The car manufacturers sell their cars through the dealers. If every time they make an EV, the dealerships don't order them and steer every customer away from buying them, that's just as much a problem for the car manufacturer.
> Most cars are replaced because the lease was up on the old one.
The leased car still goes to someone else who then needs to service it.
And if the old cars start lasting for 40 years instead of 15 then the value of just off lease cars goes down due to increased supply, which makes leasing more expensive to offset the loss of resale value, which makes fewer people buy new cars.
> Even way down the line, most places don't have emissions testing for old cars: the car is replaced because the parts wear out. Ever seen a car with 250k miles on it - don't use the door handle to close it, it will just break off more, just ignore the worn spot on the seats, the AC will work for another two weeks if I recharge it - the above is real from my last car - a small number of all the little things (and it still ran great)
Nobody replaces the door handle on an ICE car with 250,000 miles on it because they know the powertrain will give out in another 10,000 miles and then the car will be scrap.
But batteries don't work like transmissions. As they go bad they have 150 miles of range instead of 300. For many people that's enough and they'll drive the car that way another five years, and then it's worth replacing the door handle.
Meanwhile battery prices are falling like a rock. The lower they get, the older the car is before it has to be scrapped because a new battery is too expensive.
> Transmissions are generally rebuilt by a third party.
Transmissions can be rebuilt by a third party. That doesn't mean nobody goes to the dealer or buys a new transmission from the carmaker.
> NO, the cost of the battery is they have the ability to replace it. Either you replace all the individual cells (if 18650 a lot of labor - and you need a new chargers for the new chemistry), or more likely the manufacture is keeping everything around to make it even though the car it went in is out of production.
Carmakers have the incentive to standardize this. If every GM EV for twenty years has one of two or three different battery packs, people will be making those indefinitely.
Meanwhile the labor of replacing individual cells in old batteries will happen in countries with lower labor costs because it isn't labor that has to happen at the repair site.
The result is that remanufactured batteries could end up being very inexpensive.
