This bothers me...

Redundant

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This topic and similar tech topics eat at me, regarding getting the MME.

https://www.greencarreports.com/new...mile-evs-viable-million-mile-battery-in-sight

We all have seen these reports of new battery tech, Tesla's million mile batteries, faster charging, long battery life, etc, etc. Technology always move ahead, and from computers to phones, waiting for the next great thing is a fools errand, because there is always something new and you/I will never buy anything if that is a concern. However, a phone or a computer is one thing, but a $50K or $60K "investment" is another. I just don't like the idea of buying this car and having it be worth next to nothing in 3 years, when new cars routinely get 400 miles a charge or can charge in 5 minutes, name your tech. I would lease, but I don't see evidence that they are changing their milage requirements, even though they should, since EV's don't age the way ICE vehicles do.

I have never been able to lease, because I drive 22K or more a year. Obviously, at that rate, after 5 years, the value of the car is pretty low anyway due to milage, so maybe if doesn't matter if the MME depreciates. But, it still eats at me.
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Popeye

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Wow that is a lot of driving. I do have a similar concern over battery tech and how quickly it seems to be getting better and better. Ford for example, has invested millions into Solid Power, which seems to have achieved a process for manufacturing solid state battieries. They have not achieved the size of battery rehires for an BEV, but seems they arent too far off from it.

But, and this might be a big assumption on my part, batteries can be replaced on BEV. Some probably easier than others. So replacing the battery on the MME to the latest and greatest when they come out will be achievable. Granted there will be a cost, but part of the innovations that are being made is driving down the cost of the batteries as well.

What I found interesting early on with the MME, was they intentionally are overpowering the hardware on it. For example, they mentioned having additional CPUs, more Than currently utilized to allow for future updates. This gives me the hope that they are looking for these to be less of the typical 100k throwaways let a typical ICE. More in line with upgrading existing vehicles with the latest software and in the case of batteries the ability to upgrade to future better batteries. Even the charging, I read while the max is currently 150kW, the wiring in place can handle the 250 kW super chargers for when they become more mainstream.

Long and short of it, I am hopefully it is more future tech proof then what would have been produced if they went with a compliance vehicle as originally designed.
 
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Redundant

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Wow that is a lot of driving. I do have a similar concern over battery tech and how quickly it seems to be getting better and better. Ford for example, has invested millions into Solid Power, which seems to have achieved a process for manufacturing solid state battieries. They have not achieved the size of battery rehires for an BEV, but seems they arent too far off from it.

But, and this might be a big assumption on my part, batteries can be replaced on BEV. Some probably easier than others. So replacing the battery on the MME to the latest and greatest when they come out will be achievable. Granted there will be a cost, but part of the innovations that are being made is driving down the cost of the batteries as well.

What I found interesting early on with the MME, was they intentionally are overpowering the hardware on it. For example, they mentioned having additional CPUs, more Than currently utilized to allow for future updates. This gives me the hope that they are looking for these to be less of the typical 100k throwaways let a typical ICE. More in line with upgrading existing vehicles with the latest software and in the case of batteries the ability to upgrade to future better batteries. Even the charging, I read while the max is currently 150kW, the wiring in place can handle the 250 kW super chargers for when they become more mainstream.

Long and short of it, I am hopefully it is more future tech proof then what would have been produced if they went with a compliance vehicle as originally designed.
I hope so. I wouldn't mind having to replace the batteries in 5 years and keep the car. Much less expensive than a new vehicle. If they raise the milage on leasing, then I would lease, as that puts them in the position of taking the depreciation and I get a new EV in 3 or whatever years. Either way, I hope you are right about future upgradability.
 

jhalkias

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I have to see what they do with leasing too . . . I drive about 32K a year. My 2016 escape is coming up on 150K. Since I have read somewhere that the batteries will be able to be swapped out, I too am hoping to keep the car and change the batteries as the tech improves.
 

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"I just don't like the idea of buying this car and having it be worth next to nothing in 3 years"

Won't happen. Continuous improvement over 3 years doesn't make for obsolescence. It may depreciate faster than an equivalently priced gas vehicle, but that depreciation may be offset by lower maintenance and fuel costs.
 


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Despite what Musk and Mary Barra say million mile batteries with 600 mile range are not likely to be available (and certainly not commonplace) in six years let alone three. They say those things to drive investment and buzz, but even if they had such a battery in a lab today they will not be able to make it production grade for quite some time. Presumably you need a new car before 2025, so what is the alternative? An ICE with the kind of miles you drive won't be worth much by then either, so I don't think the residual value of whatever buy should be your primary concern. As stated above, upgrading/replacing your battery at that time will be far cheaper than replacing an entire ICE car.

I don't know how much your wife drives, but an alternative is to get a 15k/yr lease on the Mach E and swap with your wife's car periodically to even out the mileage. I have a 100 mile commute compared with my wife's 5 mile one, so one week a month I drove her car and she drove mine to save mileage on. That got me down to 15k miles/yr on my car before I started working from home 2 days a week (pre virus). Or, you could simply give her the Mach E after 2-3 years and get a new car for yourself at that time - assuming she doesn't mind driving your hand-me-down :) .
 

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However, a phone or a computer is one thing, but a $50K or $60K "investment" is another.
Totally agree with you there. I also look at it on a time basis. The common life of a cell phone is just 2-3 years, while the common life of a car is 10+ years. Living with a "less than state of the art" cell phone for a couple more years is no big deal. But living with substantially subpar capability (relative to the newer ones in a few years) for a decade+ would be a much bigger deal. I know it would eat at me to buy the most expensive car I've even bought (by far) and find out the range doubles in 3 years on the new ones. (Which a lot of the battery hype tends to do.)

So it's frustrating. I'm not one that likes to lease, or turn around a sell a car for an upgrade every few years. Once I buy one, I have it for 10+ years until it's no longer dependable. (Plus we're of the age that this will probably be our final new car period, as we don't drive a lot of miles in retirement.)

But there is a potential out on a new BEV -- a battery replacement. If there really is a quantum leap in batteries in 5 years or something (not just in the lab but in actual practice), it may be possible to just upgrade the battery back for something like $8k-10k. Since a mere extra 60 miles (more like 45 highway-speed miles) between the current SR and ER battery isn't enough for us to drive the Mach-e on road trips, we're just getting the SR and saving the $5000 anyway. So paying for a battery pack replacement in 5 years if it gets 450 miles or something wouldn't feel too bad.

In the mean time, it comes down to whether current range is plenty sufficient for how we plan to use the Mach-e. And it is. I've resigned myself to making it our around-home car and not the road trip car (we have a 2nd ICE car for that). And the Mach-e has plenty of range for our around-home needs. So a gradual increase in range in the 2021s, then 2022s, then 2023s, etc wouldn't change anything for me anyway. Only a quantum leap would.
 

dbsb3233

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An ICE with the kind of miles you drive won't be worth much by then either, so I don't think the residual value of whatever buy should be your primary concern.
Yep. Putting on 22k miles/year means about a 7-year lifespan of a vehicle anyway. High mileage like that makes for a much more compelling case to get a BEV, if it's a good logistical fit otherwise (i.e. you have a house/garage to dependably charge at home nightly, your daily commutes are well within the single-charge range of the vehicle, you don't need it for long road trips, etc).
 

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If the MME lives up to the hype and promise, then I don’t plan on selling it, maybe ever. I’ll replace the battery when the time comes ahead of buying something new, so I’m not worried about battery tech advancing. In fact, I welcome it. The MME battery is attached to the undercarriage, so when the time comes, it’s easily done.

Most important thing for me is that the car drives well and I’m excited by it. That’s pretty much why people love mustangs, right? So mine is for life! I plan to keep it alive as long as possible. As long as batteries keep supplying electricity, then they should always be compatible with an electric car... maybe far down the line some re-wiring or retro fitting may need to happen, but no reason why the MME couldn’t become an electric classic.
 

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You can say the same things about ICE vehicles also. We had cars with carburetors, then we had sequential port injection, then direct injection etc etc. Every few years things get more advanced, better, and we are less able to work on them ourselves,,,,,:oops:, The same thing happened with distributors...all you older guys like me remember those? You had to change out the points on them about every year and reset the timing on the distributor. Then there was dual point distributors, then it was solid state distributors. I have no idea what it is called now. Even with all those rapid changes the older vehicle still maintained some value. Will be the same with present and future EV's. Some day batteries will be obsolete. First we will develop super capacitors that give a vehicle a 1000 mile range and charge in 60 seconds. Then someone will invent some kind of quantum power source that has limitless energy and after that it will become old and something else comes around. Artificial gravity drives or something along those lines. You buy for today and a few tomorrows then in 3-5 years the next best thing will come along. Roll with the times and enjoy your MME.
 

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I wouldn't be so sure replacing the battery packs is a viable solution.
True, you may not be able to change battery chemistry or form factor due the the native BMS - but I suspect by then there will be a hot market for third party options that are compatible. There is a whole cottage industry for customizing ICE ponies, so I would expect that to exist in the BEV realm eventually also. The internal wiring will probably limit you to 150-200 kw charging as well, but who knows?

I don't think even without upgrading anything and simply replacing the old batteries with new OEM ones with the same specs the car will still be worth something to somebody.
 

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True, you may not be able to change battery chemistry or form factor due the the native BMS - but I suspect by then there will be a hot market for third party options that are compatible. There is a whole cottage industry for customizing ICE ponies, so I would expect that to exist in the BEV realm eventually also. The internal wiring will probably limit you to 150-200 kw charging as well, but who knows?

I don't think even without upgrading anything and simply replacing the old batteries with new OEM ones with the same specs the car will still be worth something to somebody.
I think you're right that other components would need to be replaced if you changed/upgraded the battery. If they doubled the capacity of the battery, I'm sure that would come paired with some new tech/hardware to charge it faster.

With Mustangs typically getting a lot of aftermarket support it's possible the MME could benefit from that, but they will have to sell a lot more than 50k a year to support that industry.
 

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True, you may not be able to change battery chemistry or form factor due the the native BMS - but I suspect by then there will be a hot market for third party options that are compatible. There is a whole cottage industry for customizing ICE ponies, so I would expect that to exist in the BEV realm eventually also. The internal wiring will probably limit you to 150-200 kw charging as well, but who knows?

I don't think even without upgrading anything and simply replacing the old batteries with new OEM ones with the same specs the car will still be worth something to somebody.
Third party may be able to do it, but the labor to almost completely disassemble and reassemble the vehicle might be prohibitive, and it might take substantially different tooling between makes and models (barrier to entry for the shops).

Tesla tried to make the modules easily replaceable with Model 3, but failed (not sure why/how). I know at least some Tesla drivers have tried to gauge the cost of replacing smaller battery packs with larger ones, and eventually concluded trading in was a better option.

But if a car is designed for ease of swap, that's a different story. Remember back in the day when we had crate motors (still do, I guess)? Might this be the era of crate battery packs?
 

pbojanoski

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Totally agree with you there. I also look at it on a time basis. The common life of a cell phone is just 2-3 years, while the common life of a car is 10+ years. Living with a "less than state of the art" cell phone for a couple more years is no big deal. But living with substantially subpar capability (relative to the newer ones in a few years) for a decade+ would be a much bigger deal. I know it would eat at me to buy the most expensive car I've even bought (by far) and find out the range doubles in 3 years on the new ones. (Which a lot of the battery hype tends to do.)
Agree, but even with ICE cars, the in car infotainment tech is quickly evolving and cars get new design features, mileage improvements, improved performance etc. Even a new ICE car today will probably look dated in 5 years.

If you are happy with the "second" car (today's BEV) being a local car due to range and charging time limitations, then 5 years from now it is still a local car and maybe you replace the ICE car with the improved BEV. (By the way, I mean "you" generically. ;) )
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