I bought my Tesla Model 3 as an all purpose car, which for us also means convenient drives of ~ 400 miles a day all year round. Some people put a lot higher demands on their vehicles. I figure that I can absorb ~ 10% of range loss and still use the car as fully intended. If the car battery degrades more than 10% it still has a lot of utility left in it, but it would force me to buy another car. Will the car have under 10% battery degradation in 15 years ? I think it is possible, but I sure would not gamble on it being so. And so far as the LEAF goes, I would happily gamble that battery degradation will far exceed 10% in 5 - 10 years.salyavin said:Don't forget it is not just fuel (which you can save more on if you are able to install solar btw) but oil changes, mufflers, belts and other maintenence you don't need. On replacing batteries that is a big hit down the road lots of discussion on what level of degredation do you pull the trigger, a plus batter going down to a 2011 LEAF battery? If you go that far I am confident you can get 15 years out of the battery easily. We'll see how long the batteries keep good range, I'm expecting more than 40kw left in 10 years but that is only a guess.
And then there is another aspect of depreciation that has not been discussed in this thread -- the advance of technology.
In 5 years (let alone 10), will people who purchase a LEAF today be satisfied with the CHAdeMO network ? Will other people want to buy a CHAdeMO LEAF in the future when e.g. the best DC network is 150 - 200 kW CCS ? The shorts answer is -- of course not. A new LEAF *better* be darn cheap, because it is deprecated technology. I think it is a mistake to take the market price of deprecated tech as evidence of the coming of age of EVs as cheaper than ICE. To average Joe who does not understand or care that ICE has massive cost externalities, ICE is still "cheaper."