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> I would love to see an affordable, simple, modular, maintainable, repairable electric car. One can dream... I applaud the dream, of course. As someone menti

> I would love to see an affordable, simple, modular, maintainable, repairable electric car. One can dream... I applaud the dream, of course. As someone mentioned, pretty much all older vehicles were infinitely more repairable than current designs, so, no USSR tech required. For the first ten or twelve years of my driving history I bought used cars with at least 80K miles (128 K km) in the odometer. This means I spent my weekends and some evenings under the hood or under the car. This is to say, I get it. The problem with electrics is that they are very far from "grease monkey" territory. When one starts dealing with high voltages and high current discharge capability, one very quickly leaves the domain of what the average person can and should be able to touch. In fact, lots of EE's lack the experience to safely deal with such devices. The good news is that they are much simpler (in the sense of the modules that make-up a vehicle) than the internal combustion version. First order repairs should take the form of changing modules. The factory can then deal with component level repair (think: motor controller).

wiseleo 5y ago
An electronics tech can repair a random failed motor controller. That information should absolutely not be limited to just factory. When I fix cars, most of the time I have to fix broken wires and faulty ground. Occasionally, I have to fix a failed component in the ECU. They are extremely easy to work on for someone skilled at microsoldering, which is not a hard skill to attain.
- robomartin 5y ago
  It isn't about being able to solder components. It's about just how dangerous it is to work on high power circuits. High voltage makes it even worse. And then, you need specialized test equipment and fixtures. Source: I used to own a company where we designed manufactured high power DC brush and brushless motor controllers. As a simple example, every motor controller had to be tested for short circuit protection under full load. The power supplies alone were outside the realm of anything normal. The motor controller, power supply and storage capacitors had to be in a custom explosion-proof enclosure for the test.

wiseleo 5y ago

An electronics tech can repair a random failed motor controller. That information should absolutely not be limited to just factory. When I fix cars, most of the time I have to fix broken wires and faulty ground. Occasionally, I have to fix a failed component in the ECU. They are extremely easy to work on for someone skilled at microsoldering, which is not a hard skill to attain.

robomartin 5y ago
It isn't about being able to solder components. It's about just how dangerous it is to work on high power circuits. High voltage makes it even worse. And then, you need specialized test equipment and fixtures. Source: I used to own a company where we designed manufactured high power DC brush and brushless motor controllers. As a simple example, every motor controller had to be tested for short circuit protection under full load. The power supplies alone were outside the realm of anything normal. The motor controller, power supply and storage capacitors had to be in a custom explosion-proof enclosure for the test.