To be fair, that wasn't just the battery, it also covered the fraame and other components damaged in the accident. It is what insurers call "totalled" when repair would cost more than replacement.
I personally have a Polestar 2 long range dual motor. the thing that doesn’t quite make sense to me about this cost is the fact that during the Polestar 2 announcement the battery pack was shown to be completely modular, and each 7-12kwh module making up the battery, could be individually replaced if it had high degradation, or was damaged. I confirmed this in a conversation with Polestar after I heard this news I also confirmed it with my insurance company who told me it’s one of the reasons my rates are so low in comparison to skateboard platform EV's. I’m interested to see how this all pans out because the modularity was a big selling point for me I’m interested to see how this all pans out because the modularity in the longevity that that offers was a big selling point for me.
as a chinese live in china the complete story is this car is heavily damage, repair price is 13k USD and battery replacement price is about 55k USD , this car has full Insurance ,after negotiated with Insurance company ,they decide scrap this car, and car owner got compensate according to the price he bought this car .
Are you aware that you used the Mustang Mach-e video of the subframe and not the Polestar 2 in the start of the video? The frame is exactly why the Mach-e can have a battery replacement quite easily. The Polestar 2 can not...
Battery packs from EVs are going to be in high demand. It's not just because buyers are using them to fix cars. Home storage for solar, EV conversion of classic cars, and other reuse applications will cause those batteries to be valuable. In fact, recycling facilities are going to have a difficult time obtaining packs because of all the reuse. Insurance companies are eventually going to catch on to this and begin totaling the cars and paying off the owner to get the car. In some cases they may make more off the damaged car than they payed out in the claim. If the insurance company doesn't do it someone will make a deal with the insurance company to get their hands on damaged EVs.
How can this be justified though, clearly they do not cost more than the car - As a new car they put one in, build it with everything else, make a profit and so do the dealers - its just not possible, there has to be more to this story. Clearly requires a bit of journalism here, like, ring a dealer and ask for replacement battery cost. Either way, I wouldnt fancy paying for one at a tenth of the price mentioned on here LOL
It could cost more than the car if Polestar is losing money on each car. Should this be the case, you still have a point though. Why, if I want to get new costumers so badly that I sell my vehicle at a loss would I charge an existing customer the 'real' price of the battery instead of telling them a lower price again. Another explanation is that the labor to replace the battery is this expensive. It is like when an "average" ice vehicle is totalled. Meaning the repair cost is higher than the cars value. In this instance this is already true even if the vehicle is new. Either way Polestar needs to do some work I guess
@@leander9263 Yep I can see that, especially the totalled car bit - it does rather sound like we are talking about a car that has been totalled for a number of reasons (like twisted chassis etc) than purely the cost of the battery as suggested on here)
Hey there Sam, would you mind giving the sources to your articles as URL, please ? I always like going further and (also) for this one, check out what really happened (80k for battery replacement alone seems far fetched). Thanks!
he's clearly biased against Ev's Polestar has modular battery packs so if your car wasn't involved in a collision, there is probably no need to replace it. The unlucky bloke he was referring to suffered frame damage which also did a number to most of the battery modules hence the steep cost.
Sounds like there was structural damage, and not just damage to the battery. And probably very few are equipped to do this repair to this type of car. I guess he should just sell the battery pack to a recycler.
this news is a big ad for insurance companies , cos EV insurance is much more expensive then ICE .some EV owner with Fluke mentality driven they car without insurance, so this news told them ,if you don't bought full insurance with you EV, you will doomed.
Chassis replacements on any car is basically a total. I had a 1999 Jimmy that had a bent frame after only 14k miles and it was a 22k repair. This is not specific to polestar battery cars.
I remember a video by Rich Rebuilds where his Electrified Garage repaired damage to the battery pack on a Model 3 after Tesla quoted the owner $22k to replace the battery pack. Clearly there are repair shops who can do this, whereas some won't and will quote a ridiculous price to repair the vehicle just so they can write it off.
You're correct.. If an online Community can keep Gen3 Taurus SHOs going for 20 years, a rolling Motherboard with a S- ton of batteries should be a walk in the park 👍😎👍
@@wj9494 They just discovered enough lithium in the US to power 50 million EVs (Utah?). I live in western, central Florida, In our "backyard" we have a mountain of phosphorus waiting to be used. I imagine iron won't be hard to get (LFP). I think the supply chain is becoming more mature and in five years, we'll be souping up old Tesla Plaids!
I looked up what a Polestar 2 would cost me to insure. The FWD model was about 1/3 of the cost of insuring a Tesla Model 3. The 4WD version was about half of the Model 3 cost. That's not the Polestar being dirt cheap to insure, it is the Tesla being extremely expensive in my case.
its more to the number of accidents the cars are in that normally sets the rate. As more Polestars are sold and claimed against they will raise the premiums. Thats why the model 3 is more expensive.. theres alot more on the road and for longer. I think generally as EV's of differing brands get more of a presence they will start to be more comparable, still insurers are limited to who can undertake certain repairs especially those related to the drive system/electronics.
It cost me 20% more to insure my LR model 3 over a 10 year old VW Passat diesel at 400 ukp for everything l. Why are so many comments full of shit here.
@@Tom55data of course it costs more than a 10 yr VW Passat. Do you know insurers work on a number of factors car by car, number of accidents, repair cost / complexity, theft risk etc. Trust me my wife works for an insurer and it staggering how they calculate a cars insured worth. The other thing I think you are missing here is that unlike a Tesla the VW has a number of repairers available.
@@Tom55data I wrote what the difference is FOR ME here in Sweden. It's just plain facts. If I compare to the 14 year old Saab I own, the difference is about 8x. For my Zoe it's 5x. I'm talking about full insurance which you need to pay for three years over here if you want to be covered in an accident that you cause yourself. Good for you that you found cheaper insurance, but Teslas are very expensive to insure here.
@@z00fbar Yes I know !!!!! read the comments on this page, everyone says it is expensive, it is not - 20% more is negligible going from a 10 year old car that does 0-60 in 9.8 seconds to a new car that does 0-60 in 4.4 seconds.
Most EV makers are moving to structural battery packs which integrate the battery and the frame. I am curious to see what the insurance rates will be for such cars.
No changing in cells is a bad idea (balancing issues) & probability not possible as the cells are glued to the cooling channel aswell as to each other.
I don't think insurance will do in a case like this with those prices for the car and the battery pack. When there is a damage to a car, and the cost of repair exceeds 40-=50- % of the actual value of the car, the insurance company will total the car and give you another one or pay the balance of the car you lost for you to buy another, equivalent one. So in this case, the owner, if insured, would have receive an equivalent vehicle to the one he had, and the insurance company will stay with the damaged car. That is at least my experience. And thanks for letting me know about the Polestar. I think I will stay with my 2014 P85D........
This is no different to someone driving an ICE car and drowning the engine. I am sure an engine replacement on a new car would be more than the car is worth
I predict that within a few years there will be companies who will be replacing, batteries and motors fixing and reprogramming EV computers. Already there are a few really talented people converting ICE cars to accept motors and batteries from wrecked EVs. An example is a BMW2002te with a front Tesla motor driving the rear wheels powered by a BMW 3i battery. see Bavarian Econs
In March 2022, I paid $6000 to buy a replacement electronic hand brake actuator part on a 2013 Hyundai i30 out of warranty (plus labour costs) Nearly half the current market value of the car. Now I will have to ask insurance companies if they cover the EV battery and glass sunroof in an accident.
I understand the common sense reflex is to say "get insurance". In my view this doesn't adress the problem. Insurance is merely a plaster on the wound of a bigger issue. To start with I can understand the LiFePh batteries are cheaper and safer. But that was, if I understand correctly, not the issue of this polestar owner. The problem was inward damage to the battery pack, which apparently warranted a new battery pack advice. I think if even a LiFePh battery was part of this polestar, except for the price perhaps, I think Volvo would still have given advice to replace the whole battery pack. So that's the safety argument out the windows. The ussue at hand is repairability. Xpen apparently can service the battery at a modular or cell level. Which is preferably what you really want for every EV. The question we have to ask critically of Polestar is why Polestar is not offering this level of granular service. Same goes for Tesla as well. As we've seen recently with Munro's teardown it is virtually impossible to tear down the latest 4680 cells as they are heavily isolated and coated with the pink foam. Great for safety. Bad for a repairability score. Only recyclability. I would think you would want EVs produced as long the road as possible, I stead the "easy" but more energy intensive recycling. Tecycling is good, but I think ultimately the best carbon neutral footprint would be to keep current EV models as long on the road as possible, with minimal maintenace. This includes repairability, preferably, at the cell level. 80000 dollars is criminally high for a new pack. Certainly if it's twice as expensive as the car itself. This stinks all over like a scam, in my view. An insurance paying a scam, sounds like it is going to hurt all of our pockets. Because if insurance pays every scam, more industries will follow suit in this behavior. And eventually, every person's insurance will rise, which ultimately means more overhead costs for owning an EV, which means owning a car in general becomes even more expensive. So yes there is a place for insurance coverage. But not for an 80000 dollar scam pay off. I think insurance should be there to pay off reasonable pricing. One has to ask how it is a possible a Tesla new battery apparently costs 20000 dollars and a polestar 80000 for almost the same capacity. Somethings off. I think even Elon Musk should make a statement on this matter for proper industrial pricing etiquette, if more of these cases arise in time, preferably sooner than later.
You forget that insurance pays up to a certain percentage of what the car is worth in damages. If the repair exceeds the cost of the car, insurance will total it and pay the owner the car's value. They will then auction off the car to the highest bidder at an auction.
There is a lot of labour to replace the pack and the repair centres will be out of practice, how ever getting a hold of either a new car or a new replacement battery pack is probably months if not years. So much demand and supply no where near touching it no matter the manufacturer. Also Polestar maybe selling the initial cars at some loss to get them out in the world.
In longer range EVs the battery weighs around half the total car and the encasement is a structural item with internal complex power and liquid cooling management. In some ICE vehicles, the whole body needs to be lifted to access certain engine and transmission items.
> Classic example of a dealer taking the customer for a ride. And Tesla has replacement battery prices, much lower than the media reports. And Sandy 's boys struggling to disassemble a structural pack shows ignorance on their part. Lots more research needs to be done on these items. You up to it Sam? Looking forward to future reports to settle these issues.
Something like Vinfast's battery rental (with insurance rolled in) might make sense at least until battery standards start to settle down. This case is a clear exercise in price gouging with the car owner in a fairly precarious position and at the mercy of Polestar.
Is Polestar making money on their EVs? If not that would explain it. Also for a Tesla Model S, I liken it to a Corvette Engine. A new Corvette crate engine for a 2012 is about the same as a 2012 Tesla Model S battery pack replacement..
@@benjaminsmith2287 So there is another scenario. It would be that they have a negative gross margin on the cars and are just trying to gain market share. In that case, the battery coukd truly cost that much. Or it could be that they never designed the battery to be replaceable and just requires huge amounts of labor. Or could be the dealership pulling a fast one (I don't see that because the insurance company would have shopped around)
Wait until Tesla shows you the price for the structural battery pack. Totally impossible to repair and most of the the inner of car is attached to it like chairs, mats and so on.
No one buys those polecats anyway. I see 20 tree huggers with Teslas for every Polecat. Sure is interesting how many used Teslas are for sale around here...I wonder why? How many have decided that conventional cars are actually the way to go?
The economics don't make sense. 3rd recommendation: don't buy Polestars until someone at Polestar realizes that they should NOT price-gouge their customers. The cure for corporate greed is boycotts.
If the car was insured properly, the insurer would write it off, and replace his car with another of similar value. I had two different fossil cars written off by insurers. In both cases I then had the repairs carried out by competent people and at much lower costs, and then continued driving the vehicles for several more years, both fully insured and legally. If Mr. Han has not scrapped the car, he would be wise to have the battery replaced with a good used one from another vehicle which has been scrapped, and save himself a bundle of money. In the case of this car, I suspect strongly that the repair bill is for both the battery replacement and for the other damage to the vehicle. Damage to the car will be extensive if the battery has been damaged. Either way, with that much damage, he's probably much better off if he sells the car for parts, or scraps it, and buys himself a new one. Insurance is mandatory in many countries, with good reason, and often mainly to protect third parties. Unfortunately, repairers take advantage of insurance and sting the insurer (and, in effect, the customer, via increased premiums) for as much money as they can get away with.
In EU you get a full pack from crashed cars for ~4-5000€. Full replacement was quoted 28k€ for an unlucky guy in Germany. Still a lot, but less then half your guy paid
He's being ripped off, taken advantage of and scammed all at the same time. If a new Polestar LR cost less than $50K then that means the battery alone can't cost $80k. But yeah, at this point just sell the car for parts and buy a new car.
If the battery pack is so expensive, it should be designed so that only the damaged part is replaced, not the whole battery pack. Polestar battery pack design is a joke. Avoid Polestar at all cost.
@@realestatenow This is significant design flaw, yet the Electric Viking doesn't even talk about this with regards to major EVs. People must not think that totaling their car when the battery pack is damaged is significant. Tesla price to replace the whole battery pack may not cost more than replacing the car itself, but to have to replace the whole battery pack for damage to just a small part of the pack is a major design flaw since the whole battery pack still cost an arm and a leg, no matter what manufacturer is in questioned.
YOU are a liar. A liar. I just had my traction battery replace (under warranty). I then inquired with the service department what that woukld have cost me out of warrenty. About $12K.
