volt. Speaking of, Chevy Volt. The Chevy Volt has a more agreeable price range of $3,000 to $9,000. So it goes without saying, you can replace these battery packs, and you can keep your car running for a very long time. But if you get to that point where you need to replace your battery pack, as you can see, it's going to be a big upfront cost. Now, full disclaimer, when it comes to internal combustion engines, if I need to go out and replace the engine in a truck, a modern truck, a V8, that's going to be $10,000 to $15,000 as well. So this isn't just picking on electric battery costs, but I think we have this image in our minds that when you have an electric vehicle, the costs are just so low. True, but there are times where you're going to have some bulk costs, and you'll be feeling it when you pay for that. Anyway, those are big numbers, and it's a shocking cost. So keep those things in mind, follow those tips, don't overcharge it, don't drain it to zero, and we'll see you guys in the next video. Bye.