Will EVs become collectible or just Recycled? | FerrariChat

Will EVs become collectible or just Recycled?

Discussion in 'General Automotive Discussion' started by Innovativethinker, Jun 7, 2021.

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  1. Innovativethinker

    Innovativethinker F1 Veteran
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    Nothing like a 40 year old car to be in your collection, but what about EVs?

    What will a 2018 $175k Tesla be worth in 20 years?

    Old mechanics are cool, old tech, not so much. Will the operating system and components last for 50 years? Are batteries changeable? Will 40 year old EVs even run?

    Anyone have a crystal ball?
     
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  2. flash32

    flash32 F1 Veteran

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    They will become like tvs stereos PCs etc .. disposable

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  3. GrigioGuy

    GrigioGuy Splenda Daddy
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    Disposable. Nobody will actually own one, they'll just be rented ("leased") and then dismantled.
     
  4. PaulK

    PaulK F1 Rookie
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    They'll be collectible kind of like these rad era econoboxes are right now. Essentially they'll be collectible because we think they won't be. At some point self-driving cars are going to take over and we'll look back at them saying "this was the last of the cars we could actually drive."

    Maybe cars made in 2020 will be collectible because of how ******* crazy that year was for the world.

    Now... I won't be one of them. I prefer my cars with an engine. All Ferraris with an engine will be blue chip investments in the future.
     
  5. Jaguar36

    Jaguar36 Formula Junior

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    This issue is unrelated to EVs and is going to be an issue for all modern cars. They all have a ton of electronics and millions of lines of code on them.

    The batteries are generally changeable, depending on the model. The Tesla Model S battery was designed to be quickly swapped and can be done in 20 minutes or so. Batteries are batteries, if the full packs are no longer available, you'll always be able to rebuild the internals of them with modern ones. Of course this will ruin the originality of the car and decrease its value.

    The original Tesla roadsters have already become collectables, with significant 3rd parties supporting them and have started increasing in value.
     
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  6. Innovativethinker

    Innovativethinker F1 Veteran
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    That is a good point. While you can source or create a part from 1975, you really can't replace the coding or the proprietary electronic components in today's cars.
     
  7. David_S

    David_S F1 World Champ
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    Teslas, or most any other EVs? Pretty much gonna be disposable crap.

    However? If you can get your hands on a functioning GM EV1? Those are probably worth quite a bit... Also? Not pretty, but to this day it still has one of the best CoD (coefficient of drag) of any car on the planet.
     
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  8. BJK

    BJK F1 Rookie

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    as mentioned above, software and electronics in most new cars, not just EV's, could be a big problem as they age past 15 or 20 years. ;)
    .
     
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  9. Natkingcolebasket69

    Natkingcolebasket69 F1 World Champ

    There might be some collector, like the first Ludacris mode, plaid etc... but overall they will end up like an old sega genesis; no one will want to play with them or look at them


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  10. anunakki

    anunakki Seven Time F1 World Champ
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  11. David_S

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  12. CoreyNJ

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    #12 CoreyNJ, Jun 10, 2021
    Last edited: Jun 10, 2021
    I find this thread funny since I work with museums and auction houses dealing with vintage technology every day...

    Vintage technology can be worth decent money as a collectible artifact if they have special provenance or something that makes them collectible. I should also mention, contrived collectibility always seems to backfire over time.

    So what do I mean by something that makes them collectible. I'll use vintage computers as an example, but this could apply to cars, comic books, vintage stereos and even Nike "Moon Shoes"

    Well, an Apple-1 computer from 1976, which cost only $666 at the time, is worth between $500,000 and a million dollars. Did anyone think in 1976 they would be collectible, the answer is no. There were lots of smaller home computer companies making computers at the time and none are worth today what an Apple-1 is. Apple became successful and a big company so their first product which had limited availability is collectible, yet something rarer like a Scelbi 8h computer may only be worth 25k. A case of contrived collectibility was Apple 20th anniversary Macintosh which cost 15k new in 1997 but is worth maybe 2 to 3k now.

    Let's apply this to EVs... The GM EV1. Since GM ordered them destroyed, if any survived, the collectibility is high and so is the price. Will this mean a Tesla roadster will be worth a ton of money... No because of contrived collectibility, they limited production and even offered upgrades to keep them on the road well after their production ended. Here is where another special circumstance comes into play. A Tesla roadster which hasn't been upgraded may be worth something down the road as most will be upgraded. An example of this in the computer world is an Apple Lisa computer. Most were upgraded to Lisa 2 specifications worth 2 to 3k , but an unmodified Lisa 1 can be worth 80k even though it's barely usable in that configuration.

    Now onto provenance... While an upgraded or regular Tesla roadster may not be worth a fortune in the future, if you had Martin Eberhard's Tesla roadster (if he ever would sell it) the value in the future will be high. Martin, if you didn't know is the real co-founder of Tesla not Elon Musk. He was the money guy who came in later when they needed more funding and eventually Elon pushed Martin out.
     
  13. Natkingcolebasket69

    Natkingcolebasket69 F1 World Champ

    That’s my point though not all of them will.
    My 286/386/486 dx2/66 or pentium 75 are worth less right now at least BUT my Apple-2 might be worth a bit more...
    So for those I don’t see a Tesla s 60 reaching crazy heights but maybe the roadster will.


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  14. Bullfighter

    Bullfighter Two Time F1 World Champ
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    This.

    Actually I can’t imagine that any of the modern cars with video screens, touch pads and virtual instruments are going to be worth preserving. I was recently looking at a California T and Porsche 991.2, both great cars, but I wouldn’t want them in 10, 20 or 30 years. Technology ages poorly. Mechanicals are timeless. Think Apple Watch vs. Rolex.


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  15. TheMayor

    TheMayor Nine Time F1 World Champ
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    And all that tech stuff people admire today will be obsolete in 20 years. No replacement parts. No one to fix them. Who is going to repair a 1990's era CD based Nav system?
     
  16. BMW.SauberF1Team

    BMW.SauberF1Team F1 World Champ

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    No one will, but they certainly make replacement units that look OEM. Those late 90s/early 00s BMWs with the 4:3 aspect ratio screens and later on 16:9 regularly get upgraded by enthusiasts to the Apple/Android units that look like the OEM 2001 16:9 display.
     
  17. Bullfighter

    Bullfighter Two Time F1 World Champ
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    One great example is the Porsche Classic Communication radio replacement to update older Porsches… very cool, but that’s for one discrete bit of the car.

    In general, though, no one seems to plan for this. There’s no lane departure hardware and software in an early 911 or Testarossa, for example. Doubt that will be charming or usable in the coming decades.


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  18. BMW.SauberF1Team

    BMW.SauberF1Team F1 World Champ

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    I didn't know about that Porsche piece. Nice! I agree about other subsystems not being supported like lane departure, but for those that really want the cars still like us enthusiasts there will be others out there that will be able to deactivate those if hardware goes bad or other issues. I'm surprised with all the electronics the E39 M5 has that people are still swapping over all those electronics into wagons and getting people to do custom tailored bug fixing with ECU and body control module errors. If the car has just one crazy enthusiast out there they will find a way and the others will use them as the go-to.
     
  19. crinoid

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    What do we do with old computers? There’s the answer.
     
  20. technom3

    technom3 F1 World Champ
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    Those referencing old video games and the original apple computer etc ...

    That has to do with scarcity...

    It has to do with that crowd of people coming into an age of disposable income.

    And when there are only a few of those computers... Well it doesn't take much for the price to get astronomical.

    People will try to apply this to collector cars... Except...

    You can't. They are have solidified their existence. Their desirability. There a re millions of them and the prices are extremely high.

    Also... With regulations they can't build them anymore.

    You can build an original Nintendo if you wanted to. A manufacturer could start it up now and make it.

    A car manufacturer couldn't. Not without extreme loop wholes if not actually assembling the car.

    Also take muscle cars for example why were they such a big deal... Well because for about 20-25 years after... You couldn't build a car like that. Nothing made that kind of power and they became sought after and pop culture icons. They became a life style it meant more than transportation.


    EVs will have to mean more than transportation but at the moment they keep designing the cars to be more and more automated with less input.

    Who knows where everything will go but it's pop culture that makes in relevant.

    Also there is the whole "you will own nothing and be happy" sentiment. If that actually becomes a thing I think EVs will end up next to your flat screen from 2006... Right next to that giant tube tv... And the tv cabinet.
     
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  21. Bas

    Bas Four Time F1 World Champ

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    They'll be disposable objects.

    I'll even go as far to say that even the Ferrari EV will be disposable. Sure this may leave a handful of cars left over and those will be worth millions...
     
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  22. anunakki

    anunakki Seven Time F1 World Champ
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    I hear you but I dont agree as people arent playing these video games. It will be the same with the cars. They will be trucked to a warehouse and stored. Just like the video games which are now encased in plastic graded boxes.

    And old video games were made in the hundreds of thousands, so not scarce at the time. They are scarce now because they werent valued or seen as future collectibles...just like EV today. They are being driven and then trashed. So the ones that werent used will be worth a lot eventually.

    Collectibles is my business for the past 30 years.
     
  23. 330 4HL

    330 4HL Formula 3

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    Reality Check: go check the prices on Tesla Roadsters before you jump to your conclusion...
    How high? Waaay high!
     
  24. technom3

    technom3 F1 World Champ
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    I totally hear you and neither one of us has a crystal ball and I think we are actually pretty close to being on the same page.
    .yes the ones that never get used become scarce and therefore become valuable.

    It will happen with EVs too... But... But... I think the culture behind electric cars and young people are going to be a little different. I don't want to being politics into this but let's just call it a potentially large shift in the culture. Also... The other thing with EVs is if EVs get made obsolete by another technology their existence could be too short to gather the love of the masses and just be a stepping stone.

    Who collects late 70s and 80s cars? (Ferrari and Porsche excluded) the cars before were more exciting and the cars after we're leaps and bounds better.
     
  25. Bullfighter

    Bullfighter Two Time F1 World Champ
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    I think we’ll see a pretty clear demarcation between exciting collectible cars and obsolete appliances. A first generation Prius is already forgotten, for example. A Testarossa, Countach or 930 Turbo will always be a landmark car, and I expect they’ll always be preserved and valued. Ditto the vintage Ferraris, Porsches, et al. They’re already artifacts of the golden age of the internal combustion engine.

    I view all modern cars as somewhat disposable, due to the technology content. The Tesla is like an iPad- cool today, recyclable tomorrow. They don’t have Nardi steering wheels, Scaglietti bodies, Fuchs or Cromodora alloys, etc. Zero character or craftsmanship.

    And, as noted, current generations aren’t accustomed to wrenching on their car and keeping it for 10 years. Everything seems to be on a fast turnover cycle, so you don’t really bond with your Audi e-tron: You lease it till the upgraded model is available.


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