14 ms·

Electric Vehicles Are Going to Suck; Here's Why [video]

67 points by southerntofu 4y ago

csours 4y ago
Disclosure: I work for GM, anything here is solely my own opinion and experience. I broadly agree with the motivation for the talk and many of the ideas presented, here's some more context from my point of view: Screens break. Nothing critical should ever be in a screen. Buttons and knobs work and are replaceable. (again my opinion, if you love your screens, good for you) --- This talk reminded me of the saying "they don't make them like they used to". I heard this saying very often when I was growing up in the 1980's and 90's. You don't hear it much anymore. People could repair cars from before the 80's. They also HAD TO repair cars from before the 80's, because a lot of stuff wore down quickly or broke. It was much harder for individuals to repair cars from the 80's, and even harder in the 90's, and you still had to repair them, because a lot of new systems were added that weren't fully baked. In this time frame, it made sense to say "they don't make them like they used to". If you rewind to the 70's, people could also say the same, because cars in the 60's were better than cars in the 70's - the oil crisis hit, insurance hit cars with too much horse power, smog systems were mandated, and a few more things really did make cars worse from a consumer perspective. But then in the 2000's, we worked out the computers and metallurgy and paint and coating processes and cars really did get better. Horsepower went back up, and fuel efficiency went up at the same time, which is frankly a miracle of engineering and deserves recognition. The computers managing ICE engines are pretty good now, actually, and so are materials and build processes. Even most plastic parts are pretty good now. I'm glossing over quite a lot of important detail, but my point is, I don't hear "they don't make them like they used to" very much any more. --- I don't know if manufacturers will voluntarily use the same standards, but Software Defined Vehicles are coming. Currently, cars are built with on the order of 50 electronic computer modules, and those modules are like appliances. You plug it in and it does what it does. There is some capability to flash the modules with parameters or sometimes firmware updates, but most are not programmable. Software Defined Vehicles (SDV) will provide manufacturers an API that supports upgrades, so you won't have to find a module in 2035 that was only available in 2022-2025 or whatever. We'll see how it actually turns out. --- Quirks and Features. I have a whole rant about quirks and features. Today's feature is just something that will be broken in 5 or 15 years. A new BMW is much more affordable than a 15 year old BMW (rabble rabble rabble). It's hard for companies to compete on durability, because today's durability is not apparent. Durability from 10 years ago is apparent. There are engineering trade-offs everywhere, and not just malicious or "value engineering" either. Lighter cars accelerate faster (yay) and use less fuel (yay), but reducing mass may weaken parts. --- EVs in junkyards - I don't think you'll see EVs in junkyards at a higher rate than ICE cars. Quite a lot of components from EVs can have a second life in industry or consumer applications. The batteries can be home power backup. The motors can be used in many applications. The parts can go to repair other cars (like normal). --- I think EVs are going to be really good in about 15 years. Bear in mind that the traditional automotive lifecycle is 5 years, so 15 years is a long time, but only 3 generations of vehicle product platform.
- LooseMarmoset 4y ago
  As someone who has repaired both old and new cars, I would agree. I've rebuilt a VW Beetle from the ground up - tore the whole engine apart, new bores, the works. I could do this in a couple of afternoons on the Beetle, but I don't think I could do it in a month on a modern car. However, I won't need to do it to a modern car. A Beetle with 100k miles is ready for a total rebuild. A modern car with 100k miles is ready for a fluids change. The biggest problem I have with newer cars is all the add-on stuff, and pickup trucks are the best example. My first truck, a 1985 F150 (straight-6 300, what a beautiful engine) didn't have power windows, locks, air conditioning, or even a radio. Why can't we buy a bare-bones vehicle anymore? You don't need that stuff on a farm or work vehicle. Why do we have to have touch screens and telemetry? Why do we have to have a full stack of software that is totally inaccessible to the end user? And what total idiots think that over-the-air interfaces (LTE) that let you program things like acceleration and braking were a good idea? I admit I do like backup cameras, though... I agree, in 15 years, we won't miss ICE for daily driving. EVs will be that good. I say this as someone who gets all nostalgic when I smell the motocross magic of VP and castor oil burning. We'll have solar panels on our roofs to help charge our vehicles, and I won't miss cleaning up 2-stroke trimmers and leaf blowers when they get all gummed up and won't start.
raxxorraxor 4y ago
Absolute agree with this. With reduced ability to repair them the ecological balance might even be worse than for conventional cars, even if you heavily focus on just carbon dioxide. I don't drive much and cars aren't a symbol of status anymore in my generation. So I have a 1000$ car (significant upgrade from my previous 500$ car) that gets repaired by a friend. It is extremely cheap for me. While I am by no means a car mechanic, attaching another piece of metal or exchanging some parts can be quite fun. But repairs are simply not possible, even by qualified mechanics if they don't have access to proprietary diagnostics software that you sometimes need to just reset some error state. Of course a 0.50$ sensor also does cost hundreds of dollars if you need to get them from the manufacturer. The small circuit attached to the sensor supplies power and DRM. It would probably cost another 0.50$. The guy that blew up his Tesla was right, although Tesla isn't even the worst offender. The car industry is full of this shit.
- ChuckNorris89 4y ago
  Same thoughts. The EV revolution is one step forward, one major step back. This hasn't started with EVs though. The frog was being boiled for the last 15 or so years with ICE cars. Like you said, repairing any modern car is a huge DRM minefield designed to milk the customer dry. I had an old Fiat which was a delight to repair. You could tell everything was designed to be easily accessible for quick and easy repairs with basic tools or even tool-less. Air filters were just held in place with clips you can undo in 2 seconds and swap them yourself. Now I own a modern Fiat and the filters are bolted down with custom screws and even the user manual tells you to visit your dealer to ... replace your air filters. Sorry, but fuck off Fiat! That's the last time I'm giving you my money. I hope the EU fines your greedy ass for these deliberate anti consumer designs. Though I would expect Italy to veto any such moves. It's no wonder that some of the most desirable second hand cars are the one build around the mid 2000's as they have enough electronics for safety and comfort while still not having enough planned obsolescence built in, being reliable and cheap and easy to repair. Modern cars are becoming an expensive subscription service rather than something you own and it seems like the big German brands are leading the pack.
  - mantas 4y ago
orwin 4y ago
Ok, i kind of agree, but not totally (disclaimer: did not watch the entirety, it's too long, so maybe the caveat i put are are the end of the video). Big anecdata: We have old automotive, and especially Mercedes vans, with no replacement parts anymore. Those usually cost a fortune. two summers ago, i went in one of those van to Lyon. The van is falling into pieces, but was still ok to drive. Until it wasn't. We were sure it was the end of its life, so we took an hostel nearby and look into car cemetery (don't know the actual name in english). We found a weird garage and my friends, who was very attached to this van, wanted to give it a shot. The garage wasn't looking professional. The mechanics looked nothing like the mechanics in our remote, rural area (they looked very young), but they were the only one available (i think the insurance wasn't going to pay anyway, so it wasn't sanctioned mechanics either, lot of under the hood repairs and stuff i think). There was only scooters, solex and very, very old motorbikes. They 3d printed a few pieces, slow melted rubber tube to make them smaller, and milled a few metal pieces. For one of them they said "we are not sure if we got the inside totally right, we had to cut the OG in two and ours isn't as smooth, you should come back in two years and we will check it out". We weren't confident, but we never had a motor-related issue the rest of the trip (and we traveled through the Alps...) Two years later, my friend went back there, left his van for a week. They recreated everything. Repaired his doors, the seats, the mechanical windows and every piece that looked fragile was re-milled from metal (or actually 3d printed when no force was applied and only the rust and their thinness was a danger). I think he should change his motor entirely, it guzzle too much gas, but anyway, this might be the future. Two guys with obvious talent from a poor area of a big city basically rebuilding an engine/car from scratch. One day, if we manage to force a law that force manufacturers to put their plans online once the piece isn't made anymore, we will be able repair our stuff ourselves, in fab-labs or places like this kind of garage.
- heavenlyblue 4y ago
  Did they have access to a metal 3d-printer?
  - orwin 4y ago
    No, but they had an automated plasma cutter and an automated 'mill' (the French term is 'fraiseuse'). I don't know if they updated their tools during the last 2 years. From what I understood, they rented their tools and equipment (above the counter) to a lot of low wage workers/gig workers (it was on the fringe of the less reputable/poorest neighborhood of the city), so the overall atmosphere was weird for a garage. It was like a fab-lab for the working poor.
dhsysusbsjsi 4y ago
For an much more informative talk on the future of EV’s, energy and so on, watch Tony Seba, who actually studies these trends for a living. The Tony Seba version is much more optimistic, instead actually the data shows cars are lasting twice as long or more as ICE, which is easily provable by watching what fleets do. They are much more sensitive to longevity than upfront capital cost. Cars are tipped to work for 1 million km’s soon. Not to mention grid optimisation and a whole another topic on synthetic protein development and it’s possible we will actually beat the 2° target just with technology and human greed chasing lower cost goods.
- andoma 4y ago
  According to Hertz in their 2022 Q2 report [0] (pg. 11), they are spending 50-60% on EV maintenance compared to ICE. [0] https://ir.hertz.com/static-files/bf4780e2-5bd6-4236-8b11-edd7c4765c8e https://ir.hertz.com/static-files/bf4780e2-5bd6-4236-8b11-ed...
  - asah 4y ago
    This seems due to EVs being primarily rented to Uber/Lyft drivers, where they experience 5-7x fewer "touches" due to weekly rentals. (common sense: cleaning, body and interior repairs, tires, windows/locks, climate control, etc should all be the same - implying that motor-train maintenance is half the total maintenance cost, and the EVs need zero maintenance...) --copy/paste-- Stephen M. Scherr - Hertz Global Holdings, Inc. - CEO & Director The answer is unequivocally yes. In fact, last week, we did kind of re-underwrite on the EV fleet, how it's playing, how it's presenting relative to what we thought it would do on the initial decision to go in. So I'd say a couple of things. First of all, we continue to take delivery of Teslas, and we'll continue to do that, number one. Number two, I think you should expect in the coming months that you'll see announcements from us about purchase of electric vehicles in sizable quantity from other OEMs as we try to sort of build out kind of a broad population of vehicles across a range of OEMs, and we'll see those at very attractive kind of price entry points. Third, we are capturing, I think, as I said in the remarks, kind of a $30 to $35 premium on this. That premium has been fairly sustainable. And in the TNC channel, we're renting these for about $334, $335. We have found kind of just the right price point where, given all sorts of externalities around economics for an Uber driver, they want to and are excited about renting that, and they can turn a profit there. What that means for us, by the way, particularly in the TNC side, is fewer touch points on the car over a course of a month, maybe by as many as 5 to 7x. That reduces cost considerably. We're obviously passing some of that on because the weekly rental is lower for the TNC driver than the per diem or per day rental out to the normal RAC. On maintenance, I think Kenny said to you, we are running kind of 50% to 60% of what maintenance costs are on ICE vehicles. That's roughly in line with where we are. If there's any one surprise, it's probably slightly higher expense on tires, but not much more, and that's embedded in the figure I'm giving you. So I would say, overall, we're very pleased with the results. They're coming in roughly in line with what we thought when we first underwrote the move in this strategic direction.
otikik 4y ago
If a company released an Easy-To-Repair EV, and that gave them a huge competitive advantage, then its competitors would have to follow through or perish. But right now EVs are still targeting rich guys, for which the car is a symbol of status. Those people don't care about repairability. I think the only one who is trying to cast a wider network in the west is Dacia, with its Spring. I don't know how much repair-friendly those are. Probably it's still locked down like everyone else's. From the POV of car manufacturers this is a risky business decision. "Can this new audience and the increase in sells justify my loss in repairs?". Regulations will eventually happen, at least in EU. I guess we will see how effective they are.
- dzhiurgis 4y ago
  Making it more repairable also means it's more prone to break. Look at Apple's laptops - one blob of RAM and CPU is way less likely to break than huge connectors that you gonna mingle with your greasy fingers. Waterproof iPhone is way harder to open and seal after, but it's a fricking waterproof iPhone. Mine has been in water multiple times now (also slapped concrete 10x times with no case with 0 damage).
  - actionfromafar 4y ago
    This is stretching an analog way too far. A car is necessarily a mechanical contraption. There is no inherent conflict between reliable and easily repairable in that domain.
    - panick21_ 4y ago
      Actually you are disagreeing with vehicle engineers. Because every single connection is a failure point. Every screw, every clip and so on is a failure point. A very reliable car would be cast in a single part. That would not be reparable. If you want to make things reparable you need to make them in many parts that can be individually replaced. That means many failure points.
- anovikov 4y ago
  Electric cars make for about 1/4 of all European vehicles sold these days and about 1/6 worldwide. They are no longer targeting just the rich people. Most electric cars sold aren't luxury at all.
scrappyjoe 4y ago
Electric vehicles (at least, _todays_ electric vehicles) are eminently hackable. The people over at openinverter.org are doing amazing work implementing open source controller boards for OEM inverters. Sure, a lot of ICE-based skill sets are going to become obsolete. But, as things stand now, if you have solid CAN sniffing skills and can code C++ (I can’t), you can make Leaf, Tesla, Prius, Mitsubishi or (soon) BMW components do your bidding. The real risk is if OEMs adopt an obfuscatory stance and start locking people out of CAN networks. But I haven’t heard of that happening yet.
- scrappyjoe 4y ago
  Some Google search terms for anyone interested in the EV hacking space. Openinverter SimpBMS Orion BMS Lebowski controller Zombieverter
imdsm 4y ago
How easy were ICE vehicles to repair in the 20s?
foxhill 4y ago
i honestly think gasoline is a far batter energy storage platform for longer distance, personal journeys. * far higher energy density, ~45MJ/kg compared to LiPo's ~1MJ/kg. (in fact the latter is probably the only reason LiPo is safe at all - more on that) * essentially immediate "recharge" time * 100+ years of ICE drivetrain expertise * LiPo is a "two-part"-like fuel - it has everything it needs to release the energy stored inside of it (as opposed to gasoline that requires an external supply of oxygen). improvements to energy density necessarily make it less safe: LiPo battery fires are very difficult to extinguish, and release most of their energy in a short period of time. to be clear, EVs have a place, for example, congested and population dense areas, where the primary concern is air quality, rather than global CO2 emissions. i really think consumerism/capatilism coupled with society's less than healthy relationship with science & futurism have made EVs seem a lot more attractive than they really are. i'm not so sure i'm comfortable with the conditions of the mines where the rare-earth metals required for all these battery packs comes from. IMO, technologies that capture carbon from the air and produce gasoline are far more attractive. the energy for which should naturally come from the sun, even if this process is "inefficient" - we receive the energy regardless of whether we use it or not. more broadly speaking, right-to-repair/user serviceability has been degraded for most consumer platforms. even modern gasoline cars face the same problems as EVs. work (likely legislation) needs to be done on every front to improve this, in all facets of technology.
- audunw 4y ago
  You seem to be under the common misconception that it's the energy density of batteries that make them unsafe. This is completely false. There's nothing inherent about battery energy density that makes them more dangerous. What makes LiPo/Li-ion unsafe is that they have a flammable liquid electrolyte in the middle, that's both responsible for starting the fire (the explosion you see with some battery fires) and for failing to keep the anode/cathode separated afterwards. LiFePo doesn't have significantly less energy density, but they're far safer. Same with sodium batteries. Solid state lithium ion batteries have more energy density than Li-Ion/LiPo in some cases, but are generally far more safe, since there's no flammable electrolyte. EVs, even with LiPo/Li-ion, are FAR safer than ICE vehicles, there's just no competition. Lots of oil and gasoline being piped around, with potential for leaks + old electrical wiring = recipe for disaster. We had a huge parking garage fire here in Norway recently, started - as they often do - by an ICE vehicle. Lots of EVs in the garage, but not a SINGLE EV battery pack caught fire. If all of them were EVs, the fire would be far less serious (the interior of the cars still burned, but that's all). EV battery fires are tricky to extinguish, I'll give you that. But the fire department here in Norway say they already have the needed training/experience, and make it clear that EVs are far better for fire safety in general. As for your points on whether they're better for longer distance, personal journeys.. I mean, yeah.. at some point they are. If you're driving 1000km in a day I'd definitely agree. But how many people do that often? * far higher energy density: don't forget to account for efficiency and regenerative breaking (hybrids get some of that benefit, but then you get all the downsides of both technologies) .. practical range difference is much closer than what your numbers would indicate. For most people the range of EVs is good enough, even for long trips. * essentially immediate "recharge" time: Yeah, but it's still a couple of minutes and you have to stand there while it's filling. Almost every single road-trip charging session for me has been: 1. spend 30 seconds plugging in and beeping the payment card (with Tesla you don't even have to do this). 2. walk into a restaurant/cafe/grocery store and take a pee, drink some coffee, buy groceries for the trip, etc.. 3. come back to a fully charged car * 100+ years of ICE drivetrain expertise: This is totally pointless. The only reason you need that expertise with ICE drivetrain is because it's so hard to maintain. Most EVs simply don't have anything to maintain, other than what all cars have (break pads, air filters, etc.). And I've never heard anyone here in Norway having trouble getting their EV fixed due to inexperience. The training isn't hard. You can even get people to change individual battery cells on some cars now. * The last point I covered above.
hkt 4y ago
It'd be nice - even without excellent, compelling arguments like this one - if we relegated cars to being something you hire when you need, displacing them with bicycles and public transport. I guess CCC being from Germany, they've already experienced how good this can be.
audunw 4y ago
I didn't watch the whole thing, but did she mention electric bikes? IMO, Electric cars, or cars in general, are just fine. We just did a family road-trip around Denmark with our Ioniq 5 and it's absolutely perfect for that. The thing is, we should be renting them when we need them, and use bikes more the rest of the time. Electric bikes are quickly becoming a viable alternative to cars in many bike-friendly cities, and we're seeing an explosion in the choices of electric cargo bikes. Not Just Bikes has an excellent new video on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQhzEnWCgHA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQhzEnWCgHA I rode my electric bike to work today in fact. Instead of our EV, ironically. But our family uses only one car at least. We don't necessarily need simpler cars, we need better electric bikes. Or electric motorbikes/scooters. And better public transportation. Something like this would be a nice option for some usecases: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPyIwY2hJ_A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPyIwY2hJ_A GetAround is making renting cars more viable too. We do actually have a second car now, but I've been renting the old one out until we're ready to sell it and until we're sure we can handle two kids in kindergarten without it. It's been way more popular than I anticipated.
- Tade0 4y ago
  > We don't necessarily need simpler cars, we need better electric bikes. Or electric motorbikes/scooters. Or golf carts. Just like so many creatures in nature evolve into crabs, personal transport appears to evolve into golf carts. The Japanese have kei cars, which are just heavy golf carts and there exist cargo bikes, which are just underpowered, three-wheeled golf carts. There are even golf-cart oriented towns: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcVGqtmd2wM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcVGqtmd2wM
- fho 4y ago
  Something something velomobile: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velomobile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velomobile I am right now shopping for one after ten years of not being able to afford and/or justify one. "But you will get killed!" ... probably not.
xwdv 4y ago
This is mostly preaching to the choir. Around here we’ve long known EVs aren’t everything they’re made out to be, and for a vast majority of use cases ICE vehicles are far better and more reliable. Even from an environmental standpoint, the output from low emission vehicles these days is mild, and better than firing up dirty power plants to charge electric vehicles en mass.
tomohawk 4y ago
Enticed by massive subsidies and chastened by threatened penalties, car industry makes a product few can afford and which doesn't actually meet customers needs. Who could have predicted that making products based on politician mandates instead of what customers are asking for would produce sucky products?
ZeroGravitas 4y ago
This has nothing to do with EVs.
DayDollar 4y ago
Actually, there is a market position here, for somebody willing to venture. A chain of "bomb" defusers, who take the product, replace or remove the breakable components, add a modular bus and the ability to add other open source components - then you get a "forever" product. As long as the product works, you pay a small suscription per month. How about a nice name. Eternia. Anyon willing to invest? At worst, you can still scim off as a middle man like some selective add blockers..
Rackedup 4y ago
"You need a transmission" -> luckily, no
- Rackedup 4y ago
  Elon did try to put one in Teslas at the beginning though...
cabirum 4y ago
Before the mass EV adoption, shouldn't we upgrade the power grid? The Brits call it "TV pickup", the synchronized surges of electricity consumption, by electric kettles and such. Now consider 10s thousands of EVs start charging after work.
- mpol 4y ago
  Or maybe both can happen at the same time? One doesn't have to exclude the other.
- ethagknight 4y ago
  EVs can schedule to charge at night time during low grid strain, it's a trivial matter that can be improved over decades.
- perlgeek 4y ago
  The mass adoption of EVs will be gradual, so we'll have to upgrade the grid as demand rises.
  - cabirum 4y ago
    Consumer adoption is gradual (s-curve), enterprise tends to order large batches - fleets of taxis, cargo, delivery and service vehicles - so adoption in steps. As the night falls, they all start charging at 00:00 with a huuge load spike on the grid. My bet is soon after, night time will cease to be the cheapest time to charge. And EV companies will be required to pay taxes to cover infrastructure costs , in turn hiking EV price.
- bryanlarsen 4y ago
  EV's as a rule don't charge after work. Most (all?) EV's allow you to charge when the electricity is cheapest -- at night. An average daily charge for an EV is < 10 kWh since the average daily usage of a car is < 40 miles. That's less than what a whole house A/C will use on a hot day. So any grid that can handle A/C charging on a hot day can handle EV charging at night. Not all grids can, but that means that they'll need to be upgraded whether or not we add EV's to the grid.
MomoXenosaga 4y ago
Whether or not they suck is irrelevant climate change IS going to change our lifestyle and you will thank Jesus for your tiny electric microcar. It's time to accept that the age of excess and unlimited resources are over.
FloatArtifact 4y ago
As a general question as car manufacturers bypass dealerships shipping directly to customers, does this change the right to repair, especially from a legal perspective?
dsego 4y ago
Well, my first regular servicing of a Skoda ICE took from 9am to 3pm. The traditional filter and oil change was done quickly but the car got stuck on some firmware update from the factory and they didn't want to interrupt it.
- rad_gruchalski 4y ago
  Do you think that if an electric Enyaq got stuck on the same update the situation would be different?
  - dsego 4y ago
    Probably not.
cameronh90 4y ago
This seems to be based on a faulty premise that cars aren't lasting as long as they used to last and that EVs will be more of the same. The video claims this is due to planned obsolescence facilitated by electronics making the car impossible to repair. I don't believe this is true at all. Battery lifetime aside, cars are very reliable now compared to the past. Multiple studies back this up, but I think most people must anecdotally have noticed fewer broken down cars on the side of the highway and their own cars needing less maintenance and breaking down less often. Yes, modern cars are often less repairable. Lack of repairability is sometimes malevolent, but most times it's just a side effect of making things safer and more reliable. For example, engine computers reduce engine wear and prevent knocking, sealed systems leak less, safety systems require sensors in fenders and wing mirrors and crumple zones result in cars being written off. I have had a car that would have suffered a catastrophic engine failure in the past, but thanks to modern sensors and electronics, instead shut itself down, preventing serious damage. By comparison, my old carburettor car was incredibly easy to repair just using tools in my toolbox, but it always had something going wrong, was a bitch to start in winter and driving in wet leaf conditions was seriously terrifying. My current car is a 2009 petrol with 150k miles and has never had any work outside of the routine service schedule or basic consumables.
- bryanlarsen 4y ago
  Chinese EV's and the Model 3 Standard Range and most of the upcoming affordable EV's are all shipping with LFP batteries rather than the standard NMC batteries. LFP batteries are usually rated for 750,000 kilometres of range.
  - cameronh90 4y ago
    Indeed. I didn't go into EV battery tech because it's still relatively new technology and doesn't really have any relevance to the planned obsolescence angle. But as you point out, newer battery packs have very long design lifetimes. It remains to be seen how well this will translate into actual lifetimes, but at this point it seems like EVs will end up being much more reliable than ICEs. Almost every other part of an EV is much simpler and more reliable. Honestly, even with modern ICEs, it's rarely the engine and drivetrain causing problems towards the end of its life. The interior starts to fall apart, the weather proofing fails, buttons stop working, things start to rattle, etc. until eventually you get bored of the constant minor repairs, meanwhile new cars are so much more comfortable and better designed, better fuel economy, lower emissions/taxes, etc. I only drive an old car because I don't drive often.
kubanczyk 4y ago
> Short-lived electric cars aren't environmentally sound at all. Well, electric cars can produce minimal atmospheric emissions, or medium, or huge. It depends. What I'm missing from the talk is that the total emissions of ICE cars are inherently bound to be higher. Atmospheric. Emissions. These are the immediate problem, not an abstract "environmental soundness". OP is actively diffusing attention from where the poor of the world need it the most. Yes, I'm saying that the scrapyard full of five-year-old electric cars is bearable and can be dealt with much less priority than the real environmental disaster we're heading into, full-steam. I applaud the drive to buy less stuff, I really get that. I also get that our civilization has its own fundamental dynamics and you cannot just look at the buyer-side and treat that as an independent system. It's quite telling that OP's response to "why even focus on private property of cars?" is "because I want to" (at 30:40).
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- Sebb767 4y ago
  > Yes, I'm saying that the scrapyard full of five-year-old electric cars is bearable and can be dealt with much less priority than the real environmental disaster we're heading into, full-steam. Well, the people that owned these cars won't go "welp, was nice owning a car for five years, let's go public transport now". Instead, they'll order a new EV and cause a massive amount of emissions during its production, which might even result in more emissions than if they simply continued to drive their old ICE all along. So yes, this is very much a problem we'll need to deal with now.
  - kubanczyk 4y ago
    > a massive amount of emissions during its production It's massive today. Why do you predict it will remain massive? It's not like producing EV physically requires pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, like when using combustion engines.
alldayeveryday 4y ago
Environmental and energy policies are both down wind of politics. I view electric cars as a complete miss - that is to say that they aim to solve the wrong problem. Now I am not advocating that we abandon electric car development, rather I mean that they will not solve the underlying political issues that dictate our solutions in the environmental and energy realms. Take for example how we approach the design of cities, neighborhoods, where we place food growth centers, etc. A different design could render car transportation greatly reduced such that electric vs ICE would be inconsequential. Changing where we live and how supply chains work would have a much larger impact than a change to how cars get from one place to another, and by a massive magnitude. But such a change would require the necessary political will.
Tade0 4y ago
I could maybe get behind this if it weren't for the fact that an old Nissan LEAF can be updated with a battery from the next generation model because the manufacturer didn't bother to develop a new powertrain from scratch.
pabs3 4y ago
As full computers on wheels, probably they are going to be full of spyware, Internet facing vulnerabilities etc too.
ezoe 4y ago
I don't bother to watch the linked video but traditional car is a poor choice to be an electric vehicle. Because it's simply too heavy. Recent improvements on the hub motor and battery made it possible for the various light-weight toys to be a practical city commuter. Kick scooter, unicycle, hoverboard, skateboard, onewheel and such. Unfortunately, the law isn't up to date with these vehicles in most countries. It probably took us decades, if not a century to accept these light-weight electric vehicles.
jacknews 4y ago
This problem of too much integration is not limited to cars. The same for washing machines, TV's, etc, etc. The 'smart' electronics and UI are always early to break, become obsolete or unsupported, and they're usually by far the most expensive 'component' to repair or replace, and often aren't even available after a few years. Also they're completely custom - there's no way to substitute something generic. We need to get back to more modular hardware.

67 points by southerntofu 4y ago

Disclosure: I work for GM, anything here is solely my own opinion and experience. I broadly agree with the motivation for the talk and many of the ideas presented, here's some more context from my point of view: Screens break. Nothing critical should ever be in a screen. Buttons and knobs work and are replaceable. (again my opinion, if you love your screens, good for you) --- This talk reminded me of the saying "they don't make them like they used to". I heard this saying very often when I was growing up in the 1980's and 90's. You don't hear it much anymore. People could repair cars from before the 80's. They also HAD TO repair cars from before the 80's, because a lot of stuff wore down quickly or broke. It was much harder for individuals to repair cars from the 80's, and even harder in the 90's, and you still had to repair them, because a lot of new systems were added that weren't fully baked. In this time frame, it made sense to say "they don't make them like they used to". If you rewind to the 70's, people could also say the same, because cars in the 60's were better than cars in the 70's - the oil crisis hit, insurance hit cars with too much horse power, smog systems were mandated, and a few more things really did make cars worse from a consumer perspective. But then in the 2000's, we worked out the computers and metallurgy and paint and coating processes and cars really did get better. Horsepower went back up, and fuel efficiency went up at the same time, which is frankly a miracle of engineering and deserves recognition. The computers managing ICE engines are pretty good now, actually, and so are materials and build processes. Even most plastic parts are pretty good now. I'm glossing over quite a lot of important detail, but my point is, I don't hear "they don't make them like they used to" very much any more. --- I don't know if manufacturers will voluntarily use the same standards, but Software Defined Vehicles are coming. Currently, cars are built with on the order of 50 electronic computer modules, and those modules are like appliances. You plug it in and it does what it does. There is some capability to flash the modules with parameters or sometimes firmware updates, but most are not programmable. Software Defined Vehicles (SDV) will provide manufacturers an API that supports upgrades, so you won't have to find a module in 2035 that was only available in 2022-2025 or whatever. We'll see how it actually turns out. --- Quirks and Features. I have a whole rant about quirks and features. Today's feature is just something that will be broken in 5 or 15 years. A new BMW is much more affordable than a 15 year old BMW (rabble rabble rabble). It's hard for companies to compete on durability, because today's durability is not apparent. Durability from 10 years ago is apparent. There are engineering trade-offs everywhere, and not just malicious or "value engineering" either. Lighter cars accelerate faster (yay) and use less fuel (yay), but reducing mass may weaken parts. --- EVs in junkyards - I don't think you'll see EVs in junkyards at a higher rate than ICE cars. Quite a lot of components from EVs can have a second life in industry or consumer applications. The batteries can be home power backup. The motors can be used in many applications. The parts can go to repair other cars (like normal). --- I think EVs are going to be really good in about 15 years. Bear in mind that the traditional automotive lifecycle is 5 years, so 15 years is a long time, but only 3 generations of vehicle product platform.

LooseMarmoset 4y ago
As someone who has repaired both old and new cars, I would agree. I've rebuilt a VW Beetle from the ground up - tore the whole engine apart, new bores, the works. I could do this in a couple of afternoons on the Beetle, but I don't think I could do it in a month on a modern car. However, I won't need to do it to a modern car. A Beetle with 100k miles is ready for a total rebuild. A modern car with 100k miles is ready for a fluids change. The biggest problem I have with newer cars is all the add-on stuff, and pickup trucks are the best example. My first truck, a 1985 F150 (straight-6 300, what a beautiful engine) didn't have power windows, locks, air conditioning, or even a radio. Why can't we buy a bare-bones vehicle anymore? You don't need that stuff on a farm or work vehicle. Why do we have to have touch screens and telemetry? Why do we have to have a full stack of software that is totally inaccessible to the end user? And what total idiots think that over-the-air interfaces (LTE) that let you program things like acceleration and braking were a good idea? I admit I do like backup cameras, though... I agree, in 15 years, we won't miss ICE for daily driving. EVs will be that good. I say this as someone who gets all nostalgic when I smell the motocross magic of VP and castor oil burning. We'll have solar panels on our roofs to help charge our vehicles, and I won't miss cleaning up 2-stroke trimmers and leaf blowers when they get all gummed up and won't start.

raxxorraxor 4y ago

Absolute agree with this. With reduced ability to repair them the ecological balance might even be worse than for conventional cars, even if you heavily focus on just carbon dioxide. I don't drive much and cars aren't a symbol of status anymore in my generation. So I have a 1000$ car (significant upgrade from my previous 500$ car) that gets repaired by a friend. It is extremely cheap for me. While I am by no means a car mechanic, attaching another piece of metal or exchanging some parts can be quite fun. But repairs are simply not possible, even by qualified mechanics if they don't have access to proprietary diagnostics software that you sometimes need to just reset some error state. Of course a 0.50$ sensor also does cost hundreds of dollars if you need to get them from the manufacturer. The small circuit attached to the sensor supplies power and DRM. It would probably cost another 0.50$. The guy that blew up his Tesla was right, although Tesla isn't even the worst offender. The car industry is full of this shit.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago
Same thoughts. The EV revolution is one step forward, one major step back. This hasn't started with EVs though. The frog was being boiled for the last 15 or so years with ICE cars. Like you said, repairing any modern car is a huge DRM minefield designed to milk the customer dry. I had an old Fiat which was a delight to repair. You could tell everything was designed to be easily accessible for quick and easy repairs with basic tools or even tool-less. Air filters were just held in place with clips you can undo in 2 seconds and swap them yourself. Now I own a modern Fiat and the filters are bolted down with custom screws and even the user manual tells you to visit your dealer to ... replace your air filters. Sorry, but fuck off Fiat! That's the last time I'm giving you my money. I hope the EU fines your greedy ass for these deliberate anti consumer designs. Though I would expect Italy to veto any such moves. It's no wonder that some of the most desirable second hand cars are the one build around the mid 2000's as they have enough electronics for safety and comfort while still not having enough planned obsolescence built in, being reliable and cheap and easy to repair. Modern cars are becoming an expensive subscription service rather than something you own and it seems like the big German brands are leading the pack.
- mantas 4y ago

orwin 4y ago

Ok, i kind of agree, but not totally (disclaimer: did not watch the entirety, it's too long, so maybe the caveat i put are are the end of the video). Big anecdata: We have old automotive, and especially Mercedes vans, with no replacement parts anymore. Those usually cost a fortune. two summers ago, i went in one of those van to Lyon. The van is falling into pieces, but was still ok to drive. Until it wasn't. We were sure it was the end of its life, so we took an hostel nearby and look into car cemetery (don't know the actual name in english). We found a weird garage and my friends, who was very attached to this van, wanted to give it a shot. The garage wasn't looking professional. The mechanics looked nothing like the mechanics in our remote, rural area (they looked very young), but they were the only one available (i think the insurance wasn't going to pay anyway, so it wasn't sanctioned mechanics either, lot of under the hood repairs and stuff i think). There was only scooters, solex and very, very old motorbikes. They 3d printed a few pieces, slow melted rubber tube to make them smaller, and milled a few metal pieces. For one of them they said "we are not sure if we got the inside totally right, we had to cut the OG in two and ours isn't as smooth, you should come back in two years and we will check it out". We weren't confident, but we never had a motor-related issue the rest of the trip (and we traveled through the Alps...) Two years later, my friend went back there, left his van for a week. They recreated everything. Repaired his doors, the seats, the mechanical windows and every piece that looked fragile was re-milled from metal (or actually 3d printed when no force was applied and only the rust and their thinness was a danger). I think he should change his motor entirely, it guzzle too much gas, but anyway, this might be the future. Two guys with obvious talent from a poor area of a big city basically rebuilding an engine/car from scratch. One day, if we manage to force a law that force manufacturers to put their plans online once the piece isn't made anymore, we will be able repair our stuff ourselves, in fab-labs or places like this kind of garage.

heavenlyblue 4y ago
Did they have access to a metal 3d-printer?
- orwin 4y ago
  No, but they had an automated plasma cutter and an automated 'mill' (the French term is 'fraiseuse'). I don't know if they updated their tools during the last 2 years. From what I understood, they rented their tools and equipment (above the counter) to a lot of low wage workers/gig workers (it was on the fringe of the less reputable/poorest neighborhood of the city), so the overall atmosphere was weird for a garage. It was like a fab-lab for the working poor.

dhsysusbsjsi 4y ago

For an much more informative talk on the future of EV’s, energy and so on, watch Tony Seba, who actually studies these trends for a living. The Tony Seba version is much more optimistic, instead actually the data shows cars are lasting twice as long or more as ICE, which is easily provable by watching what fleets do. They are much more sensitive to longevity than upfront capital cost. Cars are tipped to work for 1 million km’s soon. Not to mention grid optimisation and a whole another topic on synthetic protein development and it’s possible we will actually beat the 2° target just with technology and human greed chasing lower cost goods.

andoma 4y ago
According to Hertz in their 2022 Q2 report [0] (pg. 11), they are spending 50-60% on EV maintenance compared to ICE. [0] https://ir.hertz.com/static-files/bf4780e2-5bd6-4236-8b11-edd7c4765c8e https://ir.hertz.com/static-files/bf4780e2-5bd6-4236-8b11-ed...
- asah 4y ago
  This seems due to EVs being primarily rented to Uber/Lyft drivers, where they experience 5-7x fewer "touches" due to weekly rentals. (common sense: cleaning, body and interior repairs, tires, windows/locks, climate control, etc should all be the same - implying that motor-train maintenance is half the total maintenance cost, and the EVs need zero maintenance...) --copy/paste-- Stephen M. Scherr - Hertz Global Holdings, Inc. - CEO & Director The answer is unequivocally yes. In fact, last week, we did kind of re-underwrite on the EV fleet, how it's playing, how it's presenting relative to what we thought it would do on the initial decision to go in. So I'd say a couple of things. First of all, we continue to take delivery of Teslas, and we'll continue to do that, number one. Number two, I think you should expect in the coming months that you'll see announcements from us about purchase of electric vehicles in sizable quantity from other OEMs as we try to sort of build out kind of a broad population of vehicles across a range of OEMs, and we'll see those at very attractive kind of price entry points. Third, we are capturing, I think, as I said in the remarks, kind of a $30 to $35 premium on this. That premium has been fairly sustainable. And in the TNC channel, we're renting these for about $334, $335. We have found kind of just the right price point where, given all sorts of externalities around economics for an Uber driver, they want to and are excited about renting that, and they can turn a profit there. What that means for us, by the way, particularly in the TNC side, is fewer touch points on the car over a course of a month, maybe by as many as 5 to 7x. That reduces cost considerably. We're obviously passing some of that on because the weekly rental is lower for the TNC driver than the per diem or per day rental out to the normal RAC. On maintenance, I think Kenny said to you, we are running kind of 50% to 60% of what maintenance costs are on ICE vehicles. That's roughly in line with where we are. If there's any one surprise, it's probably slightly higher expense on tires, but not much more, and that's embedded in the figure I'm giving you. So I would say, overall, we're very pleased with the results. They're coming in roughly in line with what we thought when we first underwrote the move in this strategic direction.

otikik 4y ago

If a company released an Easy-To-Repair EV, and that gave them a huge competitive advantage, then its competitors would have to follow through or perish. But right now EVs are still targeting rich guys, for which the car is a symbol of status. Those people don't care about repairability. I think the only one who is trying to cast a wider network in the west is Dacia, with its Spring. I don't know how much repair-friendly those are. Probably it's still locked down like everyone else's. From the POV of car manufacturers this is a risky business decision. "Can this new audience and the increase in sells justify my loss in repairs?". Regulations will eventually happen, at least in EU. I guess we will see how effective they are.

dzhiurgis 4y ago
Making it more repairable also means it's more prone to break. Look at Apple's laptops - one blob of RAM and CPU is way less likely to break than huge connectors that you gonna mingle with your greasy fingers. Waterproof iPhone is way harder to open and seal after, but it's a fricking waterproof iPhone. Mine has been in water multiple times now (also slapped concrete 10x times with no case with 0 damage).
- actionfromafar 4y ago
  This is stretching an analog way too far. A car is necessarily a mechanical contraption. There is no inherent conflict between reliable and easily repairable in that domain.
  - panick21_ 4y ago
    Actually you are disagreeing with vehicle engineers. Because every single connection is a failure point. Every screw, every clip and so on is a failure point. A very reliable car would be cast in a single part. That would not be reparable. If you want to make things reparable you need to make them in many parts that can be individually replaced. That means many failure points.
anovikov 4y ago
Electric cars make for about 1/4 of all European vehicles sold these days and about 1/6 worldwide. They are no longer targeting just the rich people. Most electric cars sold aren't luxury at all.

scrappyjoe 4y ago

Electric vehicles (at least, _todays_ electric vehicles) are eminently hackable. The people over at openinverter.org are doing amazing work implementing open source controller boards for OEM inverters. Sure, a lot of ICE-based skill sets are going to become obsolete. But, as things stand now, if you have solid CAN sniffing skills and can code C++ (I can’t), you can make Leaf, Tesla, Prius, Mitsubishi or (soon) BMW components do your bidding. The real risk is if OEMs adopt an obfuscatory stance and start locking people out of CAN networks. But I haven’t heard of that happening yet.

scrappyjoe 4y ago
Some Google search terms for anyone interested in the EV hacking space. Openinverter SimpBMS Orion BMS Lebowski controller Zombieverter

imdsm 4y ago

How easy were ICE vehicles to repair in the 20s?

foxhill 4y ago

i honestly think gasoline is a far batter energy storage platform for longer distance, personal journeys. * far higher energy density, ~45MJ/kg compared to LiPo's ~1MJ/kg. (in fact the latter is probably the only reason LiPo is safe at all - more on that) * essentially immediate "recharge" time * 100+ years of ICE drivetrain expertise * LiPo is a "two-part"-like fuel - it has everything it needs to release the energy stored inside of it (as opposed to gasoline that requires an external supply of oxygen). improvements to energy density necessarily make it less safe: LiPo battery fires are very difficult to extinguish, and release most of their energy in a short period of time. to be clear, EVs have a place, for example, congested and population dense areas, where the primary concern is air quality, rather than global CO2 emissions. i really think consumerism/capatilism coupled with society's less than healthy relationship with science & futurism have made EVs seem a lot more attractive than they really are. i'm not so sure i'm comfortable with the conditions of the mines where the rare-earth metals required for all these battery packs comes from. IMO, technologies that capture carbon from the air and produce gasoline are far more attractive. the energy for which should naturally come from the sun, even if this process is "inefficient" - we receive the energy regardless of whether we use it or not. more broadly speaking, right-to-repair/user serviceability has been degraded for most consumer platforms. even modern gasoline cars face the same problems as EVs. work (likely legislation) needs to be done on every front to improve this, in all facets of technology.

audunw 4y ago
You seem to be under the common misconception that it's the energy density of batteries that make them unsafe. This is completely false. There's nothing inherent about battery energy density that makes them more dangerous. What makes LiPo/Li-ion unsafe is that they have a flammable liquid electrolyte in the middle, that's both responsible for starting the fire (the explosion you see with some battery fires) and for failing to keep the anode/cathode separated afterwards. LiFePo doesn't have significantly less energy density, but they're far safer. Same with sodium batteries. Solid state lithium ion batteries have more energy density than Li-Ion/LiPo in some cases, but are generally far more safe, since there's no flammable electrolyte. EVs, even with LiPo/Li-ion, are FAR safer than ICE vehicles, there's just no competition. Lots of oil and gasoline being piped around, with potential for leaks + old electrical wiring = recipe for disaster. We had a huge parking garage fire here in Norway recently, started - as they often do - by an ICE vehicle. Lots of EVs in the garage, but not a SINGLE EV battery pack caught fire. If all of them were EVs, the fire would be far less serious (the interior of the cars still burned, but that's all). EV battery fires are tricky to extinguish, I'll give you that. But the fire department here in Norway say they already have the needed training/experience, and make it clear that EVs are far better for fire safety in general. As for your points on whether they're better for longer distance, personal journeys.. I mean, yeah.. at some point they are. If you're driving 1000km in a day I'd definitely agree. But how many people do that often? * far higher energy density: don't forget to account for efficiency and regenerative breaking (hybrids get some of that benefit, but then you get all the downsides of both technologies) .. practical range difference is much closer than what your numbers would indicate. For most people the range of EVs is good enough, even for long trips. * essentially immediate "recharge" time: Yeah, but it's still a couple of minutes and you have to stand there while it's filling. Almost every single road-trip charging session for me has been: 1. spend 30 seconds plugging in and beeping the payment card (with Tesla you don't even have to do this). 2. walk into a restaurant/cafe/grocery store and take a pee, drink some coffee, buy groceries for the trip, etc.. 3. come back to a fully charged car * 100+ years of ICE drivetrain expertise: This is totally pointless. The only reason you need that expertise with ICE drivetrain is because it's so hard to maintain. Most EVs simply don't have anything to maintain, other than what all cars have (break pads, air filters, etc.). And I've never heard anyone here in Norway having trouble getting their EV fixed due to inexperience. The training isn't hard. You can even get people to change individual battery cells on some cars now. * The last point I covered above.

hkt 4y ago

It'd be nice - even without excellent, compelling arguments like this one - if we relegated cars to being something you hire when you need, displacing them with bicycles and public transport. I guess CCC being from Germany, they've already experienced how good this can be.

audunw 4y ago

I didn't watch the whole thing, but did she mention electric bikes? IMO, Electric cars, or cars in general, are just fine. We just did a family road-trip around Denmark with our Ioniq 5 and it's absolutely perfect for that. The thing is, we should be renting them when we need them, and use bikes more the rest of the time. Electric bikes are quickly becoming a viable alternative to cars in many bike-friendly cities, and we're seeing an explosion in the choices of electric cargo bikes. Not Just Bikes has an excellent new video on this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQhzEnWCgHA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQhzEnWCgHA I rode my electric bike to work today in fact. Instead of our EV, ironically. But our family uses only one car at least. We don't necessarily need simpler cars, we need better electric bikes. Or electric motorbikes/scooters. And better public transportation. Something like this would be a nice option for some usecases: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPyIwY2hJ_A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPyIwY2hJ_A GetAround is making renting cars more viable too. We do actually have a second car now, but I've been renting the old one out until we're ready to sell it and until we're sure we can handle two kids in kindergarten without it. It's been way more popular than I anticipated.

Tade0 4y ago
> We don't necessarily need simpler cars, we need better electric bikes. Or electric motorbikes/scooters. Or golf carts. Just like so many creatures in nature evolve into crabs, personal transport appears to evolve into golf carts. The Japanese have kei cars, which are just heavy golf carts and there exist cargo bikes, which are just underpowered, three-wheeled golf carts. There are even golf-cart oriented towns: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcVGqtmd2wM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcVGqtmd2wM
fho 4y ago
Something something velomobile: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velomobile https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velomobile I am right now shopping for one after ten years of not being able to afford and/or justify one. "But you will get killed!" ... probably not.

xwdv 4y ago

This is mostly preaching to the choir. Around here we’ve long known EVs aren’t everything they’re made out to be, and for a vast majority of use cases ICE vehicles are far better and more reliable. Even from an environmental standpoint, the output from low emission vehicles these days is mild, and better than firing up dirty power plants to charge electric vehicles en mass.

tomohawk 4y ago

Enticed by massive subsidies and chastened by threatened penalties, car industry makes a product few can afford and which doesn't actually meet customers needs. Who could have predicted that making products based on politician mandates instead of what customers are asking for would produce sucky products?

ZeroGravitas 4y ago

This has nothing to do with EVs.

DayDollar 4y ago

Actually, there is a market position here, for somebody willing to venture. A chain of "bomb" defusers, who take the product, replace or remove the breakable components, add a modular bus and the ability to add other open source components - then you get a "forever" product. As long as the product works, you pay a small suscription per month. How about a nice name. Eternia. Anyon willing to invest? At worst, you can still scim off as a middle man like some selective add blockers..

Rackedup 4y ago

"You need a transmission" -> luckily, no

Rackedup 4y ago
Elon did try to put one in Teslas at the beginning though...

cabirum 4y ago

Before the mass EV adoption, shouldn't we upgrade the power grid? The Brits call it "TV pickup", the synchronized surges of electricity consumption, by electric kettles and such. Now consider 10s thousands of EVs start charging after work.

mpol 4y ago
Or maybe both can happen at the same time? One doesn't have to exclude the other.
ethagknight 4y ago
EVs can schedule to charge at night time during low grid strain, it's a trivial matter that can be improved over decades.
perlgeek 4y ago
The mass adoption of EVs will be gradual, so we'll have to upgrade the grid as demand rises.
- cabirum 4y ago
  Consumer adoption is gradual (s-curve), enterprise tends to order large batches - fleets of taxis, cargo, delivery and service vehicles - so adoption in steps. As the night falls, they all start charging at 00:00 with a huuge load spike on the grid. My bet is soon after, night time will cease to be the cheapest time to charge. And EV companies will be required to pay taxes to cover infrastructure costs , in turn hiking EV price.
bryanlarsen 4y ago
EV's as a rule don't charge after work. Most (all?) EV's allow you to charge when the electricity is cheapest -- at night. An average daily charge for an EV is < 10 kWh since the average daily usage of a car is < 40 miles. That's less than what a whole house A/C will use on a hot day. So any grid that can handle A/C charging on a hot day can handle EV charging at night. Not all grids can, but that means that they'll need to be upgraded whether or not we add EV's to the grid.

MomoXenosaga 4y ago

Whether or not they suck is irrelevant climate change IS going to change our lifestyle and you will thank Jesus for your tiny electric microcar. It's time to accept that the age of excess and unlimited resources are over.

FloatArtifact 4y ago

As a general question as car manufacturers bypass dealerships shipping directly to customers, does this change the right to repair, especially from a legal perspective?

dsego 4y ago

Well, my first regular servicing of a Skoda ICE took from 9am to 3pm. The traditional filter and oil change was done quickly but the car got stuck on some firmware update from the factory and they didn't want to interrupt it.

rad_gruchalski 4y ago
Do you think that if an electric Enyaq got stuck on the same update the situation would be different?
- dsego 4y ago
  Probably not.

cameronh90 4y ago

This seems to be based on a faulty premise that cars aren't lasting as long as they used to last and that EVs will be more of the same. The video claims this is due to planned obsolescence facilitated by electronics making the car impossible to repair. I don't believe this is true at all. Battery lifetime aside, cars are very reliable now compared to the past. Multiple studies back this up, but I think most people must anecdotally have noticed fewer broken down cars on the side of the highway and their own cars needing less maintenance and breaking down less often. Yes, modern cars are often less repairable. Lack of repairability is sometimes malevolent, but most times it's just a side effect of making things safer and more reliable. For example, engine computers reduce engine wear and prevent knocking, sealed systems leak less, safety systems require sensors in fenders and wing mirrors and crumple zones result in cars being written off. I have had a car that would have suffered a catastrophic engine failure in the past, but thanks to modern sensors and electronics, instead shut itself down, preventing serious damage. By comparison, my old carburettor car was incredibly easy to repair just using tools in my toolbox, but it always had something going wrong, was a bitch to start in winter and driving in wet leaf conditions was seriously terrifying. My current car is a 2009 petrol with 150k miles and has never had any work outside of the routine service schedule or basic consumables.

bryanlarsen 4y ago
Chinese EV's and the Model 3 Standard Range and most of the upcoming affordable EV's are all shipping with LFP batteries rather than the standard NMC batteries. LFP batteries are usually rated for 750,000 kilometres of range.
- cameronh90 4y ago
  Indeed. I didn't go into EV battery tech because it's still relatively new technology and doesn't really have any relevance to the planned obsolescence angle. But as you point out, newer battery packs have very long design lifetimes. It remains to be seen how well this will translate into actual lifetimes, but at this point it seems like EVs will end up being much more reliable than ICEs. Almost every other part of an EV is much simpler and more reliable. Honestly, even with modern ICEs, it's rarely the engine and drivetrain causing problems towards the end of its life. The interior starts to fall apart, the weather proofing fails, buttons stop working, things start to rattle, etc. until eventually you get bored of the constant minor repairs, meanwhile new cars are so much more comfortable and better designed, better fuel economy, lower emissions/taxes, etc. I only drive an old car because I don't drive often.

kubanczyk 4y ago

> Short-lived electric cars aren't environmentally sound at all. Well, electric cars can produce minimal atmospheric emissions, or medium, or huge. It depends. What I'm missing from the talk is that the total emissions of ICE cars are inherently bound to be higher. Atmospheric. Emissions. These are the immediate problem, not an abstract "environmental soundness". OP is actively diffusing attention from where the poor of the world need it the most. Yes, I'm saying that the scrapyard full of five-year-old electric cars is bearable and can be dealt with much less priority than the real environmental disaster we're heading into, full-steam. I applaud the drive to buy less stuff, I really get that. I also get that our civilization has its own fundamental dynamics and you cannot just look at the buyer-side and treat that as an independent system. It's quite telling that OP's response to "why even focus on private property of cars?" is "because I want to" (at 30:40).

deleted 4y ago
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Sebb767 4y ago
> Yes, I'm saying that the scrapyard full of five-year-old electric cars is bearable and can be dealt with much less priority than the real environmental disaster we're heading into, full-steam. Well, the people that owned these cars won't go "welp, was nice owning a car for five years, let's go public transport now". Instead, they'll order a new EV and cause a massive amount of emissions during its production, which might even result in more emissions than if they simply continued to drive their old ICE all along. So yes, this is very much a problem we'll need to deal with now.
- kubanczyk 4y ago
  > a massive amount of emissions during its production It's massive today. Why do you predict it will remain massive? It's not like producing EV physically requires pumping CO2 into the atmosphere, like when using combustion engines.

alldayeveryday 4y ago

Environmental and energy policies are both down wind of politics. I view electric cars as a complete miss - that is to say that they aim to solve the wrong problem. Now I am not advocating that we abandon electric car development, rather I mean that they will not solve the underlying political issues that dictate our solutions in the environmental and energy realms. Take for example how we approach the design of cities, neighborhoods, where we place food growth centers, etc. A different design could render car transportation greatly reduced such that electric vs ICE would be inconsequential. Changing where we live and how supply chains work would have a much larger impact than a change to how cars get from one place to another, and by a massive magnitude. But such a change would require the necessary political will.

Tade0 4y ago

I could maybe get behind this if it weren't for the fact that an old Nissan LEAF can be updated with a battery from the next generation model because the manufacturer didn't bother to develop a new powertrain from scratch.

pabs3 4y ago

As full computers on wheels, probably they are going to be full of spyware, Internet facing vulnerabilities etc too.

ezoe 4y ago

I don't bother to watch the linked video but traditional car is a poor choice to be an electric vehicle. Because it's simply too heavy. Recent improvements on the hub motor and battery made it possible for the various light-weight toys to be a practical city commuter. Kick scooter, unicycle, hoverboard, skateboard, onewheel and such. Unfortunately, the law isn't up to date with these vehicles in most countries. It probably took us decades, if not a century to accept these light-weight electric vehicles.

jacknews 4y ago

This problem of too much integration is not limited to cars. The same for washing machines, TV's, etc, etc. The 'smart' electronics and UI are always early to break, become obsolete or unsupported, and they're usually by far the most expensive 'component' to repair or replace, and often aren't even available after a few years. Also they're completely custom - there's no way to substitute something generic. We need to get back to more modular hardware.