Buying Used i-MiEV with Expired Warranty

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JoeS

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I recently helped a friend purchase a used i-MiEV that was in excellent shape but was a very high-mileage car with the battery warranty about to expire. This, of course, resulted in a fair amount of angst, as up until now none of us had to worry about the main battery as it was covered by warranty. I was interested because the battery had been replaced at around 50K miles, with the knowledgeable owner stating that the new pack contained the upgraded LEV50N cells.

As part of the sight-unseen negotiations, I came up with what I thought was an approach unique to electric vehicles on the used car market which no longer have a battery warranty: if the car is otherwise in good condition, have the price of the car be related to its remaining battery capacity. So, liking to play with numbers, I put together this chart: the upper end being the owner's asking price and the lower end being the cutoff capacity below which we wouldn't buy the car. Recall, these are theoretically 50Ah cells. Oh, and I've altered the real price numbers as I would prefer not to divulge them.

iMiEVPriceBattCap.jpg


Since neither the owner nor we had any idea what the car's battery capacity was (the owner claimed it was as good as new), I put this down on the table as an offer, before driving down the 400 miles to have a look at the car. The owner was non-committal. The outcome? I'll keep you in suspense, but the battery capacity (measured using my CaniOn) registered as over 43Ah(!), we bought the car, and the final negotiated price was acceptable to all parties concerned.

I thought this approach to pricing a used electric car was unique and simply thought I'd share it.
 
:shock: You can get these cars for really cheap in the US.

Well, most cars, actually. Here in Europe is always so much more expensive.
 
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