Most out-of-warranty service isn't done at dealers, because they tend to massively overcharge compared with independent garages. Most out-of-warranty repairs are done with parts salvaged from wrecked vehicles, i.e. they are factory parts.

Repair for $4k + labor or replace for $9k. Still not a write off.

Nissan Leaf batteries can be obtained for $4,000 to $14,500, depending on capacity. I assume that is plus installation, but not certain. That's considerably less than what the resale value would be after the repair, so not a write-off.

My favorite all time winner got the "Worst abuse of the rules" consisting solely of #include "/dev/kbd"

When it comes to string theory I'm not ashamed to admit I'm too dumb to understand, And I was a math major in college (40+ years ago).

Asks the bartender for a drink. Bartender says "I'm sorry, we don't serve strings in here". String leaves, ties himself into a knot, rubs himself on the ground, walks back into the bar and asks for a drink. Bartender says "Hey, aren't you that string that was just in here?" "Nope, I'm a frayed knot".

Okay, sure, in Canada, where the number of EVs is already low and access to used parts is almost nonexistent, someone scrapped a single copy of an extremely unpopular toy EV with a tiny battery that sold only 22,000 units in total that model year worldwide.

That's not an EV problem. It's an ultra-rare car problem. Rare ICE cars have the same problem.

FWIW, when you can actually get them, used batteries for that model of car cost only about $4k. But you'll probably spend another $2,000 on shipping it by boat from Europe, because there are more people living in my immediate neighborhood plus the one across the street than there are 2017 Ioniq EVs in all of North America.

So let me restate that. There are no *popular* EVs that are getting scrapped because of the cost of battery replacement. After all, you could make that battery from scratch today for about $3,000, give or take, if somebody actually cared to do so. But they don't, because there's no market for it. You could also replace all the cells in that battery for under $3k, not including the labor. So a $50k estimate falls into "don't make me laugh" territory. It's a ludicrously inflated price, probably because they don't actually have any of the batteries left, and would have to spin up a production line just to build more. :-D

In a World where electrical tape and black markers don't exist ...

More to the point, a permanent alteration seems dumb, especially if you ever want a working light or want to resell them.

I imagine they (are told to) say that because Texas gives preference to corporations over its citizens while California doesn't, but that's just a guess. For example, Public School Rankings by State 2026 has CA at #8 and TX at #34 - surprisingly, the latter is lower than FL at #24. (New York is highest at #1, btw.)

These are not use cases. These are driver incompetence.

First, modern EVs typically have support for telling you how much range you have left at your current speed, and telling you whether you need to slow down to reach a supercharger without running out of juice. The number of times I've had range anxiety in almost a decade of driving my Model X is in the single digits, and I've never run out.

Second, most people charge their EVs overnight, which means you aren't ever waiting for for the vehicle to charge. Or they charge at work while they are working. Five minutes for a refill is an eternity compared with the roughly zero minutes that the average EV user spends.

No, the problematic use cases are:

• Towing. This depletes batteries or fuel a lot more quickly, and EVs just don't have the battery capacity to do it well. What is needed here is a universal standard for powering cars from a secondary battery in the trailer.
• Apartment dwellers with no access to at-home charging. This is mostly solvable through a combination of incentives for apartment complexes to provide charging, laws requiring new apartments to have charging, and market pressure, but it doesn't happen overnight.
• Ultra-high-miles-per-day driving. If you're driving more than the range of the car every day, an EV might not be for you.

For approximately every other use case, EVs are better hands down.

WTF are you talking about? People replace EV batteries all the time. They also rebuild packs by swapping out modules. There are companies that specialize in doing so, and have a high rate of success. They charge single-digit thousands of dollars to rebuild a Tesla battery, depending on how many modules have to be replaced and other factors.

The number of EVs written off because of battery repair costs should be within the margin of error of being zero, because there are no used EVs that are worth less than $10k at this point. Even the cheapest, low-end EVs with a tiny battery are worth that much.

And if the number isn't zero, it is likely because some cars have such an undersized battery pack that nobody would want the car even with a refurbished pack, and therefore it isn't worth the effort to do so. While this might be a good reason not to buy short-range EVs (under 200 miles of range), it isn't a reason to avoid EVs in general.