A small accident and you have to change the whole battery pack? A hidden problem of EV cars
Somewhat surprisingly , Reuters published an article revealing that the electric vehicle revolution may not be as green as the automakers claim. Indeed it could be particularly expensive also from an insurance point of view, given that a scratched or slightly damaged battery pack could cause the entire car to be scrapped.
" We buy electric cars for sustainability reasons ," said Matthew Avery, research director at automotive risk intelligence firm Thatcham Research, " but an EV isn't very sustainable if you have to throw the battery away after a minor crash ."
A Tesla battery costs tens of thousands of dollars and accounts for a large percentage of the vehicle's price. Insurance companies have found that it is uneconomical to replace damaged battery packs and it can often pay to scrap the whole car.
Many automakers, including Tesla, have made battery packs a structural part of the car to reduce product costs, but have passed the cost onto consumers and insurance when batteries need to be replaced. Structural battery packs lead to much higher costs for their replacement in the event of an accident and insurance companies, which are not charitable bodies, will pass these higher costs onto drivers, both directly and by increasing bonus-malus premiums.
Then there is the environmental problem. "The number of cases is set to increase, so battery management is crucial," said Christoph Lauterwasser, chief executive officer of the Allianz Center for Technology, an Allianz-owned research institute. According to Lauterwasser, the production of batteries for electric vehicles results in significantly higher CO2 emissions than conventional fossil-fuel models. Therefore, if these batteries are discarded with low mileage, it undermines the goal of promoting environmentally friendly practices.
“If you throw the vehicle away at an early stage, you lose virtually all of the CO2 emission advantage,” he said.
Sandy Munro, head of Michigan-based Munro & Associates, which analyzes vehicles and advises automakers on how to improve them, said the Model Y's battery pack has "zero repairability." “A Tesla structural battery pack goes straight to the shredder,” Munro said.
So much for the EV revolution and the green “circular economy” touted by automakers, politicians, NGOs and climate activists… These EVs look even more harmful to the environment when compared to traditional petrol vehicles. To have a true circular economy it is therefore necessary to redesign all battery packs, especially the more advanced structural ones.
Thanks to our Telegram channel you can stay updated on the publication of new articles from Economic Scenarios.
The article A small accident and you have to change the whole battery pack? A hidden problem of EV cars comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/un-piccolo-incidente-e-devi-cambiare-tutto-il-pacco-batterie-un-problema-nascosto-delle-auto-ev/ on Tue, 21 Mar 2023 11:00:00 +0000.