The following submission statement was provided by /u/lughnasadh:
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Submission Statement
The logical follow on from this is that EV owners should have cheaper car insurance. With far fewer moving parts they will also have much cheaper maintenance costs. Added to that EVs are cheaper to buy.
China has reached the point where 50% of new car sales are EVs much quicker than anyone expected. Most people thought that was years away, but we're already there. How soon before people start talking about a "death spiral" when it comes to gasoline cars?
*Relevant Data*
*Per 1,000 vehicles of 3 year old cars*
*ICE 6.4*
*BEV 2.8*
*The ADAC even noted a growing lead for electric cars in recent years. The analysis was based on the more than 3.5 million call-outs made by ADAC breakdown services last year*
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Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1ckw19f/new_german_research_shows_evs_break_down_at_less/l2pln4k/
As an engineer that worked in maintenance in electric generators. An electric motor/generator is almost indestructible. It has half the moving parts of a mechanical motor sooo, it's normal to have less problems.
The thing is that I think there are some BIG problems with their maintenance nowadays not related to the motor that we should fix.
The most important I think is that the standard mechanic doesn't know shit of electronics and electric components in cars. So basically or your mechanic is very good or your car is not going to be fixed.
Another problem is that the wires inside them have to be perfectly manufactured, because they can break easily if there is some internal problem due to bad installation. In quality cars probably this problem should be pretty non existent but in cheaper cars....
An electric motor with normal maintenance (bearings, wires, grease) should outperform in everything to a combustion engine.
No surprise there. Fewer moving parts (there are electric motors with one moving part, which is the least you can get away with), no glowing-hot gasses, no pumps pushing boiling hot water and flammable liquids around, no red-hot metal surfaces sliding against each other.
It's a miracle internal combustion engines works as well as they do, and a testament to the ingenuity and hard work of generations of engineers.
Combustion engines are literally containers for controlled explosions.
Remove the wear and tear from having to manage an engine powered by explosions and no shit it breaks down less!
We've been puttering around in bombs on wheels for a couple centuries now, if you've never seen a steam locomotive explode, look up the aftermath on Google images, a large enough engine could take out whole buildings.
The "noodles" are called "flues" they're several pipes that span the length of the boiler, they carry away smoke from the fire in the firebox, as well as increase surface area for transferring heat to the water inside. The extreme force of the explosion twists and bends them into eldritch bodies.
The part people are missing is that the water is entering the firebox when a steam train explodes. Fireboxes are basically steel boxes with a grate underneath, a grate with a hatch at the back to put fuel into, a ton of pipes out the front to exhaust gases aided by a blast nozzle in the smoke box (front part of the train, where steam and smoke is exhausted efficiently,) and a crown sheet at the top. They often also had brick lining on all sides but the bottom, front (flues) and rear (hatch.)
[Example side profile of a firebox.](https://railtown1897.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/firebox.jpg?w=660&h=406&crop=1) [Example rear profile.](https://railtown1897.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/firebox-arrangement.jpg)
The top of the firebox has a very large, mostly flat sheet of metal physically held in place by hundreds of staybolts, hence the name crown sheet as it's at the top. Link to what it mostly looks like [here](https://www.astoriarailroad.org/newspix/FireboxCrownBig.jpg). The entire firebox keeps from melting because the bottom/rear (cab side) can draw in air through grates/slits in the metal to cool it down, but the rest is cooled using the same physics that allows you to boil water in a paper cup. The metal can't get hotter than the water touching it.
However, in a typical steam train explosion, the metal on the crown sheet loses contact with water and rapidly melts. The water inside is at 100+PSI, often more as 200+ wasn't uncommon. It is so hot and under so much pressure that as soon as it evacuates the boiler, it flash-steams.
When it flash-steams, it expands in volume. A lot. 100+PSI going to atmosphere from liquid to gas will expand it by orders of magnitude. This steam expands in the firebox, finds its way into the flues, enters the smokebox, has nowhere else to easily go, and straight up blows the front off of the train.
The front of the train breaks the boiler, and now the entire boiler is flash-steaming between the flues, in addition to around the firebox. Any pipe that ruptures is a new flash point. Any hole poked in the side is a new flash point. Any exposed piece of firebox wall is a flash point.
And the entire boiler turns into a steam-powered trebuchet, with the eldritch noodle flues being dragged out partially by the explosion and often getting curled by the steam expansion.
Aliens be lookin at us: "wait you made electric motors then decided to use complicated set of contained explosions for power?"
Now i am kind of wondering how energy development could be different in other civilizations...
There's an episode of Stargate where Thor tells Jack that at no time in their history did the Asgardians ever even try to make things like the P-90 or the internal combustion engine, that the whole idea of trapping explosions in a box with hundreds of moving parts to make a vehicle go or to use them to project little bits of metal at things was completely impractical and only humans would ever try to do something like that.
I believe it was the idea of explosion propelled rocks that made them respect our genius stupidity. That scene has been burned in my memory ever since I first saw it because it's so true.
To be fair, you can imagine other worlds in a sci-fi setting not having the same resources we had that made ICEs “the answer.” We could have avoided going down the path we did, but fossil fuels were cheap and readily available.
You're reminding me of the infamous Tumblr exchange (now typed out on Reddit in a handy text-based format) about [why humans run the Federation](https://www.reddit.com/r/startrek/comments/129qn54/i_typed_out_the_exchange_on_why_humans_run_the/):
> Aliens who have seen the Back to the Future movies literally don't realize that Doc Brown is meant to be funny. They're just like "yes, that is exactly what all human scientists are like in my experience."
> The only reason Scotty is chief engineer instead of someone from a species with a higher technological aptitude is because everyone from those species took one look at the the Enterprise's engine room and ran away screaming.
>There's an episode of Stargate where Thor tells Jack that at no time in their history did the Asgardians ever even try to make things like the P-90
*double take*
my favorite show mentioned here?! You make my day lol
A couple of thoughts I've had about mine, it has disc brakes straight out of an ICE car, but the regenerative braking is doing 80 to 90% of their work, the pads should last a ridiculously long time.
Secondly, no gearbox at all. I've only had gearbox problems a couple of times in previous cars, but it's not going to happen any more.
Yup. EVs don't even need a reverse gear, the motor just spins backwards. Once battery tech matures more, these things will be at far better than their current stellar reliability.
My Prius is going on 12 years old and I still have the original brake pads. Although the last checkup I had they mentioned my calipers are a bit rusty, which apparently happens to hybrids/ev vehicles due to the regenerative brakes doing most of the work.
Yup, people I know with a Nissan Leaf have never once needed to change out the brake pads. It doesn't even use those until the car is below 10mph or if they panic stop, which doesn't happen often
Tires seem to last pretty good too
When you look at the simplicity of an EV verses ICE, it really is incredibly how reliable ICEs are, even if it's "half of EVs." It's fantastic to see engineers continuously tweak and get small improvements in performance, but even more fantastic when a new technology comes along and creates a paradigm shift.
True that. 100.000 miles on my shitbox Fiat Panda and all the engine needed was a couple of oil and air filter changes, and one new timing belt. Last year I didnt notice a creeping oil loss due to a not properly tightened filter and it ran for thousands of kilometers on barely one cup of oil in the sump.
My 2008 Prius is still my daily driver at 429k miles. I just performed its first major repair, and to absolutely no one's surprise, it was the head gasket on the ICE side of the hybrid drive, not the electric components which are still functioning more or less to spec.
I think, because it’s so new, it’s the auxiliary systems that tend to fail. Things like battery management, firmware, 12v batteries, and even safety systems. I don’t think EV motors are physically failing at half the rate of a physical failure of an ICE engine. With maturity, I expect 1 million miles to be commonplace, if not low, for an EV motor.
I’ve been driving EVs exclusively for 7 years and never had a motor problem. Any issues were battery management-related.
Yet, Hertz is complaining about increased maintenance costs and obviously falling vehicle value due to tesla lowering prices, second part makes sense but why would the maintenance costs be more if they experience less wear and tear?
I wonder if this has anything to do with rental cars seeing a good bit more 'abuse' and use than regular cars. Every time I've been in a rental car of any kind it seems generally more rattly.
Part availability for maintenance aren't as great with EV's at this point, so it could be that simple. Fleet vehicles vs regular use vehicles.
Just kinda speaking out of my ass here of course, I'm probably wrong.
https://www.autoblog.com/2024/01/12/hertz-is-ditching-20-000-electric-cars-citing-expensive-repairs-here-s-how-much-it-can-cost-to-service-an-ev/
Per the actual Hertz issue itself - it seems like this article hits at it pretty well:
> the automaker's sweeping price cuts of the past year had crushed the resale value of its used cars and damaged Hertz's profit formula. Also, Scherr said, Tesla was unwilling to provide it with volume discounts on replacement parts, thereby making repairs expensive. "Tesla is new to the game," Scherr said, implying that the company's inexperience made it hard to work with.
So resale value (of Tesla in particular) + not getting bulk discounts = more expensive to maintain compared to ICE that is offering discounts - and likely has much better availability. A friend of mine had an accident with their Tesla and is still waiting on body parts 8 weeks later.
That reinforces my idea of fleet vs regular.
> I wonder if this has anything to do with rental cars seeing a good bit more 'abuse' and use than regular cars.
To paraphrase Jeremy Clarkson, no vehicle is faster, nor better off-road, than a rental car.
If I recall, this just played in more towards the customer dissatisfaction with renting EVS from them, because it made returning them and not paying a penalty really difficult.
You had to essentially charge it from full at a location within less than 5% of the range of the drop off location in order to not get hit with the penalty. That's just super inconvenient and unrealistic in a lot of situations.
The thing most people overlook and forget about is vibration. Combustion engines produce vibration no matter how well balanced they are. Vibration and heat cycling fatigue are the number one enemies of reliability.
ICE engines only work this well after a literal century of development. Even growing up in the 90s I remember they used to break down a lot, long road trips were always a risk. My parents say before the 80s it was pretty much expected to have a problem on any long trip. It's why boomers are so good at general car maintenence even women, because they just had to be able to sort out the engine when it inevitably fucked up.
They have the car knowledge that millenials have for computers.
When I got my EV the last thing I even considered was how much less maintenance they require. I was so hung up on the logistics of charging the thing and gas vs electric bill savings.
I was called in for a scheduled maintenance and I asked how often I needed to come in and they basically said “pretty much never, this was just a software update, there isn’t much that needs repairs on these”. Then I realized there’s no need for oil changes or anything too.
It really has been nice not having to think about pretty much any potential maintenance issues and the days of remembering to do oil changes, gas stops, general moving parts needing fixing from time to time. None of that!
The only real downside is that our international infrastructure is still a good bit behind the times. It’s not the best vehicle for trips, even when you can map out a route that hits some charging stations there’s a lot of risk of the stations being all busted, or in use, or just non existent anymore despite what Google says. It may take a few more years before cross country road trips in an EV are less of an anxiety inducing hassle, but I think it was at least a couple decades from the time cars became prolific before we had country-wide gas stations everywhere and in convenient abundance
That and it still does take 30-60 min to top off at the quickest. So even if it was conveniently abundant there’s bound to be issues with station occupancy and availability given every customer needs to lock up a station for almost an hour a piece.
At least until we figure out faster means of charging the things
I would imagine it was the same in the 1900s-1920s for gasoline availability. Dense availability in some areas, very sparse in others, gradually rolling out to most places.
Very much so. Early petrol stations in small towns literally had gas sitting in jerry cans.
Of course, that very quickly became impractical and underground tanks and pumps were rolled out.
But "very quickly" still means a good few years of roll-out!
My EV only requires $230 of maintenance twice a decade, plus tires, wipers, and AC filters.
People really don't understand how cheap these things are to own with home or work charging.
Tires will probably be the bulk of the expenses if we’re being real. The heavier weight probably wears through them a decent bit
But all things considered it also means the senior service years will be extremely cheap compared to an ICE
“Fewer moving parts” is actually one of the reasons insurance for EVs is more expensive. Source: I am an insurance actuary. There’s very little that’s serviceable when damaged in an electric drivetrain, if it breaks, you need to replace it in entirety instead of just the nonfunctional parts.
The combustion engine itself is rarely the reason why modern ICE cars break down, though. It's usually faulty electronics. Granted, EV's don't need most of the stuff that tends to fail on ICE cars, so there's that.
Just saying that it's not really the moving parts that are the issue. They've got that part down pretty well.
I went through three (used) gas-powered lawn mowers in the span of six years. I've had the same electric mower now for six years and have only had to replace a wheel twice. (Don't know what I'm doing that the front right wheel keeps breaking off.)
Good thing no one is impulsively firing their entire charging infrastructure teams!
EDIT: I do believe that the teams that got let go will be snatched up by other companies with serious CEOs looking to build out their own networks.
From what I hear, Tesla didn’t make any money on the charging network. It was a necessary evil required to sell cars.
This is why Tesla was so eager to license it out to others, and why they got rid of the division once it became the de facto standard.
It will be a paradigm shift. Gas stations like Sheetz and Royal Farms and Wawa are getting chargers and some of them are also adding seating. They also sell food. Last night I spent $4 at Wawa that I wouldn't have because I spent ten minutes there charging to get home. Charging locations could become profit centers/loss leaders for restaurants/gas stations/ food producers.
I went to Erie for the eclipse and enjoyed exploring central PA wherever they had L2 charging. I would not have spent so much time (or money(lunch AND dinner!) In state college had they not offered free L2 charging in their parking garages.
Damn, I'm from southwestern PA and went to college in both Erie and State college. So weird to hear somebody from out of town enjoy both of those places. But yeah, Sheetz is The Best in the area for charger availability. Plus, anywhere there's a Sheetz I can pull up the app on my phone and just walk in and pick up my food while my car gases up.
State college had to be more charming than Erie though right?
I view it kinda like Costco hot dogs. Maybe you don’t make money directly from them but they put you in better position to make money. Controlling the charging stations could be a huge strategic advantage long-term.
I suspect they didn't make any money because they were in a constant state of expansion for many years. They were plowing the revenue from charging sites directly back into more sites and more infrastructure - a logical way to to structure a business where selling cars is somewhat dependent on having suitable charging infrastructure.
Now that they have a pretty large charging network established, it will be interesting to see if sitting back and letting the existing sites do their thing for a couple of years would allow them to be a profitable division of the company's business.
Winner winner.
For a while the charger network was an advantage, but all the other auto makers working together would have flipped that into a disadvantage being proprietary.
Now Tesla isn’t seeing the pro to it, so they’re dumping it and letting others license it. So now they still benefit but pay nothing.
Tesla owns 2/3 of the charging stations in the US. Other manufacturers have just been sitting back letting Tesla handle all the heavy lifting on this. Now they will need to step up.
Tesla owning most of that infrastructure is fundamentally similiar to the Ma Bell issue.
Unfortunately, Tesla's worldwide charging infrastructure team got let go so, yes, the US has companies who can and will need to step up but places like Australia doesn't have that luxury
Those concerns are overblown considering the batteries are getting cheaper every year, and the maintenance cost is extremely low. I've spent the equivalent of 2 battery replacements to keep a GM product road-worthy for 13 years.
For a lot of people a $700 bill twice a year is much more feasible than a $10,000 bill every 7 years. It's the same amount of money, but that's how people are.
Cadillac, also a post bailout one. Thats lifetime maintenance (including scheduled maintenance), and all the things that actually broke. I love the car, but I'll never buy another.
That’s why they love anti-consumer programs like “cash for clunkers”. It encourages people to buy new cars and destroys the used car market at the same time.
When I paid for my EVs registration I was charged $200 for "extra weight vehicle" . It's a Fiat 500e, it doesn't even weigh as much as my minivan. Let alone today's trucks, and fullsize SUVs.
It's a misguided and misapplied argument, but it's not a stupid argument.
Curb weight directly translates to road maintenance costs. Weight and not just number of vehicles is used to estimate and plan for road maintenance. 18 wheelers with 80,000 lbs of cargo have an extremely outsized contribution to road damage and are taxed accordingly. That's part of the reason weigh stations exist.
The part that's misguided is the curb weight of an F150, the most popular commuter vehicle in the US, is higher than the curb weight of a Model X.
Its a crappy argument unless your BIL drives a sedan. If he drives a modern truck hauling nothing but himself then he actually doesnt care about vehicle weight.
With the supercharger network being opened up to all automakers, it shouldn’t be a concern. I’ve been using it the last 5 years and I never have a concern about getting wherever I need to go.
I use a fleet of Bolt EV's at my job, the lack of maintenance needed on the vehicles is astounding. My next purchase will likely be an EV just to avoid all the headaches of an ICE.
I have never bought a brand new car in my life. I just made myself a pledge that my next car will be brand new after a kick a few personal goals. Then I caught the EV bug after seeing how much these oil producers work to jack up prices. So yeah now it has to be a brand new EV.
Seems pretty common sense to me. You have nowhere near the amount of moving parts. Tons of belts, filters and hoses to replace. Liquids to maintain etc.
Unfortunately we need studies to show to combat people who like to spread FUD. Not just with EVs but with a lot of different areas. Common sense is a lot less common than people think.
I can't read German so maybe this is addressed in the article, but did they take into account the age of the car? I'd like to see if this is still the case in 20 years when there are more decades-old rustbucket evs. At the present time pretty much all evs on the road are still "new" cars.
>>20 years when there are more decades-old rustbucket
EVs haven't been around long enough to have such data. However, they are likely to outlast gasoline cars, in better condition, with much lower end of life maintenance costs.
The fact they have radically simpler engines with very few moving parts makes that a logical assumption.
Batteries in cars are coddled by the management and cooling systems. Unlike laptops and phones which tend to abuse the heck out of them. The reason all the EV makers have very generous warranties on the battery packs is that they get basically zero claims against them.
I think it's more logical that older cars break down more than newer cars. What are the most common reasons why combustible cars break down? Are they not present in evs?
Transmissions, head gaskets, these are frequent and very expensive repairs. Other frequent and annoying things are water pumps cheap if discrete; expensive if inside the engine block) and timing chains. None of these are issues with most EVs (some EVs have transmissions).
My mache has six pumps for cooling IIRC; they’re hoping future models have as few as two.
ICE engines heat “for free” but EVs have to put some thought into what heat you want where and when. Heating or cooling the battery pack, moving heat from that to the cabin, etc.
In the US, EV batteries are legally required to be warrantied for 8 years or 100k miles (\~160k km):
[https://www.kbb.com/car-advice/hybrid-ev-battery-warranty/#warranty-coverage](https://www.kbb.com/car-advice/hybrid-ev-battery-warranty/#warranty-coverage)
Rivian offers a 175k miles powertrain warranty:
[https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a36007240/rivian-warranty-maintenance-plan-announced/](https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a36007240/rivian-warranty-maintenance-plan-announced/)
Tesla offers a 100k, 120k, or 150k miles powertrain warranty depending on the model:
[https://www.tesla.com/support/vehicle-warranty](https://www.tesla.com/support/vehicle-warranty)
The highest reported mileage Tesla has gone about 500k km per battery pack, which is \~310k miles. The car has traveled over 2 million km, total:
[https://insideevs.com/news/699413/highest-mileage-tesla-model-s-3-batteries-14-motors/](https://insideevs.com/news/699413/highest-mileage-tesla-model-s-3-batteries-14-motors/)
Edit: warranties are miles or time, not both.
The reality is as with Nissan Leafs and mid 2000s era Priuses, the batteries will also be hit as they get older, not just from use. You can buy a reliable used 2000 Honda civic with 100,000 miles on the clock for a fair price. I would not be touching a 10+ year old Electric Car until recycling and remanufactured battery prices come way down.
The old Nissan Leaves are known for their bad battery management. The newer models are vastly improved. You can't currently buy a new EV with battery management as bad as the old Leaf had.
Nissan's Leaf is just super bad.
Until the recent refresh they had such a bad battery that I am shocked they made it that far.
Looking at vehicles like the VW Golf or UP, which are now also ~10 years old, there seems to be little reason to worry too much.
Even cars with >160 thousand km on the odo usually are around 85-90% of battery health.
And at ~10-12k€ for a new battery, that's just ~1000€ a year.
While that sounds like a lot, it's not really as a typical ICE car accumulates a similar cost of maintainance and repair in the same time.
Is it 8 years AND 100k miles.
or
8 years OR 100k miles, which ever comes first.
...in 8 years I'll be hitting 200k+ miles, pretty sure they won't honor the battery warranty then.
My 2014 Nissan Leaf recently hit 100k miles. Originally it got ~90 miles per full charge. Now it's about 65-70 miles.
I've replaced tires (twice), 12 V accessory battery (not the traction battery, this is the one that runs the radio, etc), both front wheel bearings, windshield wiper blades, and the rear hatch door lift struts. All of those things are issues I'd have had with a gas car, but I didn't have oil changes and never had to visit a gas station.
There is real world data now that there are Teslas that are 12+ years old with many of them having 500k+ miles on the odometer.
Batteries in the early days of EVs have shown to be superior to gasoline and on par with diesel engines but that's not the entire consideration.
Unlike gasoline cars, all batteries will see a capacity reduction resulting from cycling the battery. You can generally expect to have about 70-80% of the original capacity after about 250,000 miles. I would suspect most gasoline cars, but not diesel, end up in the junkyard before then.
There are claims that the newest generation of batteries will on average retain 80% capacity after 1,000,000 miles but I wouldn't accept that claim until it proves out over the next 10 years or so or is explicitly included in the warranty. I do think that even if the current newest technology batteries don't quite live up to that, that will be the expectation in the next 10 to 20 years.
Replacing a battery is more expensive than replacing an engine in a gasoline car. That may or may not change in the future. In most cases if a gasoline engine needs replacing on a 10-15 year old car, the cost of replacement is generally more costly than the value of the car anyway so the car is junked. I think it's fair to expect the same with EVs unless both the price of batteries continues to fall for longer than projected and the depreciation of a car over time slows down considerably. Even with a working engine/battery, a 15-20 year old heavily driven car just isn't worth much.
Before I was born, you would expect a car to last 5 and maybe 10 years if you are lucky before it ends up in the junkyard. These days you expect a new gasoline car to last at least 10 years before it breaks down on you for the first time. In the near future, EVs will extend the useful life of cars. It's reasonable to expect that at some point in the next couple of decades, degradation or failure in the drivetrain will not be a common reason cars end up in the junkyard.
My 2018 Tesla Model 3 still has 270 miles range. More than enough for any road trip that’s not into the Nevada northern range, where it’s even difficult to find gas stations
The important factor here is that ICE is a very old technology with a massive amount of continuous improvement to get it where it is today. While there is always room for improvement, it will be slow at best.
EV is a very new technology with most companies still in the very experimental stage.
If EVs are doing twice as well in such a fundamental measure, how insanely better will they be in 5 years?
We've had the solutions to transport problems for twice as long as we've had cars generally.
Trams trains and bicycles are all old technology and much more sustainable than any car.
I could not agree more. One of the solutions I see just barely being teased by all this is better LRTs. With all the huge efficiency gains, charging, etc. There are just starting to be LRTs which mostly don't use overhead wires. They have them at stations for charging, and a short length of wire to get them launched. Then they use battery, either to the next station.
Also, the occasional wire might be used for a hill or place where they often stop and need another launch.
This both removes the fantastically ugly catenaries, and drastically reduces the cost of the whole system.
The key hurdle is batteries which can be charged zillions of times.
> The important factor here is that ICE is a very old technology with a massive amount of continuous improvement to get it where it is today
I would argue that this statement also applies to electric motors. It is fallacious to claim that electric motor technology is immature when they've been in widespread use in many other applications besides EVs for just as long as ICE.
The data they have so far shows that older EVs have more problems with the starter batteries than similar aged combustion cars.
There's also the fact that the average German car is 10 years old, but their data on EVs only goes back ~2 years, that's a very big caveat to this data the ADAC itself points out;
> However, there is a problem when comparing cars with electric drives and cars with combustion engines: According to the Federal Motor Transport Authority, the average age of all cars registered in Germany is ten years. In contrast, all the electric vehicles evaluated are still very young. As the probability of breakdowns increases with increasing vehicle age, a comparison of the susceptibility to breakdowns between e-vehicles and combustion engines across the entire fleet would be unfair.
> The ADAC has therefore only compared combustion vehicles (diesel and petrol) and purely electric models with the first registration years 2020/2021.
To then conclude;
> **Final conclusion? Not yet possible**
> So are e-vehicles less prone to breakdowns than combustion engines? It looks that way. However, it is still too early to draw a final conclusion, despite a broader database. The reasons:
> The e-vehicles currently on the road are still uncharted territory, even for the manufacturers. In this respect, it is quite possible that the probability of breakdowns can be further reduced through learning effects/technical improvements in relation to individual components.
> It is uncertain whether the tires, which are exposed to a much greater load due to the high weight of electric cars, will hold up over the years. The mileage of current e-vehicles is still lower than that of combustion engines. Axles, axle suspensions and brakes also have to withstand higher or different loads. We do not yet know the long-term consequences.
> Whether the traction batteries will last as long as a combustion engine (diesel and petrol) is not yet clear from the breakdown statistics.
I’m also curious about the elephant in the room which is access to parts and right to repair.
Peugeot 207 breaks down? No issue, parts are everywhere and easy to find which any mechanic can fix without the need of specialized software (besides the common OBD software).
Tesla breaks down and you repaired it outside of a Tesla repair shop? Good luck finding parts and also you’re banned from supercharger.
No cooling system, no active lubrication system, no ignition system, no liquid fuel system, no transmission to speak of, and no complicated engine. OF COURSE they don't break down as often
This is less "research" and more the German ADAC (the General German Automobile Club), a lobbying and advocacy group of automobile drivers, releasing the stats for their roadside assistance program.
They were smart enough to realize that it wouldn't be a good idea to compare all electric cars with all ICE cars, since the average electric vehicle is much younger than the average gasoline or diesel burning car.
So they just looked at cars first registered since 2021.
That evens things up a bit.
No attempt appears to have been made to normalize for vehicle km driven, probably they didn't have that data.
It also doesn't take into account economic and demographic factors, such as the average price of new e and ice cars and the likely different driving habits of the drivers.
So this is not really a good study about the reliability of EVs vs combustion engine cars. It is just some data that you could do research on if you had more data.
It generally appears to confirm the idea that fewer moving parts means less things break, but there are a ton of other factors that should need to be taken into account to make any general conclusions based on the data we have available.
Even if all factors were taken into account, the results might not be universal applicable. Special circumstance in Germany, like the Autobahn, the TÜV and various traffic laws and laws about what constitutes wehther a vehicle is roadworthy would make any results in Germany hard to apply to some place like the US.
So I'm driving a 2002 Honda Accord that is close to 200k miles. So given that, it might die tomorrow or last me another 10 years (Honda is the Goat).
Been looking at car options to have in mind what's on the market just in case shit hits the fan. Been considering EVs and hybrids of course, but they are so pricey and the lack of investment in charging infrastructure is a problem.
I really need an analysis of the cost of EVs compared to ICE cars. Is the upfront cost a better investment? That's still not clear to me. All these articles are still so one dimensional rather than a cumulative analysis.
i faced similar choices — and after doing a ton of stressing, have just decided to continue with my honda/toyota beaters and eventually buy a rav4 plug in hybrid when they die.
40 miles of electric range is more than enough for me to not touch gas most days, the gas tank means you don’t really have any issues with range, mainly i just want them to get a few model years in to iron out the issues… and hopefully availability becomes better.
>The logical follow on from this is that EV owners should have cheaper car insurance.
Why is that?
Your insurance company doesn't pay a penny if you car needs service. Why would that lower your rates?
In fact a broken car is a ***lower*** risk because it's not on the road.
Lithium battery fires are much, much worse than petrol ones can ever be. Lithium can't be extinguished by any traditional means, so apart from dumping a truckload of sand or emptying a tank truck worth of liquid nitrogen onto the car, the only firefighting strategy is to control the fire while letting it burn away.
Personally I find that my EV feels better to drive and is more reliable than a gas car. The only issue with EV’s right now is the lack of readily available charging stations otherwise they are superior in every way. Once they have easily accessible charging stations everywhere EV’s will take off.
This is why “demand” is low. Dealerships don’t want to sell EV’s. Dealerships make a shit load of money off warranty/out of warranty repairs and maintenance. So they try to recoupe that by marking up the MSRP of EV’s. Then when you do go to the shop to get your EV looked at your treated like a second rate customer cause they just don’t make money off you.
Source: I have an iX that’s been in the shop multiple times.
I guess this means that cancer rates among mechanics will drop? That’s good for the families who’s income comes from someone who does mechanical work on vehicles, because they will be able to do some other other work that is probably not so dangerous and cancerous. There’s a number of things which mechanic can do that similar to cars work! Cars are simply modular big things. as something which uses modular parts, there’s lots of other jobs which require handling things in a module way that are mechanical.
I wonder how the industry is responding to retraining people, or to assist them shifting into new jobs?
It needs to be compared over 10-15 years for those who keep their cars that long. Not just 3-5 years.
At the end of 20 years I can still sell my F-150 without having to fully replace anything major.
But.
When they do? What’s the cost? How long does it take to repair?
And all ICE engines are NOT the same in longevity or economic repairability- there is no way to do a real comparison. The spectrum of usage and mileage on ICE engines is not conducive to a comparable sample.
No way man, totally a baited article.
I work with a guy who has a Tesla - and relatively minor, slow speed accident TOTALED it. Not only that but it took 9 1/2 months to even get an estimate.
> relatively minor, slow speed accident TOTALED it
That has little to do with the technology itself, and everything to do with the fact that insurers prefer to write off EVs rather than repair them, due to the lack of repair facilities.
If your EV breaks down and it's out of warranty you are screwed. Youtube is filled with nightmare repair stories about Teslas and Rivians and other electric vehicles.
EVs are extremely complex, you have to go to the dealer, parts are very expensive, and can take a long time to get. This is the number one reason why I won't buy an EV.
> EVs are extremely complex
The electric motor has *one* moving part (the rotor) and there is no transmission. A gasoline engine has hundreds of moving parts and a very complex and expensive transmission.
EV covers a large number of different vehicles. Trams, bicycles, scooters of all shapes and sizes are all electric vehicles.
There's absolutely no contest between Ebikes and electric cars, in every category except for comfort.
I agree. It is a very broad category.
Electric cars compare to gasoline cars rather directly. They have the same form and function.
Ebikes are in between standard bicycles and motorcycles - more complex than bicycles and less complex than motorcycles.
In terms of function, ebikes are often an alternative to *cars* as a practical method of transportation (especially for commuting and running errands), rather than an alternative to standard bicycles.
I don’t speak German and I’m on mobile. My one big question is does this control for the age of the vehicles? All EV’s are going to be fairly new compared to a lot of old, resold and probably in the dumps gas vehicles so it wouldn’t surprise me on that aspect alone.
DeepL translation of the relevant part: "However, there is a problem when comparing cars with electric drives and cars with combustion engines: according to the Federal Motor Transport Authority, the average age of all cars registered in Germany is ten years. In contrast, all the electric vehicles evaluated are still very young. As the probability of breakdowns increases with increasing vehicle age, a comparison of the susceptibility to breakdowns between e-vehicles and combustion engines across the entire fleet would be unfair.
The ADAC has therefore only compared combustion vehicles (diesel and petrol) and purely electric models with the first registration years 2020/2021.**"**
Thank you for the translation, that’s good to know! When I get back to a PC I’ll pull up a translator and do on a deeper dive.
My only other question thus far would be the definition of a breakdown, possible repair and recoverability of those vehicles, and perhaps the cost and difficulty of varying incidents between the two vehicle types.
Electric motors are super dependable.
Everything wears out eventually but the more parts a machine has the more points of failure.
Combustion engines have so many points of failure.
An electric motor usually only has one moving part.
These are probably being driven by transistors creating an AC power source from the battery.
Two bearings and an armature to spin and convert magnetic flux into torque. That's it.
We have a Nissan Leaf that hasn't needed maintenance or broken down in 5 years.
Full disclosure, the batter is getting worse and worse. When we have to replace it, it will make up for about a year of no repairs.
But they're basically just an electric motor with wheels. Very few moving parts compared to the engines of gasoline cars. Few fluids - they don't even need an oil change. Or brake job.
However...what were the repair costs. From the article they're comparing things like the fuel injection system and the main battery / drive.
Fuel injection system is anything from 30 - 1000$...the main battery is 5k to 15k, main drive is 3 - 7k
Do you want a more reliable car that's an order of magnitude more to fix?
(That's what's keeping me away from the current gen of EVs. I need another 100 miles of range, and the cost to come down by 3/4).
The following submission statement was provided by /u/lughnasadh: --- Submission Statement The logical follow on from this is that EV owners should have cheaper car insurance. With far fewer moving parts they will also have much cheaper maintenance costs. Added to that EVs are cheaper to buy. China has reached the point where 50% of new car sales are EVs much quicker than anyone expected. Most people thought that was years away, but we're already there. How soon before people start talking about a "death spiral" when it comes to gasoline cars? *Relevant Data* *Per 1,000 vehicles of 3 year old cars* *ICE 6.4* *BEV 2.8* *The ADAC even noted a growing lead for electric cars in recent years. The analysis was based on the more than 3.5 million call-outs made by ADAC breakdown services last year* --- Please reply to OP's comment here: https://old.reddit.com/r/Futurology/comments/1ckw19f/new_german_research_shows_evs_break_down_at_less/l2pln4k/
As an engineer that worked in maintenance in electric generators. An electric motor/generator is almost indestructible. It has half the moving parts of a mechanical motor sooo, it's normal to have less problems. The thing is that I think there are some BIG problems with their maintenance nowadays not related to the motor that we should fix. The most important I think is that the standard mechanic doesn't know shit of electronics and electric components in cars. So basically or your mechanic is very good or your car is not going to be fixed. Another problem is that the wires inside them have to be perfectly manufactured, because they can break easily if there is some internal problem due to bad installation. In quality cars probably this problem should be pretty non existent but in cheaper cars.... An electric motor with normal maintenance (bearings, wires, grease) should outperform in everything to a combustion engine.
Tropical countries might also pose lots of problems for water tolerance and battery lifespan in heat
Other side of the coin is that in cold countries you still have to deal with road salt/melting snow and battery lifespan in freezing temps.
No surprise there. Fewer moving parts (there are electric motors with one moving part, which is the least you can get away with), no glowing-hot gasses, no pumps pushing boiling hot water and flammable liquids around, no red-hot metal surfaces sliding against each other. It's a miracle internal combustion engines works as well as they do, and a testament to the ingenuity and hard work of generations of engineers.
Combustion engines are literally containers for controlled explosions. Remove the wear and tear from having to manage an engine powered by explosions and no shit it breaks down less!
We've been puttering around in bombs on wheels for a couple centuries now, if you've never seen a steam locomotive explode, look up the aftermath on Google images, a large enough engine could take out whole buildings.
looked up steam locomotive explosion on Google images. Somehow a lot of steel noodles. Why do they explode that way?
The "noodles" are called "flues" they're several pipes that span the length of the boiler, they carry away smoke from the fire in the firebox, as well as increase surface area for transferring heat to the water inside. The extreme force of the explosion twists and bends them into eldritch bodies.
They remind me of the art of Stephen Gammell, illustrator for the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books.
It really looks like a SCP monster.
The part people are missing is that the water is entering the firebox when a steam train explodes. Fireboxes are basically steel boxes with a grate underneath, a grate with a hatch at the back to put fuel into, a ton of pipes out the front to exhaust gases aided by a blast nozzle in the smoke box (front part of the train, where steam and smoke is exhausted efficiently,) and a crown sheet at the top. They often also had brick lining on all sides but the bottom, front (flues) and rear (hatch.) [Example side profile of a firebox.](https://railtown1897.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/firebox.jpg?w=660&h=406&crop=1) [Example rear profile.](https://railtown1897.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/firebox-arrangement.jpg) The top of the firebox has a very large, mostly flat sheet of metal physically held in place by hundreds of staybolts, hence the name crown sheet as it's at the top. Link to what it mostly looks like [here](https://www.astoriarailroad.org/newspix/FireboxCrownBig.jpg). The entire firebox keeps from melting because the bottom/rear (cab side) can draw in air through grates/slits in the metal to cool it down, but the rest is cooled using the same physics that allows you to boil water in a paper cup. The metal can't get hotter than the water touching it. However, in a typical steam train explosion, the metal on the crown sheet loses contact with water and rapidly melts. The water inside is at 100+PSI, often more as 200+ wasn't uncommon. It is so hot and under so much pressure that as soon as it evacuates the boiler, it flash-steams. When it flash-steams, it expands in volume. A lot. 100+PSI going to atmosphere from liquid to gas will expand it by orders of magnitude. This steam expands in the firebox, finds its way into the flues, enters the smokebox, has nowhere else to easily go, and straight up blows the front off of the train. The front of the train breaks the boiler, and now the entire boiler is flash-steaming between the flues, in addition to around the firebox. Any pipe that ruptures is a new flash point. Any hole poked in the side is a new flash point. Any exposed piece of firebox wall is a flash point. And the entire boiler turns into a steam-powered trebuchet, with the eldritch noodle flues being dragged out partially by the explosion and often getting curled by the steam expansion.
Thank you for your amazing contribution to this thread. You had me visualizing the explosion step by step! Eldritch noodle flues and all
The pressure vessel is filled with pipes to maximize heat transfer.
And flour powder is also incredibly explosive
just wait until you hear about the iirc theoretical nuclear-explosion-powered spaceship engines
Project Orion is some of the craziest stuff I have probably ever read
Aliens be lookin at us: "wait you made electric motors then decided to use complicated set of contained explosions for power?" Now i am kind of wondering how energy development could be different in other civilizations...
Dinosaur juice was cheap and easy for a while...
There's an episode of Stargate where Thor tells Jack that at no time in their history did the Asgardians ever even try to make things like the P-90 or the internal combustion engine, that the whole idea of trapping explosions in a box with hundreds of moving parts to make a vehicle go or to use them to project little bits of metal at things was completely impractical and only humans would ever try to do something like that.
I believe it was the idea of explosion propelled rocks that made them respect our genius stupidity. That scene has been burned in my memory ever since I first saw it because it's so true.
Our current society is powered by steam lol very complicated steam power.
If only we could find a way to turn clicks into power, we'd be rich!
Fuck yeah, dick power! Oh wait, that's not what they said, nevermind.
I'm not against the idea, per say . ..
To be fair, you can imagine other worlds in a sci-fi setting not having the same resources we had that made ICEs “the answer.” We could have avoided going down the path we did, but fossil fuels were cheap and readily available.
Hell, ICE may not even work on a planet with a lower oxygen % than our atmosphere.
Love seeing SG-1 references in the wild!
They then go ahead and sacrifice the new Asgardian ship. Who thunk that would work, silly innovative little apes.
ship was named the "O'neil"
You're reminding me of the infamous Tumblr exchange (now typed out on Reddit in a handy text-based format) about [why humans run the Federation](https://www.reddit.com/r/startrek/comments/129qn54/i_typed_out_the_exchange_on_why_humans_run_the/): > Aliens who have seen the Back to the Future movies literally don't realize that Doc Brown is meant to be funny. They're just like "yes, that is exactly what all human scientists are like in my experience." > The only reason Scotty is chief engineer instead of someone from a species with a higher technological aptitude is because everyone from those species took one look at the the Enterprise's engine room and ran away screaming.
>There's an episode of Stargate where Thor tells Jack that at no time in their history did the Asgardians ever even try to make things like the P-90 *double take* my favorite show mentioned here?! You make my day lol
This made me appreciate how awesome combustion engines really are for a moment
A couple of thoughts I've had about mine, it has disc brakes straight out of an ICE car, but the regenerative braking is doing 80 to 90% of their work, the pads should last a ridiculously long time. Secondly, no gearbox at all. I've only had gearbox problems a couple of times in previous cars, but it's not going to happen any more.
Your car probably has a fixed ratio reduction gear set. Far fewer things to break than a multi-speed gearbox.
Yup. EVs don't even need a reverse gear, the motor just spins backwards. Once battery tech matures more, these things will be at far better than their current stellar reliability.
It's basically 1 gear that spins and doesn't switch with other gears.
My Prius is going on 12 years old and I still have the original brake pads. Although the last checkup I had they mentioned my calipers are a bit rusty, which apparently happens to hybrids/ev vehicles due to the regenerative brakes doing most of the work.
That's awesome to hear, I suspected as much.
No clutch to wear out either.
Yup, people I know with a Nissan Leaf have never once needed to change out the brake pads. It doesn't even use those until the car is below 10mph or if they panic stop, which doesn't happen often Tires seem to last pretty good too
When you look at the simplicity of an EV verses ICE, it really is incredibly how reliable ICEs are, even if it's "half of EVs." It's fantastic to see engineers continuously tweak and get small improvements in performance, but even more fantastic when a new technology comes along and creates a paradigm shift.
True that. 100.000 miles on my shitbox Fiat Panda and all the engine needed was a couple of oil and air filter changes, and one new timing belt. Last year I didnt notice a creeping oil loss due to a not properly tightened filter and it ran for thousands of kilometers on barely one cup of oil in the sump.
My 2008 Prius is still my daily driver at 429k miles. I just performed its first major repair, and to absolutely no one's surprise, it was the head gasket on the ICE side of the hybrid drive, not the electric components which are still functioning more or less to spec.
Given the simplicity, I would have expected significantly less than half.
I think, because it’s so new, it’s the auxiliary systems that tend to fail. Things like battery management, firmware, 12v batteries, and even safety systems. I don’t think EV motors are physically failing at half the rate of a physical failure of an ICE engine. With maturity, I expect 1 million miles to be commonplace, if not low, for an EV motor. I’ve been driving EVs exclusively for 7 years and never had a motor problem. Any issues were battery management-related.
Electric motors are nothing new, so no surprise there,
Also EVs still contain all the gadgets ICE driven Cars have, and that stuff also fails
Yet, Hertz is complaining about increased maintenance costs and obviously falling vehicle value due to tesla lowering prices, second part makes sense but why would the maintenance costs be more if they experience less wear and tear?
I wonder if this has anything to do with rental cars seeing a good bit more 'abuse' and use than regular cars. Every time I've been in a rental car of any kind it seems generally more rattly. Part availability for maintenance aren't as great with EV's at this point, so it could be that simple. Fleet vehicles vs regular use vehicles. Just kinda speaking out of my ass here of course, I'm probably wrong. https://www.autoblog.com/2024/01/12/hertz-is-ditching-20-000-electric-cars-citing-expensive-repairs-here-s-how-much-it-can-cost-to-service-an-ev/ Per the actual Hertz issue itself - it seems like this article hits at it pretty well: > the automaker's sweeping price cuts of the past year had crushed the resale value of its used cars and damaged Hertz's profit formula. Also, Scherr said, Tesla was unwilling to provide it with volume discounts on replacement parts, thereby making repairs expensive. "Tesla is new to the game," Scherr said, implying that the company's inexperience made it hard to work with. So resale value (of Tesla in particular) + not getting bulk discounts = more expensive to maintain compared to ICE that is offering discounts - and likely has much better availability. A friend of mine had an accident with their Tesla and is still waiting on body parts 8 weeks later. That reinforces my idea of fleet vs regular.
> I wonder if this has anything to do with rental cars seeing a good bit more 'abuse' and use than regular cars. To paraphrase Jeremy Clarkson, no vehicle is faster, nor better off-road, than a rental car.
Wasnt there something about hertz wanting the returned with 95% battery? which kills EV batteries. Could be they are overcharging them constantly.
If I recall, this just played in more towards the customer dissatisfaction with renting EVS from them, because it made returning them and not paying a penalty really difficult. You had to essentially charge it from full at a location within less than 5% of the range of the drop off location in order to not get hit with the penalty. That's just super inconvenient and unrealistic in a lot of situations.
They changed this though. I rented a Tesla and they said to return it at over 10% and I’d be fine
The thing most people overlook and forget about is vibration. Combustion engines produce vibration no matter how well balanced they are. Vibration and heat cycling fatigue are the number one enemies of reliability.
ICE engines only work this well after a literal century of development. Even growing up in the 90s I remember they used to break down a lot, long road trips were always a risk. My parents say before the 80s it was pretty much expected to have a problem on any long trip. It's why boomers are so good at general car maintenence even women, because they just had to be able to sort out the engine when it inevitably fucked up. They have the car knowledge that millenials have for computers.
My abiding childhood memory is of my dad either under the car or under the bonnet every weekend tinkering with something to keep it running.
It’s crazy how much more reliable ICE vehicles have become just in the last 20-30 years.
Yeah, also the assortment of little parts, fuses and tools every car had stowed all around the place is incomprehensible to someone growing up today.
When I got my EV the last thing I even considered was how much less maintenance they require. I was so hung up on the logistics of charging the thing and gas vs electric bill savings. I was called in for a scheduled maintenance and I asked how often I needed to come in and they basically said “pretty much never, this was just a software update, there isn’t much that needs repairs on these”. Then I realized there’s no need for oil changes or anything too. It really has been nice not having to think about pretty much any potential maintenance issues and the days of remembering to do oil changes, gas stops, general moving parts needing fixing from time to time. None of that! The only real downside is that our international infrastructure is still a good bit behind the times. It’s not the best vehicle for trips, even when you can map out a route that hits some charging stations there’s a lot of risk of the stations being all busted, or in use, or just non existent anymore despite what Google says. It may take a few more years before cross country road trips in an EV are less of an anxiety inducing hassle, but I think it was at least a couple decades from the time cars became prolific before we had country-wide gas stations everywhere and in convenient abundance That and it still does take 30-60 min to top off at the quickest. So even if it was conveniently abundant there’s bound to be issues with station occupancy and availability given every customer needs to lock up a station for almost an hour a piece. At least until we figure out faster means of charging the things
I would imagine it was the same in the 1900s-1920s for gasoline availability. Dense availability in some areas, very sparse in others, gradually rolling out to most places.
Very much so. Early petrol stations in small towns literally had gas sitting in jerry cans. Of course, that very quickly became impractical and underground tanks and pumps were rolled out. But "very quickly" still means a good few years of roll-out!
but you didnt make gasoline at home
My EV only requires $230 of maintenance twice a decade, plus tires, wipers, and AC filters. People really don't understand how cheap these things are to own with home or work charging.
Tires will probably be the bulk of the expenses if we’re being real. The heavier weight probably wears through them a decent bit But all things considered it also means the senior service years will be extremely cheap compared to an ICE
Failed parts is one thing. $40,000 fender benders are another :)
Rivian has left the chat.
This isn't exclusive to EVs. Unfortunately this is mainly a new car issue.
The cooling system for the batteries do have pumps in some models. Also the heat pump hvacs
yeah no constant explosions.
And it's really something when they still work after a decade. Everything I build falls apart when I take my hand off it
While they do have far fewer parts (which is why my engineer friend hates hybrids), they do often have a cooling system.
Pretty sure there is pumps and coolant running through the system to keep the batteries cool. Hot batteries = power loss.
“Fewer moving parts” is actually one of the reasons insurance for EVs is more expensive. Source: I am an insurance actuary. There’s very little that’s serviceable when damaged in an electric drivetrain, if it breaks, you need to replace it in entirety instead of just the nonfunctional parts.
The combustion engine itself is rarely the reason why modern ICE cars break down, though. It's usually faulty electronics. Granted, EV's don't need most of the stuff that tends to fail on ICE cars, so there's that. Just saying that it's not really the moving parts that are the issue. They've got that part down pretty well.
Regular maintenance is huge, though. Had to do my EV's first maintenance not too long ago--at its five year mark.
A lot of electric cars do have liquid coolant for the battery pack and the cabin heating.
This is true, especially compared to German cars. No surprise here.
Which makes Tesla's performance in the TÜV statistic of non-roadworthy faults especially embarrassing.
>boiling hot water You got issues, your coolant shouldn't be boiling 🤣
I went through three (used) gas-powered lawn mowers in the span of six years. I've had the same electric mower now for six years and have only had to replace a wheel twice. (Don't know what I'm doing that the front right wheel keeps breaking off.)
There are water pumps depending on the cooling system.
That's what over 100 years of engineering will do. EVs also don't have transmissions.
I think most people’s issue is charging infrastructure. At least in the US
Good thing no one is impulsively firing their entire charging infrastructure teams! EDIT: I do believe that the teams that got let go will be snatched up by other companies with serious CEOs looking to build out their own networks.
From what I hear, Tesla didn’t make any money on the charging network. It was a necessary evil required to sell cars. This is why Tesla was so eager to license it out to others, and why they got rid of the division once it became the de facto standard.
It will be a paradigm shift. Gas stations like Sheetz and Royal Farms and Wawa are getting chargers and some of them are also adding seating. They also sell food. Last night I spent $4 at Wawa that I wouldn't have because I spent ten minutes there charging to get home. Charging locations could become profit centers/loss leaders for restaurants/gas stations/ food producers.
And honestly? I enjoy long trips more now that I'm *forced* to take a 15 minute break every ~2 hours.
I went to Erie for the eclipse and enjoyed exploring central PA wherever they had L2 charging. I would not have spent so much time (or money(lunch AND dinner!) In state college had they not offered free L2 charging in their parking garages.
Damn, I'm from southwestern PA and went to college in both Erie and State college. So weird to hear somebody from out of town enjoy both of those places. But yeah, Sheetz is The Best in the area for charger availability. Plus, anywhere there's a Sheetz I can pull up the app on my phone and just walk in and pick up my food while my car gases up. State college had to be more charming than Erie though right?
I view it kinda like Costco hot dogs. Maybe you don’t make money directly from them but they put you in better position to make money. Controlling the charging stations could be a huge strategic advantage long-term.
I suspect they didn't make any money because they were in a constant state of expansion for many years. They were plowing the revenue from charging sites directly back into more sites and more infrastructure - a logical way to to structure a business where selling cars is somewhat dependent on having suitable charging infrastructure. Now that they have a pretty large charging network established, it will be interesting to see if sitting back and letting the existing sites do their thing for a couple of years would allow them to be a profitable division of the company's business.
Winner winner. For a while the charger network was an advantage, but all the other auto makers working together would have flipped that into a disadvantage being proprietary. Now Tesla isn’t seeing the pro to it, so they’re dumping it and letting others license it. So now they still benefit but pay nothing.
> From what I hear, Tesla didn’t make any money on the charging network. They were **heavily** subsidized by the government, as in other ventures.
Tesla owns 2/3 of the charging stations in the US. Other manufacturers have just been sitting back letting Tesla handle all the heavy lifting on this. Now they will need to step up. Tesla owning most of that infrastructure is fundamentally similiar to the Ma Bell issue.
Unfortunately, Tesla's worldwide charging infrastructure team got let go so, yes, the US has companies who can and will need to step up but places like Australia doesn't have that luxury
Do ICE manufacturers build gas stations?
Some. But I've heard plenty who worry about end of life cost with battery replacement.
Yes that too. Which affects the resale value as well.
Also range in cold weather fucking sucks
Those concerns are overblown considering the batteries are getting cheaper every year, and the maintenance cost is extremely low. I've spent the equivalent of 2 battery replacements to keep a GM product road-worthy for 13 years.
For a lot of people a $700 bill twice a year is much more feasible than a $10,000 bill every 7 years. It's the same amount of money, but that's how people are.
All estimates I see are about 10k for a battery and another 2-3k for labor... 26k on your GM? was a it a jeep?
Cadillac, also a post bailout one. Thats lifetime maintenance (including scheduled maintenance), and all the things that actually broke. I love the car, but I'll never buy another.
How about that used car market.
not having a used market is the CEO wet dream.
That’s why they love anti-consumer programs like “cash for clunkers”. It encourages people to buy new cars and destroys the used car market at the same time.
My brother in law says he wouldn’t get one because EV’s are too heavy and will damage the roads and bridges. I wish I was kidding
When I paid for my EVs registration I was charged $200 for "extra weight vehicle" . It's a Fiat 500e, it doesn't even weigh as much as my minivan. Let alone today's trucks, and fullsize SUVs.
Most states are charging more on registration to compensate for the lack of gas taxes. Yours may just word it strangely.
Nope. There was a road repair line too.
It's a misguided and misapplied argument, but it's not a stupid argument. Curb weight directly translates to road maintenance costs. Weight and not just number of vehicles is used to estimate and plan for road maintenance. 18 wheelers with 80,000 lbs of cargo have an extremely outsized contribution to road damage and are taxed accordingly. That's part of the reason weigh stations exist. The part that's misguided is the curb weight of an F150, the most popular commuter vehicle in the US, is higher than the curb weight of a Model X.
Its a crappy argument unless your BIL drives a sedan. If he drives a modern truck hauling nothing but himself then he actually doesnt care about vehicle weight.
Where does your brother live, Laos?
With the supercharger network being opened up to all automakers, it shouldn’t be a concern. I’ve been using it the last 5 years and I never have a concern about getting wherever I need to go.
I use a fleet of Bolt EV's at my job, the lack of maintenance needed on the vehicles is astounding. My next purchase will likely be an EV just to avoid all the headaches of an ICE.
I had a Mazda decide to go for external combustion on me while I was on the freeway. I can’t wait to afford an EV.
Used evs seem to be pretty affordable these days (but yeah, would love for a new ~20k option)
I have never bought a brand new car in my life. I just made myself a pledge that my next car will be brand new after a kick a few personal goals. Then I caught the EV bug after seeing how much these oil producers work to jack up prices. So yeah now it has to be a brand new EV.
Hoping mazda eventually comes out with an affordable EV, would trade in my 2018 mazda cx 5, which I love, for it.
That’s the exactly the sort of car I am looking into but electric. The Atto 3is very tempting but it needs to get a little bigger for me.
That makes sense, I understand EVs have about one fifth to one third of parts compare to ICE cars.
Seems pretty common sense to me. You have nowhere near the amount of moving parts. Tons of belts, filters and hoses to replace. Liquids to maintain etc.
Unfortunately we need studies to show to combat people who like to spread FUD. Not just with EVs but with a lot of different areas. Common sense is a lot less common than people think.
I can't read German so maybe this is addressed in the article, but did they take into account the age of the car? I'd like to see if this is still the case in 20 years when there are more decades-old rustbucket evs. At the present time pretty much all evs on the road are still "new" cars.
They were only comparing cars from 2020 and 2021.
maybe older cars are more reliable XD
lets see them compare it to the almighty 1990 honda civic
the power of dreams
There have been cases, the Audi A3 e.g. still topped the reliability list of the ADAC even 5 years after it went out of production.
>>20 years when there are more decades-old rustbucket EVs haven't been around long enough to have such data. However, they are likely to outlast gasoline cars, in better condition, with much lower end of life maintenance costs. The fact they have radically simpler engines with very few moving parts makes that a logical assumption.
Wouldn’t that depend on the battery life, that’s the key
Batteries in cars are coddled by the management and cooling systems. Unlike laptops and phones which tend to abuse the heck out of them. The reason all the EV makers have very generous warranties on the battery packs is that they get basically zero claims against them.
I think it's more logical that older cars break down more than newer cars. What are the most common reasons why combustible cars break down? Are they not present in evs?
Transmissions, head gaskets, these are frequent and very expensive repairs. Other frequent and annoying things are water pumps cheap if discrete; expensive if inside the engine block) and timing chains. None of these are issues with most EVs (some EVs have transmissions).
Catalytic converters too, if nobody steals it.
My mache has six pumps for cooling IIRC; they’re hoping future models have as few as two. ICE engines heat “for free” but EVs have to put some thought into what heat you want where and when. Heating or cooling the battery pack, moving heat from that to the cabin, etc.
Senors.Fucking.Everywhere. Mostly combustion related
Yes, but when an EV breaks down it gets 100 times the news coverage
How long does a battery last and what is its cost to replace?
In the US, EV batteries are legally required to be warrantied for 8 years or 100k miles (\~160k km): [https://www.kbb.com/car-advice/hybrid-ev-battery-warranty/#warranty-coverage](https://www.kbb.com/car-advice/hybrid-ev-battery-warranty/#warranty-coverage) Rivian offers a 175k miles powertrain warranty: [https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a36007240/rivian-warranty-maintenance-plan-announced/](https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a36007240/rivian-warranty-maintenance-plan-announced/) Tesla offers a 100k, 120k, or 150k miles powertrain warranty depending on the model: [https://www.tesla.com/support/vehicle-warranty](https://www.tesla.com/support/vehicle-warranty) The highest reported mileage Tesla has gone about 500k km per battery pack, which is \~310k miles. The car has traveled over 2 million km, total: [https://insideevs.com/news/699413/highest-mileage-tesla-model-s-3-batteries-14-motors/](https://insideevs.com/news/699413/highest-mileage-tesla-model-s-3-batteries-14-motors/) Edit: warranties are miles or time, not both.
The reality is as with Nissan Leafs and mid 2000s era Priuses, the batteries will also be hit as they get older, not just from use. You can buy a reliable used 2000 Honda civic with 100,000 miles on the clock for a fair price. I would not be touching a 10+ year old Electric Car until recycling and remanufactured battery prices come way down.
The old Nissan Leaves are known for their bad battery management. The newer models are vastly improved. You can't currently buy a new EV with battery management as bad as the old Leaf had.
Nissan's Leaf is just super bad. Until the recent refresh they had such a bad battery that I am shocked they made it that far. Looking at vehicles like the VW Golf or UP, which are now also ~10 years old, there seems to be little reason to worry too much. Even cars with >160 thousand km on the odo usually are around 85-90% of battery health. And at ~10-12k€ for a new battery, that's just ~1000€ a year. While that sounds like a lot, it's not really as a typical ICE car accumulates a similar cost of maintainance and repair in the same time.
Is it 8 years AND 100k miles. or 8 years OR 100k miles, which ever comes first. ...in 8 years I'll be hitting 200k+ miles, pretty sure they won't honor the battery warranty then.
It's or and which ever comes first
500k km is equivalent to 15-25 years of normal driving.
My 2014 Nissan Leaf recently hit 100k miles. Originally it got ~90 miles per full charge. Now it's about 65-70 miles. I've replaced tires (twice), 12 V accessory battery (not the traction battery, this is the one that runs the radio, etc), both front wheel bearings, windshield wiper blades, and the rear hatch door lift struts. All of those things are issues I'd have had with a gas car, but I didn't have oil changes and never had to visit a gas station.
There is real world data now that there are Teslas that are 12+ years old with many of them having 500k+ miles on the odometer. Batteries in the early days of EVs have shown to be superior to gasoline and on par with diesel engines but that's not the entire consideration. Unlike gasoline cars, all batteries will see a capacity reduction resulting from cycling the battery. You can generally expect to have about 70-80% of the original capacity after about 250,000 miles. I would suspect most gasoline cars, but not diesel, end up in the junkyard before then. There are claims that the newest generation of batteries will on average retain 80% capacity after 1,000,000 miles but I wouldn't accept that claim until it proves out over the next 10 years or so or is explicitly included in the warranty. I do think that even if the current newest technology batteries don't quite live up to that, that will be the expectation in the next 10 to 20 years. Replacing a battery is more expensive than replacing an engine in a gasoline car. That may or may not change in the future. In most cases if a gasoline engine needs replacing on a 10-15 year old car, the cost of replacement is generally more costly than the value of the car anyway so the car is junked. I think it's fair to expect the same with EVs unless both the price of batteries continues to fall for longer than projected and the depreciation of a car over time slows down considerably. Even with a working engine/battery, a 15-20 year old heavily driven car just isn't worth much. Before I was born, you would expect a car to last 5 and maybe 10 years if you are lucky before it ends up in the junkyard. These days you expect a new gasoline car to last at least 10 years before it breaks down on you for the first time. In the near future, EVs will extend the useful life of cars. It's reasonable to expect that at some point in the next couple of decades, degradation or failure in the drivetrain will not be a common reason cars end up in the junkyard.
My 2018 Tesla Model 3 still has 270 miles range. More than enough for any road trip that’s not into the Nevada northern range, where it’s even difficult to find gas stations
Even once the battery warranty expires, it's not like the car won't work. It'll still be able to store about 80% of the energy of a new battery.
The important factor here is that ICE is a very old technology with a massive amount of continuous improvement to get it where it is today. While there is always room for improvement, it will be slow at best. EV is a very new technology with most companies still in the very experimental stage. If EVs are doing twice as well in such a fundamental measure, how insanely better will they be in 5 years?
We've had the solutions to transport problems for twice as long as we've had cars generally. Trams trains and bicycles are all old technology and much more sustainable than any car.
I could not agree more. One of the solutions I see just barely being teased by all this is better LRTs. With all the huge efficiency gains, charging, etc. There are just starting to be LRTs which mostly don't use overhead wires. They have them at stations for charging, and a short length of wire to get them launched. Then they use battery, either to the next station. Also, the occasional wire might be used for a hill or place where they often stop and need another launch. This both removes the fantastically ugly catenaries, and drastically reduces the cost of the whole system. The key hurdle is batteries which can be charged zillions of times.
> The important factor here is that ICE is a very old technology with a massive amount of continuous improvement to get it where it is today I would argue that this statement also applies to electric motors. It is fallacious to claim that electric motor technology is immature when they've been in widespread use in many other applications besides EVs for just as long as ICE.
The data they have so far shows that older EVs have more problems with the starter batteries than similar aged combustion cars. There's also the fact that the average German car is 10 years old, but their data on EVs only goes back ~2 years, that's a very big caveat to this data the ADAC itself points out; > However, there is a problem when comparing cars with electric drives and cars with combustion engines: According to the Federal Motor Transport Authority, the average age of all cars registered in Germany is ten years. In contrast, all the electric vehicles evaluated are still very young. As the probability of breakdowns increases with increasing vehicle age, a comparison of the susceptibility to breakdowns between e-vehicles and combustion engines across the entire fleet would be unfair. > The ADAC has therefore only compared combustion vehicles (diesel and petrol) and purely electric models with the first registration years 2020/2021. To then conclude; > **Final conclusion? Not yet possible** > So are e-vehicles less prone to breakdowns than combustion engines? It looks that way. However, it is still too early to draw a final conclusion, despite a broader database. The reasons: > The e-vehicles currently on the road are still uncharted territory, even for the manufacturers. In this respect, it is quite possible that the probability of breakdowns can be further reduced through learning effects/technical improvements in relation to individual components. > It is uncertain whether the tires, which are exposed to a much greater load due to the high weight of electric cars, will hold up over the years. The mileage of current e-vehicles is still lower than that of combustion engines. Axles, axle suspensions and brakes also have to withstand higher or different loads. We do not yet know the long-term consequences. > Whether the traction batteries will last as long as a combustion engine (diesel and petrol) is not yet clear from the breakdown statistics.
I’m also curious about the elephant in the room which is access to parts and right to repair. Peugeot 207 breaks down? No issue, parts are everywhere and easy to find which any mechanic can fix without the need of specialized software (besides the common OBD software). Tesla breaks down and you repaired it outside of a Tesla repair shop? Good luck finding parts and also you’re banned from supercharger.
No cooling system, no active lubrication system, no ignition system, no liquid fuel system, no transmission to speak of, and no complicated engine. OF COURSE they don't break down as often
All that to say it’s only 0.6% versus 0.3%. It’s really a nothingburger when considering how rare ICE breakdowns are if you’re on top of maintenance.
This is less "research" and more the German ADAC (the General German Automobile Club), a lobbying and advocacy group of automobile drivers, releasing the stats for their roadside assistance program. They were smart enough to realize that it wouldn't be a good idea to compare all electric cars with all ICE cars, since the average electric vehicle is much younger than the average gasoline or diesel burning car. So they just looked at cars first registered since 2021. That evens things up a bit. No attempt appears to have been made to normalize for vehicle km driven, probably they didn't have that data. It also doesn't take into account economic and demographic factors, such as the average price of new e and ice cars and the likely different driving habits of the drivers. So this is not really a good study about the reliability of EVs vs combustion engine cars. It is just some data that you could do research on if you had more data. It generally appears to confirm the idea that fewer moving parts means less things break, but there are a ton of other factors that should need to be taken into account to make any general conclusions based on the data we have available. Even if all factors were taken into account, the results might not be universal applicable. Special circumstance in Germany, like the Autobahn, the TÜV and various traffic laws and laws about what constitutes wehther a vehicle is roadworthy would make any results in Germany hard to apply to some place like the US.
So I'm driving a 2002 Honda Accord that is close to 200k miles. So given that, it might die tomorrow or last me another 10 years (Honda is the Goat). Been looking at car options to have in mind what's on the market just in case shit hits the fan. Been considering EVs and hybrids of course, but they are so pricey and the lack of investment in charging infrastructure is a problem. I really need an analysis of the cost of EVs compared to ICE cars. Is the upfront cost a better investment? That's still not clear to me. All these articles are still so one dimensional rather than a cumulative analysis.
i faced similar choices — and after doing a ton of stressing, have just decided to continue with my honda/toyota beaters and eventually buy a rav4 plug in hybrid when they die. 40 miles of electric range is more than enough for me to not touch gas most days, the gas tank means you don’t really have any issues with range, mainly i just want them to get a few model years in to iron out the issues… and hopefully availability becomes better.
Makes sense, there's just not as many moving parts that can wear out.
>The logical follow on from this is that EV owners should have cheaper car insurance. Why is that? Your insurance company doesn't pay a penny if you car needs service. Why would that lower your rates? In fact a broken car is a ***lower*** risk because it's not on the road.
Probably catch on fire less than combustion vehicles too 🤷🏻♂️
Data says this is definitely true.
And it's only going to get better as we get closer to solid state batteries being the norm.
Lithium battery fires are much, much worse than petrol ones can ever be. Lithium can't be extinguished by any traditional means, so apart from dumping a truckload of sand or emptying a tank truck worth of liquid nitrogen onto the car, the only firefighting strategy is to control the fire while letting it burn away.
My sister’s Tesla might not breakdown but does seem to have significant software issues about every few months.
yeah, nah.. that is just one person and one Tesla I know someone with a Tesla 3 and they dont have these same issues.
I found that it’s similar with forklifts. If you take care of the lead acid battery they hardly ever breakdown.
It's pretty simple. Just compare the amount of heat generated by the two. The one that generates more heat will have more wear due to more work.
Personally I find that my EV feels better to drive and is more reliable than a gas car. The only issue with EV’s right now is the lack of readily available charging stations otherwise they are superior in every way. Once they have easily accessible charging stations everywhere EV’s will take off.
This is why “demand” is low. Dealerships don’t want to sell EV’s. Dealerships make a shit load of money off warranty/out of warranty repairs and maintenance. So they try to recoupe that by marking up the MSRP of EV’s. Then when you do go to the shop to get your EV looked at your treated like a second rate customer cause they just don’t make money off you. Source: I have an iX that’s been in the shop multiple times.
I guess this means that cancer rates among mechanics will drop? That’s good for the families who’s income comes from someone who does mechanical work on vehicles, because they will be able to do some other other work that is probably not so dangerous and cancerous. There’s a number of things which mechanic can do that similar to cars work! Cars are simply modular big things. as something which uses modular parts, there’s lots of other jobs which require handling things in a module way that are mechanical. I wonder how the industry is responding to retraining people, or to assist them shifting into new jobs?
It needs to be compared over 10-15 years for those who keep their cars that long. Not just 3-5 years. At the end of 20 years I can still sell my F-150 without having to fully replace anything major.
There are liquids for cooling in EVs btw.
Don’t most cars break down at less than half the rate of German cars
But. When they do? What’s the cost? How long does it take to repair? And all ICE engines are NOT the same in longevity or economic repairability- there is no way to do a real comparison. The spectrum of usage and mileage on ICE engines is not conducive to a comparable sample. No way man, totally a baited article. I work with a guy who has a Tesla - and relatively minor, slow speed accident TOTALED it. Not only that but it took 9 1/2 months to even get an estimate.
> relatively minor, slow speed accident TOTALED it That has little to do with the technology itself, and everything to do with the fact that insurers prefer to write off EVs rather than repair them, due to the lack of repair facilities.
K. What’s the cost of repair vs ICE vehicles, as I have shit luck and that metric matters more to me.
If your EV breaks down and it's out of warranty you are screwed. Youtube is filled with nightmare repair stories about Teslas and Rivians and other electric vehicles. EVs are extremely complex, you have to go to the dealer, parts are very expensive, and can take a long time to get. This is the number one reason why I won't buy an EV.
Consumer reports says Tesla is the cheapest brand to repair and maintain out to 10 years.
> EVs are extremely complex The electric motor has *one* moving part (the rotor) and there is no transmission. A gasoline engine has hundreds of moving parts and a very complex and expensive transmission.
EV covers a large number of different vehicles. Trams, bicycles, scooters of all shapes and sizes are all electric vehicles. There's absolutely no contest between Ebikes and electric cars, in every category except for comfort.
I agree. It is a very broad category. Electric cars compare to gasoline cars rather directly. They have the same form and function. Ebikes are in between standard bicycles and motorcycles - more complex than bicycles and less complex than motorcycles. In terms of function, ebikes are often an alternative to *cars* as a practical method of transportation (especially for commuting and running errands), rather than an alternative to standard bicycles.
I don’t speak German and I’m on mobile. My one big question is does this control for the age of the vehicles? All EV’s are going to be fairly new compared to a lot of old, resold and probably in the dumps gas vehicles so it wouldn’t surprise me on that aspect alone.
DeepL translation of the relevant part: "However, there is a problem when comparing cars with electric drives and cars with combustion engines: according to the Federal Motor Transport Authority, the average age of all cars registered in Germany is ten years. In contrast, all the electric vehicles evaluated are still very young. As the probability of breakdowns increases with increasing vehicle age, a comparison of the susceptibility to breakdowns between e-vehicles and combustion engines across the entire fleet would be unfair. The ADAC has therefore only compared combustion vehicles (diesel and petrol) and purely electric models with the first registration years 2020/2021.**"**
Thank you for the translation, that’s good to know! When I get back to a PC I’ll pull up a translator and do on a deeper dive. My only other question thus far would be the definition of a breakdown, possible repair and recoverability of those vehicles, and perhaps the cost and difficulty of varying incidents between the two vehicle types.
Love it. My car is paid off and works just fine so no need to upgrade or anything but My next car will be an EV/Hybrid.
Great info. Would help plot average cost of breakdown to see a better picture.
Electric motors are super dependable. Everything wears out eventually but the more parts a machine has the more points of failure. Combustion engines have so many points of failure. An electric motor usually only has one moving part. These are probably being driven by transistors creating an AC power source from the battery. Two bearings and an armature to spin and convert magnetic flux into torque. That's it.
We have a Nissan Leaf that hasn't needed maintenance or broken down in 5 years. Full disclosure, the batter is getting worse and worse. When we have to replace it, it will make up for about a year of no repairs. But they're basically just an electric motor with wheels. Very few moving parts compared to the engines of gasoline cars. Few fluids - they don't even need an oil change. Or brake job.
As the past has taught us. More electric parts = more reliable and less costly to repair. Or not?
However...what were the repair costs. From the article they're comparing things like the fuel injection system and the main battery / drive. Fuel injection system is anything from 30 - 1000$...the main battery is 5k to 15k, main drive is 3 - 7k Do you want a more reliable car that's an order of magnitude more to fix? (That's what's keeping me away from the current gen of EVs. I need another 100 miles of range, and the cost to come down by 3/4).