An Arizona man suffered a massive shock when he learned that his 2014 Infiniti hybrid car battery had an enormous price tag.
Lucas Turner ran into problems when his engine light came on, and everything went downhill.
Turner thought his car, which had under 70,000 miles on the clock, would be a quick fix.
He was wrong.
“They called me and said, ‘Oh, I’ve got bad news, Mr. Turner,” he said.
“You need a new hybrid battery and it’s going to cost $18,000 for the battery and another $2,000 to have it installed.'”
| “And I’m like, ‘Oh my God.’ My jaw dropped,” Turner admitted.
“I almost cried,” he said.
Turner had only bought the car three years ago for $16,000.
“I can’t make this make sense in my mind,” Turner said.
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“How does it cost $20,000 to put a battery in a car, but you only paid $16,000?” he added.
“When I bought the car, it came with the battery. It came with wheels,” he said.
“It came with brakes. It came with a body.”
“It came with glass and everything. It came with an engine, but they wanted $20,000 just for a battery. It makes no sense in my mind,” he continued.
According to the website Nerdwallet, battery replacements come between $1,000 and $8,000.
Karl Brauer, an analyst for iSeeCars, remarked on the incident.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that [Turner] could find a less expensive battery from another source,” he said.
“It’s not uncommon for these batteries to last 15-plus years and 150,000 plus miles.”
“That should be part of the pre-purchase inspection, which you should always do when you’re buying a used car, no matter what kind of car it is,” Brauer said.
“If they can confirm the battery is in healthy state, that’s the first step. If it’s not in a healthy state, they should use that as a negotiation point and they should research potential replacement costs.”
However, Turner said that after KPHO shed light on the issue, Infiniti dropped the price to half.
Roger Dean Chevrolet in Cape Coral said seeking a part for vehicle that has been discontinued can be expensive.
“This is an estimate for a 12-year-old vehicle out of warranty and for a battery that is extremely hard to get, due to the older technology of the 12-year-old vehicle,” the dealership posted.
“Think of it like big screen TVs. Remember when the first big screen came out, they were very expensive, and as the technology advanced the prices became better. This battery is also out of warranty of 8yr/100k miles whatever hits first.”
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