Car batteries don’t just rapidly degrade out of the blue

Tell that to the guy who had his Tesla blown up because of the battery replacement cost. Or anyone with an Audi E-Tron where after you go have it checked out for the battery recall, they limit you to max 80% charge on a car with already poor range, “just in case”.

It’s not like you can’t easily total a second-hand ICE by mechanical failure. Just ask anyone who own(ed) a puretech engine. If you went by manufacturer recommendations, the fucking thing might just eat your timing belt one day and grenade itself. And there’s no way a full engine swap on a 5-10 year old economy car is economically viable.

Ah, but I wouldn’t buy a puretech engine. For one, too few cylinders. Secondly, I already know it’s a bad engine. The point of buying cars second hand is that others have already done ridiculous mileages on similar engines so you know if they’re good or not. If I want an economical engine from that time period, the Mercedes OM651 and OM654 are pretty durable and use very little fuel. I would of course prefer a 6 cylinder, but we’re talking about economy cars here.

There’s always something that could go wrong when you buy a car. Unless you get comprehensive insurance and warranty, you need to accept the fact that losing the entire car to an accident, catastrophic mechanical failure, or theft is always a risk.

I can get comprehensive insurance on a car up to 15 years old. I can fix or prevent catastrophic mechanical failure on an ICE. The infamous chains on an Audi 3.0 TDI are just chains… a replaceable item. Well actually it’s just the one tensioner that sometimes fails. Same with the infamous camshafts on the 2.5 TDI V6 dubbed “Hitler’s revenge”. The infamous seal that ruins early OM642s may take an entire day to replace at home, but it costs 10€. Most of these infamous early failure modes that people are afraid of are entirely possible to repair at home for a DIY guy. On a BEV I’m shit out of luck. When batteries become affordable, this is no longer the case and once those EVs drop down from 70-100k EUR new to 20k used, I’m buying the shit out of them.