Family shocked when the cost of replacing electric car battery is more expensive than buying the car

With fuel prices continuing to rise and showing no signs of stopping, coupled with climate change concerns, many people are turning to electric vehicles instead of internal combustion engine vehicles. The Siwinski family, who live in St. Petersburg, Florida, is one of them.

Accordingly, the parents of Avery Siwinski, 17, decided to buy her a 2014 Ford Focus Electric - using an electric motor, so Avery could drive herself to school. This car has run more than 96,000 km and the Siwinski family only spent $ 11,000 to buy it back.

Avery Siwinski was happy with his old electric car, but not for long. (Photo: WTTD).

At first, everything went well as the car ran smoothly, had no problems, had low running costs and the Siwinski family saw it as a reasonable expense.

"I'm really excited and love this car. It's compact and quiet, I love it," Avery Siwinski shared about the electric car bought by his parents.

However, 6 months later, the car started to have many problems when the warning light kept appearing on the dashboard, the car sometimes could not start or even stopped suddenly in the middle of the road.

After taking the car to a garage for inspection, the Siwinski family was informed that the fault originated from the car's battery and that the battery needed to be replaced.

The problem, however, is that since Ford has discontinued the Focus Electric, it has also discontinued the battery for that vehicle. So replacing the battery in the car would cost Avery $14,000, not including labor costs, which is more than the price of the car Avery drives.

"I know Ford has discontinued the car, but it's frustrating that they've also discontinued the battery, which will inconvenience thousands of people who need to replace the battery after a long period of use," Avery said. "The Ford dealer advised us to use a different battery to replace it, which cost up to $14,000."

With Avery’s father recently passing away from cancer, the family is struggling financially and the battery replacement is too expensive, so Avery is currently keeping the car at a local garage. The garage owner has offered to buy it from her for $500, much less than the family originally paid for it.

The Focus Electric is Ford's second electric vehicle, with a life cycle of nearly 7 years. (Photo: CarBuzz).

After the incident, Avery Swinski shared his story on social media and warned people to do their research before deciding to buy an electric car, especially old and discontinued electric car models, because finding replacement parts or batteries is very difficult and the cost will be much more expensive than replacing parts on a car using an internal combustion engine.

The Focus Electric is the second electric vehicle (after the Ranger EV) produced by Ford. It was first sold in December 2011 and discontinued in May 2018. Ford sold its electric vehicle in all 50 states in the US and also in the European market. In the US alone, Ford sold more than 9,200 Focus Electrics in the model's nearly 7-year lifespan.