You can assign any value you like to that. However, consumers will assign values based on seats, cargo capacity, operating cost, depreciation, expected maintenance.

And consumers decide what to do with their dead 100K mile cars on a very practical basis; should I put $5K into this vehicle or just buy something else for $5K? If you like, yes, that is an investment decision. You can also frame it as a cost decision, if you like. If the $5K repair is to a vehicle that is worth just $5K, this is a tossup; except that you will strongly suspect you’ll need that $5K part in another 100K miles. For a conventional car, your worst-case scenario is a $2.5K engine and they appear to last, with proper care, indefinitely. For a Volt, you up the worst-case stakes to $5K.

This is all comparable because financial commitments can be compared.

Of course, for me, this is moot. A Volt makes no sense. I either drive 6 to 12 miles per day or I drive over 240 miles per day, often well over and do so for several consecutive days, on trips (no charging is likely to be possible). At 6 to 12 miles, a Volt is completely uneconomic (I don’t drive enough to justify the cost of the vehicle). On the 240+ mile days, I drive so far beyond the Volt’s AER that it’s uneconomic again.

Most Volt analyses you see here are framed in terms of the perfect use cycle of 40 miles/day, 365 days/year. Who has that? Drive either more or less than exactly 40 miles/day, 365 days/year, and the Volt makes even less economic sense.

The value of a 10 year old Volt or any other unreleased model is impossible to predict. I’m not going to even try to discuss it. To me, the worthwhile discussion is about the technological value of an EREV or lack thereof. That is the context of which I was speaking. Reputation and resale values are fickle and depend on a lot more things than just realibility, eventhough GM has certainly shot themselves in the foot in this area.

Replacing a $2.5K transmission or a $2.5k ICE for comparable cars IS comparable, assuming everything else is equal but that says nothing about the relative value of replacing an ICE (or transmission) in an ICE only vehicle vs replacing a battery in an EREV. Based on your economics, you believe it to be a wiser financial decision to add $2.5k ICE than a $5k battery to an EREV40 if both vehicles had a $5k value. This is a finacial commitment to another 100k miles for each car (which, by the way, I believe it’s 100k from the battery from what has been said but would mean many more generator miles). This means 100k of gas or 100k more of electric. If gas is more than $2, then you will be far better off with the new battery in the EREV. I thought all economics considered future obligations. Sounds like your doing an investment analysis instead of a cost analysis.

While it would take $10 gas to make the Volt economical under some rare scenarios. If you are comparing apples to apples cars, the “economical” gas price is much lower for the average driver and lower still for the heavy users.