A family in St. Petersburg, FL, found out that the costs of replacing EV batteries are increasing and they are not amused.
Avery Siwinksi told 10 Tampa Bay that her used 2014 Ford Focus Electric meant that she could drive herself to school. Her family shelled out $11,000 for it, and for the initial 6 months, all went well.
“It was fine at first,” Avery Siwinski told 10 Tampa Bay. “I loved it so much. It was small and quiet and cute. And all the sudden it stopped working.”
When the vehicle started giving her a dash alert in March, Siwinski took it to the dealership with the help of her grandfather, Ray Siwinksi. It was found out that a battery replacement was needed. The cost was $14,000, more than she paid for the car in the first place. Even worse, Ford had stopped making the Focus Electric model four years ago, so the battery wasn’t even available anymore.
“If you’re buying a new one, you have to realize there is no second-hand market right now because the manufacturers are not supporting the cars,” Ray warned the broadcaster.
When an EV comes off the road, its batteries are ideally recycled or repurposed. But EV battery manufacturing and recycling infrastructure just aren’t there yet. In addition to being much more complicated to recycle than the lead acid batteries in traditional cars, EV batteries are incredibly heavy and costly to transport.
Currently, federal law states that EV batteries should be guaranteed for eight years, or 100,000 miles but while that’s better than nothing, it’d be disgraceful to think of replacing the engine in a gas vehicle after just eight years.
