gmarcucio

I was wondering how the ERay will hold it's value as the traction battery degradation takes place. The battery warranty is 8 years/100,000 miles. Most owners will run out of warranty years before they run out of miles. So, if you're looking at purchasing a used ERay 5 or 6 years down the road how important is it to you that there is only 2 or 3 more years battery warranty left. I don't know what an ERay battery replacement would cost but I would imagine it's not cheap! My point is, should this be a consideration now before purchasing an ERay looking forward to it's demand and value as the battery degrades? In comparison, this wouldn't be an issue with a Z06.

C823

Z06 will have a better resale value in the considerable future, if you've a realistic chance of getting one at MSRP anytime soon, by all means go for it. I personally would sell the ERay within 2 years/ when I am able to get a ZR1 to have any chance of getting close to what was paid for it. The unrealistic resale value of C8 has already slowed down as the supply is catching up with the demand and the same will happen for ERay in 5 years, being a hybrid will likely affect the value adversely. All that said, I have been waiting for an AWD Corvette so it's a no brainer for me despite what the future might hold 🍻

z28lt1

I think this is a non-issue. Most batteries will last much longer than the warranty (if they didn't, a bunch would fail within warranty). The battery is tiny, and shouldn't cost that much. I'm sure there will be a Corvette tax the first couple of years or so, but similar size batteries are generally $1500-$2k or so now (and will likely be much cheaper 8 years from now). Labor to replace them should be minimal since it is easily accessible. On a $100k plus vehicle with $12k+ worth of brakes (more if paying retail), and a DCT that probably runs in the 5 figures, the battery is very unlikely to be the reason resale suffers.

The Z06 might hold its value better, but it has its own set of repair cost worries as it has a very expensive and very low volume engine that won't be cheap to fix or replace int he future.

GOLD72

Tadge said at a presentation at Carlyle recently that GM was expecting the battery to likely last the life of the car though some degradation will take place.

/Bear/

That is something I plan to measure and report on in detail.

GOLD72

I don’t remember exactly what Tadge said but I seem to remember him saying that he expected to find 15+ yo E-Rays still with their factory installed batteries. Time will tell (pardon the pun!!).

JerriVette

I wouldn’t worry about replacement battery cost as an issue on the Eray over time. It’ll be minuscule.

1.9 and easy to access. As battery tech advances the cost of replacement won’t be a lot

jmo

sshallen

I'm going to keep mine a while, I really expect aftermarket "Mister Fusion" reactor retrofits to be available before I pass away.

Doc had his in 2015.

Jridden

How are we expected to gauge / measure how much degradation there is?

gmarcucio

From the owners/driver's standpoint I guess it depends on how much battery information is available for the driver to see. Does it give the driver charge capacity information of the battery like an EV does? And even if it does, I would imagine it would take a while of owning the car to know what's normal and what's not. From what I hear the regen rate of the battery is so quick and always ready to deliver that it would be hard to tell. And then, does the battery have a low and high end buffer zone where if it was starting to degrade you wouldn't even know it because the buffer zone doesn't show it. Such as the Chevrolet Volt did. From a technician's standpoint they can probably just monitor the battery cells condition with diagnostic hardware and software. I guess at this point it doesn't really matter as people mentioned here the battery should last the life of the car or can always be replaced at hopefully not too much of an expense.

ryoder

I can replace the battery in my Volt for about 5k with a reman. I assume this will also be possible in a ERay ten years from now and might cost less as it’s way smaller
https://www.greentecauto.com/product...volt-2013-2015

fullbeansracing

Similar to the Chevy Volt, I'm sure they overengineered the battery. The Volt can go 150k+ miles before it starts to have any noticeable degradation. I'm guessing the same or more for this.

BIG Dave

According to <THIS> article, by today’s pricing, a 1.9 kWh battery should cost around $300. In eight years, I would expect the same size battery to be practically FREE.

Ltngdrvr

My question would be, what kind of "degradation" are you referring to? Degradation in the performance, the output of the electric motor?
According to the specs out there, the battery is 1.9 Kwh, but only uses 1.1 Kwh for the electric motor, keeps the remaining power in reserve, it never uses up 100% of the 1.9Kwh.
So, I don't think degradation will be a pressing issue ever, and as mentioned in other replies, battery replacement cost will pale in comparison to ceramic brake replacement, which I would worry more about than the battery replacement.

Racer X

When the demand goes up for lithium, and supply doesn't follow the price of the primary component will go up and maybe dramatically. In November 2020 Lithium was 39,000 a metric ton, it is now 164,500 per ton. In November 2022 it got as high as 597,500 per ton. I could be wrong, but I am guessing those kinds of swing affect the price of Lithium based batteries.

gmarcucio

Geez, that's less than my electric riding mower battery!!!

Michael A

Somebody's dreaming if they think an E-ray replacement battery will be $300.

stealthpilot

Won’t make much difference. ERAY battery will be cheap. It’s a tiny battery. Probably $2k replacement.

EvanZR1

Having had an ELR where the battery did degrade, it’s a gradual process, not something that happens overnight. And it does not impact the electric motor performance. The ERay only uses about 58% of its batter capacity, so I has a lot of capacity to absorb deg without an owner even noticing it. Even once it goes beyon that, it’ll be a gradual reduction in usable range, but given the design f the ERay, most will probably not even notice. With our ELR, even when th battery was so degraded that the ICE was running all the time, the battery was still able to provide max power bursts, which is more how the ERay functions by design.

What will be really interesting to see is if as battery tech improves, there are replacement batteries that are higher capacity. McLaren did this on the P1 almost roughly doubling the battery capacity with a factory available replacement pack.

LS2CTSV

To GM, the life of the car is 36,000 miles.