I wish evs were just as reliable and repairable as gasoline/diesel cars are on average.
Well, the range part of the equation isn’t. A fuel tank doesn’t get smaller over time, and you can replace one fairly easily. Batteries die over time, and can’t be replaced easily.
They aren’t that hard, just no one wants to actually do it. Harder than a fuel tank and requires actual training, for sure, but it isn’t that hard for a trained person. I’ve seen reports of batteries actually doing fairly well, although I suspect that’s brand dependant, the Nissan leaf got a pretty bad rep for being hot trash. Literally, I think the issue was a passive cooled battery just degrading it at absurd rates.
Doesn’t fuel efficiency go down, though? I’d say that’s roughly equivalent to the battery losing effectiveness. And generally requires fixing or outright replacing key components to get back to par.
They’re actually more reliable and money saved on gas and maintenance is much more than the price of changing the battery every 10 years.
I mean, depends on the car you have. Outside of purchasing the vehicle, I haven’t spent 15k in the last decade of car ownership and that’s in AUD, so like 10k us. Pretty sure a new battery could cost more than that. Definitely the case for some though, especially if you have cheap electricity.
The only issue I’ve ever had with my Ioniq 5 in 2 years was running over a screw and had to get the tire sealed. There is no oil to change, so the only regular maintenance is free tire rotations at the dealer.
It is a relatively new car though, if anything severely broke on it you’d probably be pretty upset, same with a new ice car. You probably have cabin air filters that should be changed at some point, but that isn’t different to an equivalent ice car anyway. At least for EVs in my country, maintenance seems to be about 2/5ths the cost of an ice car, or at least of the ice cars i’ve owned. If you have solar or live somewhere with cheap electricity compared to fuel it’s probably saving a respectable amount.
The repairability is a much bigger concern for me than reliability. When even opening the motor housing is grounds for warranty termination in most EVs, it’s easy to understand why so many people are still buying ICEs
EV only vehicle manufacturers are not doing a great job on the servicing side of the business with months wait times. Robison is up to 6 mo right now. That’s unacceptable when your AC fails. This is where the large manufacturers have the upper hand, if they can ever get it together and make 1) vehicles that aren’t a 2nd mortgage and 2) cheaper to repair.
A rear quarter panel on a Rivian R1S is $20K+ as the entire side of the vehicle has to come off to get to it. Rivian only sells the quarter panel with the entire side. You can’t just get the rear quarter panel. Absolutely insane engineering.
Rivian only sells the quarter panel with the entire side. You can’t just get the rear quarter panel.
Volkswagen did this with the Fox in the 80s. The whole side from the A pillar to the taillight, roof to rocker, was one piece. And to add insult to injury, they shipped them bare. 100% of them required repair by the body shop before putting on the car.
They’re following the model of the tech industry, which makes sense because there’s a lot of crossover there
I fixed an acer laptop yesterday. It was a gaming one, like a $700 laptop. Wouldn’t turn on. Acer said the motherboard had to be replaced. When I got it I found a blown capacitor shorting the main power rail, replaced it, and it works fine now. A part that costs like 3 cents in bulk. Repair was roughly 45 minutes including diagnosis.
For this one a motherboard swap isn’t the end of the world but the additional point is that for many of modern laptops and for all phones this results in a superior repair. This laptop in particular had removable nvme storage but tons of laptops have the ssd soldered directly to the motherboard so swapping the motherboard means you lose all your data. No one ever has backups lmao
But acer, apple, Lenovo, hp, etc all do this. It’s much easier to train their techs to just do board swaps, it’s much more lucrative to make repairs a several hundred dollar endeavor instead of the pennys it would cost to replace passives or basic ics, etc. they then send the “junk” boards off to the manufacturing depot in sea to actually get fixed and then sell them again as refurbished
Far less moving parts though. No oil changes. Simpler “transmission”. Regenerative breaking means it takes forever for you to need to replace brake pads. Etc etc.
Less moving parts means an entire drivetrain replacement when something inevitably goes wrong and maintenence =/= repairs
Nope. My car had not mechanical defects at all but cost $23k to repair when the battery failed.
People who constantly drive new cars are fucking psychos. Why would you ever get rid of a car just because it’s 10 years old?
And you saved more on gas and maintenance than the cost of that repair if it happened outside of warranty (which is 10 years on batteries)
$23 grand for a battery plus the cost of the car? I don’t think they would have spent more on gas and maintenance.
$23 grand for a battery plus the cost of the car? I don’t think they would have spent more on gas and maintenance.
I love how you’ve added the capital expense with the operating expenses on only one side of the equation but not the other. You know we can see that, right?
Your math falls apart when people, like me, have long drives. I could make my daily commute with an EV especially since my work has charging stations, but the 100000 mile warranty kills it for me. I do that in three years. I spend $50 a week in fuel which is $7800 for three years. I haven’t even come close to spending another $14000 in maintenance during that time. I also expect to get at least another 3-5 years out of this vehicle.
Long commute > 50$ a week in fuel
Eh… You don’t have a long commute buddy and I doubt you drive over 100 000 miles in 3 years!
Talk about my maths all you want, yours doesn’t make sense.
Also you’re acting like your battery will need to be changed after 100k miles for sure but you certainly don’t take into consideration that your gas engine could blow up after your warranty expires and it’s no cheaper than an EV battery! The difference is that the EV will require much less maintenance over its lifespan and is much cheaper to drive day to day.
Assuming $3/gal, $50/week for 3 years is 40mpg. Averaging that is damn impressive for an ICE car.
Just saw somewhere else that you are driving a golf. TDI or gas? I’m not doubting you. That’s just impressive. I can get the mid or upper 30s on my 55mi one-way commute in my gas Passat…if I’m lucky enough to not hit traffic. But that takes me trying to drive for efficiency, and almost all highway. I’d be happy to average at 30.
“Actually the battery will probably lose the exact amount every year, and nothing will ever go wrong with any parts of it, and also they’ll also break the rest of the car at the same rate as a gas car, which is 20 years, which we’re going to call 15 years. Which means in 12 years the car will be useless, but the battery will still be at 80%. MATHS.”
Fucking. What.
No-one reports that their car didn’t need maintenance. See also, Toyota, Prius.
I had to dig deep to find this:
an average EV battery degrades at 1.8% per year, it will still have over 80% state of health after 12 years, generally beyond the usual life of a fleet vehicle.
You still have to assume they’re using average fleet vehicles use as their comparison, but at the same time also that they’re using 80% battery as comparable.
I’ve had my current ICE vehicle for 15 years and it hasn’t given me any problems yet. With any luck I can get another ten years out of it. Im not sold on the reliability of EVs yet, but hopefully by the time my vehicle dies reliability won’t be an issue any longer.
I’ve had my ev 5 years. I’ve had the tires changed and had the windshield replaced because it got a chip in it.
There are barely any moving parts to make the thing go. No waste heat or slamming around of pistons to worry about. At one point I quite literally forgot cars need maintenance because with an EV, it’s just not a thing (largely).
The idea that ICE vehicles are even on the same planet as EVs in terms of reliability and maintenance is utterly laughable. It’s very very very simple. Fewer moving parts, no waste heat to manage, no pumps or multiple fluid systems, so no seals and gaskets.
The batteries in most EV’s need some kind of passive or active cooling. Some cars are using liquid cooling.
Tesla, BMW i-3 and i-8, Chevy Volt, Ford Focus, Jaguar i-Pace, and LG Chem’s lithium-ion batteries all use some form of liquid cooling system. Since electric vehicles are still a relatively new technology, there have been problems maintaining temperature range and uniformity in extreme temperatures even when using a liquid cooling system.
That’s not a reason to not get an EV but they all have some form of waste heat and some have fluid systems, pumps, gaskets, and seals. They just have less of all of it.
That and suspension components still need to be greased. Plus electric cars tend to be a little heavier, often time with large wheels, meaning more wear and tear.
MG started offering a lifetime warranty for the battery and drivetrains in Thailand.
It confirms what the article is saying, manufacturers know with their experience that the rest of the car will break before the battery or the motor does.
How long does MG consider to be a lifetime? I’m daily driving a 32 year old car.
Edit: Ok, I looked it up. It’s an unlimited-mile warranty for the first 12 months. After that, it lasts up to 80,000 miles or 7 years, whichever comes first. This is less than the battery warranty for many other brands. This kind of advertising should be illegal, but they placed “lifetime” in quotes, so I guess everyone’s cool with it. Actually, it looks like that might be the old warranty, effective in 2019. I’m having trouble finding the actual terms for the new warranty, but I wanted to correct myself first.
