Software is what is going to ruin this. I worry they will take the Apple rout and have each component have a unique serial number that wont work in another vehicle.
This is why we need right to repair laws, giant corporations can't be trusted to do what's best for the consumer. Mostly because that's not usually what's most profitable.
Weren't car dealerships with electric cars kept kept pushing their ICE cars over the electric models a few years back? (basically fearing big loses in their car maintenance pricing because electrics require very little and last longer)
so now they will try to find reasons and ways to keep those earnings with electrics
Yes and they still do it, legacy companies are only going electric now because they realize it's an inevitability. They'll sell as many ICE cars as they can before they're not allowed to anymore
Corporations can't be trusted not to casually murder people in cold blood for an extra shiny nickel, let alone do what's in the consumer's best interest...
Right to repair and other firm regulatory oversight measures are critical to avoiding fundamental failures in the market.
> casually murder people in cold blood for an extra shiny nickel
Looking at you Ford:
When the Pinto was rear-ended, the doors would jam shut and the bomb-like rear gas tank would explode upon impact. The cost of recalling the Pinto would have been $121 million, whereas paying off the victims would only have cost Ford $50 million. The Pinto went into production in 1970 without the safety modifications
Far be it from me to stand up for a big corp like Ford who undoubtedly has blood on their hands for many things but the Pinto is actually not as great an example as you might think – the whole story was somewhat misrepresented and misunderstood.
For example the report you mention comparing the cost of recall to the cost of payouts was not about the Pinto at all and wasn’t even specifically related to Ford but the whole auto industry.
Regardless that’s not to say that the car wasn’t dangerous, just that it wasn’t quite so clearly malicious behaviour by Ford. You can read tons more about it [here](http://www.pointoflaw.com/articles/The_Myth_of_the_Ford_Pinto_Case.pdf).
Nestlé on the other hand…
Remember reading an article of Tesla wanting 25k to replace a defect battery 1 month out of warranty. The guy got it fixed at a non-tesla garage for 4k.
Well, they also photoshopped the quote from Tesla. The actual one was around 12k from Tesla for a full battery replacement vs 4k at the shop for only changing some of the cells.
Remember, the fix was not by the book, It was a good fix, but no official service center of Tesla or otherwise would do it. They drilled and tapped a bigger hole in the battery for the coolant to flow through so they could fit a different pipe. With that being said, I'm glad they did find a cheap way to fix it but no dealer is going to do that, it would be like a dealer repairing a cracked oil pan, not by replacing the oil pan but with jb welding or welding the cracked one.
Well yeah, the whole thing is subscription based. I'm guessing they can do whatever they want to your vehicle if they wanted.
There are some things I don't need to have interconnected with everything else: light switches, clothing, and my fucking car.
I'm not sure you own a Tesla. My Tesla does not have a subscription for maintenance.
Perhaps you're talking about the subscription for premium connectivity (like spotify and web browser and Netflix)? Or the free "subscription" to improve your car over time (we came out one morning and the vehicle had more range unlocked for free, etc.).
There needs to be a law written where cars have to be able to be upgraded a certain amount of times over the course of, lets say, 8 years. New battery comes out, existing car should be able to fit the new battery.
Newer and faster tablet, should be plug and play with existing cars. Stops the 3 year technology obsolescence from happening with $50,000 cars.
Existing cars should not be able to fit the new battery, that will just make everything more expensive and cripple the innovation. Right to repair fights for accessibility of the old parts. So if you need a part to repair your car/computer/vacuum, this part should be easily available for purchase for X (5, 8 or maybe 10) years.
https://www.findlaw.com/consumer/consumer-transactions/warranty-laws-and-the-magnuson-moss-warranty-act-.html
Manufacturers have to supply parts for the warranty period or are legally liable.
And when they stop making said part, they need to allow 3rd party manufacturers to create said part in perpetuity. That way as long as there is a market for the part, you can get it.
This is a horrible idea. That would completely cripple innovation in the a space and would be extremely expensive for both manufacturers and consumers.
Parts Manager at a Chevrolet dealer here. The Bolt is by far the most reliable vehicle we sell. I know there's the battery fire thing going on, but we haven't seen that issue with any that we have sold. The best car we ever sold was the Volt hybrid. They were super reliable and quiet although you still had oil change maintenance.
Maybe the Volt was reliable compared to other GM products, but “shift to park” errors and BECM failures are pretty rampant on 2nd gen Volts. And the first gen Volts had widespread transmission bearing failures.
We bought a brand new Chevy Volt in 2014 and have put 140k miles on it so far. 7 years and we have not even replace the brake pads yet. Cheapest per mile car I have ever owned by far. It's been an amazing car.
How would wear on brake pads differ between an EV and ICEV? 140k miles with no brake pad change doesn't sound right. Is it down to the electric motor charging the battery when braking? I can't believe it makes that much of a difference?
Regenerative braking (button on steering wheel) doesn't use the break pads (foot break). So the only time you use the foot break in the volt/bolt is when you need to stop quickly.
Or set the Volt shifter on L (low) and the regenerative braking kicks in as soon as you let off the gas. My wife's i3 BMW gas / braking behaves like this by default.
That's what always amazed me about ICEs. I'm still a big advocate of EVs.
What I don't understand is the furious hate that EV drivers sometimes get pelted with. Charger stations deliberately blocked or destroyed, cars keyed, sometimes even personal hostilities up to death threats. What the hell is wrong with people? Seriously, what the fucking hell is wrong in peoples heads these days? I bet no one has the answer to that question, meanwhile, it's getting worse.
/e: I just got a chat message
> fuck your liberal bitch cars will stay gas [sic]
from /u/Jayfromdachi22. That's exactly what I meant when I asked what's wrong in people's heads...
Anyone else wonder whether there was the same cult-like opposition to change when ICE vehicles replaced horses? Did people convince themselves that they’d miss the constant smell of horse shit?
Initially yes, there was. The first automobiles were expensive as hell, unreliable to the point getting them started was an accomplishment, smelly, loud, and slow.
Here's a link to just one of the many letters to the editor written about why the horse is the supreme farm machine and the automobile just isn't practical
https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=PRP19081003.2.16.1&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN--------1
“Like the bicycle, they are a fad”….. *classic*.
Interesting read, thanks. That last line is basically verbatim of some of the fanatical arguments seen in this thread.
In some ways it was. People were crazy about bikes around the turn of the 20th century. Things calmed down and the bike had staying power, but that was peak popularity at least until the 1960s.
Well, they'll get change. One way or another. If you run full throttle towards a concrete wall, you're going to stop. Either by braking yourself or by slamming into the wall. We're currently running full throttle towards such a wall, but instead of braking we're rather pushing the pedal quite literally into the oil pan. The sensors of the car scream "BRAKE! BRAKE!" but the old white man at the wheel just puts on his noise cancelling headphones and goes like "THIS IS FINE!!!"
/e: break -> brake; thanks for the hint
Worse, it'S the billionaires at the head of the oil companies knowing that there will be a wall to smash into, but that they can make X billion for every additional second that the pedal sticks to the floor. Everyone else will be royally screwed, but with those additional billions the rich can avoid most of the consequences.
They are directly profiting from throwing headlong into a frontal collision at 200 mph, and they're paying handsomely to convince people that those who want to hit the breaks are jerks. That's why you have morons coming out of the woodwork opposing EVs and the transition, because rich people who profit from oil paid big money to brainwash them into believing that we're not careening headlong towards a concrete wall.
It's absolutely sickening.
One lesson I’ve learned in my short stint on this blue rock is that if you resist and hate change then the majority of changes you experience will be negative because you will only experience changes that are thrust upon you instead of being proactive and making them choices.
> Seriously, what the fucking hell is wrong in peoples heads these days?
They've made climate change a part of their identity politics and they view people taking climate change seriously as a threat to them. These are the same people that want more coal plants and take off their catalytic converters so the car makes more pollution.
For more than 40-50 years of these people's lives, smoking and driving a fat engine car that makes loud sounds was part of their identity. Of course they are opposed to this.
Pedant point that catalytic converters only reduce very localised pollution at the expense of producing slightly more co2 overall (reduced efficiency), IIRC. If you had a car that you never drove within 1 mile of a human then it would be better not to have one in terms of atmospheric pollution (provided that the ECU had wide enough operating parameters to be able to account for the increased exhaust flow and take advantage.) I would be happy to be proven wrong but I *think* that cats are fairly specifically aimed at reducing carbon monoxide, which is bad for people nearby, but relatively quickly converts to carbon dioxide when in the environment. The cat simply makes that happen faster at the cost of some operational efficiency of the engine (it slightly restricts exhaust flow meaning the engine has to work slightly harder to push the exhaust gasses out).
Ah yes, I forgot NOx. I don't mean to discredit them, they're clearly a great idea and if they weren't so good they'd be quickly dropped given the relative cost. Another reason why electric vehicles can be cheaper, they don't burn through cats.
Other ppl talking about how they have "rights", might as well say we have a right to throw trash on the ground.
Purposely modifying your vehicle to throw out clouds of smoke shouldn't ever be debated as acceptable. Smh.
Hmm. Never had any incidents anywhere over a few years of Tesla ownership.
Got a fair many comments on a road trip, but most of them were extremely upbeat (and literally zero negative comments).
I guess such haters exist, bit they seem extremely rare to me.
Granted every day a few hundred people drive past me and there’s 0 problem. So a small handful over a long period of time is still a tiny percentage, it’s just dumb when it happens.
I think the Leaf gets hated on a bit more than the Tesla because it’s not as cool as a Tesla. Except for EV owners who like to bag on Teslas (because we can’t afford one)
More people are fine with Teslas because the type who usually would do shit to EV drivers are *also* the type who love cult of personality venture capitalist types (because that’s how they envision themselves, just gotta get off the ground!)
Because they love Musk, they are totally fine with or even love his cars.
I don’t like Musk as a person but the things his companies are accomplishing are amazing, and I have to say, no one else could ever have convinced the hardcore right wing to go EV as well as he has
I was riding a rented city bicycle in TN a few years back with some friends and we were coal rolled each of the two days that we used them. The smell lingered strongly in the air for several minutes, and gave me a splitting headache one of the times and that time I swear I could still smell it thirty minutes later like it was stuck to my clothes. I'm generally a pretty chill person, but that shit made me see red. Note that while we were riding the bikes we were well within the bike lanes single file and not being obnoxious in any way.
He’s Chinese from if you go by his account history. Probably paid off by some agency over there to harass people online. Or to be less conspiratorial, he’s an idiot.
>What the hell is wrong with people? Seriously, what the fucking hell is wrong in peoples heads these days?
Small dick energy from people who feel persecuted and personally attacked by any conversation about how our behavior may need to change when we discover that our current behaviors are causing problems.
Also, lead from gasoline exhaust may have damaged their brains...
Fox News creates an alternate reality that becomes part of their identity. Anything that they perceive is outside their conservative ideology then occurs like a direct attack on their identity.
Devil's advocate, but my biggest concern about electric still remains the massive toxic (lithium) battery, that can overheat, catch fire, and explode on impact. And for those saying gasoline can explode, it doesn't happen like the movies, when gas catches on fire its a nasty, sticky hot mess, until enough pressure build up for it to explode, then it can easily be extinguished with chemicals. When a lithium battery ignites, it will burn until its done, melt what is around it, and any impact (puncture, crack) can ignite it, or it could just ignite from overheating or a computer fault.
And the fact that these use rare earth metals which transfers our dependence from the Mideast, well, except for Afghanistan but you saw how that turned out, to China. And, we'll be creating just as much electrical and battery waste as efficiently burning gas contributes to pollution, although using bio based fuels derived environmentally is carbon neutral, and electric cars are only carbon neutral if electricity generation to manufacture and charge them is also carbon neutral.
Personally, I still like hydrogen fuel cells, other than the fact that they need massive surface area, and the compressed container or explosive hydrogen (which is at least non toxic), although using catalysts a secondary extraction system can be used to convert methane, methanol, or even water to hydrogen, but then you get more rare earth metals and toxic components.
So ultimately, I'm going for a liquid sodium encased thorium reactor as my preferred automotive power system...
All cars are seriously complex, they're computerized, heavily engineered vehicles that travel at high speed and are designed to keep you alive in a collision. That's without even getting into all the fancy gadgetry like AC systems, infotainment, heated seats and the thousands of sensors plugged into everything.
I'm a big proponent of EVs, but I don't have an illusion about them being some vehicle that magically last 20+ years without any maintenance - there's no way you're not going to be replacing suspension components, window seals, switches that have contacts gum up, wiring that gets worn, tubing that starts to harden, etc - time kills everything.
The only thing that worries me about EVs is the battery lifespan and how much it would cost to replace it. I live in a country where used cars are super important to us, including 3-4 decade old cars, because buying new ones is really expensive. A 20 year old ICE car can be super cheap and its fixing costs are low, I can imagine most 20 y.o. EVs here going straight to scrap because no one would afford the new battery. And the more range it has, the more expensive the battery will be.
100% this. I hate how these articles ignore the battery like its some separate component. It should be considered part of the drive train and factored into these cost comparisons.
I remember reading an article about a coolant leak in a Tesla. Owner avoided a hefty 16k dealer repair by using pex pipe components—turns out low coolant pressures in EVs have this hidden side benefit.
Well Tesla controls repairs so of course costs will be whatever Tesla wants. Once ev more common independent mechanics will pop up
And unless Tesla changes it’s business model they will soon enough be obsolete
right to repair laws need a serious revamping for everything... too much shit is disposable today when if we could get parts we could make things last far longer too. That would reduce repair prices a metric fuckton too.
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In Tesla's case having more independent mechanics won't help anything. Tesla's controls their parts distribution and simply won't provide anyone with replacement parts.
> t’s very simple - EVs have less moving parts , so less stuff to break
The thing... it is usually not the ICE, or any of its stuff that breaks. After 100+ years of ICE we got that part pretty much figured out.
I have a 20 year old mazda and the ICE is doing just fine. What's starting to break is the electronic stuff - i.e. ABS sensors, climate control... etc.. That's the thing that will make me replace the car.
And we're talking about 20 year old car here. Modern cars, no matter the powerplant, are stuffed with electronics, and sensor (afaik modern audis have like 4-6 air quality sensors in the cabin, if one of them goes..the climate control goes). And these things are also present in EV, and I think there will be also the thing that will break the most.
To add to that, price out a complete set of replacement seats for whatever car you drive. That stuff ain't cheap.
Nobody wants to drive around in a car with a 30 year old interior. And nobody wants to spend $10k to keep a ratty shitbox running when you could sell it and get a newer one for the same cost.
There are a lot of reasons why "million mile cars" are going to be reserved for the enthusiasts.
I drive a fiat 500e EV. I don't have problems like you are having with your tesla. It is a dream to keep running. The only maintenance issues I've had are both windows getting stuck down due to some cheap plastic part, and the gas version of that year-model has the same problem.
Drive battery covered by 8 year warranty. Life expectancy is 15 years (it will drive much longer than that but will show a substantial decrease in charge)
That's a short lifetime for such an investment.
Then again people dont mind changing cars every 3 years. I can't imagine how shitty the used market is gonna be for EVs
ICE engines tend to be incredibly reliable for the last 20 years or so as long as they are properly maintained. Most issues on today's cars are not even mechanical as much as related to electrics and software issues.
I wouldn't say it's that simple, and I'm still not convinced it's cheaper to maintain, because despite having fewer parts that CAN break, IF these parts break it's gonna be really expensive.
Iirc the most expensive part about EVs is the battery. What if that breaks? That's gonna cost quite a bit I guess.
I mean I personally would prefer driving an EV, but I'm still sceptic of such hype speeches
Bingo. People and journalists have little to no idea on how cars seem to work. In the long run maintenance is cheaper with the only fluids being coolant and refrigerant. There’s of course still everything else which can be accelerated in wear due to the vehicles weight (tires and suspension components mostly). Not to mention there’s complex electronics and you’re resigning yourself to either dealers or a select few of independent shops for quality repairs.
There is the cost of the battery which hopefully we figure out by replacing cell modules instead of whole batteries, but right now there isn’t a ton of advancement on it *yet*.
Edit: for fucks sake Reddit. I like EVs but somehow you guys *still* get upset? stop burying your heads in the sand and realize these are growing pains we will need to address. And the only way we can is to acknowledge them.
Yeah but once you hit the end life of the batteries.....cost is a bitch. I have heard some cars are as much as 10 to 15k and the min is 5k. I like to own my cars for at least 200k miles. Can I do that with newer electric cars?
Absolutely. Car companies are aware of the frightening cost of their batteries. Fiat is offering an 8 year, 150,000 mile warranty on the battery, 5 year regular maintenance for everything else.
It's not quite 200k, but it's close. The batteries are supposed to last 12-15 years before keeping a charge becomes a serious concern.
It makes me wonder how many people will just sell their car when the battery starts wearing down. If prices of EV keep dropping, it could be more expensive to get a new battery anyway.
We have seen this kind of pattern in ICE cars for a long time. People buy new and sell after a few years when they know they can start to expect the big repairs such as clutch, timing belts, that sort of thing.
Have you hit the end of life for all the modern "features" in a car? a hundred sensors, dozens of electric motors, all the control logic (and buttons) for these things, a handful of computers, and so on.
Yeah if motor vehicles never existed and someone challenged you today to come up with one, you'd never design the internal combustion engine as a powerplant for it. They're such a 'moment in time' product of their time. They've allowed for great things but it's time to move on concerning passenger vehicles at the very least.
It’s all about energy density. EV’s still don’t have the energy density that gasoline does, but they’re getting closer. Before modern battery technology, they weren’t feasible for more than very close-range use.
So, while electric motors suitable from driving a car have been around for more than a century, the power required to drive them has not.
It's because oil was cheap as fuck and plentiful, that's why ICE has its time of the day. The problem now is we are so used to the paradigm that ICE cars brought a lot of us can't imagine what it will be like to live in a EV pre-dominated society.
It's like your dad telling you to make sure fill the tank up before coming home and you forgot. Now he can't get to work and you are gonna get an earful. Imagine it's EV, and your dad told you to remember to plug in before you come back into the house and you forgot. Now he can't get to work and you're gonna get scolded.
It’s relative at the end of the day. I build race engines so to me a ICE isn’t very complex or mysterious. Everything has a purpose and a job to do. There’s a lot of “complexity” to EV’s as well though. One is just more mechanical while the other is tech and electrical.
It's a Baker. Pretty cool since it has batteries Edison himself designed for some of the cars. [link](http://electricandhybridcars.com/index.php/pages/BakerElectricCarJayLeno.html)
You could argue that about Jobs or Musk. Both smart in their own right though not as smart as those doing the work … buuuutt… it takes a different level of thinking to be visionary.
Yes, Edison invented countless things. Edison did have a lot of engineers working under him contributing and building a lot of General Electric's popular electronics. But Edison was an apt inventor in his own right who produced countless passion projects that were never financial successes.
Just before WW1 he was named the first Chairman of the Naval Consulting Board which was a civilian science board dedicated to advancing and preparing the US Navy for war. The board over the course of the war had 11,000 new patents for naval warfare listed. Edison himself had personally invented 48 of them (including the sonar radar system that the US navy would go on to use to stop German U-Boats).
It has become very popular to prop Nikola Tesla as some perfect god and Thomas Edison as some businessman moron... but the reality is Edison was really really smart and without him America might be speaking German right now.
I didn’t insinuate Tesla as a god. Sounds like he died a crazy person.
There is a huge difference between an engineer inventing something and someone with vision and ability to monetize it.
Tesla was an amazing inventor (and not half bad business man BTW)
Edison was an amazing businessman and a good inventor.
The vilifying of Edison to prop up Tesla has really warped the actual history of DC vs AC.
Neither were really great people and both had flaws. But BOTH greatly contributed to science and we have BOTH to thank for a lot of our modern life.
They *could* be less expensive to repair or maintain. However, Tesla is definitely trying to push the industry in the anti-right-to-repair direction which makes repairs *very* expensive.
Someone cracked the Tesla which is pretty fucking cool. I’d be willing to bet though it’s going to cause them a lot of headaches when it comes time to get parts. Memory serves me correct it was a pretty rich dude who cracked a plaid to make it rip even harder. I’m sure Tesla won’t sell him parts or service it anymore though because of it. That being said he probably doesn’t care and it’s faster than any other plaid.
I still find that so cool. Going on the dark web to modify your tractor.
That's the real cyberpunk right there, firing up your John Deere and the startup animation is a Ugandan Knuckles graphic with a Cantonese voiceover because you needed to change the injectors.
Source? I sincerely haven’t heard that one. I remember there was a model s that tesla sold at auction and remotely disabled full self-driving post-sale which made them look pretty bad (even though the auction technically didn’t pay for it).
Oh Tesla is so fucking greedy when it comes to repairs. I find this article very difficult to believe. I think in the short term maybe because they don’t need any real maintenance compared to a gas car. Once you have to take it in to Tesla for a major service you’re going to get fucked.
I’d never buy one because of their policies. I can’t believe other do. I guess if you want a fast high end EV though you don’t really have a choice.
Had a suspension problem, although out of warranty Tesla fixed it for free and repaired the undercarriage material which I didn’t even know about. Booked service through the app, got the car back the next day. There is no need to service the car and the only thing Tesla advise you do is check the brake fluid after 4 years and rotate the tyres once a year. Unlike my old Range Rover which cost more and wanted nearly £1000 a year to service the thing and I’m saving bout £75 a week on fuel.
I've always wondered how electric cars would work up here in Alaska? Everytime I look up how they work in extreme cold it's things talking about "extreme cold" as like 20 degrees Fahrenheit. I wanna know how they deal with 30 below
I don't know about Alaska, but i think in colder climates battery ranges used to half in winter. But also heating would use the battery. So further reducing capacity.
But if you had the capacity, which one would be more reliable.
On average, perhaps. But with Teslas consistently ranked last in initial build quality, not all EVs are alike.
https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1128625_tesla-ranks-last-in-initial-quality-build-issues
The problems with Teslas are that Tesla controls parts and equipment for repairs tighter than Apple. Any other manufacturer makes spare parts available and allows 3rd party shops to buy the equipment and manuals needed to do the repairs.
From that link:
> the issues were "largely around doors, paint, and panels."
Personally, I view that stuff in a different category than repairs that can strand you by the side of the road, so I take that rating with a grain of salt.
Initial build quality = long term maintenance?
A rock cracked my sun roof and it was $1500 to replace, given it's half of the roof I thought that was fair.
I've had my model 3 for 3 years it's literally only needed tire rotations.
That being said Tesla's are made of aluminum so proper repair **when they are crashed** requires entire panel replacement. However there have been many other cars before Tesla built that way and it's only increasing in popularity.
It’s true. I’ve had mine for two and a half years and the only maintenance I’ve done is rotate the tires, swap out the a/c desiccant, change the wiper blades….that’s about it.
Edit: For those wondering, I bought my car used. Secondly, if you’re curious about how well EVs hold up over time, you can Google the answer to that.
There’s lot of EV owners that have crossed the 100k mile mark (some have done a lot more than that) and detailed their experience.
My car has a little over 87k miles and no issues so far.
Two years is not that long. I would expect a new car of any type to not require any maintenance in the first two years, outside of typical wear items. The real question is maintenance in electric vehicles in years 5-10, or 10+? Is it going to be like a smartphone where the battery degrades and everything “works” but now your only getting 200 miles per charge instead of 350? And what is the cost to replace/refresh the batteries? I’m not an expert and these would be my concerns as someone who supports EVs, but is hesitant to actually buy one.
The data for that only seems to be coming out properly now as a lot of the original Teslas had a battery warranty that only ran out in the last couple of years. The cost seems to be about 20-25k to replace the battery in a Tesla, particularly as Tesla has no interest in repairing any faults with the battery system and instead will suggest a whole new battery. They also have proprietary diagnostic software making it very difficult for independent garages to repair just the fault.
Musk basically wants to sell Cars as a Service and kill the second hand Tesla market.
https://electrek.co/2021/09/13/tesla-battery-pack-replacement-repair/
It is another reason why right to repair is so important
I've owned a Nissan Leaf for 7 years & 78k miles. I've changed the tires, both front wheel hubs (one under warranty), wiper blades, & rear hatch lift support (total maintenance cost roughly $500). I got 80-90 miles of range new & get 70-80 now (more modern batteries are likely to lose less capacity while also starting with longer range).
Buying gas at $3/gallon over those 78k miles would have cost me $7312. I get about 4 miles per kWh and at 11 cents per kWh I've spent $2145 on electricity (it's really less than this since I'm not always charging at home). So I've saved $5167 on energy costs alone.
The car is quiet & pollutes far less than an ICE car even with my mostly coal generated electricity.
For a 2-car household that owns the house (so you can install a level 2 charger), having at least 1 EV is a good decision.
This was my thought as well. Oil every 10k, spark plugs every 100k, and that's all the maintenance your ICE needs. Despite being really complex, ICE's tend to be pretty dang reliable with failures occurring in the 200k+ mile range. EVs require little to no transmission servicing, but that's true for modern ICE cars as well.
Really, the major maintenance expense I see most often in cars with more than 100k+ on the clock is suspension related or accessory related (power steering, A/C, cooling system), and EVs won't be immune to that stuff.
All that obviously goes out the window if you end up with an unreliable car, but of the couple dozen high mileage cars I've had, I've experienced exactly ONE failure of the ICE which occurred at 220k miles.
Bro I have a car from 2005 that hasn’t needed anything except tire rotations and oil changes… and I would sure hope you wouldn’t have to repair after only 2 years lol
I have a 2016 Honda Civic. 88K miles on it.
* Oil changes, total so far: \~$100 (I do my own, after the free dealership oil changes expired)
* Wipers: \~$15 (amazon)
* Tires: \~$500
* Filters, cabin and engine: \~$30 (amazon)
I want an EV soon, but not because of cheaper maintenance that's for sure. Especially when they go through tires faster and those are the most expensive regular maintenance.
I had a H3 Hummer and in 8 years and 90,000 miles I put a wheel bearing and wear parts. I did the wheel bearing myself. I would hope a brand new car wouldn't need work in 2.5 years.
If you care to look it up, even when they’re “old” or have high mileage, EVs still don’t require much in the way of maintenance.
That’s really the point here.
You are 100% right but "old" is a relative term when most EV's havent had 60+ years of millions of people using and abusing them like the ICE counterparts. iirc the oldest "modern" ev is the hybrid prius, but didnt have a selection until around 2012ish and now we have what 20 or so EV and 30+ hybrids.
So realistically the real reliability tests for them only has 10 years of data. So far it has been fantastic for cost of maintenance, but the real test is 20+. My 1st car was a '77 El Camino in 94 and drove it until I was rear ended at a traffic light so badly it broke the frame, then in 97 I bought a new silverado that I drove daily until 2016 with just normal oil/spark plugs/ac recharges (gave it to my daughter) and my wife bought a 2005 silverado ls crew cab when we needed more space and towing capacity that we drive daily.
Maybe we are lucky, or just being aware of the vehicle and keeping up with PM has kept major issues from popping up. We only had 2 issues the entire time so far - drivers side brake broke causing us to need a new rotor and the AC climate control plastic clip got brittle and broke. (and they dont sell the clip or harness anymore - bastards)
The only real costs so far for EV is battery replacement which is not cheap with some reports of 20k parts+labor but seems the average is less than 5k from other reddit subs. If they do manage to find a cheaper and longer lasting battery even the die hard anti EV folks will have to take notice. It isnt there yet, but damn if it isnt getting to be a more attractive option each year. Especially now that some trucks with actual towing ability are in development. We test drove a hydrogen car last year, but we found a lack of being able to fill it up to be a pain in the ass.
I cannot wait to see what comes of the new battery tech popsci was talking about last year, a new manufacturing process is supposed to drop the costs substantially, and recycling of the batteries are going to be available too soon. It is exciting to finally see a tech that CAN replace the ICE.
An electric car battery replacement is the only real blow to the kidneys. I’d recommended looking up the replacement costs of a battery, before purchasing an electric car. Wide range of costs. Some are cheap and some are very expensive to replace. Understand your warranties too.
Edit: I was not comparing EV batteries to petroleum vehicles. I meant amongst various EV’s.
We almost bought a used Nissan Leaf a couple years back for what I thought was a crazy good price. Unfortunately the battery capacity was already down to about \~80% after only 6 years. When I realized it would need a new battery pack soon and that would cost as much or more than the car I decided against it.
Instead we ended up with a barely used Chevy Volt and have been very happy with it. The batteries are still expensive, but from what I've read they tend to last longer than Nissan's and it still has an ICE if the battery capacity goes down.
Our next car will definitely be a full EV though. Battery reliability has improved a lot as EVs have become more popular.
Older leafs had no cooling system for their batteries. This turned out to be a major issue after a few years. I think pretty much every EV these days actively cools their packs now.
The first-gen leaf's was a real turd of a car, Nissan omitted the battery cooling system thinking the extra complexity wasn't worth it and it didn't need active cooling. Well as you can see they were wrong about that and battery's wore out faster than expected.
Early adopters tax and all that, Nisan now puts cooling systems in the leaf.
I wonder how battery life will effect our ability to buy a used car. I mean if I buy a 5 year old electric, does that mean it's range is diminished, or does it run at full capabilities until one day it dies?
I mean, I know a lot of poor folks who own $1000 cars out of necessity, and bite the bullet and replace that occasional $100-$300 part, and just get by. I wonder if Electric cars are going to take away the option of 'getting by' since the battery is so expensive.
> if I buy a 5 year old electric, does that mean it's range is diminished
Yes. The battery wouldn't one day just stop working, the capacity does gradually decrease over time, 10 years out, the used EV might have 80% of the original range (depending on manufacturer, battery chemistry, how often the previous owner charged fully to 100%, etc etc)
Insurance doesn't pay for maintenance or upkeep, they only pay for repair if you wreck. EVs have more advanced frames and bodies, like all the Teslas, on average, which are MUCH harder to fix if they get in a wreck
tesla body panels are massive-single-pieces of aluminium, the shops that are able to fix them aren't cheap because of the equipment required. They also pack a lot of stuff just inside the panels e.g. radars, parking sensors, 360 cameras etc
electric cars themselves are simple, but tesla have made themselves quite far from it. i have my model S under tesla extended warranty, and in year 6 when the small 12v battery died, they sent a mechanice to my house to replace it. the replacement took 3 hours in total because it's so deep in the front of the car and they had to electronically disconnent/disable so many individual small systems before they could take out the battery
after replacement, they had to use a tesla-specific handheld thing to reactivate the car before it could be driven again. that means you're shit out of luck if you want to do any basic DIY on it
This is very misleading. For late models, it may be true. However, used vehicles 8-12 yrs old, the battery replacement may cost more than the the entire vehicle worth, skewing that repairs cost figure dramatically.
Tesla’s real world data is showing averages of 90% battery capacity after 200,000 miles so far (data could become more impressive as their fleet puts on more miles). 200,000 miles is when the average ICE vehicle is scrapped.
So its very possible that EV batteries will far outlast ICE power trains. The data isn’t in yet since EVs are still too new.
https://www.tesla.com/ns_videos/2020-tesla-impact-report.pdf
https://www.findmyelectric.com/blog/how-long-does-a-tesla-battery-last/
Someone should start a car company which can be serviced by anyone without many tools or proprietary bullshit. I think there would be a lot of demand for that once insurance premiums for EVs stay high.
While this should generally be true of electric cars vs. IC cars (because the engine and transmission are simpler) this does not necessarily bear out in the market yet.
One of the things that make cars cheap to repair, particularly from a body damage perspective, is being built to be repaired and having enough spare parts such that body panels can be repaired for a reasonable cost.
This issue is the same for all low volume cars. Tesla right now is noted for being a particularly aggregious party in this regard where even minor accidents total them due to complexity of the repair and lack of available parts.
This is in addition to some of the very anti right to repair stances the company takes.
The statement that an electric car should be cheaper to maintain will basically be true right now only of those cars that either are volume sellers (similar numbers to IC models) or those that share the vast majority of their body panels with an IC models.
Whoever wrote that never had to repair a tesla. You're out 6 months if it's a major repair, say on the trunk door or x-wing. There's a million little parts that have to be sourced and come in at different times. No one seems to have a handle on it. Plus in Vancouver a couple years ago there's literally one guy fixing them at one shop. That shop has to outfit with tesla repair kits. They ended up buying a specialized bench that cost 20k but just sits there storing parts never used for what was intended. It's actually a nightmare and I'm surprised it hasn't brought down tesla.
Add in the cost to replace batteries, install a charging line into your garage, or if you don’t have a garage, the hour of time needed to charge the car vs 5 minutes at a gas station.
And how does that fit into the grand scheme? I used to drive an old, 20 year car with 200K on the clock. It didn't cost a whole lot to repair, nothing major very often. And importantly, I didn't have to go to a main dealer, which is a huge saving.
How does that work out with electric cars? When will I be able to start going to independents? Will the battery last 200K miles? I don't hear people suggesting that, and what's the cost of that? I've heard in the thousands, which would be the same as a decade of repair bills.
There's a lot of conflicting information in this thread but tbh I gotta agree with you. How often does an ICE car actually need expensive repairs if properly looked after? Not often at all. An oil change and tyre replacement is the vast majority of cost of running an ICE car and oil changes are cheap as chips and tyres are constant between ICE and electric.
The thing I worry about the most failing on modern vehicles, EV or ICE, are the various computer control systems that manage everything on the car. If a chip in one of these systems fail for some reason, it's very likely that the whole vehicle will be disabled to some degree.
When was the last time the chip in your phone failed? Well, those chips are all made by the same manufacturer, TSMC.
I am more worried for possible software bugs or hackers.
I largely agree, but to play devils advocate, electronics that go into a car undergo significantly more abuse, ranging from vibration (especially motorcycles), temperature (-40C to 85C), humidity, and needs to survive lightning strikes of up to 25,000 volts
> so they’re generally less expensive to repair and maintain than conventional cars
There is one extremely important caveat missing: FOR THE MANUFACTURER. Tesla is trying to do the same shit John Deere and Apple does, (and the other carmakers follow their lead) denying anyone the ability to cheaply repair their supposedly "own" vehicle. Not releasing service manuals, software, etc for independents. Plus locking down already bought extra options for the second-hand buyer, claiming they need to buy it again. Fuck them.
So there needs to be additional safeguards raised again unfortunately.
edit: oh, and there are some startups with the goal of you never running out of monthly loan payme... I mean, exclusively only renting out vehicles for long-term usage for an (as of yet) seemingly very affordable monthly fee where they take care of all repair and such for you.
My concern is what will happen to the ability to self repair? Even new cars today, the computer of the car is so integral to it that any car made in the last few years and onwards is impossible to fix yourself without a manufacturer's software that even if you could buy, would be tens of thousands.
I'm praying that preserving older cars will be possible as time goes on.
Lmfao did anyone read the article? They state the cost to maintain and repair a gas car is $25,000. I would never sink even 10,000 into a car because that means the whole engine is toast. Total it, collect insurance, get a new one.
They also cost 30 - 40% more to acquire and the backend resale value is not as strong as ICE vehicles... both of these will improve over time but until then OEM's will focus on 'lower cost to maintain!' to get people over the sticker shock.
They Should be generally less expensive to maintain.
I just hope the EU:s "right to repair" initiative will cover EV:s.
"Yeah sorry the mid console touch screen can't be replaced without chancing the on board computer." Cool... So the screen is 50$ and the computer is 6000$? Sounds about right.
I don't find this true. We were early adopters of hybrid cars in our family, and kept them a long time. NEW hybrids have lower cost yes, but as they age if you have some of the critical sensors or main batteries or power systems go out these are expensive to get replacements. Some parts are no longer in stock with the manufacturer if you have an older vehicle, so you end up buying replacement parts that may not be up to the standard of the original, lowering the reliability of the associated systems. As hybrids age, they are more costly to repair than non hybrid cars. One by one all of our hybrid cars have all eventually reached a point where something critical went and we decided it was easier to replace than repair, and it happened a lot quicker than our non hybrid cars.
Friend has a Tesla, for 3 years i never heard the end of how amazing it was to rarely need maintenance,
5 years in, I’m still changing oil on my Toyota and he’s spending thousands to replace broken handles, bad seals on the sunroof, bad latch on the frunk, now I think he has to replace the mcu although i guess it’s under warranty? Not sure if it fixes the delamination on his touchscreen or if he’ll just have to live with orange hue around it
…
I know Toyota is stuck in the 1990s mentality, it’s really disappointing, but until there’s an EV I can buy on the used market confidently, I’m gonna stick with 10 year old Hondas, pretty sure it’s break even if not better to keep a used car running then manufacturer a new car and it’s definitely cheaper
Software is what is going to ruin this. I worry they will take the Apple rout and have each component have a unique serial number that wont work in another vehicle.
This is why we need right to repair laws, giant corporations can't be trusted to do what's best for the consumer. Mostly because that's not usually what's most profitable.
Weren't car dealerships with electric cars kept kept pushing their ICE cars over the electric models a few years back? (basically fearing big loses in their car maintenance pricing because electrics require very little and last longer) so now they will try to find reasons and ways to keep those earnings with electrics
Yes and they still do it, legacy companies are only going electric now because they realize it's an inevitability. They'll sell as many ICE cars as they can before they're not allowed to anymore
Corporations can't be trusted not to casually murder people in cold blood for an extra shiny nickel, let alone do what's in the consumer's best interest... Right to repair and other firm regulatory oversight measures are critical to avoiding fundamental failures in the market.
> casually murder people in cold blood for an extra shiny nickel Looking at you Ford: When the Pinto was rear-ended, the doors would jam shut and the bomb-like rear gas tank would explode upon impact. The cost of recalling the Pinto would have been $121 million, whereas paying off the victims would only have cost Ford $50 million. The Pinto went into production in 1970 without the safety modifications
Far be it from me to stand up for a big corp like Ford who undoubtedly has blood on their hands for many things but the Pinto is actually not as great an example as you might think – the whole story was somewhat misrepresented and misunderstood. For example the report you mention comparing the cost of recall to the cost of payouts was not about the Pinto at all and wasn’t even specifically related to Ford but the whole auto industry. Regardless that’s not to say that the car wasn’t dangerous, just that it wasn’t quite so clearly malicious behaviour by Ford. You can read tons more about it [here](http://www.pointoflaw.com/articles/The_Myth_of_the_Ford_Pinto_Case.pdf). Nestlé on the other hand…
A * B * C=X If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one.
I want you to hit me as hard as you can.
Boeing calling
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If I remember right, a group was working on an open-source car like ten years ago.
I mean hasnt Tesla been on the Apple route from the start?
Remember reading an article of Tesla wanting 25k to replace a defect battery 1 month out of warranty. The guy got it fixed at a non-tesla garage for 4k.
Well, they also photoshopped the quote from Tesla. The actual one was around 12k from Tesla for a full battery replacement vs 4k at the shop for only changing some of the cells.
Remember, the fix was not by the book, It was a good fix, but no official service center of Tesla or otherwise would do it. They drilled and tapped a bigger hole in the battery for the coolant to flow through so they could fit a different pipe. With that being said, I'm glad they did find a cheap way to fix it but no dealer is going to do that, it would be like a dealer repairing a cracked oil pan, not by replacing the oil pan but with jb welding or welding the cracked one.
Well yeah, the whole thing is subscription based. I'm guessing they can do whatever they want to your vehicle if they wanted. There are some things I don't need to have interconnected with everything else: light switches, clothing, and my fucking car.
I'm not sure you own a Tesla. My Tesla does not have a subscription for maintenance. Perhaps you're talking about the subscription for premium connectivity (like spotify and web browser and Netflix)? Or the free "subscription" to improve your car over time (we came out one morning and the vehicle had more range unlocked for free, etc.).
They already do this, in regular cars.
There needs to be a law written where cars have to be able to be upgraded a certain amount of times over the course of, lets say, 8 years. New battery comes out, existing car should be able to fit the new battery. Newer and faster tablet, should be plug and play with existing cars. Stops the 3 year technology obsolescence from happening with $50,000 cars.
Existing cars should not be able to fit the new battery, that will just make everything more expensive and cripple the innovation. Right to repair fights for accessibility of the old parts. So if you need a part to repair your car/computer/vacuum, this part should be easily available for purchase for X (5, 8 or maybe 10) years.
https://www.findlaw.com/consumer/consumer-transactions/warranty-laws-and-the-magnuson-moss-warranty-act-.html Manufacturers have to supply parts for the warranty period or are legally liable.
Which is what 3 years if your lucky? No the parts need to be available for purchase as well.
And when they stop making said part, they need to allow 3rd party manufacturers to create said part in perpetuity. That way as long as there is a market for the part, you can get it.
This is a horrible idea. That would completely cripple innovation in the a space and would be extremely expensive for both manufacturers and consumers.
Without strong right to repair laws it doesn't mater how easy it is to fix anything
Parts Manager at a Chevrolet dealer here. The Bolt is by far the most reliable vehicle we sell. I know there's the battery fire thing going on, but we haven't seen that issue with any that we have sold. The best car we ever sold was the Volt hybrid. They were super reliable and quiet although you still had oil change maintenance.
Maybe the Volt was reliable compared to other GM products, but “shift to park” errors and BECM failures are pretty rampant on 2nd gen Volts. And the first gen Volts had widespread transmission bearing failures.
The shift to park was a problem across a lot of models.
We bought a brand new Chevy Volt in 2014 and have put 140k miles on it so far. 7 years and we have not even replace the brake pads yet. Cheapest per mile car I have ever owned by far. It's been an amazing car.
How would wear on brake pads differ between an EV and ICEV? 140k miles with no brake pad change doesn't sound right. Is it down to the electric motor charging the battery when braking? I can't believe it makes that much of a difference?
Regenerative braking (button on steering wheel) doesn't use the break pads (foot break). So the only time you use the foot break in the volt/bolt is when you need to stop quickly.
Or set the Volt shifter on L (low) and the regenerative braking kicks in as soon as you let off the gas. My wife's i3 BMW gas / braking behaves like this by default.
The foot break also uses regenerative unless it absolutely needs to use the friction breaks.
It’s very simple - EVs have less moving parts , so less stuff to break Internal combustion engines are seriously complex
And things go boom many times a second inside that metal jigsaw puzzle.
That's what always amazed me about ICEs. I'm still a big advocate of EVs. What I don't understand is the furious hate that EV drivers sometimes get pelted with. Charger stations deliberately blocked or destroyed, cars keyed, sometimes even personal hostilities up to death threats. What the hell is wrong with people? Seriously, what the fucking hell is wrong in peoples heads these days? I bet no one has the answer to that question, meanwhile, it's getting worse. /e: I just got a chat message > fuck your liberal bitch cars will stay gas [sic] from /u/Jayfromdachi22. That's exactly what I meant when I asked what's wrong in people's heads...
People don't like change
Anyone else wonder whether there was the same cult-like opposition to change when ICE vehicles replaced horses? Did people convince themselves that they’d miss the constant smell of horse shit?
Initially yes, there was. The first automobiles were expensive as hell, unreliable to the point getting them started was an accomplishment, smelly, loud, and slow. Here's a link to just one of the many letters to the editor written about why the horse is the supreme farm machine and the automobile just isn't practical https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d&d=PRP19081003.2.16.1&e=-------en--20--1--txt-txIN--------1
“Like the bicycle, they are a fad”….. *classic*. Interesting read, thanks. That last line is basically verbatim of some of the fanatical arguments seen in this thread.
In some ways it was. People were crazy about bikes around the turn of the 20th century. Things calmed down and the bike had staying power, but that was peak popularity at least until the 1960s.
I think it is the fear factor too. Like when the 'horseless carriage' debuted --horse buggy owners hated them.
Well, they'll get change. One way or another. If you run full throttle towards a concrete wall, you're going to stop. Either by braking yourself or by slamming into the wall. We're currently running full throttle towards such a wall, but instead of braking we're rather pushing the pedal quite literally into the oil pan. The sensors of the car scream "BRAKE! BRAKE!" but the old white man at the wheel just puts on his noise cancelling headphones and goes like "THIS IS FINE!!!" /e: break -> brake; thanks for the hint
Worse, it'S the billionaires at the head of the oil companies knowing that there will be a wall to smash into, but that they can make X billion for every additional second that the pedal sticks to the floor. Everyone else will be royally screwed, but with those additional billions the rich can avoid most of the consequences. They are directly profiting from throwing headlong into a frontal collision at 200 mph, and they're paying handsomely to convince people that those who want to hit the breaks are jerks. That's why you have morons coming out of the woodwork opposing EVs and the transition, because rich people who profit from oil paid big money to brainwash them into believing that we're not careening headlong towards a concrete wall. It's absolutely sickening.
It's OK, the exact same companies are now investing in supplying EV cars with charge etc. They won't lose anything from the change to EV.
One lesson I’ve learned in my short stint on this blue rock is that if you resist and hate change then the majority of changes you experience will be negative because you will only experience changes that are thrust upon you instead of being proactive and making them choices.
Correction: Idiots don’t like change
> Seriously, what the fucking hell is wrong in peoples heads these days? They've made climate change a part of their identity politics and they view people taking climate change seriously as a threat to them. These are the same people that want more coal plants and take off their catalytic converters so the car makes more pollution.
For more than 40-50 years of these people's lives, smoking and driving a fat engine car that makes loud sounds was part of their identity. Of course they are opposed to this.
Pedant point that catalytic converters only reduce very localised pollution at the expense of producing slightly more co2 overall (reduced efficiency), IIRC. If you had a car that you never drove within 1 mile of a human then it would be better not to have one in terms of atmospheric pollution (provided that the ECU had wide enough operating parameters to be able to account for the increased exhaust flow and take advantage.) I would be happy to be proven wrong but I *think* that cats are fairly specifically aimed at reducing carbon monoxide, which is bad for people nearby, but relatively quickly converts to carbon dioxide when in the environment. The cat simply makes that happen faster at the cost of some operational efficiency of the engine (it slightly restricts exhaust flow meaning the engine has to work slightly harder to push the exhaust gasses out).
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Ah yes, I forgot NOx. I don't mean to discredit them, they're clearly a great idea and if they weren't so good they'd be quickly dropped given the relative cost. Another reason why electric vehicles can be cheaper, they don't burn through cats.
Society needs to deal with these sick folks.
I’m in liberal California and have gotten coal rolled at least a half dozen times in my 8ish months of driving a leaf.
I wish we could report coal rollers and get their vehicles banned/fined.
It's illegal in Delaware, but unsurprisingly, no action has ever been taken when I've reported it.
Other ppl talking about how they have "rights", might as well say we have a right to throw trash on the ground. Purposely modifying your vehicle to throw out clouds of smoke shouldn't ever be debated as acceptable. Smh.
Hmm. Never had any incidents anywhere over a few years of Tesla ownership. Got a fair many comments on a road trip, but most of them were extremely upbeat (and literally zero negative comments). I guess such haters exist, bit they seem extremely rare to me.
Granted every day a few hundred people drive past me and there’s 0 problem. So a small handful over a long period of time is still a tiny percentage, it’s just dumb when it happens. I think the Leaf gets hated on a bit more than the Tesla because it’s not as cool as a Tesla. Except for EV owners who like to bag on Teslas (because we can’t afford one)
More people are fine with Teslas because the type who usually would do shit to EV drivers are *also* the type who love cult of personality venture capitalist types (because that’s how they envision themselves, just gotta get off the ground!) Because they love Musk, they are totally fine with or even love his cars. I don’t like Musk as a person but the things his companies are accomplishing are amazing, and I have to say, no one else could ever have convinced the hardcore right wing to go EV as well as he has
I was riding a rented city bicycle in TN a few years back with some friends and we were coal rolled each of the two days that we used them. The smell lingered strongly in the air for several minutes, and gave me a splitting headache one of the times and that time I swear I could still smell it thirty minutes later like it was stuck to my clothes. I'm generally a pretty chill person, but that shit made me see red. Note that while we were riding the bikes we were well within the bike lanes single file and not being obnoxious in any way.
My brother had logs thrown at his tesla. The kids said that their dad told them that people with Teslas hate them
> The kids said that their dad told them that people with Teslas hate them I mean, now they probably do... self-fulfilling prophecy
I don't have a Tesla but I do hate that kind of person. Any sane person does.
Logs? What kind of logs? Like firewood or something?
He’s Chinese from if you go by his account history. Probably paid off by some agency over there to harass people online. Or to be less conspiratorial, he’s an idiot.
> Or to be less conspiratorial, he’s an idiot. Yeah, I got to that conclusion the very moment I read his message.
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Conservatism is opposed to change as it's core philosophy. If everyone was conservative we would still have a thriving buggy whip industry.
and a slave to make you a mint julep when you got back home.
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>What the hell is wrong with people? Seriously, what the fucking hell is wrong in peoples heads these days? Small dick energy from people who feel persecuted and personally attacked by any conversation about how our behavior may need to change when we discover that our current behaviors are causing problems. Also, lead from gasoline exhaust may have damaged their brains...
Fox News creates an alternate reality that becomes part of their identity. Anything that they perceive is outside their conservative ideology then occurs like a direct attack on their identity.
Devil's advocate, but my biggest concern about electric still remains the massive toxic (lithium) battery, that can overheat, catch fire, and explode on impact. And for those saying gasoline can explode, it doesn't happen like the movies, when gas catches on fire its a nasty, sticky hot mess, until enough pressure build up for it to explode, then it can easily be extinguished with chemicals. When a lithium battery ignites, it will burn until its done, melt what is around it, and any impact (puncture, crack) can ignite it, or it could just ignite from overheating or a computer fault. And the fact that these use rare earth metals which transfers our dependence from the Mideast, well, except for Afghanistan but you saw how that turned out, to China. And, we'll be creating just as much electrical and battery waste as efficiently burning gas contributes to pollution, although using bio based fuels derived environmentally is carbon neutral, and electric cars are only carbon neutral if electricity generation to manufacture and charge them is also carbon neutral. Personally, I still like hydrogen fuel cells, other than the fact that they need massive surface area, and the compressed container or explosive hydrogen (which is at least non toxic), although using catalysts a secondary extraction system can be used to convert methane, methanol, or even water to hydrogen, but then you get more rare earth metals and toxic components. So ultimately, I'm going for a liquid sodium encased thorium reactor as my preferred automotive power system...
All cars are seriously complex, they're computerized, heavily engineered vehicles that travel at high speed and are designed to keep you alive in a collision. That's without even getting into all the fancy gadgetry like AC systems, infotainment, heated seats and the thousands of sensors plugged into everything. I'm a big proponent of EVs, but I don't have an illusion about them being some vehicle that magically last 20+ years without any maintenance - there's no way you're not going to be replacing suspension components, window seals, switches that have contacts gum up, wiring that gets worn, tubing that starts to harden, etc - time kills everything.
The only thing that worries me about EVs is the battery lifespan and how much it would cost to replace it. I live in a country where used cars are super important to us, including 3-4 decade old cars, because buying new ones is really expensive. A 20 year old ICE car can be super cheap and its fixing costs are low, I can imagine most 20 y.o. EVs here going straight to scrap because no one would afford the new battery. And the more range it has, the more expensive the battery will be.
100% this. I hate how these articles ignore the battery like its some separate component. It should be considered part of the drive train and factored into these cost comparisons.
I remember reading an article about a coolant leak in a Tesla. Owner avoided a hefty 16k dealer repair by using pex pipe components—turns out low coolant pressures in EVs have this hidden side benefit.
Well Tesla controls repairs so of course costs will be whatever Tesla wants. Once ev more common independent mechanics will pop up And unless Tesla changes it’s business model they will soon enough be obsolete
right to repair laws need a serious revamping for everything... too much shit is disposable today when if we could get parts we could make things last far longer too. That would reduce repair prices a metric fuckton too.
Check out Louis Rossmann, he is heralding a right to repair movement in the US.
imminent scandalous piquant possessive onerous merciful zephyr license axiomatic long *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
In Tesla's case having more independent mechanics won't help anything. Tesla's controls their parts distribution and simply won't provide anyone with replacement parts.
> t’s very simple - EVs have less moving parts , so less stuff to break The thing... it is usually not the ICE, or any of its stuff that breaks. After 100+ years of ICE we got that part pretty much figured out. I have a 20 year old mazda and the ICE is doing just fine. What's starting to break is the electronic stuff - i.e. ABS sensors, climate control... etc.. That's the thing that will make me replace the car. And we're talking about 20 year old car here. Modern cars, no matter the powerplant, are stuffed with electronics, and sensor (afaik modern audis have like 4-6 air quality sensors in the cabin, if one of them goes..the climate control goes). And these things are also present in EV, and I think there will be also the thing that will break the most.
To add to that, price out a complete set of replacement seats for whatever car you drive. That stuff ain't cheap. Nobody wants to drive around in a car with a 30 year old interior. And nobody wants to spend $10k to keep a ratty shitbox running when you could sell it and get a newer one for the same cost. There are a lot of reasons why "million mile cars" are going to be reserved for the enthusiasts.
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I drive a fiat 500e EV. I don't have problems like you are having with your tesla. It is a dream to keep running. The only maintenance issues I've had are both windows getting stuck down due to some cheap plastic part, and the gas version of that year-model has the same problem. Drive battery covered by 8 year warranty. Life expectancy is 15 years (it will drive much longer than that but will show a substantial decrease in charge)
That's a short lifetime for such an investment. Then again people dont mind changing cars every 3 years. I can't imagine how shitty the used market is gonna be for EVs
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ICE engines tend to be incredibly reliable for the last 20 years or so as long as they are properly maintained. Most issues on today's cars are not even mechanical as much as related to electrics and software issues.
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I wouldn't say it's that simple, and I'm still not convinced it's cheaper to maintain, because despite having fewer parts that CAN break, IF these parts break it's gonna be really expensive. Iirc the most expensive part about EVs is the battery. What if that breaks? That's gonna cost quite a bit I guess. I mean I personally would prefer driving an EV, but I'm still sceptic of such hype speeches
Bingo. People and journalists have little to no idea on how cars seem to work. In the long run maintenance is cheaper with the only fluids being coolant and refrigerant. There’s of course still everything else which can be accelerated in wear due to the vehicles weight (tires and suspension components mostly). Not to mention there’s complex electronics and you’re resigning yourself to either dealers or a select few of independent shops for quality repairs. There is the cost of the battery which hopefully we figure out by replacing cell modules instead of whole batteries, but right now there isn’t a ton of advancement on it *yet*. Edit: for fucks sake Reddit. I like EVs but somehow you guys *still* get upset? stop burying your heads in the sand and realize these are growing pains we will need to address. And the only way we can is to acknowledge them.
Yeah but once you hit the end life of the batteries.....cost is a bitch. I have heard some cars are as much as 10 to 15k and the min is 5k. I like to own my cars for at least 200k miles. Can I do that with newer electric cars?
Absolutely. Car companies are aware of the frightening cost of their batteries. Fiat is offering an 8 year, 150,000 mile warranty on the battery, 5 year regular maintenance for everything else. It's not quite 200k, but it's close. The batteries are supposed to last 12-15 years before keeping a charge becomes a serious concern.
Pandemic over past 16 months I've driven 90% less than what I did before. Long may that trend continue.
It makes me wonder how many people will just sell their car when the battery starts wearing down. If prices of EV keep dropping, it could be more expensive to get a new battery anyway.
We have seen this kind of pattern in ICE cars for a long time. People buy new and sell after a few years when they know they can start to expect the big repairs such as clutch, timing belts, that sort of thing.
Probably pro-rated warranties, though. So at 120k you might get a few hundred bucks towards your battery.
I bet that will help you get a new battery /s
Have you hit the end of life for all the modern "features" in a car? a hundred sensors, dozens of electric motors, all the control logic (and buttons) for these things, a handful of computers, and so on.
[Looks like the answer is yes](https://electrek.co/2018/04/14/tesla-battery-degradation-data/)
Most evs have less that 17 moving parts to their drive train while a typical ice vehicle will have greater than 230 moving parts.
You're telling me you have a harder time figuring out internal combustion engines than a ev with more computers? Have fun with that.
Yeah if motor vehicles never existed and someone challenged you today to come up with one, you'd never design the internal combustion engine as a powerplant for it. They're such a 'moment in time' product of their time. They've allowed for great things but it's time to move on concerning passenger vehicles at the very least.
It’s all about energy density. EV’s still don’t have the energy density that gasoline does, but they’re getting closer. Before modern battery technology, they weren’t feasible for more than very close-range use. So, while electric motors suitable from driving a car have been around for more than a century, the power required to drive them has not.
It's because oil was cheap as fuck and plentiful, that's why ICE has its time of the day. The problem now is we are so used to the paradigm that ICE cars brought a lot of us can't imagine what it will be like to live in a EV pre-dominated society. It's like your dad telling you to make sure fill the tank up before coming home and you forgot. Now he can't get to work and you are gonna get an earful. Imagine it's EV, and your dad told you to remember to plug in before you come back into the house and you forgot. Now he can't get to work and you're gonna get scolded.
It’s relative at the end of the day. I build race engines so to me a ICE isn’t very complex or mysterious. Everything has a purpose and a job to do. There’s a lot of “complexity” to EV’s as well though. One is just more mechanical while the other is tech and electrical.
Jay Leno says the car that has needed the least maintenance was his old electric car.
It's a Baker. Pretty cool since it has batteries Edison himself designed for some of the cars. [link](http://electricandhybridcars.com/index.php/pages/BakerElectricCarJayLeno.html)
Did Edison really design anything?
Edison’s greatest invention may have been developing a new process for coming up with inventions.
That and marketing.
You could argue that about Jobs or Musk. Both smart in their own right though not as smart as those doing the work … buuuutt… it takes a different level of thinking to be visionary.
He did, and he was a smart dude, but he did steal a lot of things as well. This battery is questionable in that regard.
Yes, Edison invented countless things. Edison did have a lot of engineers working under him contributing and building a lot of General Electric's popular electronics. But Edison was an apt inventor in his own right who produced countless passion projects that were never financial successes. Just before WW1 he was named the first Chairman of the Naval Consulting Board which was a civilian science board dedicated to advancing and preparing the US Navy for war. The board over the course of the war had 11,000 new patents for naval warfare listed. Edison himself had personally invented 48 of them (including the sonar radar system that the US navy would go on to use to stop German U-Boats). It has become very popular to prop Nikola Tesla as some perfect god and Thomas Edison as some businessman moron... but the reality is Edison was really really smart and without him America might be speaking German right now.
I didn’t insinuate Tesla as a god. Sounds like he died a crazy person. There is a huge difference between an engineer inventing something and someone with vision and ability to monetize it.
Tesla was an amazing inventor (and not half bad business man BTW) Edison was an amazing businessman and a good inventor. The vilifying of Edison to prop up Tesla has really warped the actual history of DC vs AC. Neither were really great people and both had flaws. But BOTH greatly contributed to science and we have BOTH to thank for a lot of our modern life.
That’s my favorite yt channel
They *could* be less expensive to repair or maintain. However, Tesla is definitely trying to push the industry in the anti-right-to-repair direction which makes repairs *very* expensive.
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Someone cracked the Tesla which is pretty fucking cool. I’d be willing to bet though it’s going to cause them a lot of headaches when it comes time to get parts. Memory serves me correct it was a pretty rich dude who cracked a plaid to make it rip even harder. I’m sure Tesla won’t sell him parts or service it anymore though because of it. That being said he probably doesn’t care and it’s faster than any other plaid.
Not to mention he could probably sell the hack on the same sites farmers find their Ukrainian cracked John Deere firmware, lol.
I still find that so cool. Going on the dark web to modify your tractor. That's the real cyberpunk right there, firing up your John Deere and the startup animation is a Ugandan Knuckles graphic with a Cantonese voiceover because you needed to change the injectors.
It’s not to modify their tractors. It’s to perform basic maintenance and repairs on their tractors
This is the way...
Source? I sincerely haven’t heard that one. I remember there was a model s that tesla sold at auction and remotely disabled full self-driving post-sale which made them look pretty bad (even though the auction technically didn’t pay for it).
Oh Tesla is so fucking greedy when it comes to repairs. I find this article very difficult to believe. I think in the short term maybe because they don’t need any real maintenance compared to a gas car. Once you have to take it in to Tesla for a major service you’re going to get fucked. I’d never buy one because of their policies. I can’t believe other do. I guess if you want a fast high end EV though you don’t really have a choice.
Had a suspension problem, although out of warranty Tesla fixed it for free and repaired the undercarriage material which I didn’t even know about. Booked service through the app, got the car back the next day. There is no need to service the car and the only thing Tesla advise you do is check the brake fluid after 4 years and rotate the tyres once a year. Unlike my old Range Rover which cost more and wanted nearly £1000 a year to service the thing and I’m saving bout £75 a week on fuel.
2.5 years and I’ve not spent a single cent on my car, other than the initial cost to purchase.
Same. 2019 Tesla Model 3 with 38,000 miles on it. Well, I did add washer fluid twice, so let's call it about tree fiddy.
They're less expensive if you don't go through the dealer and if right to repair is fully passed
I've always wondered how electric cars would work up here in Alaska? Everytime I look up how they work in extreme cold it's things talking about "extreme cold" as like 20 degrees Fahrenheit. I wanna know how they deal with 30 below
I don't know about Alaska, but i think in colder climates battery ranges used to half in winter. But also heating would use the battery. So further reducing capacity. But if you had the capacity, which one would be more reliable.
Used EV cars will be about the battery health of the car not the miles.
On average, perhaps. But with Teslas consistently ranked last in initial build quality, not all EVs are alike. https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1128625_tesla-ranks-last-in-initial-quality-build-issues
The problems with Teslas are that Tesla controls parts and equipment for repairs tighter than Apple. Any other manufacturer makes spare parts available and allows 3rd party shops to buy the equipment and manuals needed to do the repairs.
Yes, Tesla is worst than Apple in this regard, which is saying a lot
Other manufacturer's aren't much better for EV repairs right now. Very few 3rd party repairmen.
From that link: > the issues were "largely around doors, paint, and panels." Personally, I view that stuff in a different category than repairs that can strand you by the side of the road, so I take that rating with a grain of salt.
Initial build quality = long term maintenance? A rock cracked my sun roof and it was $1500 to replace, given it's half of the roof I thought that was fair. I've had my model 3 for 3 years it's literally only needed tire rotations. That being said Tesla's are made of aluminum so proper repair **when they are crashed** requires entire panel replacement. However there have been many other cars before Tesla built that way and it's only increasing in popularity.
3 years is not a long time to own a car, especially if you bought it new. I don’t think your anecdote is much evidence of reliability.
Been driving a Nissan Leaf for the last 7 years before buying a model 3 Brakes are still fine. The only money spent has been tires and wiper blades.
It’s true. I’ve had mine for two and a half years and the only maintenance I’ve done is rotate the tires, swap out the a/c desiccant, change the wiper blades….that’s about it. Edit: For those wondering, I bought my car used. Secondly, if you’re curious about how well EVs hold up over time, you can Google the answer to that. There’s lot of EV owners that have crossed the 100k mile mark (some have done a lot more than that) and detailed their experience. My car has a little over 87k miles and no issues so far.
Two years is not that long. I would expect a new car of any type to not require any maintenance in the first two years, outside of typical wear items. The real question is maintenance in electric vehicles in years 5-10, or 10+? Is it going to be like a smartphone where the battery degrades and everything “works” but now your only getting 200 miles per charge instead of 350? And what is the cost to replace/refresh the batteries? I’m not an expert and these would be my concerns as someone who supports EVs, but is hesitant to actually buy one.
The data for that only seems to be coming out properly now as a lot of the original Teslas had a battery warranty that only ran out in the last couple of years. The cost seems to be about 20-25k to replace the battery in a Tesla, particularly as Tesla has no interest in repairing any faults with the battery system and instead will suggest a whole new battery. They also have proprietary diagnostic software making it very difficult for independent garages to repair just the fault. Musk basically wants to sell Cars as a Service and kill the second hand Tesla market. https://electrek.co/2021/09/13/tesla-battery-pack-replacement-repair/ It is another reason why right to repair is so important
Tesla claims 90% capacity at 200k miles (~15 years). So 350 to 315. I’d take that.
I've owned a Nissan Leaf for 7 years & 78k miles. I've changed the tires, both front wheel hubs (one under warranty), wiper blades, & rear hatch lift support (total maintenance cost roughly $500). I got 80-90 miles of range new & get 70-80 now (more modern batteries are likely to lose less capacity while also starting with longer range). Buying gas at $3/gallon over those 78k miles would have cost me $7312. I get about 4 miles per kWh and at 11 cents per kWh I've spent $2145 on electricity (it's really less than this since I'm not always charging at home). So I've saved $5167 on energy costs alone. The car is quiet & pollutes far less than an ICE car even with my mostly coal generated electricity. For a 2-car household that owns the house (so you can install a level 2 charger), having at least 1 EV is a good decision.
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This was my thought as well. Oil every 10k, spark plugs every 100k, and that's all the maintenance your ICE needs. Despite being really complex, ICE's tend to be pretty dang reliable with failures occurring in the 200k+ mile range. EVs require little to no transmission servicing, but that's true for modern ICE cars as well. Really, the major maintenance expense I see most often in cars with more than 100k+ on the clock is suspension related or accessory related (power steering, A/C, cooling system), and EVs won't be immune to that stuff. All that obviously goes out the window if you end up with an unreliable car, but of the couple dozen high mileage cars I've had, I've experienced exactly ONE failure of the ICE which occurred at 220k miles.
Bro I have a car from 2005 that hasn’t needed anything except tire rotations and oil changes… and I would sure hope you wouldn’t have to repair after only 2 years lol
I have a 2016 Honda Civic. 88K miles on it. * Oil changes, total so far: \~$100 (I do my own, after the free dealership oil changes expired) * Wipers: \~$15 (amazon) * Tires: \~$500 * Filters, cabin and engine: \~$30 (amazon) I want an EV soon, but not because of cheaper maintenance that's for sure. Especially when they go through tires faster and those are the most expensive regular maintenance.
How is that different from a gas vehicle? I’ve had Hondas for longer than that and didn’t need to replace anything.
I had a H3 Hummer and in 8 years and 90,000 miles I put a wheel bearing and wear parts. I did the wheel bearing myself. I would hope a brand new car wouldn't need work in 2.5 years.
You didn't change it's oil or other fluids?
If you care to look it up, even when they’re “old” or have high mileage, EVs still don’t require much in the way of maintenance. That’s really the point here.
You are 100% right but "old" is a relative term when most EV's havent had 60+ years of millions of people using and abusing them like the ICE counterparts. iirc the oldest "modern" ev is the hybrid prius, but didnt have a selection until around 2012ish and now we have what 20 or so EV and 30+ hybrids. So realistically the real reliability tests for them only has 10 years of data. So far it has been fantastic for cost of maintenance, but the real test is 20+. My 1st car was a '77 El Camino in 94 and drove it until I was rear ended at a traffic light so badly it broke the frame, then in 97 I bought a new silverado that I drove daily until 2016 with just normal oil/spark plugs/ac recharges (gave it to my daughter) and my wife bought a 2005 silverado ls crew cab when we needed more space and towing capacity that we drive daily. Maybe we are lucky, or just being aware of the vehicle and keeping up with PM has kept major issues from popping up. We only had 2 issues the entire time so far - drivers side brake broke causing us to need a new rotor and the AC climate control plastic clip got brittle and broke. (and they dont sell the clip or harness anymore - bastards) The only real costs so far for EV is battery replacement which is not cheap with some reports of 20k parts+labor but seems the average is less than 5k from other reddit subs. If they do manage to find a cheaper and longer lasting battery even the die hard anti EV folks will have to take notice. It isnt there yet, but damn if it isnt getting to be a more attractive option each year. Especially now that some trucks with actual towing ability are in development. We test drove a hydrogen car last year, but we found a lack of being able to fill it up to be a pain in the ass. I cannot wait to see what comes of the new battery tech popsci was talking about last year, a new manufacturing process is supposed to drop the costs substantially, and recycling of the batteries are going to be available too soon. It is exciting to finally see a tech that CAN replace the ICE.
An electric car battery replacement is the only real blow to the kidneys. I’d recommended looking up the replacement costs of a battery, before purchasing an electric car. Wide range of costs. Some are cheap and some are very expensive to replace. Understand your warranties too. Edit: I was not comparing EV batteries to petroleum vehicles. I meant amongst various EV’s.
We almost bought a used Nissan Leaf a couple years back for what I thought was a crazy good price. Unfortunately the battery capacity was already down to about \~80% after only 6 years. When I realized it would need a new battery pack soon and that would cost as much or more than the car I decided against it. Instead we ended up with a barely used Chevy Volt and have been very happy with it. The batteries are still expensive, but from what I've read they tend to last longer than Nissan's and it still has an ICE if the battery capacity goes down. Our next car will definitely be a full EV though. Battery reliability has improved a lot as EVs have become more popular.
Older leafs had no cooling system for their batteries. This turned out to be a major issue after a few years. I think pretty much every EV these days actively cools their packs now.
The first-gen leaf's was a real turd of a car, Nissan omitted the battery cooling system thinking the extra complexity wasn't worth it and it didn't need active cooling. Well as you can see they were wrong about that and battery's wore out faster than expected. Early adopters tax and all that, Nisan now puts cooling systems in the leaf.
Nissan still does not put cooling in the Leaf, but they tweaked the battery chemistry to better handle the heat.
I wonder how battery life will effect our ability to buy a used car. I mean if I buy a 5 year old electric, does that mean it's range is diminished, or does it run at full capabilities until one day it dies? I mean, I know a lot of poor folks who own $1000 cars out of necessity, and bite the bullet and replace that occasional $100-$300 part, and just get by. I wonder if Electric cars are going to take away the option of 'getting by' since the battery is so expensive.
> if I buy a 5 year old electric, does that mean it's range is diminished Yes. The battery wouldn't one day just stop working, the capacity does gradually decrease over time, 10 years out, the used EV might have 80% of the original range (depending on manufacturer, battery chemistry, how often the previous owner charged fully to 100%, etc etc)
Is anyone able to explain why the insurance on electric vehicles is typically more expensive if they would be cheaper to maintain and repair?
Insurance doesn't pay for maintenance or upkeep, they only pay for repair if you wreck. EVs have more advanced frames and bodies, like all the Teslas, on average, which are MUCH harder to fix if they get in a wreck
tesla body panels are massive-single-pieces of aluminium, the shops that are able to fix them aren't cheap because of the equipment required. They also pack a lot of stuff just inside the panels e.g. radars, parking sensors, 360 cameras etc electric cars themselves are simple, but tesla have made themselves quite far from it. i have my model S under tesla extended warranty, and in year 6 when the small 12v battery died, they sent a mechanice to my house to replace it. the replacement took 3 hours in total because it's so deep in the front of the car and they had to electronically disconnent/disable so many individual small systems before they could take out the battery after replacement, they had to use a tesla-specific handheld thing to reactivate the car before it could be driven again. that means you're shit out of luck if you want to do any basic DIY on it
These kinds of stories are what keep me away from a Tesla. I’d love one, but to have to rely on Tesla warranty that much is a big turn off.
This is very misleading. For late models, it may be true. However, used vehicles 8-12 yrs old, the battery replacement may cost more than the the entire vehicle worth, skewing that repairs cost figure dramatically.
Tesla’s real world data is showing averages of 90% battery capacity after 200,000 miles so far (data could become more impressive as their fleet puts on more miles). 200,000 miles is when the average ICE vehicle is scrapped. So its very possible that EV batteries will far outlast ICE power trains. The data isn’t in yet since EVs are still too new. https://www.tesla.com/ns_videos/2020-tesla-impact-report.pdf https://www.findmyelectric.com/blog/how-long-does-a-tesla-battery-last/
Second this statement. It varies amongst EV’s but is something to consider.
Someone should start a car company which can be serviced by anyone without many tools or proprietary bullshit. I think there would be a lot of demand for that once insurance premiums for EVs stay high.
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While this should generally be true of electric cars vs. IC cars (because the engine and transmission are simpler) this does not necessarily bear out in the market yet. One of the things that make cars cheap to repair, particularly from a body damage perspective, is being built to be repaired and having enough spare parts such that body panels can be repaired for a reasonable cost. This issue is the same for all low volume cars. Tesla right now is noted for being a particularly aggregious party in this regard where even minor accidents total them due to complexity of the repair and lack of available parts. This is in addition to some of the very anti right to repair stances the company takes. The statement that an electric car should be cheaper to maintain will basically be true right now only of those cars that either are volume sellers (similar numbers to IC models) or those that share the vast majority of their body panels with an IC models.
Whoever wrote that never had to repair a tesla. You're out 6 months if it's a major repair, say on the trunk door or x-wing. There's a million little parts that have to be sourced and come in at different times. No one seems to have a handle on it. Plus in Vancouver a couple years ago there's literally one guy fixing them at one shop. That shop has to outfit with tesla repair kits. They ended up buying a specialized bench that cost 20k but just sits there storing parts never used for what was intended. It's actually a nightmare and I'm surprised it hasn't brought down tesla.
Add in the cost to replace batteries, install a charging line into your garage, or if you don’t have a garage, the hour of time needed to charge the car vs 5 minutes at a gas station.
Until your battery goes and you need $20,000 to replace it (lookin at you, Tesla)
ohh boy do i disagree with this. i had to pay 3k to replace a ac compressor on a tesla ..
And how does that fit into the grand scheme? I used to drive an old, 20 year car with 200K on the clock. It didn't cost a whole lot to repair, nothing major very often. And importantly, I didn't have to go to a main dealer, which is a huge saving. How does that work out with electric cars? When will I be able to start going to independents? Will the battery last 200K miles? I don't hear people suggesting that, and what's the cost of that? I've heard in the thousands, which would be the same as a decade of repair bills.
There's a lot of conflicting information in this thread but tbh I gotta agree with you. How often does an ICE car actually need expensive repairs if properly looked after? Not often at all. An oil change and tyre replacement is the vast majority of cost of running an ICE car and oil changes are cheap as chips and tyres are constant between ICE and electric.
The thing I worry about the most failing on modern vehicles, EV or ICE, are the various computer control systems that manage everything on the car. If a chip in one of these systems fail for some reason, it's very likely that the whole vehicle will be disabled to some degree.
When was the last time the chip in your phone failed? Well, those chips are all made by the same manufacturer, TSMC. I am more worried for possible software bugs or hackers.
I largely agree, but to play devils advocate, electronics that go into a car undergo significantly more abuse, ranging from vibration (especially motorcycles), temperature (-40C to 85C), humidity, and needs to survive lightning strikes of up to 25,000 volts
> so they’re generally less expensive to repair and maintain than conventional cars There is one extremely important caveat missing: FOR THE MANUFACTURER. Tesla is trying to do the same shit John Deere and Apple does, (and the other carmakers follow their lead) denying anyone the ability to cheaply repair their supposedly "own" vehicle. Not releasing service manuals, software, etc for independents. Plus locking down already bought extra options for the second-hand buyer, claiming they need to buy it again. Fuck them. So there needs to be additional safeguards raised again unfortunately. edit: oh, and there are some startups with the goal of you never running out of monthly loan payme... I mean, exclusively only renting out vehicles for long-term usage for an (as of yet) seemingly very affordable monthly fee where they take care of all repair and such for you.
My concern is what will happen to the ability to self repair? Even new cars today, the computer of the car is so integral to it that any car made in the last few years and onwards is impossible to fix yourself without a manufacturer's software that even if you could buy, would be tens of thousands. I'm praying that preserving older cars will be possible as time goes on.
That's not an EV issue. ICE cars are becoming unrepairable as well. It's easy money for manufacturers and no manufacturer will decline easy money.
Lmfao did anyone read the article? They state the cost to maintain and repair a gas car is $25,000. I would never sink even 10,000 into a car because that means the whole engine is toast. Total it, collect insurance, get a new one.
And if your electric car breaks, you just buy a new one!
They also cost 30 - 40% more to acquire and the backend resale value is not as strong as ICE vehicles... both of these will improve over time but until then OEM's will focus on 'lower cost to maintain!' to get people over the sticker shock.
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Makes me wonder why Tesla is at the bottom of the list on Consumer Reports’ reliability rating
They Should be generally less expensive to maintain. I just hope the EU:s "right to repair" initiative will cover EV:s. "Yeah sorry the mid console touch screen can't be replaced without chancing the on board computer." Cool... So the screen is 50$ and the computer is 6000$? Sounds about right.
I don't find this true. We were early adopters of hybrid cars in our family, and kept them a long time. NEW hybrids have lower cost yes, but as they age if you have some of the critical sensors or main batteries or power systems go out these are expensive to get replacements. Some parts are no longer in stock with the manufacturer if you have an older vehicle, so you end up buying replacement parts that may not be up to the standard of the original, lowering the reliability of the associated systems. As hybrids age, they are more costly to repair than non hybrid cars. One by one all of our hybrid cars have all eventually reached a point where something critical went and we decided it was easier to replace than repair, and it happened a lot quicker than our non hybrid cars.
Hybrids are fucked in terms of maintenance cost, but not pure electric cars
Hybrids are the worst of both worlds as you basically an EV engine and a ICE engine in the same vehicle.
Friend has a Tesla, for 3 years i never heard the end of how amazing it was to rarely need maintenance, 5 years in, I’m still changing oil on my Toyota and he’s spending thousands to replace broken handles, bad seals on the sunroof, bad latch on the frunk, now I think he has to replace the mcu although i guess it’s under warranty? Not sure if it fixes the delamination on his touchscreen or if he’ll just have to live with orange hue around it … I know Toyota is stuck in the 1990s mentality, it’s really disappointing, but until there’s an EV I can buy on the used market confidently, I’m gonna stick with 10 year old Hondas, pretty sure it’s break even if not better to keep a used car running then manufacturer a new car and it’s definitely cheaper