Heading to $0 value? Not sure if makes sense to keep...

[ThunderDome]

Apologies in advance for the doom and gloom. But with the used Mach E market the way it is (and the EV market in general), I'm curious to hear other opinions on keeping our 2021 First Edition Premium Mach E with 50,000 miles. If this $60,000 car is worth ~$30,000 today and sinking, I'd love to know an argument for keeping.

If the battery will need to be replaced, and a new battery is going to cost $30,000, then it is so hard to justify outside of loving the car. What is the likelihood that there will be a lower cost replacement battery for the Mach E in the future? Will any company be interested and able to produce a battery replacement for the Mach E for $10,000 one day? Will future lower-cost batteries even be able to work with Mach E and its 2021 technology?

Are we all looking at the battery flat out dying at some point, or is our range just going to shrink and shrink? As crazy as it sounds, I could live with 75 miles of range one day. But I don't want to pay $30,000 for a new battery for a car that is going to be worth little to nothing in the future.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts!

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[HuntingPudel]

Unless the value of the car ever drops below the cost of a repair, it’s never going to drop to zero. It will always have value of some sort. Regarding the battery, it is impossible to predict whether the cost of replacement will increase or decrease in the future. Likely, if something in the pack fails it will be a single cell, so correcting that would be less expensive than replacing the entire pack. ??

 

[ThunderDome]

Thanks, I understand but I mean in the sense that nobody will want to buy a used car for $10,000 that needs a $30,000 battery replacement because they could just buy a brand new car for something comparable.

 

[Logal727]

Depreciable assets gonna depreciate, some more than others.

 

[AtomicInternet]

You didn't mention if you're leasing, but I assume you already purchased and are thinking of selling. If you already purchased it, if I was in your situation I'd keep it until the battery dies and then sell it for scrap. You already lost the value, so no point selling it in case the value (remotely possibly) goes back up like they all did in the pandemic.

Myself, I'm leasing and no way I'm going to buy it out at the price they gave me. I'll likely end up returning it and then buying a different used one off the lot for half the price.

But in a few years time who knows.

 

[RickMachE]

Apologies in advance for the doom and gloom. But with the used Mach E market the way it is (and the EV market in general), I'm curious to hear other opinions on keeping our 2021 First Edition Premium Mach E with 50,000 miles. If this $60,000 car is worth ~$30,000 today and sinking, I'd love to know an argument for keeping.

If the battery will need to be replaced, and a new battery is going to cost $30,000, then it is so hard to justify outside of loving the car. What is the likelihood that there will be a lower cost replacement battery for the Mach E in the future? Will any company be interested and able to produce a battery replacement for the Mach E for $10,000 one day? Will future lower-cost batteries even be able to work with Mach E and its 2021 technology?

Are we all looking at the battery flat out dying at some point, or is our range just going to shrink and shrink? As crazy as it sounds, I could live with 75 miles of range one day. But I don't want to pay $30,000 for a new battery for a car that is going to be worth little to nothing in the future.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts!

I'm confused. Why would your battery need replacing? Why would it cost $30,000 (that's rhetorical)?

Do you think that people on this forum can predict future pricing of EV components? They can't.

Answers:

Likelihood of lower cost replacement battery in the future - high
Will any company produce a replacement for $10,000 one day - highly unlikely
Will future lower-cost batteries even be able to work with the Mach-E - doubtful
Will battery die or range just shrink and shrink? - Maybe, yes.

I will also add the following assertations:

- the earth one day will be covered with water. Should we all buy snorkels, or have gill surgery?
- the sun is going to die, and become a black hole and swallow us up. BlueCruise will no longer work. Will Ford give us a refund?

 

[TheSteelRider]

Apologies in advance for the doom and gloom. But with the used Mach E market the way it is (and the EV market in general), I'm curious to hear other opinions on keeping our 2021 First Edition Premium Mach E with 50,000 miles. If this $60,000 car is worth ~$30,000 today and sinking, I'd love to know an argument for keeping.

If the battery will need to be replaced, and a new battery is going to cost $30,000, then it is so hard to justify outside of loving the car. What is the likelihood that there will be a lower cost replacement battery for the Mach E in the future? Will any company be interested and able to produce a battery replacement for the Mach E for $10,000 one day? Will future lower-cost batteries even be able to work with Mach E and its 2021 technology?

Are we all looking at the battery flat out dying at some point, or is our range just going to shrink and shrink? As crazy as it sounds, I could live with 75 miles of range one day. But I don't want to pay $30,000 for a new battery for a car that is going to be worth little to nothing in the future.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts!

You are basically asking whether you should buy an asset high at $60k and sell the asset low at $30k based on assumed accumulated depreciation vs. continuing to utilize the asset during the balance of it's depreciation phase.

I'm not an investment adviser, so I will simply leave my comment at that as food for thought. YMMV, though, each situation is unique.

 

[DennisD]

Apologies in advance for the doom and gloom. But with the used Mach E market the way it is (and the EV market in general), I'm curious to hear other opinions on keeping our 2021 First Edition Premium Mach E with 50,000 miles. If this $60,000 car is worth ~$30,000 today and sinking, I'd love to know an argument for keeping.

If the battery will need to be replaced, and a new battery is going to cost $30,000, then it is so hard to justify outside of loving the car. What is the likelihood that there will be a lower cost replacement battery for the Mach E in the future? Will any company be interested and able to produce a battery replacement for the Mach E for $10,000 one day? Will future lower-cost batteries even be able to work with Mach E and its 2021 technology?

Are we all looking at the battery flat out dying at some point, or is our range just going to shrink and shrink? As crazy as it sounds, I could live with 75 miles of range one day. But I don't want to pay $30,000 for a new battery for a car that is going to be worth little to nothing in the future.

Thanks in advance for any thoughts!

Are you going to replace the car after selling it?

If you are, let us do some quick Math.

Purchased 60K
Sell 30K

Loss = 30k

Purchase another new car 60k?
That car will depreciate the second you drive off the lot and most likely would depreciate a great deal as well so you would be "pissing into the wind". ?

I would keep it if you are going to need to replace it. If you don't need to replace it, I would drive it until close to the end of warranty.

The silver lining is that it already has taken a huge hit and you don't have much further to fall at this point. If you buy another car, the nose dive will continue. ?

 

[kdonnel]

Depreciable assets gonna depreciate, some more than others.

I think the 2-3 years where used cars actually went up in value made everyone forgot that:

Depreciable assets gonna depreciate, some more than others.

 

[jeffMachE]

Not trying to be controversial or raise hysterics here, but the way I look at a car is ultimately what is the cost per mile. In other words, driving costs money, you simply have to accept it. Once you've accepted that driving costs money, you can evaluate what the correct choice is for you. Ignoring the actual operating cost (e.g. the cost of electricity), insurance, etc. to make the analysis simpler, you really have 2 choices when acquiring a car - lease or buy.

If you lease, you end up with a well-known cost per mile based on the lease. You'll only achieve that cost, btw, if you use up the entire set of leased miles. If you drive less than the leased miles, your cost per mile is higher. Say you lease for 45,000 miles (15K/yr for 3 years) and your total lease cost, all in, is $26,500 ($5000 down, $600/mo for 3 years). Your cost per mile at the end of the lease (assuming you use the entire 45K miles) is $0.59 cents. You don't have any trade-in to offset, you simply walk away.

If you buy, you theoretically can continually reduce your cost per mile. If you buy at $60K with some financing, let say you end up paying $65K all in. For simplicity, I'm going to assume you pay the entire amount. Again, assuming 15K miles per year, your cost per mile after 3 years is $1.44/mile, but after 5 years, its down to $0.86/mile, and after 6 years (90K miles) its down to $0.72/mile. All this is assuming that you scrap it for $0 at the end of the driving period. Since that's probably not realistic, whatever you get when you sell the car reduces this cost per mile. So if you drive it for 6 years (90K miles) and sell it for whatever you can get at that point (say $15K), your cost per mile across 90K miles ends up being ~$0.555/mile. However, every mile you continue to drive the car lowers your cost per mile.

The big difference between these 2 approaches is that when your lease is up after 3 years, you have to get another vehicle. There is no way to predict what a vehicle lease will cost 3 years from now, so it might be cheaper to lease again, but it might not. In short, a lease gives you a fixed cost per mile that is almost certainly cheaper at 3 years, but comes with the uncertainty of replacement cost. A purchase gives you the ability to continuously lower your cost/mile, and is most likely more expensive at 3 years, but less expensive at 6 years.

As always, YMMV

 

[ShaggySS]

Maybe its me, but I don't expect a new car to hold its value. I typically buy and keep it for 8-10 years. I suspect they dropped more than normal due to the EV price wars but suspect they will stabilize. Not worried about the current value, nor am I worried about the battery. I wouldn't stress unless you are looking to sell.

 

[Blue highway]

Thanks, I understand but I mean in the sense that nobody will want to buy a used car for $10,000 that needs a $30,000 battery replacement because they could just buy a brand new car for something comparable.

For a guidance of what will happen, you might want to look to old Prius and old Teslas... Nobody puts new batteries in these... in the rare case that the battery has an issue, the few faulty cells are replaced with used cells in a similar state of health to the ones in your car.

This is generally accomplished by swapping our the current battery with a used one that has had the faulty cells replaced as I mention above.

This costs relatively little.

The disinformation that people are facing $30k bill to replace their batteries has to stop. it is nonsense.

 

[Kamuelaflyer]

Maybe its me, but I don't expect a new car to hold its value.

It’s not just you, that is reality. The pandemic was in full force when this car came out. That skewed the normal car market and skewed some people’s expectations. The current market is much closer to normal particularly when you consider most folks ignorance of ev’s.

 

[txaggies07]

The value dropping super fast means that I will keep the car for quite some time. When my cars have an unexpectedly high trade in for the miles that is when I switch cars since the switching cost is low. My Mach-E is probably worth about 30k after 3 years down from the 60k I paid. In the next 3 years I would expect it to drop another 10k or so. Any car I would replace it with would likely drop in value more over the next 3 years than my Mach-E will.

The used market for EVs is all kind of messed up. The tax credits and Tesla dropping prices rapidly last year have led to all sorts of problems. My biggest worry is that my car gets totaled in a wreck and forces me to replace it but only getting the current used prices.

Edit: One more thing to think about. In my head I paid 60k for the car. I actually paid $7500 less due to the tax credit so my cost basis is actually at 52,500. You have to include the tax credit when discussing losses on EVs.

 

[ChasingCoral]

Firstly, the battery doesn’t become an issue until 8 years out 100,000 miles when the warranty ends.

Secondly, Ford has been using modular batteries. Some folks are seeing high variations in cell to cell voltage in their Lightnings and Ford only needs to replace the module where the problem exists (it’s an open CSP under warranty).

Finally, ICE cars will need new engines some day. Transmissions too. That doesn’t mean they have zero value.

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