by robomartin | 2025-10-19 03:16:25+00:00
What's being missed here --likely from the context of technical people who have never had a sales position-- is that whatever you might want to say about the technical realities of batteries is utterly irrelevant.

I know batteries degrade over time. I know random failures do not happen unless, well, something random happens, which is generally rare.

As an engineer who has designed and manufactured dozens of products and then had to go sell them, what I am telling you is that the EV industry has done a shit job selling risk mitigation.

There are virtually no stories of IC cars requiring $25K repairs after N years. Nobody buying a new or used IC vehicle ever thinks about having to spend at those levels, because is just does not happen except for really freak circumstances (your engine and transmission commit suicide).

In the EV world the case is different. Someone (my wife and others) don't go from "Let's install a large solar array to get ready to buy a couple of Teslas" to "I am not touching an EV if it was free" out of nowhere.

That happened because the fear of the $25K expense per vehicle got planted into her head when reports of this happening surfaced. You never hear from happy customers who put 200K miles on an EV. You definitely do hear from cases where the manufacturer charged someone $25K or more for a battery replacement.

This is called "Positioning" and there's a very famous marketing book on the subject. Once your product or a concept owns a certain position in someone's mind it is incredibly difficult to change it.

You know exactly how positioning works. If I were to ask you who you'd call to fix your plumbing; where to go to get the best coffee, burger, steak, etc. You will typically answer that question instantly using whatever brand or company owns that positioning in your brain. That's how it works.

Well, the EV companies have managed to own the "$25K battery replacement" position. They should have come out of the gate with an aggressively low replacement cost, the kind that nobody would every object paying. In my post I proposed that this number is $5K. Why? Because I know that, if this guarantee existed, this would be the number that would put two Teslas on our driveway right now.

Don't send links about battery longevity and your personal anecdotal data. They are irrelevant. This is the equivalent of "Sell me this pen" for the EV question about batteries.

Maybe this example can drive the point further: I have a fear of going up on a tall ladder, you know, the kind you might use to get up on a roof. I get up past a certain point and my brain says "Hard stop! No f-ing way". Now, intellectually, I know that millions of people go up and down these things every day without a problem. I also know that, as long as I secure the bottom very well and make sure the top can't slide around, I'll be safe. I further understand that I have to keep the vertical projection of the center of gravity within the base of the triangle formed by the ladder against the house. I know these things. And I know that I will be perfectly safe. And yet, in my brain, the "tall ladders are unsafe" positioning has taken hold and that's that. I know I can fix it. And it will take a lot of work.

That's my point. Positioning. Not physics.