What if your car’s engine breaks after 10 years? What are you doing with the car? With how expensive it has to be to change an entire engine… do you throw the car into the scrapyard? And if you don’t, do you invest thousands of euros in it?
It is very likely that when you have told a friend, a cousin or a co-worker that you are thinking of buying a gasoline car, they have never asked you these questions. What if it were electric? Would they ask you what happens if your battery breaks when the car is 10 years old? In that case, the questions are not so strange anymore.
Now, the answer will be less uncomfortable if you are one of the latter, one of those who are thinking about jumping into the electric car. At least not so much if you compare it with a combustion car.
As expensive… as a combustion one
How much does a serious gearbox breakdown cost?
How much does a serious breakdown caused by the timing belt cost?
How much does a serious engine cylinder head breakdown cost?
These questions, and many others, are answered by RACE. Whether due to the amount of time that has to be invested, either because the replaced parts are expensive or due to a combination of both, the three aforementioned breakdowns can easily cost over 5,000 euros.
An electric car, most commonly, does not have a gearbox. It will also not have a timing belt or an engine with cylinder heads, connecting rods or injectors. In fact, its maintenance is so simple that there are those who were wondering If electric cars have oil and if it is necessary to change it.
However, there is a large public that continues to worry about the health of the battery and how much the bill may increase in the event of a forced change.
This question was already answered by Recurrent study supported by Goldman Sachs. In it it was stated that in 2030 Changing an electric car battery will be as expensive as facing a serious breakdown of a combustion engine. According to his calculations, collected by Hybrids and ElectricsIn less than five years, changing batteries will cost between 3,200 and 4,800 euros for larger batteries. For lower battery cars, the forecast is for it to be below 3,000 euros.
The bulk of the calculation to make these estimates is based on the price of its minerals and their impact on battery cells and packs. According to the data of Bloomberg NEFthe total cost of the battery in 2025 stood at $108/kWh. That is, a car battery with an 80 kWh accumulator (for which a highway range of between 350 and 450 kilometers is usually expected) would cost $8,640 right now, just over 7,200 euros.
The number, however, has plummeted in a decade. In 2015 they calculated that the cost was $475/kWh and in 2013 it was $827/kWh. The evolution is promising. That Recurrent report already anticipated a price of $65/kWh cost for a complete battery replacement in 2030. That is, a car with the aforementioned 80 kWh battery would cost about $5,200 (about 4,380 euros).
The study mentions the chemistry used (NMC are predictably more expensive than LFP) but it does not indicate whether there would be any additional cost between the cars that use CTC or CTB batteries. The first are batteries that are installed on the chassis of the vehicle but in the second the chassis itself is used as the vehicle’s casing and the cells are attached to it. In this way, energy density is increased and, therefore, there is a greater amount of electrical energy available in the same space.
What is certain is that the price of changing batteries should fall over the years. The economy of scale itself will lower what remains the main cost of an electric vehicle. To this we must add that firms like Toyota They are already offering guarantees of ten years or one million kilometers if maintenance is carried out in their official workshops.
To the above we must also add that some studies suggest thatOnly 2.5% of electric cars replace the battery due to breakdowns. Of course, it must be taken into account that the figure may have been distorted by the high cost that, until now, this operation has had.
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