I am aware this article is a few years old, but it’s a good overview of some of the issues with trying to recycle EV batteries. Things have definitely improved since then, but there is still very far to go.
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Make sure you never get into an accident if you have a Tesla Y, because the battery has zero repairability.
20% of EV owners go back to gas cars.
There is still a long way to go before EVs are a viable option for most people, especially those in rural areas or who need trucks to work for a living.
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So that is Tesla battery packs, Doesn’t help non-Tesla drivers
BUT you’re missing the detail that running the heater DOES affect mileage. Literally everything in almost every EV is run off of battery, so any accessory is going to drain the battery life distance. There are dozens of verifiable source tests on what happens to mileage if the driver is running the heater, heated steering wheel & seats, etc… it DOES affect the range of a charge. You may be able to get 70 miles round trip in -20F without major effect (though I am not totally convinced about this). But I’d be interested in you doing a honest gut check with yourself about what happens to your range if you are driving 70 miles in bitter cold and running the car at a temp to be comfortable. Not wrapped up in 8 layers, hat, gloves, arctic boots to “be warm” on your daily drive. You don’t have to answer that here, just food for thought when you are getting triggered by posters pointing out some of the issues that still need to be addressed for more wide-spread adoption
And on this point - considering how long ICE cars and trucks can run without needing a major repair, this is a lot of money every 100k miles for many, many people. Like beyond the financial reach of most. They can limp along refurbed motors and transmissions for many years which often does not cost anywhere near $5k - your low end estimate - and that is for the most basic Tesla. Batteries? You’ve got absolutely no choice but to replace them.
A charging issue for me is assuming that “at-home” charging is a easy option for everyone. How about condo or apartment residents without their own garage? People who live in cities where there is little to no driveway parking - it is all street parking. My sister rented in Newport Beach for several years and they did not have a driveway or garage in her neighborhood. It was ALL street parking. It’s not always so simple to just “top off” at home each night. As more EVs are mandated, this will become a bigger problem.
@M_al - this last part was not directed at you - it is for some of the other posters going on about how simple charging is if you just handle it at home.
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I have a mid-2000s sedan that has been used as a commuter car for over a decade and if we exclude tires (since EVs are harder on tires anyway, with the additional weight, so those costs might be similar over the last 10+ years), I don’t think I’ve put $5k into car repairs total (excluding normal maintenance, inexpensive oil changes I do myself) and it has more than 250k miles and is still kicking. Cost me a whopping $8k when I purchased it with 50k miles on it to begin with. I fully expect it to still be functional past the 300k mile mark. DH might limp it to 400k, if he can - he loves a challenge, lol.
It did need a small transmission part replaced to the tune of $3000 at the 100k mile mark - a $50 part gets REAL expensive to install when you need to drop the whole motor to do it, since I couldn’t do that at home. Gets great gas mileage. A few other miscellaneous repairs over time (tie rod irons/brakes/etc). Minor repairs I can do myself after watching YouTube videos. Definitely not something the average person can do on an EV.
Did my gas costs over the last decade add up to what a new EV would have cost me? I very much doubt it. Plus I don’t have a jacked up home insurance premium from the liability of an EV charger here (not to mention to cost of installing one). And the car still has value and I don’t need a new $10k+ battery every 100k miles.
If we want to talk trucks I’ve got several “cheap” ancient farm trucks kicking around that are 20-30+ years old and still working on the farm daily. Combined total into multiple trucks and their repairs over the last 20 years still probably doesn’t equal the cost of a new “cyber truck” - they’re not the tricked out bells and whistles ones with camera angles of every corner and fold down tailgates with ladders, these trucks WORK for a living 
I fully support people who have the appropriate lifestyle and access to a reliable charging network to go the EV route if it works for them and their financial situation, but I do not see an EV being a viable option for me in my lifetime. And I’d really love it if people stopped trying to cram them down my throat and attempting to look down on me for owning ICE vehicles like that’s some sort of crime 
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Just seconding all of this.
The company I work for is involved in the development of alternative storage systems for large quantities of energy (we’re talking grid scale) that aren’t batteries and don’t involve significant quantities of precious metals. Another company with a plant in my area is developing iron-air batteries for large-scale storage. The sooner those solutions become viable, the sooner larger portions of the grid can be decarbonized to more significant degrees and the energy charging all those car batteries won’t be sourced from fossil fuels.
My parents own an ID.4 and they covered the roof of their (not very large) house in solar panels about four months after they bought the car. They fully acknowledge that they were only able to do both of those things because of a large insurance payout after my dad was hit by an inattentive driver while cycling, but also believe that having the ability to do it also kind of obligates them to do so. They generate more power on the average day than is consumed (even with daily charging of the car), and that’s with us living in an area where we spend at least 50% of the year under some kind of cloud cover. They haven’t had an electric bill since the panels were connected to the grid over a year ago.
The latest software update did cause issues with their range (predated the winter storms and temperature drops of the last couple of weeks), so the car is in the shop right now, but my mother was told by the tech that the reported percentage of faulty ID.4s is 1-2%. The challenges my parents are having are due to early adoption. Those of us who are waiting a few more years to go electric will be like me waiting a week or two to update my phone after Apple pushes out a software update—giving manufacturers a chance to fix initial bugs.
There are definitely infrastructure issues right now with broad-base adoption of EVs in all parts of the US, I’m not disputing that, but I for one look forward to replacing my (much-loved and very efficient) tiny crossover with an EV once she’s on her last legs. My drive to the barn is 70 miles round-trip, I’m looking at a hundred miles in a day if I also go to the office, and that would hurt a lot less if I didn’t have to get gas all the time.
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I think development of self-charging vehicles would be the thing–if possible in the future.
I saw an Fisker EV has a solar power roof and you can use the vehicle as a generator -allegedly-- if you lose house electric–(although I read it likely does not generate enough power, yet to replace plugging in 
) (Suppose to “harvest” 1500 miles a year.)
Or if the movement of the car could be amplified enough (like develop a big alternator!) to charge it- but of course I realize it can be hard to keep a regular battery charged by driving!
My gas truck battery died this week-and I got educated on how much “stuff” is on new vehicles that really taxes just your normal battery --and because of that they have developed the AGM battery. Hopefully advances will continue.
A taller vehicle is easier for many to get in and out of than a shorter car.
It’s nice to know one can buy lumber or a new (big thing) and use the bed to haul it home.
Retired horses eat hay and grain. That goes in the truck bed.
Etc etc etc.
I’ve never once wondered why someone kept a paid-for vehicle.
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Volvo just pulled funding for EVTesla sales are off…it’s not just a “truck” thing, something is not working right in the EV world.
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Volvo has stopped funding Polestar but continues development on its own branded EVs. Tesla has created its own problems. Yes, it appears the industry was somewhat over-optimistic as far as sales, but sales continue to grow year-over-year. EVs are not going away, much as you would apparently like them to.
Catching up on this thread, I am really getting a sense of déjà vu, remembering all the negativity directed at the Prius when It came out in its iconic shape and we got ours, 20 years ago — but now ramped up x1000.
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Difference is Prius and other hybrids weren’t shoved down our throats like EVs - and you can drive your Prius when there’s a power outage. CA is a poster child for why we’re not quite ready to go all in - Rolling brown outs with messaging to not charge your EVs. how’s that for progess. SMH
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But if you have a Lightning, you can use it to power your house during a brown out! /s
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I just read an article that was responding to all the bad press about cold and charging. It talked about Norway. Norway is nearing 25% of the cars on the road being electric. 80% of new car sales have been for electric. So how do they survive in the cold? One of the points the article made was that many of the cold related problems can be prevented by planning. For example preconditioning the battery allows it to charge much faster in cold weather. Also, just like an ICE, you should not let the level get too low in the winter (those of us from the frigid north know the rule of not letting your gas tank get below 1/2 in the winter, so it’s similar to that. They also talked about how many Norwegians charge at home. Here it is so much cheaper to do that. You get great rates for charging at night (and the electric company will install a charger for a very low monthly fee if you don’t want to buy one). For most people and their commutes, charging at home at night would cover almost all their driving needs.
I agree this country still has issues with charger infrastructure. I ran into this in Seattle after renting an electric vehicle. There were charging stations, but they were busy or out of order. I had to go to two different ones to fill up before my rental return. On the other hand, in FL, I had no issue at supercharger stations, so it does vary with where you are. Again, if more people charged at home, this would not be a problem.
As for the chargers being unsightly (that was a different poster’s comment), I just have to laugh. It’s actually been hard sometimes to find where they are in a lot, they often don’t stand out enough.
All my relatives in Norway drive EVs, and love them
For hauling horses, not sure they are there yet, I’d wait until the batteries improve. And in general, you might wait a year or two for an EV. In the mean time, DH and I are opting for a plug in hybrid to get the best of both worlds.
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If it’s 20 below (which happens here) I guarantee I would be wearing a heavy coat, scarf and hat and boots anyway. But I wouldn’t have to blast my heater as almost all EV’s have heated seats and wheels, that don’t pull off that much power (and I wouldn’t have to wait for the engine to warm up to get heat like I do with my ICE, those seats get hot fast!). Yes, your mileage will go down some, but as I posted above, somehow the Norwegians (even those in Finnmark, above the arctic circle) have managed to survive driving EVs in the cold.
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I have this same thought about solar panels. Sure, I noticed them the first few weeks after my parents had them installed because they were different, but they don’t even register to me anymore. It’s like how your brain blanks out your nose in visual processing because you’re staring at it all the time.
We went to IKEA a few months ago and my mom went “Why are there no chargers here? This lot is huge. There should be chargers” and I just gestured to the other side of the parking lot where there were, in fact, chargers mid-install. We road-tripped to the Bay of Fundy four years ago (pre-ID.4) and there were superchargers in the lot of the gas station we stopped at in middle of nowhere Maine. It’s coming whether people like it or not.
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I forgot about this comment, I laughed when I first read it! Has that poster ever actually looked at a gas station?
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Gas pumps don’t work when there’s a power outage either. If a long range EV is charged up, it can go 300-400 miles. I would hope that’s enough juice for any vehicle to get through a power outage.
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How does this work for people who have street only parking in very urban areas?
When I commented on them being in the middle of parking lots and looking out of place (and yes ugly) it was because the two parking lots they are in the middle of are two parking lots that have put much effort into making their parking lots not look like a large barren vast pavement zone. Lots of islands with trees and plantings. They removed trees and plantings and put in large shiny metal boxes, which is funny after all the effort with the trees and plantings.
A gas station does not appear in the middle of a parking lot. It is its own business.
I have nothing against the charging stations at the mall in the parking lot. I just thought it was ugly compared to the look they were going for at both the establishments I saw them at.
I am sure even you can understand that it is not just that they were ugly and gas pumps are not. Please.
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I feel like I must be doing something wrong because my ICE car, as you like to call them, has heated seats and such too, but I still drive with the heat on because otherwise it is freaking cold in there.
When I am driving home, after spending that - a little longer than I should have - extra time at the barn to the point that my toes and such are numb, there is no such thing as being happy with just the heated seat.
I am just thankful we still have choices. And having seen how so many codes/rules get passed with out a thought of how they are attainable or doable by most, I just worry that the theories on getting rid of all ICE vehicles is forgetting about lots of people and lots of situations.
I also know at this point I can not afford an Electric vehicle. There is not a single one in my price range. So now that I have a slightly shorter commute to work, so one would work for that, I can not even go that route because of cost.
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I read a similar article and the answer to the question is that they have gas cars as well. Also, they were including hybrids as part of the EV sales.
Norway is interesting in that they are the tenth largest oil and gas exporter. Their electrical power comes from hydro (92%). i wonder as they push to all ev’s what will have to change in their power generation structure. It is a small by population country and pretty small by land mass as well with a low population density. so that will help them.
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I’m on my third EV now. I think it’s pretty clear to me that we should be pushing more plug in hybrids than pure EVs while we evolve charging infrastructure. With plug ins, you don’t need a special charger, and for the majority of people, that electric juice is enough for daily commutes. The Volvo I’m looking at has 40 miles of range. But you can also take a long trip no problem without worrying about charging. That said, if I’m not hauling a horse, having to stop for 20 minutes to charge on a road trip really isn’t a big deal, it’s usually at a target or somewhere I’m happy to rest for 20 minutes before heading back out.
The plug-ins require far smaller batteries so we can expand capacity more quickly and the cars are less heavy, which is also better environmentally. I"m particularly interested in the plug in hybrid RAM that’s coming out later this year. Bc the electric engine powers the car and the gas works as a generator, you’ll have that instant and really smooth torque that could be great for hauling horses.
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