The Joys of Owning a Sparky Car

One of them anyway. The limited life of a lithium-ion battery comes to light. Again. Mercedes Benz new battery price in Knighton Leicester is expensive. That is an understatement.

As I type this, 1 Pound Sterling is equal to $1.36, though that is subject to change.

A guy bought a 4 year old Mercedes for £27,000. 4 years later, when the car is just 8 years old, it needs a new battery.

But Ranjit learnt this week the battery had come to the end of its life after just eight years of motoring.

He claims he was quoted £15,000 [$20,400] for a battery replacement - excluding labour costs which he was quoted would be roughly around £200 an hour.

I think he is completely justified at feeling like he was ripped off. He was. The entire electric vehicle industry is a rip off.

You could put a new engine in a gas-powered car for less money than he was quoted. I wonder if you could fit a gas-powered engine in the electric Mercedes?

For comparison, in terms of longevity, I drive a 2007 Ford SUV, which I did not purchase new. I paid way less than $15,000 for the vehicle. It has more than a quarter of a million miles on it, and given the price of vehicles lately I have been contemplating having some major work done on it. It runs smoothly - gotta love those long-lived 8-cylinder engines - but the 4WD is acting wonky.

The cost of sparky cars is huge, when you consider the true costs. The environmental devastation caused by lithium mining is ignored by Americans. (Lithium is not mined in America; the EPA won't allow it.) And then there is the child-labor used in horrendous conditions in Congo cobalt mines. Everything is justified for the creation of lithium-ion batteries!

This isn't the first time that the owner of an electric vehicle was shocked (did you see what I did there?) to discover the true cost of ownership. Man explodes Tesla after mechanics charge $23K for a new battery. That made a statement, but the media mostlty ignored it. Why would they publish anything that hurts the "Green Car Industry?" For the record, scrapping a car that is only 8 years old is NOT green. Not even close.

For its part, Mercedes has reverted to a standard boilerplate, basically saying that he was informed of the battery limitations when he purchased that car. Translation: of the 4 pages of small-print that he signed as part of the purchase contract, this bit was buried about halfway down page 3.

This is the horrible reality behind the hype surrounding electric vehicles. They are disposable. They will soon be littering the landscape because, they don't last. Eight years on the road and the vehicle is beyond economic repair. That is disgusting. The article doesn't list how many miles are on the vehicle because United Kingdom. The difference between the Americans and the British is that Americans think 100 years is a long time, and the British think 100 miles is a long distance. My guess is that it has significantly fewer miles than the average 8-year-old vehicle in America would have.

But hey, when you ignore the effects of building lithium-ion batteries, and their limited lifespan, and the fact they are powered by coal, and their limited range, and... they are good for the environment. Or something. (Hat tip to Wirecutter.)