Now, newer electric cars are also starting to fill up the junkyards around the world. Electric cars are particularly filling up at a car scrapyard in San Francisco.
The first electric cars are already ready for scrapping to such an extent that they are filling up the various scrapyards.
In the San Francisco area alone, American motoring journalist Murilee Martin has found several scrapyards that have electric cars lying around.
At one of the stands, he saw several finished Nissan Leaf models. The cars are all from the first generation, which Nissan built between 2011 and 2017.
Why the cars are there is a good question. But a good guess is that the batteries are dead and that it costs more than the cars are worth to get new ones.
Murilee Martin herself saw the first scrapped Nissan Leaf in 2022. Some of the cars are built by Nissan in Japan, but a good portion of them were created at the brand's factory in Smyrna, Tennessee.
Martin saw the first scrapped electric cars as early as 2022
He tells this on the site in The Truth About Cars .
But according to Murilee Martin, there are more scrapyards with these types of cars in California and several other states. He also believes that the Corona pandemic has kept the cars on the road longer than they could really handle.
The pandemic that hit the entire world caused the price of used electric cars to increase to such an extent that drivers who were otherwise considering purchasing another car could not afford it. Even if the next car was used.
The electric cars in the scrapyard look sad. Many of them have been there so long that moss has started to grow on them. Others are missing several parts. The rear windows in particular are gone.
That said, Murilee Martin also has an idea as to why the cars ended up as scrap. He believes they were probably owned by a company.
A company that could get more out of selling off the best batteries in the cars and scrapping the rest, than selling the cars whole.