This seems to be based on a faulty premise that cars aren't lasting as long as they used to last and that EVs will be more of the same. The video claims this is due to planned obsolescence facilitated by electronics making the car impossible to repair.
I don't believe this is true at all. Battery lifetime aside, cars are very reliable now compared to the past. Multiple studies back this up, but I think most people must anecdotally have noticed fewer broken down cars on the side of the highway and their own cars needing less maintenance and breaking down less often.
Yes, modern cars are often less repairable.
Lack of repairability is sometimes malevolent, but most times it's just a side effect of making things safer and more reliable. For example, engine computers reduce engine wear and prevent knocking, sealed systems leak less, safety systems require sensors in fenders and wing mirrors and crumple zones result in cars being written off. I have had a car that would have suffered a catastrophic engine failure in the past, but thanks to modern sensors and electronics, instead shut itself down, preventing serious damage.
By comparison, my old carburettor car was incredibly easy to repair just using tools in my toolbox, but it always had something going wrong, was a bitch to start in winter and driving in wet leaf conditions was seriously terrifying. My current car is a 2009 petrol with 150k miles and has never had any work outside of the routine service schedule or basic consumables.
Chinese EV's and the Model 3 Standard Range and most of the upcoming affordable EV's are all shipping with LFP batteries rather than the standard NMC batteries.
LFP batteries are usually rated for 750,000 kilometres of range.
I didn't go into EV battery tech because it's still relatively new technology and doesn't really have any relevance to the planned obsolescence angle. But as you point out, newer battery packs have very long design lifetimes.
It remains to be seen how well this will translate into actual lifetimes, but at this point it seems like EVs will end up being much more reliable than ICEs. Almost every other part of an EV is much simpler and more reliable.
Honestly, even with modern ICEs, it's rarely the engine and drivetrain causing problems towards the end of its life. The interior starts to fall apart, the weather proofing fails, buttons stop working, things start to rattle, etc. until eventually you get bored of the constant minor repairs, meanwhile new cars are so much more comfortable and better designed, better fuel economy, lower emissions/taxes, etc.
I only drive an old car because I don't drive often.
In many parts of the world, it's not mechanical failure that causes a car to be scrapped, nor is it interior breakage.
It'a rust.
Rust eats cars like nothing else, and until automakers start using more corrosion-resistant materials (aluminum, stainless steel, galvanized steel, etc.), or cities stop spraying salt on roads, in these areas rust will continue to be the #1 car-killer.
A lot of the little stuff you just live with on an old car. It's the medium stuff that kills you. If something big goes you just trash the car, but it's the many $500 - $3k repairs that eat you alive. Brakes, suspension, CV joints, et cetera.
Electric cars don't eliminate this kind of stuff, but they do reduce it. Brake wear is almost completely eliminated, differentials usually are eliminated, transmissions are single speed transfer boxes, CV joints are sometimes eliminated, et cetera.
I've seen so much skepticism about this. People without EVs can't seem to believe that brake pads don't experience much wear on EVs.
I owned a Toyota Prius for many years, and while not a pure EV, it still used regenerative braking, and after several years of driving, the brake pads were no more worn than when I bought it.
I traded it for a Fiat 500e, pure EV, and I don't expect to have to replace the brake pads on it, probably ever.
We owned a Toyota Hybrid that someone totaled at ~100k miles, had the factory pads on it. I expect the pads on all of our Teslas to last the life of the vehicles. It’s a minor benefit, but super nice to not need to bother with pad and rotor replacements.
The issue I worry about is the planned obsolesce by code. Like the epson printers stop working after so many prints, or Apple phones slowing done when a new model comes out, or BMW charging for heated seats, or other features that 'expire' purely due to some parameter set in software that has nothing to do with the physical components they control. The cars of the future (EV or ICE) will suck because of these problems that no government will ever address.
> In 2017, the company confirmed it did slow down some models as they aged, but not to encourage people to upgrade.
It said the lithium-ion batteries in the devices became less capable of supplying peak current demands, as they aged over time.
That could result in an iPhone unexpectedly shutting down to protect its electronic components.
You can believe this reasoning if you wish. Do you also believe Starbucks corp when they fire an employee on the spot for being 2 minutes late because they are strong proponents of timeliness? Or because that person was attempting to form a union?
Except you don’t have to mind read to see Apple’s motives. Get an old iPhone with a bad battery. Benchmark it. Upgrade the battery. Benchmark it again. Compare the results and see if a new battery makes the slowdown go away.
The _meme_ is that Apple screwed over its legacy hardware owners though a diabolical act of planned obsolescence. What you're responding to is just the most common medium through which that meme is conveyed.
It makes even less sense when taken in the context of android handset manufacturers. If you wish to talk about planned obsolescence look at how often they update their own phones.
Also, some percentage of catastrophic accidents are likely due to cowboy mechanics introducing new failures.
Complexity reduces the grey zone where end users will attempt a ductape fix themselves. Paying more for an accreted mechanic to do more complex repairs is probably another cause of increasing road safety.
Furthermore, in most countries original car sellers are legally required to stock parts for their cars for some seriously long time; I think it's close to twenty years.
One problem with the parts of newer cars is quite often they come in "assemblies" rather than individual parts.
For example, I somehow misplaced the brake fluid cap for my car and needed to buy a new one. OEM would have required that I buy a new master cylinder assembly (including pump and more) for £200 and no garages seemed to stock the particular cap I needed.
As I couldn't find anyone willing to sell the cap on its own, I ended up buying the fluid tank from a breaker on eBay for £30 and just used the cap and put the rest in my loft just in case I ever need it.
That being said, the reason this is harder than it used to be is because fewer people need to buy individual parts nowadays. The market is evaporating. Still, some standardisation or legislation about what counts as a "part" could be valuable, but I'd be concerned about over-regulation reducing innovation and reliability, so it's hard to find a balance.
For an much more informative talk on the future of EV’s, energy and so on, watch Tony Seba, who actually studies these trends for a living.
The Tony Seba version is much more optimistic, instead actually the data shows cars are lasting twice as long or more as ICE, which is easily provable by watching what fleets do. They are much more sensitive to longevity than upfront capital cost. Cars are tipped to work for 1 million km’s soon.
Not to mention grid optimisation and a whole another topic on synthetic protein development and it’s possible we will actually beat the 2° target just with technology and human greed chasing lower cost goods.
This seems due to EVs being primarily rented to Uber/Lyft drivers, where they experience 5-7x fewer "touches" due to weekly rentals.
(common sense: cleaning, body and interior repairs, tires, windows/locks, climate control, etc should all be the same - implying that motor-train maintenance is half the total maintenance cost, and the EVs need zero maintenance...)
--copy/paste--
Stephen M. Scherr - Hertz Global Holdings, Inc. - CEO & Director
The answer is unequivocally yes. In fact, last week, we did kind of re-underwrite on the EV fleet, how it's playing, how it's presenting relative to
what we thought it would do on the initial decision to go in.
So I'd say a couple of things. First of all, we continue to take delivery of Teslas, and we'll continue to do that, number one.
Number two, I think you should expect in the coming months that you'll see announcements from us about purchase of electric vehicles in sizable
quantity from other OEMs as we try to sort of build out kind of a broad population of vehicles across a range of OEMs, and we'll see those at very
attractive kind of price entry points.
Third, we are capturing, I think, as I said in the remarks, kind of a $30 to $35 premium on this. That premium has been fairly sustainable. And in the
TNC channel, we're renting these for about $334, $335. We have found kind of just the right price point where, given all sorts of externalities around
economics for an Uber driver, they want to and are excited about renting that, and they can turn a profit there.
What that means for us, by the way, particularly in the TNC side, is fewer touch points on the car over a course of a month, maybe by as many as 5
to 7x. That reduces cost considerably. We're obviously passing some of that on because the weekly rental is lower for the TNC driver than the per
diem or per day rental out to the normal RAC.
On maintenance, I think Kenny said to you, we are running kind of 50% to 60% of what maintenance costs are on ICE vehicles. That's roughly in
line with where we are. If there's any one surprise, it's probably slightly higher expense on tires, but not much more, and that's embedded in the
figure I'm giving you.
So I would say, overall, we're very pleased with the results. They're coming in roughly in line with what we thought when we first underwrote the
move in this strategic direction.
They've found a profitable market where they can rent out EVs to Uber drivers slightly more long term which is cheaper for them and they pass some of that onto the drivers creating a win win.
But, renting more cars out to professional drivers should in theory increase mileage and so maintenance. I believe by maintenance here they're not talking about the touch points, but what most people would think of when you say "maintenance".
As they said, lower maintenance was not a surprise. It's been widely reported by fleets of EVs as a benefit.
Absolute agree with this. With reduced ability to repair them the ecological balance might even be worse than for conventional cars, even if you heavily focus on just carbon dioxide.
I don't drive much and cars aren't a symbol of status anymore in my generation. So I have a 1000$ car (significant upgrade from my previous 500$ car) that gets repaired by a friend. It is extremely cheap for me. While I am by no means a car mechanic, attaching another piece of metal or exchanging some parts can be quite fun.
But repairs are simply not possible, even by qualified mechanics if they don't have access to proprietary diagnostics software that you sometimes need to just reset some error state. Of course a 0.50$ sensor also does cost hundreds of dollars if you need to get them from the manufacturer. The small circuit attached to the sensor supplies power and DRM. It would probably cost another 0.50$. The guy that blew up his Tesla was right, although Tesla isn't even the worst offender. The car industry is full of this shit.
I fix wrecked cars for fun, and have fixed about 10 Teslas so far. I would say model 3 and Y are easier to work on than most ICE cars. They have fewer parts, most parts are relatively easy to replace, there are no fuses to replace, no light bulbs to replace, and they have service manuals for all repair procedures available for free online. Price for parts is still high and they charge too much for their toolbox diagnostics software though.
I do the same, I am an amateur mechanic and I have worked on Tesla's and other EVs. In my experience, repairing an EV is no different from modern ICE cars.
In my experience, most people who believe that EVs are harder to repair appear to be owning older, simpler cars. These people often have either no experience with repairing cars, or only have experience with repairing older cars. Most have never owned, or worked on an EV car. And yet, they have a very strong opinion about its serviceability.
Yes, you need specialized equipment to work on EV drive-trains, just as you need specialized equipment to work on ICE drive-trains. You may not have this equipment, but professional repair shops do. You also need access to vendor specific software to perform certain repairs, I don't condone that, but reality is that this is needed for all modern cars, regardless of the drive-train type.
As technology advances, professional mechanics need to keep learning to stay up-to-date, just as how software developers do. Those that don't, can still keep working on old cars for a long time to go, so not every mechanic or shop owner chooses to do so. The same goes for software developers.
However, these are also often the type of mechanic (or graybeard programmer) who are always grumpy about new tech they don't understand, and how much better everything used to be, just because they do understand old tech. It's these mechanics that spread the 'EV bad, carburetor good' nonsense, which seems to stick with most people.
Serviceability of cars in general is becoming worse, but this has nothing to do with the drive-train.
>most people who believe that EVs are harder to repair appear to be owning older, simpler cars.
Opening the hood on a modern ICE is intimdating. So much (neatly, precisely) crammed in there (covered with plastic) I wouldn't even know where to start. Compare that to an old truck, where you can practically climb inside the engine compartment beside the motor...
> Serviceability of cars in general is becoming worse, but this has nothing to do with the drive-train.
That's precisely the point the presenter of the conference was making. She even explicitly mentions there's actually good, repairable products in the electric motorbike category.
Still, that's a sad situation that's damaging to the environment and to the countless trapped customers who have a mechanically-valid car but can't drive it due to electronics/software shenanigans. Given that electric cars are marketed as an alternative to save the planet, we could reasonably expect that they be held to a higher serviceability standard... not higher than ICE vehicles mind you, just higher than the "fuck you buy a new car" attitude all car makers are displaying right now.
Btw yesterday I took off a rear motor off a model Y. Probably took me about 2 hours to remove. So much easier than removing am engine or a transmission from an ICE car. Most difficult part to replace is the HV battery- it’s a whole day job. The biggest problem with EVs right now is that there are not enough third party (affordable) shops that are willing to work on them.
Would it be possible for me to convert a classic car to electric if I got my hands on a drivetrain and battery? I used to fit V8 engines into old cars so I can fabricate stuff, but I’m worried a bit about the battery voltage and safety.
Yes there are kits for sale that will allow you to interfere with the Tesla drivetrain, you would wire that ecu to the accelerator pedal, etc. Most conversations use battery modules from model S/X as they are smaller modules than ones from 3/Y. You would need to fabricate mounting for the motor(s) and possibly custom half shafts and suspension. And custom mounting for battery modules, custom cooling system, power steering and ac must be converted to electric. Lots of work.
There are companies offering conversion parts and people self-building EVs out of ICE cars if you look for them online. Haven't looked up much, as for me a car is just a money sink, but they exist.
I would recommend you watch the talk in its entirety. The presenter explicitly addresses this point. She says modern cars are marvels of technology and the problems lie in the electronics/software architecture making the entire car operation dependent on every single part. That means if one part is broken (say central door locking) modern cars often will refuse to work at all.
This is a problem in itself, but is exacerbated by overcharging for replacement parts, and by lack of free-software support to hack around such issues. Examples are given of specific models exhibiting such undesired behavior.
> the problems lie in the electronics/software architecture
Is this shown in data? My experience is quite different. <50% of my issues have been electrical in nature and the electrical ones are usually much cheaper to fix.
I agree with you an electronic failure can be easy to fix. Or it can be okay not to fix, for example i don't care if my central car computer can't control the opening/closing of my windows. The problem is, are manufacturers making it easy/cheap to fix? And are they making it so a tiny fault in a subsystem crashes the entire car to a halt? The answers are, in my humble opinion, no and yes respectively.
>This is a problem in itself, but is exacerbated by overcharging for replacement parts, and by lack of free-software support to hack around such issues.
These things feel like they'll be market-sorted in the future. Computers become cheaper, we know that. Software does too, as it becomes tried and tests and its marginal cost drops, or it moves to open source.
We are still so early in the EV revolution. I know lots of people with lots of cars, and only a handful have EVs.
> These things feel like they'll be market-sorted in the future.
I've heard this argument in so many fields, but never seen it play out. Housing was supposed to be market-sorted, yet there are still millions of empty dwellings outnumbering by far homeless people.
In a field that's closer to HN fields of interest, i've heard the very same argument about FLOSS on smartphones. There certainly were some progress in Android land with the mandatory device trees, and on niche products like Librem/Pinephone, but there were also major regressions with for example iCloud/Knox locking becoming a pain for second-hand hardware.
Overall, i don't trust an industry whose greedy interest is to keep us buying more to regulate itself to provide better services for existing products.
I think part of this is a deliberate measure to make it harder for modern cars to be used as weapons (of course, there are other more prominent factors like fuel efficiency and safety in accidents). With crumple zones and crash sensors, vehicles are often rendered inert in the event of a collision, and I think this is intentional; compare that with the Nice truck (which was obviously much larger than a car) that barreled through 80 people.
It's basically the opposite of what you would want in a military vehicle.
There certainly is a difference to older cars. That is what I wanted to say, it is not specific to EV cars, Tesla was just an example for a car which is controlled through central electronics. Fuses are easy to replace as they are meant to be replaced. EV probably need fewer because its batteries offer smoother voltages than your alternator. Lights don't need to be replaced as often but it got more complicated. And deeper operations like replacing a track rod is almost impossible or very work intensive in newer cars. And these are maintenance parts too if you assume a longer life span of a car.
What I would criticise is that there is often not a real technical reason why things got harder to replace or that there is an absence of a general purpose diagnostic unit.
Conventional fuses are probably replaced by electronic, auto-resettable fuses like polyswitches (some kind of temperature coefficient thermistor). Alternator or not, fuses are needed to limit the amount of energy a circuit can draw in the event that it malfunctions or is short-circuited.
Replacing a track rod ends is not a deep operation, is a routine one and very easy to perform even if you can not elevate the car as most shops do. It does requires an alignment afterwards.
However, inconvenient access to diagnostic software and rare parts/components that can only be sourced from the official dealer are a big problem, and one that the market cannot solve because there's little incentive for value chain to do so.
I would like to see legislation that forces manufacturers to publish free-to-everyone specifications, firmware and diagnostic software whenever the component is commercialized for some amount of time, like 5 years or whatever makes sense. That would made old cars much more maintainable and prolong the life for several years and/or several 100 thousands kms.
> because there's little incentive for value chain to do so.
The suppliers of car makers probably would gladly sell the components but they have to be careful as their largest customer might want to grab a premium here as well. Sometimes they still sell the exact same parts under another brand name though.
I believe Tesla has far fewer suppliers as other car makers so they probably also have a larger influence on the few that they have.
Aren't polyswitches too sluggish for a car of electronics? Perhaps sensible for starting the motor though.
Yea can’t really service the new pack :( have to replace the whole thing. Right Tesla battery packs are expensive (~$8K for a used pack) but once battery costs go down, in perhaps 10 years, I imagine a third party shop would be able to swap the battery for about as much as it currently costs to replace an engine in a typical Volkswagen.
Stupid thing is that battery packs are eminently repairable, usually a few cells go bad and can be replaced.
Tesla is pretty arrogant today, but going forward you have to conclude that battery interoperability and standardisation will be a big thing given that it's the single most expensive part. That will be motivated by lower costs for standardised parts.
That's where the "reconditioned" market comes in, right? With aeroplane piston engines you can send in a "core" and get back a reconditioned engine. Your original core is then reconditioned and sold to the next customer. The same could be done for battery packs.
More modules that can be replaced individually or used to diagnose a problem is a good thing.
If an ICE car had all the fuses in a locked box (which required replacing the whole thing when one burned out) you would correctly identify that as a negative for the end user.
I'm sure there were reasons why they went for the alternative at Tesla but "easy to work on" wasn't one of them.
No light bulbs to replace? LEDs die too, you know. Only a matter of time before they start flickering or burn out. Replacing them will be fun, as they probably weren’t meant to be replaced. Seen a great deal of such “long life” LEDs die prematurely.
totally different from my old Toyota IQ. To change a LED you had to disassemble partially the motor. So it was 30 bucks for lamp and 120 bucks for the service.
Same thoughts. The EV revolution is one step forward, one major step back. This hasn't started with EVs though. The frog was being boiled for the last 15 or so years with ICE cars. Like you said, repairing any modern car is a huge DRM minefield designed to milk the customer dry.
I had an old Fiat which was a delight to repair. You could tell everything was designed to be easily accessible for quick and easy repairs with basic tools or even tool-less. Air filters were just held in place with clips you can undo in 2 seconds and swap them yourself. Now I own a modern Fiat and the filters are bolted down with custom screws and even the user manual tells you to visit your dealer to ... replace your air filters. Sorry, but fuck off Fiat! That's the last time I'm giving you my money. I hope the EU fines your greedy ass for these deliberate anti consumer designs. Though I would expect Italy to veto any such moves.
It's no wonder that some of the most desirable second hand cars are the one build around the mid 2000's as they have enough electronics for safety and comfort while still not having enough planned obsolescence built in, being reliable and cheap and easy to repair.
Modern cars are becoming an expensive subscription service rather than something you own and it seems like the big German brands are leading the pack.
I bought a VW Golf several years ago. Sales guy showed off user-replacable zero-screws bulbs as a major improvement. Which was sort of true, since my previous card, Ford Focus, required unbolting and removing headlight to replace it's bulbs...
A major improvement would be LED headlights which have a MTBF that is so high that they can essentially last for the lifetime of the vehicle. Zero "bulb" replacements. (LED headlights exist BTW, and I'm sure there are VW Golf trim levels that include them nowadays)
The problem with LED headlights is they cost a fortune. And you can't have a standardised aftermarket replacement. Of course they're nice if nothing wrong happens. But with old cars, eventually it will fail. Meanwhile for classic lights, you can polish the glass, maybe reflector, put in new bulb and it will keep working forever.
Oh God - flashbacks to trying to replace a blown bulb in my Focus. "This will be easy". Two hours later and some bleeding knuckles later, took it to the garage for them to swear at.
Those concerns are overblown, it assumes that the only choices will be aggressively closed cars. Even today people are swapping out Tesla management systems on batteries and motors for third party systems and avoiding the software issue wholesale. People have also hacked solutions to keep the existing systems in place. Finally regulation is a given if car makers keep down the unrepairable path.
Since electric cars are mechanically much simpler they will be easier to repair and cheaper overall. Currently economies of scale have not kicked in but when they do (and battery tech improves) the most popular cars will be very cheap, lower range models with standard parts made by third parties. You need to look at consumer electronics and home appliances for the likely model, not the high-end car business model that dominates the electric car industry at the moment and is transitory.
Yeah there's a vibrant Tesla hacking community already, and companies selling control modules that'll plug right into the powertrain so you can drop it into the unexpected vehicle of choice.
Once the volume of production goes up that market will become global. Once EVs filter into the Shenzen markets, parts availability at various price/quality points will explode.
I disagree with the idea that electric vehicles are inherently more difficult to repair. If anything they are simpler, more modular, and with a greatly reduced part count, will in general require less specialised knowledge to undertake common repairs compared to modern combustion vehicles.
> "But repairs are simply not possible, even by qualified mechanics if they don't have access to proprietary diagnostics software"
Tesla, for one, makes its service manuals available for free to anyone. Their diagnostic software ("Toolbox 3") is also available to anyone, but with a paid subscription.
That Tesla was completely stripped from all drive train components, including battery, before blowing it up. Those parts are now in use in an EV conversion project, in a Mercedez Benz G-Class vehicle, working just fine.
So only an empty Tesla shell was blown up, everything else was repurposed.
I keep wondering if there is a good business opportunity here...
I've mentioned similar thoughts before, but a shop that specializes in providing and/or installing standardized "restomod packages" with tuneable ECUs, modern solid-state power management[1], reliable sensors, wire harnesses, and other supporting parts (silicon coolant hoses, oil cooler upgrades, etc.) across a range of popular 90s/2000s vehicles, or even "de-teching" more modern cars like current-gen BMWs: great-driving RWD chassis, rock-solid B58 inline-6...but....monthly subscription for heated seats?! GTFO... Pull all the electronics out and replace with a race-grade harness connected to Denso (aka Toyota) sensors! Then drive for 20 years with nothing breaking. Basically expanding what I call "the Singer treatment" to a line of vehicles beyond air-cooled 911s[2].
Maybe that’s balanced by requiring less repairs? In 4 years in my tesla all I had to do was change the tires. By that time in my ICE vehicle I had been to the mechanic and/or jiffy lube at least 15 times
I have an eleven year old Ford Focus and it's had an oil change twice a year and apart from tires, that has been the extent of the maintenance it has required.
Given the price of new cars, there's no way I can justify getting rid of my Focus.
That was back when a former Boeing engineer was running Ford after Boeing promoted a bean counter over him.
I think those smaller cars are also more durable. Heavy SUVs just have higher loads and need more complexity to support them ... which leads to a higher failure rate.
Same here. It is the european version, don't know if it is comparable with the US one. Maybe it also has another name in the US. Ford was one of the few manufacturers that did build specifically new cars for the european market. They became the most successful US manufacturer here. Or even the only one since I don't know any others. Focus was a model that just never had any issues aside from maybe a 20 year old lambda probe that lets makes starting an already hot engine an issue some times. They are ridiculously dependable cars.
I like that car too and getting parts is ridiculously cheap and you can exchange almost everything yourself. Although Teslas will perhaps one day have the same advantage because older cars that were numerous once are significantly cheaper to repair.
The presenter in the linked video argues that all cars - EV or ICE - are getting both better and worse. Better in purely mechanical terms where technological marvels enable them to achieve great durability... worse in overall terms where some electronics is going to fail somewhere and suddenly the entire car won't start.
So i don't think you're wrong to say in specific benchmarks EVs are crazy reliable. But from what i've seen and understood of modern cars, complexity and interdependence of secondary subsystems make them super brittle and very highly likely to end up in a landfill under a decade after leaving the factory.
In fact we already have stats on that where car recalls keep on increasing (more than x4 in a decade), and EVs are not exempt from that as they seem to have ~2x more probability to be recalled (on average) than an ICE car.
Probably never because the industry almost completely transitioned away from belts to chains over the '00s because consumers hated having to do a multi thousand dollar service as preventative maintenance every 100k or so.
This must be unique to the US, many vehicles in Europe still have a belt. Even with a chain you'll probably still have auxiliary belts which need replacing, water pump, etc.
For small engines, a manufacturer will use the same one everywhere in the world with very little difference. Only when you get to large engines do you see things unique to the US.
The issue with belts/chains is if the engine is designed for interference or not. If the belt/chain breaks do the valves and pistons come in contact with each other or not? That's a design decision with costs and benefits.
With an interference engine, a broken belt means a destroyed engine - preventative maintenance is mandatory. Or you go with a timing chain.
If you don't have an interference engine, you replace the broken belt and drive away. Preventive maintenance is a good idea but not quite so critical.
Interference engines can run with much higher compression ratios and get better performance for their size. So you see more timing chains with higher performance engines. If your car doesn't have a turbo and isn't aimed at the speed racer crowd, chances are better that it has a timing belt.
They'll use the same engine, but quite often different engines are available in different territories. I know that the VAG 1.5 TSI (used in lots of cars here) still uses a belt for example, but the 2.0 TSI is chain. Perhaps in America only the 2.0 is available.
In the EU, vehicle manufacturers are required by regulation 2018/858 to give access to diagnostic tools to any repair shop. See Article 61 of 2018/858 [0].
At the moment it's a bit of a pain but there's an upcoming amendment to standardise the access process.
As a relatively non-car guy, Tesla's are so much easier to do maintenance on than gasoline cars. Mostly because there is so much less to do. Here's my maintenance schedule, which is more than what Tesla recommends.
- replace wipers as necessary
- rotate summer & winter tires semi-annually (cold climates)
- inspect & lube brakes annually
- test brake fluid biannually
- replace cabin air filter biannually
- replace A/C dessicant bag every 6 years.
So if you learn how to test your brake fluid (really easy with the right gauge), replace the cabin air filter and lube your brakes, you only have to go in for maintenance once every 6 years. All of those things are easier than changing your oil on a modern car IMO.
Not really. It doesn’t matter if I’ll get to choose between $10000 first party battery or $8000 replacement. Both of those prices are outside of my reach.
If a few cells fail, the replacement is cheap... if the battery is actually designed in a way individual cells can be reached (physically) and replaced.
If the current state of vehicle repair is any indication the only people who will replace "a few cells" will have a shop located in a rough part of town, not speak english and will require you to pay cash and the HN crowd will deride them and their business model for the most part.
If a company released an Easy-To-Repair EV, and that gave them a huge competitive advantage, then its competitors would have to follow through or perish. But right now EVs are still targeting rich guys, for which the car is a symbol of status. Those people don't care about repairability. I think the only one who is trying to cast a wider network in the west is Dacia, with its Spring. I don't know how much repair-friendly those are. Probably it's still locked down like everyone else's.
From the POV of car manufacturers this is a risky business decision. "Can this new audience and the increase in sells justify my loss in repairs?".
Regulations will eventually happen, at least in EU. I guess we will see how effective they are.
The Volkswagen e-Up(and its sisters - Skoda Citigo and Seat Mii Electric) are a pleasure to work with. I'm sure repairing one won't be any issue at all, in fact it should be easier than literally any ICE car. The interior is simple too - no stupid touch interfaces anywhere, everything is laid out logically and "just" works. I also regularly get over 160 miles range. And at £20k it's one of the cheapest EVs you can buy currently.
Ditto all of the above with the MG ZS EV, MG EV5 and the upcoming EV4 - those are cheap, simple EVs, that shouldn't be difficult to maintain at all.
Of course when you look at the market and only see all the E-Trons and EQCs and iX3s and whatnot, it might seem like the EV future is hostile for customers - but those brands were making cars like that even without electric drivetrains. Ask anyone how much fun maintaing a brand new ICE BMW or Audi is exactly.
But, that's not the whole market. There is still plenty of competition from cheaper, more maintainable EV cars, and there will only be more as time goes on.
That's interesting, thanks for sharing! Are you aware of how many controllers an e-Up has? How easy/expensive is it to find replacement parts? Also how many are actually in the critical path to keep the car running?
The presenter in the video says only 3 micro-controllers should be required to operate an electric car in a road-safe manner. However every car model now has hundreds of these and a failure in a single part can take the whole car to refuse to start. So if you find an electric car with few and standard off-the-shelf components, you struck a gold mine and should let us all know about it :)
First time buyers don't care about repair-ability, because they own their car on a lease for 3 to 5 years and then get a new one. Because within this lifespan normally there are no repairs and if so, then they are covered by the manufacturer guaranteed.
It is the secondary market that care about this. The market here would be then, if there would be such a manufacturer, then the cars on the secondary market hold better value then the others. So that the market value of the other cars vanished. That would increase the premiums on the lease for the first time buyers. So then the first time buyers may consider the more cheaper lease.
That is a very complex market. For that reason it is easier for the OEM to focus only on the first time buyer than the secondary market. Also they want to sell cars. So they shouldn't be around for too long.
Disclaimer: I work with automotive industry. I own mainly historic cars. My newest is an Volvo S60, which I bought brand new from factory ordered to my specification in 2001. Now the repairs are eating me with 2.000 EUR to 3.000 EUR every f-ing year.
The issue is the delta-time: there is only a competitive advantage to resale value once the repairable cars have hit the secondary market and start needing repairs. Then you're talking 7-10 years.
Currently the demand on EVs is so high that good EVs hold their resale value even with poor repairability.
Electric cars make for about 1/4 of all European vehicles sold these days and about 1/6 worldwide. They are no longer targeting just the rich people. Most electric cars sold aren't luxury at all.
I think it's true for some brands, but definitely not for all. BMW's CEO said recently that 90% of their cars are sold as company cars.
Tbh that could also be slightly misleading, because if you run a car leasing company, you also count as a "company buyer" even though your final customers aren't that.
Exactly, and that INCLUDES rental companies and lease companies: lease companies provide cars for lease mostly to individuals so these are only formally "company cars".
At most 10% are really "company cars" in the sense that "they are bought by companies to be used by their employees for business purposes e.g. delivery vans".
No they are not. Around 20% of all new cars sold are "fleet cars" that is, owned by companies not people. Of them, most are bought by lease providers to be leased by individuals - so they aren't "really" company cars, or bought by rental companies again, to be rented out to individuals. Under 10% are really "company cars" in the true sense - "bought by companies to be used by their employees for jobs like delivery, business trips, etc".
Making it more repairable also means it's more prone to break.
Look at Apple's laptops - one blob of RAM and CPU is way less likely to break than huge connectors that you gonna mingle with your greasy fingers.
Waterproof iPhone is way harder to open and seal after, but it's a fricking waterproof iPhone. Mine has been in water multiple times now (also slapped concrete 10x times with no case with 0 damage).
I specifically bought a Bonfire X electric motorbike, from Black Tea Motorbikes, because it is easy to repair and replace parts myself.
Of course, it hasn't shipped yet - but because it is based on a standard frame (Honda CBR500), there are many options for spare parts and upgrades on the market.
Its going to be very interesting to see how far we hackers get with electric vehicles. I've already got my OBD debugging gear ready to go ..
IMHO, vendors who work on removing bespoke parts from their designs, are going to get the electric transportation business ..
The market itself can fix it too - remember how online music consumption switched from DRM-infected files to "unencumbered" MP3 (or similar) downloads? Of course that was soon eclipsed by streaming, but even today you can still buy an album digitally and use it for as long as you like on as many devices as you like.
They are targeting 'rich guys' as you call it because the amount of battery is limited and the margin is higher on those cars.
And many of those people are just normal families with 1-2 people that earn a fair amount and can afford ID4 or Model 3 or something. And those people car about reliability.
Actually it is quite normal. Its not statistical avg based on income, but that's not what normal means in everyday live.
If you saw a family in a Tesla Model 3 you wouldn't be like 'wow look at that'. You see it everyday. I can literally walk 10m from where I'm sitting and see like 5 Tesla driving by. Its a normal everyday thing.
I don't mean to be offensive, but you might live in a bit of a bubble. I know this is Stack Overflow so people tend to assume that San Francisco (or other North American tech hubs) are "normal". They are quite the opposite, when compared with the rest of the world, and even with "the west" (however you define it).
> If you saw a family in a Tesla Model 3 you wouldn't be like 'wow look at that'. You see it everyday.
Teslas are infrequent enough for me (living in a first world European country) to point them out to my wife when we cross one on the highway (because she's not familiar with their shape/logo). I remember doing that at least once in the last two weeks.
I'm in Europe, not in San Francisco. And you see lots of Tesla, ID3/ID4 and so on. Some EV are somewhat hard to spot, most people don't realize ID3 are EV when they see them.
I don’t really see those that often where I live. I understand that they might feel “usual” to you. I’m just telling you that mine is different. I live in a city with millions of cars, drive every day, and I still remember the EVs I see, because they are so few amongst the sea of ICEVs.
But granted, I meant Hacker News. Slip of the mind.
I didn't watch the whole thing, but did she mention electric bikes? IMO, Electric cars, or cars in general, are just fine. We just did a family road-trip around Denmark with our Ioniq 5 and it's absolutely perfect for that. The thing is, we should be renting them when we need them, and use bikes more the rest of the time. Electric bikes are quickly becoming a viable alternative to cars in many bike-friendly cities, and we're seeing an explosion in the choices of electric cargo bikes.
GetAround is making renting cars more viable too. We do actually have a second car now, but I've been renting the old one out until we're ready to sell it and until we're sure we can handle two kids in kindergarten without it. It's been way more popular than I anticipated.
> We don't necessarily need simpler cars, we need better electric bikes. Or electric motorbikes/scooters.
Or golf carts. Just like so many creatures in nature evolve into crabs, personal transport appears to evolve into golf carts. The Japanese have kei cars, which are just heavy golf carts and there exist cargo bikes, which are just underpowered, three-wheeled golf carts.
Ok, i kind of agree, but not totally (disclaimer: did not watch the entirety, it's too long, so maybe the caveat i put are are the end of the video).
Big anecdata:
We have old automotive, and especially Mercedes vans, with no replacement parts anymore. Those usually cost a fortune. two summers ago, i went in one of those van to Lyon. The van is falling into pieces, but was still ok to drive. Until it wasn't. We were sure it was the end of its life, so we took an hostel nearby and look into car cemetery (don't know the actual name in english). We found a weird garage and my friends, who was very attached to this van, wanted to give it a shot.
The garage wasn't looking professional. The mechanics looked nothing like the mechanics in our remote, rural area (they looked very young), but they were the only one available (i think the insurance wasn't going to pay anyway, so it wasn't sanctioned mechanics either, lot of under the hood repairs and stuff i think). There was only scooters, solex and very, very old motorbikes.
They 3d printed a few pieces, slow melted rubber tube to make them smaller, and milled a few metal pieces. For one of them they said "we are not sure if we got the inside totally right, we had to cut the OG in two and ours isn't as smooth, you should come back in two years and we will check it out". We weren't confident, but we never had a motor-related issue the rest of the trip (and we traveled through the Alps...)
Two years later, my friend went back there, left his van for a week. They recreated everything. Repaired his doors, the seats, the mechanical windows and every piece that looked fragile was re-milled from metal (or actually 3d printed when no force was applied and only the rust and their thinness was a danger).
I think he should change his motor entirely, it guzzle too much gas, but anyway, this might be the future. Two guys with obvious talent from a poor area of a big city basically rebuilding an engine/car from scratch. One day, if we manage to force a law that force manufacturers to put their plans online once the piece isn't made anymore, we will be able repair our stuff ourselves, in fab-labs or places like this kind of garage.
Your garage has the luxury of being pretty assured that there is some nitwit willing to pay $1k for a brake job who will walk in the door after you leave.
The kind of shop that deals in reverse engineering stuff that's no longer available doesn't have that luxury of having a ready supply of those kinds of customers or they wouldn't be reverse engineering stuff.
No, but they had an automated plasma cutter and an automated 'mill' (the French term is 'fraiseuse'). I don't know if they updated their tools during the last 2 years.
From what I understood, they rented their tools and equipment (above the counter) to a lot of low wage workers/gig workers (it was on the fringe of the less reputable/poorest neighborhood of the city), so the overall atmosphere was weird for a garage. It was like a fab-lab for the working poor.
> Short-lived electric cars aren't environmentally sound at all.
Well, electric cars can produce minimal atmospheric emissions, or medium, or huge. It depends.
What I'm missing from the talk is that the total emissions of ICE cars are inherently bound to be higher.
Atmospheric. Emissions. These are the immediate problem, not an abstract "environmental soundness". OP is actively diffusing attention from where the poor of the world need it the most.
Yes, I'm saying that the scrapyard full of five-year-old electric cars is bearable and can be dealt with much less priority than the real environmental disaster we're heading into, full-steam.
I applaud the drive to buy less stuff, I really get that. I also get that our civilization has its own fundamental dynamics and you cannot just look at the buyer-side and treat that as an independent system. It's quite telling that OP's response to "why even focus on private property of cars?" is "because I want to" (at 30:40).
> Yes, I'm saying that the scrapyard full of five-year-old electric cars is bearable and can be dealt with much less priority than the real environmental disaster we're heading into, full-steam.
Well, the people that owned these cars won't go "welp, was nice owning a car for five years, let's go public transport now". Instead, they'll order a new EV and cause a massive amount of emissions during its production, which might even result in more emissions than if they simply continued to drive their old ICE all along. So yes, this is very much a problem we'll need to deal with now.
> a massive amount of emissions during its production
It's massive today. Why do you predict it will remain massive? It's not like producing EV physically requires pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, like when using combustion engines.
Electric vehicles (at least, _todays_ electric vehicles) are eminently hackable.
The people over at openinverter.org are doing amazing work implementing open source controller boards for OEM inverters.
Sure, a lot of ICE-based skill sets are going to become obsolete. But, as things stand now, if you have solid CAN sniffing skills and can code C++ (I can’t), you can make Leaf, Tesla, Prius, Mitsubishi or (soon) BMW components do your bidding.
The real risk is if OEMs adopt an obfuscatory stance and start locking people out of CAN networks. But I haven’t heard of that happening yet.
It'd be nice - even without excellent, compelling arguments like this one - if we relegated cars to being something you hire when you need, displacing them with bicycles and public transport. I guess CCC being from Germany, they've already experienced how good this can be.
Environmental and energy policies are both down wind of politics. I view electric cars as a complete miss - that is to say that they aim to solve the wrong problem. Now I am not advocating that we abandon electric car development, rather I mean that they will not solve the underlying political issues that dictate our solutions in the environmental and energy realms. Take for example how we approach the design of cities, neighborhoods, where we place food growth centers, etc. A different design could render car transportation greatly reduced such that electric vs ICE would be inconsequential. Changing where we live and how supply chains work would have a much larger impact than a change to how cars get from one place to another, and by a massive magnitude. But such a change would require the necessary political will.
Well, my first regular servicing of a Skoda ICE took from 9am to 3pm. The traditional filter and oil change was done quickly but the car got stuck on some firmware update from the factory and they didn't want to interrupt it.
This problem of too much integration is not limited to cars. The same for washing machines, TV's, etc, etc.
The 'smart' electronics and UI are always early to break, become obsolete or unsupported, and they're usually by far the most expensive 'component' to repair or replace, and often aren't even available after a few years. Also they're completely custom - there's no way to substitute something generic.
I don't bother to watch the linked video but traditional car is a poor choice to be an electric vehicle. Because it's simply too heavy.
Recent improvements on the hub motor and battery made it possible for the various light-weight toys to be a practical city commuter. Kick scooter, unicycle, hoverboard, skateboard, onewheel and such.
Unfortunately, the law isn't up to date with these vehicles in most countries. It probably took us decades, if not a century to accept these light-weight electric vehicles.
Actually, there is a market position here, for somebody willing to venture. A chain of "bomb" defusers, who take the product, replace or remove the breakable components, add a modular bus and the ability to add other open source components - then you get a "forever" product. As long as the product works, you pay a small suscription per month.
How about a nice name. Eternia.
Anyon willing to invest?
At worst, you can still scim off as a middle man like some selective add blockers..
I could maybe get behind this if it weren't for the fact that an old Nissan LEAF can be updated with a battery from the next generation model because the manufacturer didn't bother to develop a new powertrain from scratch.
As a general question as car manufacturers bypass dealerships shipping directly to customers, does this change the right to repair, especially from a legal perspective?
Before the mass EV adoption, shouldn't we upgrade the power grid? The Brits call it "TV pickup", the synchronized surges of electricity consumption, by electric kettles and such. Now consider 10s thousands of EVs start charging after work.
EV's as a rule don't charge after work. Most (all?) EV's allow you to charge when the electricity is cheapest -- at night.
An average daily charge for an EV is < 10 kWh since the average daily usage of a car is < 40 miles. That's less than what a whole house A/C will use on a hot day.
So any grid that can handle A/C charging on a hot day can handle EV charging at night. Not all grids can, but that means that they'll need to be upgraded whether or not we add EV's to the grid.
Consumer adoption is gradual (s-curve), enterprise tends to order large batches - fleets of taxis, cargo, delivery and service vehicles - so adoption in steps.
As the night falls, they all start charging at 00:00 with a huuge load spike on the grid. My bet is soon after, night time will cease to be the cheapest time to charge. And EV companies will be required to pay taxes to cover infrastructure costs , in turn hiking EV price.
Disclosure: I work for GM, anything here is solely my own opinion and experience.
I broadly agree with the motivation for the talk and many of the ideas presented, here's some more context from my point of view:
Screens break. Nothing critical should ever be in a screen. Buttons and knobs work and are replaceable. (again my opinion, if you love your screens, good for you)
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This talk reminded me of the saying "they don't make them like they used to". I heard this saying very often when I was growing up in the 1980's and 90's. You don't hear it much anymore. People could repair cars from before the 80's. They also HAD TO repair cars from before the 80's, because a lot of stuff wore down quickly or broke.
It was much harder for individuals to repair cars from the 80's, and even harder in the 90's, and you still had to repair them, because a lot of new systems were added that weren't fully baked. In this time frame, it made sense to say "they don't make them like they used to". If you rewind to the 70's, people could also say the same, because cars in the 60's were better than cars in the 70's - the oil crisis hit, insurance hit cars with too much horse power, smog systems were mandated, and a few more things really did make cars worse from a consumer perspective.
But then in the 2000's, we worked out the computers and metallurgy and paint and coating processes and cars really did get better. Horsepower went back up, and fuel efficiency went up at the same time, which is frankly a miracle of engineering and deserves recognition. The computers managing ICE engines are pretty good now, actually, and so are materials and build processes. Even most plastic parts are pretty good now.
I'm glossing over quite a lot of important detail, but my point is, I don't hear "they don't make them like they used to" very much any more.
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I don't know if manufacturers will voluntarily use the same standards, but Software Defined Vehicles are coming. Currently, cars are built with on the order of 50 electronic computer modules, and those modules are like appliances. You plug it in and it does what it does. There is some capability to flash the modules with parameters or sometimes firmware updates, but most are not programmable.
Software Defined Vehicles (SDV) will provide manufacturers an API that supports upgrades, so you won't have to find a module in 2035 that was only available in 2022-2025 or whatever. We'll see how it actually turns out.
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Quirks and Features. I have a whole rant about quirks and features. Today's feature is just something that will be broken in 5 or 15 years. A new BMW is much more affordable than a 15 year old BMW (rabble rabble rabble).
It's hard for companies to compete on durability, because today's durability is not apparent. Durability from 10 years ago is apparent. There are engineering trade-offs everywhere, and not just malicious or "value engineering" either. Lighter cars accelerate faster (yay) and use less fuel (yay), but reducing mass may weaken parts.
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EVs in junkyards - I don't think you'll see EVs in junkyards at a higher rate than ICE cars. Quite a lot of components from EVs can have a second life in industry or consumer applications. The batteries can be home power backup. The motors can be used in many applications. The parts can go to repair other cars (like normal).
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I think EVs are going to be really good in about 15 years. Bear in mind that the traditional automotive lifecycle is 5 years, so 15 years is a long time, but only 3 generations of vehicle product platform.
As someone who has repaired both old and new cars, I would agree. I've rebuilt a VW Beetle from the ground up - tore the whole engine apart, new bores, the works. I could do this in a couple of afternoons on the Beetle, but I don't think I could do it in a month on a modern car. However, I won't need to do it to a modern car. A Beetle with 100k miles is ready for a total rebuild. A modern car with 100k miles is ready for a fluids change.
The biggest problem I have with newer cars is all the add-on stuff, and pickup trucks are the best example. My first truck, a 1985 F150 (straight-6 300, what a beautiful engine) didn't have power windows, locks, air conditioning, or even a radio. Why can't we buy a bare-bones vehicle anymore? You don't need that stuff on a farm or work vehicle. Why do we have to have touch screens and telemetry? Why do we have to have a full stack of software that is totally inaccessible to the end user? And what total idiots think that over-the-air interfaces (LTE) that let you program things like acceleration and braking were a good idea?
I admit I do like backup cameras, though...
I agree, in 15 years, we won't miss ICE for daily driving. EVs will be that good. I say this as someone who gets all nostalgic when I smell the motocross magic of VP and castor oil burning. We'll have solar panels on our roofs to help charge our vehicles, and I won't miss cleaning up 2-stroke trimmers and leaf blowers when they get all gummed up and won't start.
i honestly think gasoline is a far batter energy storage platform for longer distance, personal journeys.
* far higher energy density, ~45MJ/kg compared to LiPo's ~1MJ/kg. (in fact the latter is probably the only reason LiPo is safe at all - more on that)
* essentially immediate "recharge" time
* 100+ years of ICE drivetrain expertise
* LiPo is a "two-part"-like fuel - it has everything it needs to release the energy stored inside of it (as opposed to gasoline that requires an external supply of oxygen). improvements to energy density necessarily make it less safe: LiPo battery fires are very difficult to extinguish, and release most of their energy in a short period of time.
to be clear, EVs have a place, for example, congested and population dense areas, where the primary concern is air quality, rather than global CO2 emissions.
i really think consumerism/capatilism coupled with society's less than healthy relationship with science & futurism have made EVs seem a lot more attractive than they really are. i'm not so sure i'm comfortable with the conditions of the mines where the rare-earth metals required for all these battery packs comes from.
IMO, technologies that capture carbon from the air and produce gasoline are far more attractive. the energy for which should naturally come from the sun, even if this process is "inefficient" - we receive the energy regardless of whether we use it or not.
more broadly speaking, right-to-repair/user serviceability has been degraded for most consumer platforms. even modern gasoline cars face the same problems as EVs. work (likely legislation) needs to be done on every front to improve this, in all facets of technology.
How often are you driving more than 300 miles a day? For me it’s 4-6 times a year. Otherwise I take a plane. I can live with one 20 minute charging stop for each journey. The electric vehicle model variety today is amazing. From luxury Lucid Air and EQS to Dacia Spring and even EQV van. And it’s growing! Everything is there. Charging at home is also game changer. It’s cheap and convenient. I don’t really want go back to petrol car.
i'd say about the same - less than 10 times a year. this isn't just about us as individuals; we still have buses, taxi's, rental cars, service cars, trucks, car-sharing, planes, etc.
few of these can viably use batteries (and when they can there's usually an additional consequence). not with out either a significant increase in energy density - which has its own risks - or another massive investment in things like rapid battery exchange.
great, your vehicle works for you. as i said, EVs have a significant role to play in our society. i don't want you to throw away your EV or have it taken from you.
all i'm saying is that i believe gasoline to be a better energy storage mechanism for a significant proportion of transportation needs.
You seem to be under the common misconception that it's the energy density of batteries that make them unsafe. This is completely false. There's nothing inherent about battery energy density that makes them more dangerous. What makes LiPo/Li-ion unsafe is that they have a flammable liquid electrolyte in the middle, that's both responsible for starting the fire (the explosion you see with some battery fires) and for failing to keep the anode/cathode separated afterwards.
LiFePo doesn't have significantly less energy density, but they're far safer. Same with sodium batteries. Solid state lithium ion batteries have more energy density than Li-Ion/LiPo in some cases, but are generally far more safe, since there's no flammable electrolyte.
EVs, even with LiPo/Li-ion, are FAR safer than ICE vehicles, there's just no competition. Lots of oil and gasoline being piped around, with potential for leaks + old electrical wiring = recipe for disaster. We had a huge parking garage fire here in Norway recently, started - as they often do - by an ICE vehicle. Lots of EVs in the garage, but not a SINGLE EV battery pack caught fire. If all of them were EVs, the fire would be far less serious (the interior of the cars still burned, but that's all).
EV battery fires are tricky to extinguish, I'll give you that. But the fire department here in Norway say they already have the needed training/experience, and make it clear that EVs are far better for fire safety in general.
As for your points on whether they're better for longer distance, personal journeys.. I mean, yeah.. at some point they are. If you're driving 1000km in a day I'd definitely agree. But how many people do that often?
* far higher energy density: don't forget to account for efficiency and regenerative breaking (hybrids get some of that benefit, but then you get all the downsides of both technologies) .. practical range difference is much closer than what your numbers would indicate. For most people the range of EVs is good enough, even for long trips.
* essentially immediate "recharge" time: Yeah, but it's still a couple of minutes and you have to stand there while it's filling. Almost every single road-trip charging session for me has been: 1. spend 30 seconds plugging in and beeping the payment card (with Tesla you don't even have to do this). 2. walk into a restaurant/cafe/grocery store and take a pee, drink some coffee, buy groceries for the trip, etc.. 3. come back to a fully charged car
* 100+ years of ICE drivetrain expertise: This is totally pointless. The only reason you need that expertise with ICE drivetrain is because it's so hard to maintain. Most EVs simply don't have anything to maintain, other than what all cars have (break pads, air filters, etc.). And I've never heard anyone here in Norway having trouble getting their EV fixed due to inexperience. The training isn't hard. You can even get people to change individual battery cells on some cars now.
> You seem to be under the common misconception that it's the energy density of batteries that make them unsafe.
not at all. in fact, i said their (comparatively) low energy density is what makes them safe. that low energy density is a problem for range, places a lower bound on the size of vehicle, and somehow fixing that issue will make battery storage a far less safe option.
> There's nothing inherent about battery energy density that makes them more dangerous.
yes, their absolutely is - gasoline requires air to burn. batteries store energy, and they can discharge that energy without any other materials: a battery could burn in space.
> What makes LiPo/Li-ion unsafe is that they have a flammable liquid electrolyte in the middle.
well its the combination of the electrolyte and the metals that make the battery the battery, it wouldn't be battery without it.
> EVs, even with LiPo/Li-ion, are FAR safer than ICE vehicles, there's just no competition.
indeed, and i don't disagree. i think you may have misunderstood what i was trying to say about about safety here: i'm not trying to suggest that gasoline vehicles are inherently safer, at all. i'm saying that if you were to create a battery technology that was even 10x more energy dense, i.e. 10MJ/kg, you'd have great difficulty in making that vehicle safe.
> But the fire department here in Norway say they already have the needed training/experience, and make it clear that EVs are far better for fire safety in general.
once the battery has started burning, it has basically inextinguishable. "clear the area" is the only option you'd have.
> As for your points on whether they're better for longer distance, personal journeys.. I mean, yeah.. at some point they are. If you're driving 1000km in a day I'd definitely agree. But how many people do that often?
in Europe? probably not much. in the US? India? Pakistan?
> [...] For most people the range of EVs is good enough, even for long trips.
likely true, and, as i mentioned, EVs have a place.
> Almost every single road-trip charging session for me has been: 1. spend 30 seconds plugging in and beeping the payment card (with Tesla you don't even have to do this). 2. walk into a restaurant/cafe/grocery store and take a pee, drink some coffee, buy groceries for the trip, etc.. 3. come back to a fully charged car
well there's a couple of issues there - adding 30/45 minutes to a journey like that might not be suitable for everyone. traumatic charge rates (above 4C) are not good for the battery, too.
> The only reason you need that expertise with ICE drivetrain is because it's so hard to maintain.
well even the linked video states that this isn't really the case these days for ICE vehicles, a point i largely agree with.
regardless, if gasoline could be recovered from the atmosphere - closing the CO2 cycle - what would be so bad about this? as it stands, with EVs alone, we're pushing the costs of a complete infrastructure change over to individuals. sure, government assistance might help us here in the west, but that's not the world a lot of people live in.
To make a battery safer, you reduce the ways it can give up that energy. For example, some batteries will give up their energy if they are penetrated with a sharp object. Some won't. Some tolerate high temperatures, some don't. Energy density is only loosely correlated with safety.
> To make a battery safer, you reduce the ways it can give up that energy.
well, not exactly:
> [...] some batteries will give up their energy if they are penetrated with a sharp object. Some won't.
and your options for surviving punctures are essentially either:
* make the battery store less energy, or
* don't stack/roll the battery layers.
the first is clearly a non-starter, the latter necessitates very flat & space wasting batteries.
> [...] Some tolerate high temperatures, some don't.
lithium based batteries chemistries are completely unfavorable to high temperatures. there is no way around this, without changing the chemistry of battery (which is likely an energy density decrease), or adding thermal mass to soak up extra heat for some finite duration.
> Energy density is only loosely correlated with safety.
ok, consider this scenario: say we found a battery chemistry is resilient to puncture. can tolerate hundreds of degrees of heat without issue, and can sustain the power required to drive an electric car. ultimately you have 50kwh battery with a positive and negative terminal. you could put a bar of copper over those terminals. one of two things is going to happen;
* the copper will rapidly heat up and explode
* the battery will rapidly heat up and its container will explode
it looks like that battery is exactly what i'd said it'd be: a flat, less space efficient form factor. all you're seeing here is fewer layer penetration from the puncture, and more surface area to dissipate the heat over.
note, you can't stack these on top of each other (without loss of safety), otherwise you have a conventional battery again, this time with more conductors in between each cell.
Enticed by massive subsidies and chastened by threatened penalties, car industry makes a product few can afford and which doesn't actually meet customers needs. Who could have predicted that making products based on politician mandates instead of what customers are asking for would produce sucky products?
This is mostly preaching to the choir. Around here we’ve long known EVs aren’t everything they’re made out to be, and for a vast majority of use cases ICE vehicles are far better and more reliable. Even from an environmental standpoint, the output from low emission vehicles these days is mild, and better than firing up dirty power plants to charge electric vehicles en mass.
I don't believe this is true at all. Battery lifetime aside, cars are very reliable now compared to the past. Multiple studies back this up, but I think most people must anecdotally have noticed fewer broken down cars on the side of the highway and their own cars needing less maintenance and breaking down less often.
Yes, modern cars are often less repairable.
Lack of repairability is sometimes malevolent, but most times it's just a side effect of making things safer and more reliable. For example, engine computers reduce engine wear and prevent knocking, sealed systems leak less, safety systems require sensors in fenders and wing mirrors and crumple zones result in cars being written off. I have had a car that would have suffered a catastrophic engine failure in the past, but thanks to modern sensors and electronics, instead shut itself down, preventing serious damage.
By comparison, my old carburettor car was incredibly easy to repair just using tools in my toolbox, but it always had something going wrong, was a bitch to start in winter and driving in wet leaf conditions was seriously terrifying. My current car is a 2009 petrol with 150k miles and has never had any work outside of the routine service schedule or basic consumables.