From Reuters: “a previously unreported and expensive gap.”
“For many electric vehicles, there is no way to repair or assess even slightly damaged battery packs after accidents, forcing insurance companies to write off cars with few miles—leading to higher premiums and undercutting gains from going electric.
“And now those battery packs are piling up in scrapyards in some countries, a previously unreported and expensive gap in what was supposed to be a ‘circular economy.'”
This inability to repair EV batteries has made insurance premiums higher for EVs than for comparable cars, Reuters said. When damaged, they have to be replaced and they can cost as much as 50 percent of the car’s total value.
And if an EV has to be scrapped early in its life, it may have put more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than other cars—because of the high emissions from the production process. An EV has to be driven for thousands of miles (typically around 10,000, according to Reuters) before its “carbon footprint” begins to be less than that of other cars.
Image of an electric car by Stefan Schweihofer from Pixabay.