Most electric cars cannot be repaired even with the slightest battery damage, which means that sometimes the cars are written off even with very little mileage, the news agency writes. Reuters.
This means that the amount to be paid when insuring the next car increases substantially, and the environmental benefit that should arise from switching to an electric car is reduced. There are already countries where electric car batteries are accumulating in scrapyards, and this is a previously unconsidered gap in what was supposed to become a “circular economy”. Automotive industry risk assessment company Thatcham Research researcher Matthew Avery said: «We buy electric cars for sustainability.
However, an electric car is not very sustainable if it has to be thrown into the garbage after a minor collision.»
Batteries usually cost several tens of thousands of dollars and account for up to half of the cost of an electric car, which makes battery replacement economically uneconomical. Some car manufacturers such as Ford and General Motors have reported improvements and easier-to-repair batteries, on the other hand Tesla has gone in the opposite direction, and experts have pointed out that the company’s Texas-made ModelY the battery cannot be repaired at all. Tesla no comments were made.
Electric cars make up only a small fraction of the world’s vehicles, so it is difficult to obtain data for the entire industry, but there is a growing tendency to write off electric cars with very low mileage and minor damage. Tesla the decision to make the battery a part of the car’s body may also reduce production costs, but it may scare away potential buyers, and insurers won’t like it.
And I’ll take Tesla and other manufacturers don’t figure out how to make batteries easier to repair or replace, and don’t allow third parties to access battery information, the already high insurance premiums will only stay higher as electric car sales increase and, with it, new car write-offs. Allianz Christoph Lauterwasse, head of the technology center, pointed out that it is important to sort out the battery issue. He said that because of the batteries, the production of electric cars produces much more carbon dioxide than the production of models that use fossil fuels.
Therefore, an electric car must be driven thousands of kilometers before it evens out the emissions it produces.
“If the electric car is written off very quickly, then all the advantages have disappeared if we talk about carbon dioxide emissions,” added the researcher.
Although many car manufacturers state that the batteries are repairable, the technical details of the batteries are often not disclosed. European Union insurance companies, loan providers and garages are already fighting with manufacturers for access to car data.
The battery problems of electric cars also highlight the shortcomings of the so-called circular economy, which the big electric car manufacturers. British used car parts trading company Circumcision manager Michael Hill (Michael Hill) stated that the number of electric cars entering the square has increased very rapidly in the last 12 months, up to 20 electric cars in one day. There is currently no electric car battery recycling plant in Great Britain, therefore batteries removed from scrapped cars must be stored in special containers. According to Hill,
about 95% of the battery cells are intact and should be repaired.
The British government is currently paying for a study into electric car insurance risk points. On the other hand, the regulations in force in the European Union do not directly affect the repair of batteries, however, the European Commission has been asked to create standards for “maintenance, repair and reuse” of batteries. Insurers have proposed a solution to the problem – to make batteries from several small modules that would be easier to replace, and to provide third parties with access to battery data so that it is possible to carry out diagnostics.
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