The commentary on these articles on social media was wild. With the usual anti-EV crowd saying this cannot be possible, since they have a 40 year old car outside still running like the day it was made, and they only had to overhaul the engine once and replace the transmission twice… or something like that.
But all that bickering does bring up an interesting question: What do they mean by the statement that it now lasts as long as its counterparts? How did they measure?
I think what they did, is they looked at averages. The average car on the road today is just 12 years old. The average car arriving at the scrap yard, is 16 years old. From those two data points, you know that the bulk of the cars are between 12 and 16 years old, and then it starts to go down.
By 20 years of age, only 10% of the original population survives. So in 4 short years, a LOT of cars disappear.
By 40 years of age, about 0.1% of the original population survives.
Numbers are slightly skewed be vehicles that disappear for non-mechanical reasons: Car accidents, rust, and so forth. But probably accurate enough. The average time an EV has to last, to break even, is 16 years. That’s what I would think.
The above article actually pins it at 18 years. But that’s UK data.
Then on the other hand, EVs have existed on the mainstream market since around 2011 (Nissan Leaf), so we technically have only 14 years of data. We can probably estimate the expected life of the fleet of vehicles by looking at how they compare with the curve we know, but I’m not sure exactly how they got to 18 years in this study.
On top of that, it is also an open question if EVs will produce the same amount of statistical outliers (the cars that last longer than 20 years, with no major work done). Somehow, I am not convinced that it will. It’s not the batteries I distrust. It is the rest of the electronics. Electronics, generally, has a 20 year lifespan before all the electrolytic caps starts leaking… if you’re lucky that is all that fails.
The above probably sounds a little negative, coming from an EV supporter such as myself. There are some reasons for that. The first, of course, is that honesty is important. But also, I don’t think longevity is the only thing that matters. If the car is half the price, and eventually that may well be the case, you won’t mind as much if it only lasts half as long. If the materials are all recyclable, a shorter lifespan also doesn’t matter too much. But mostly, if there is a good reason to get away from fossil fuels (and I think there is), that may well outweigh all our complaints about cost, convenience and longevity.
You make a good case point: How do you measure?
Adding what I’ve seen the last 10 years on repairs, all depends, I think, generally speaking, on the type and build of the replacements parts.
Like for example a Chevy Spark gearshift link to the gearbox, plastic, compared i.e. Suzy. Makes for some really annoying expensive repairs if the plastic breaks, read “early vehicle replacement”.
Like suspension, how did they design it and how long do the rubbers last in that design? Then the manufacturing process of the rubbers, how long must they last?
Electronics in cars, how robust are they? Are they easy to replace/repair cost effectively?
I think all the above contributes to how long a vehicle will be kept running.
The question you are asking, is “what is the design life?”. Very very few cars have a design life of 20 years. The Toyota Land Cruiser is one of the very few. Everything else has a design life of much less. That doesn’t mean it cannot last longer… it very well may. It just means that your ancient Daewoo Matiz, although it still drives… is a statistical outlier, a survivor, an anomaly.
It is also alright if the car needs some maintenance, some replacement of electronics. We allow for that sort of thing on our oil burners… what’s good for the goose, right?
Electronics can last a very long time, if designed for that. I have family who works in avionics. Those systems, have design lives of more than 20 years. They are repaired (to spec, otherwise the whole thing needs recertification), and rigorously tested. We have the ability to make EVs that last as long as any other car, or even longer. This debate doesn’t really come down to ability. It comes down to: What is the consumer willing to pay for.
