This week's EV bargain that I'm not buying

How do you know that will materialise? Never did for electric lawnmowers, powerwashers etc, while that industry still busy for ICE one's

Any country you know of that has EV specialists everywhere like ICE?

Swapping an ice engine is incredibly rare as a proportion of the 2.5m cars in the national fleet. It will take a few years to understand where we are with EV replacements. I think leaf is an outlier, thankfully.

A neighbour had a 131 massive mileage VW Passat 2.0D that needed a new engine just a month or two ago and said it was €3.5k for the engine and €2k to install, roughly. Independent mechanic. Im guessing those engines are literally 10-a-penny.

bear in mind most low mileage engines for replacements come from cars written off in a rear end accidents, with engines very well cocooned under the bonnet, whereas with an EV it’s going to be a lot more difficult for a completely undamaged battery to come from a crashed car.

€5.5k is expensive enough for an engine swap. I replaced a 2013 Polo engine for €1k all in parts & labour.

To be fair I think a battery swap on a Prius is only €450 or so.

It affected the lizard cars too (132 - 2018), I had one!

Mine was a 142 24kWh, the lizard pack which replaced the earliest chemistry (ie the cars that dont show SOC in percentages). It wasnt an issue in the 30kWh pack cars, so obviously mine was one of the last. Now it didnt go completely or anything, passed the NCT, but the guy said the wear levels were consistent with the known issue and I should get it done as a preventative measure.

I'm afraid ours is 161 30 kWh and the rear measured -12 m/km on NCT. It's not a fail as the limit is 18 but it was wearing one of the rear tyres quite quickly.

But as I said earlier it's potentially a very cheap fix (or free DIY) if you find an old school mechanic that can shim it. As far as I know once shimmed it won't ever need more work unless you hit something.

If we compare it to electronic hardware for example, say 30 years ago there were plenty of people who specialised in electronic repair and who actually desoldered and repaired/replaced specific parts on a circuit board, but as tech moved on (no issue with that btw!) it become a case of dropping in a new PCB at somewhat increased cost.

But now the likes of Apple have coded and encrypted every swappable component so it's exceptionally difficult for anyone else to do.

The technical and economic barriers to entry for indy's repairing EV's is one thing, but encrypting stuff to lock out indy's is very bad form.

The best we can hope for IMO is that A) defacto standards are agreed up by OEM's and the Tier 1's who design the packs and people can be trained to some common level, and B) regulators step in quickly with Right to Repair legislation.

Sadly I don't think independent mechanics have a strong enough lobby group, and for the most part consumers aren't going to step up and complain like American farmers did to John Deere.

25 including your post.

This might be the cheapest Lizard pack leaf I've seen.

https://www.donedeal.ie/cars-for-sale/nissan-leaf-2014electric/33945756

Oh now I want that leaf! 300k km! Wow