Sandy Munro, head of Michigan-based Munro & Associates, which tears down automobiles and advises automakers on tips on how to enhance them, mentioned the Mannequin Y battery pack has “zero repairability.”
“A Tesla structural battery pack goes straight to the grinder,” Munro mentioned.
EV battery issues additionally expose a gap within the inexperienced “round economic system” touted by automakers.
At Synetiq, the UK’s largest salvage firm, head of operations Michael Hill mentioned during the last 12 months the variety of EVs within the isolation bay – the place they should be checked to keep away from fireplace danger — on the agency’s Doncaster yard has soared, from maybe a dozen each three days to as much as 20 per day.
“We have seen a extremely large shift and it is throughout all producers,” Hill mentioned.
The UK at the moment has no EV battery recycling services, so Synetiq has to take away the batteries from written-off vehicles and retailer them in containers. Hill estimated a minimum of 95 p.c of the cells within the tons of of EV battery packs — and hundreds of hybrid battery packs — Synetiq has saved at Doncaster are undamaged and ought to be reused.
It already prices extra to insure most EVs than conventional vehicles.
In line with on-line brokerage Policygenius, the common U.S. month-to-month EV insurance coverage cost in 2023 is $206, 27 p.c greater than for a combustion-engine mannequin.
In line with Bankrate, an internet writer of monetary content material, U.S. insurers know that “if even a minor accident ends in injury to the battery pack … the associated fee to exchange this key element might exceed $15,000.”
A substitute battery for a Tesla Mannequin 3 can value as much as $20,000, for a automobile that retails at round $43,000 however depreciates rapidly over time.
Andy Keane, UK industrial motor product supervisor at French insurer AXA, mentioned costly substitute batteries “might generally make changing a battery unfeasible.”
There are a rising variety of restore retailers specializing in repairing EVs and changing batteries. In Phoenix, Arizona, Gruber Motor has principally targeted on changing batteries in older Tesla fashions.
However insurers can’t entry Tesla’s battery information, in order that they have taken a cautious strategy, proprietor Peter Gruber mentioned.
“An insurance coverage firm shouldn’t be going to take that danger as a result of they’re dealing with a lawsuit in a while if one thing occurs with that automobile and they didn’t whole it,” he mentioned.