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Commentary: Car Dealers Reveal an Alarming Problem with Getting Your Electric Vehicle Serviced

Commentary: Car Dealers Reveal an Alarming Problem with Getting Your Electric Vehicle Serviced

So, you bowed to the pressure to buy an electric vehicle and you are ready for the big savings to pile up.

However, just when you thought you were in the money, you found a whole new problem keeping your car off the road and causing expenses to soar.

This from westernjournal.com.

Electric vehicles are supposed to allow owners to grin giddily as they pass one gas station after another, saving the driver hundreds with every pump they pass.

But there are an awful lot of issues on the downside that EV dealers are not exactly thrilled to tell potential buyers.

For instance. What happens when your EV breaks down and you need service?

Apparently, in many cases, not much is the answer to that.

Fox News Business Network reported:

The industry is warning new EV owners that they may have a little problem finding qualified service technicians when their EVs have issues.

Dealerships, especially, are warning that even they are having trouble finding enough qualified techs to service the cars.

Sean Kelley, founder of CarMotivators, told FNBN:

The government’s wanting to make this transition and shift to EVs, and there are several concerns around that in the automotive vertical and specifically the dealership world.

That isn’t the only problem service shops are having.

The sets of specialized tools that the shops need to purchase are extremely expensive and are not in great supply.

Then there are the new charging stations needed to recharge the cars they are servicing.

Kelly said:

These stations often mean repair shops to begin ‘tearing apart your whole shop’ to rearrange their floor plan to accommodate them.

Kelly added:

Small, independent dealerships have it worse because they don’t have a cost-effective pipeline to the original equipment manufacturer tools and information and find it harder to deal with EV repairs.

This makes the costs of gearing up to include EV repairs extremely difficult for all car dealers, including the big dogs.

On the other hand, EVs do have less maintenance, so EV owners might expect fewer reasons to find their autos sitting in a repair bay.

One Tesla owner told FNBN that they don’t have problems getting technicians sent out when they are needed.

And General Motors added that they are graduating more new techs every year and sending them out to serve their customers. Ford and Hyundai made similar claims.

One thing the manufacturers and dealers studiously avoided is the question of battery pack expenses.
As The Western Journal reported before, replacing battery packs is an expensive proposition.

As the prices of lithium and other minerals needed to manufacture EVs soar because of higher demand, the costs of battery packs for EVs will rise precipitously.

Presently, the battery pack is one of the most expensive parts of an electric vehicle. And when the battery pack is no longer functional in 12-15 years, junking the entire vehicle is likely the smart option.

And what about buying a used EV?

[E]xpect to have to sink around $13,000 or more into their purchase when their used battery pack expires — and that would be a back door cost on top of the purchase price of the used car that might make procuring a used EV cost-prohibitive.

Electric Vehicles? They aren’t for everyone. Am I biased? Certainly.

They aren’t for this fine-driving-machine gasoline-engine Patriot American who got his start as a teenager in an old two-tone ’57 Chevy, a black ’64 GTO, then a red ’67 GTO.