While this is a good step forward, it feels like complaining about the 0.025% of plastic from straws in the ocean while ignoring the 75% of plastic from fishing nets.
I own a 2020 Kona EV. The battery cannot be upgraded. Eventually, I'll have to replace the entire car to get a longer range. BEVs should be mandated to have upgradable batteries and modular interfaces so that the shell can continue to be reused, the batteries (and BMS) upgraded, and old batteries easily recycled.
Useful life of most of the cars is on par with their battery longevity, as long as you have proper thermal management and your usage patterns are not outliers.
Focusing on being able to upgrade battery (and to be clear - upgrade, not replaced/repair) is solving 1% problem.
I still drive the car I bought 20 years ago. How long should the useful life of a car be?
Given the huge environmental cost involved in manufacturing a car, 20 years seems fair.
I’m still driving a 26-year old Nissan Micra – though it’s now on its last legs: the Irish climate isn’t kind to steel and we’ve had to have the under-carriage re-welded three times in the past five years. :(
You bought a car with some range, you are fine with it. Why you have to replace it with longer range?
Should I be able to eventually replace gas tank with the larger one in my ICE vehicle?
> you are fine with it.
Why not ask me my motivations instead of assuming them?
I'm not fine with the range; I bought an EV to stop burning fossil fuels, my 24-year-old RAV4 was on its last leg, and there was a $6K bonus for trade-ins (my RAV4 would have been about $5k in parts).
Plus, the long-term cost savings kick in after about 8 years, which I blogged about at: https://dave.autonoma.ca/blog/2019/08/06/typesetting-markdow...
> Why you have to replace it with longer range?
Because I want to explore the interior of BC, drive across Canada on fewer charges, visit family, go on road trips, etc. Just yesterday I spent 30 minutes trying to charge my Kona. It's a long and boring story, but suffice to say our charging infrastructure here sucks, and is not as simple, quick, or convenient as "tap-to-pay" (with a credit card) at petrol stations.
> Should I be able to eventually replace gas tank with the larger one in my ICE vehicle?
FWIW, that is actually a thing you can do. It is mostly done for SUVs and pickups since the primary use case for the extra range is off-pavement driving and the upgrade is simpler.
Batteries degrade, you know.
Yes, which is why they are replacable, and Hyundai is bound by law to keep making batteries for OP's Kona for a good while even after the production stops.
That will probably come when EV marketshare is higher and innovation plateaus. I definitely appreciate the phone thing as someone typing from an iPhone SE. I also think phone batteries degrade faster than cars, right? I think my phone is from 2022 and I’m definitely starting to feel it.
I don't see how that's even remotely comparable. It's not like you can replace the battery in your phone with a larger one. You will be able to buy a new battery for your car, that's already guaranteed in the EU - but it will be the same capacity as what you got.
I don't know why is this even an argument really, like.....in a petrol car, do you expect to be able to fit it with a bigger fuel tank after 10 years? or a more powerful engine? Until very recently even software updates to the infotainment weren't really a thing, if you wanted a newer interface you had to change the entire car(I'm not saying this was a good thing, just that generally the expectation is that the product will work the way it was when you bought it).
> It's not like you can replace the battery in your phone with a larger one.
That was totally a thing for phones in the past. Depending on the model you could get a larger pack that had a bulge on the back of the device to have extra battery time. There was a similar thing with a number of laptops.
I do agree its kind of a questionable thing on something like a car. I imagine packaging concerns would really get in the way of adding a bit extra.
it's all virtue signalling. Always has been.
Disagree. I want a replaceable battery in my phone. They can get to extensible memory next. And it's not because you don't care about something that you should remove this freedom from me. And don't tell me that the market will self regulate in the best interests of the consumer or other nonsense like that.
I want replaceable CPU and memory in my phone as well. I demand the government force device manufacturers to use socketed CPUs using standardized sockets and SO-DIMM memory. And it's not because you don't care about something that you should remove this freedom from me.
It's not for me at least. Nobody can prove their inner intent to you but most people will know from themselves that their actions are sometimes misunderstood (especially when something worked/came out badly) but that they genuinely mean well