7 ms·

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 o

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
  I bought a VW Golf several years ago. Sales guy showed off user-replacable zero-screws bulbs as a major improvement. Which was sort of true, since my previous card, Ford Focus, required unbolting and removing headlight to replace it's bulbs...
  - nbevans 4y ago
    A major improvement would be LED headlights which have a MTBF that is so high that they can essentially last for the lifetime of the vehicle. Zero "bulb" replacements. (LED headlights exist BTW, and I'm sure there are VW Golf trim levels that include them nowadays)
    - mantas 4y ago
      The problem with LED headlights is they cost a fortune. And you can't have a standardised aftermarket replacement. Of course they're nice if nothing wrong happens. But with old cars, eventually it will fail. Meanwhile for classic lights, you can polish the glass, maybe reflector, put in new bulb and it will keep working forever.
    - Kon-Peki 4y ago
      MTBF is great for the manufacturer, but not for the individual customer that gets one that fails prior to the MTBF. It is a mean value, after all.
  - Angostura 4y ago
    Oh God - flashbacks to trying to replace a blown bulb in my Focus. "This will be easy". Two hours later and some bleeding knuckles later, took it to the garage for them to swear at.
- pjmlp 4y ago
  That is leasing taken one step further, sadly.
Quekid5 4y ago
Seems to be a matter of regulating the industry to require repairability by 3rd parties?
- Ralfp 4y ago
  Not really. It doesn’t matter if I’ll get to choose between $10000 first party battery or $8000 replacement. Both of those prices are outside of my reach.
  - ajsnigrutin 4y ago
    This is only true, when the whole battery fails. If a few cells fail, the replacement is cheap... if the battery is actually designed in a way individual cells can be reached (physically) and replaced.
    - throwaway0a5e 4y ago
      If the current state of vehicle repair is any indication the only people who will replace "a few cells" will have a shop located in a rough part of town, not speak english and will require you to pay cash and the HN crowd will deride them and their business model for the most part.
jliptzin 4y ago
Maybe that’s balanced by requiring less repairs? In 4 years in my tesla all I had to do was change the tires. By that time in my ICE vehicle I had been to the mechanic and/or jiffy lube at least 15 times
- jerrya 4y ago
  I have an eleven year old Ford Focus and it's had an oil change twice a year and apart from tires, that has been the extent of the maintenance it has required. Given the price of new cars, there's no way I can justify getting rid of my Focus. That was back when a former Boeing engineer was running Ford after Boeing promoted a bean counter over him.
  - AdamN 4y ago
    I think those smaller cars are also more durable. Heavy SUVs just have higher loads and need more complexity to support them ... which leads to a higher failure rate.
  - theshrike79 4y ago
    Yep, _some_ ICE cars are crazy reliable. Oil and air filter changes according to schedule and you're good for a decade. But _all_ EVs are crazy reliable too. The engine has one moving part and it either works or doesn't.
    - southerntofu 4y ago
      > But _all_ EVs are crazy reliable too. The presenter in the linked video argues that all cars - EV or ICE - are getting both better and worse. Better in purely mechanical terms where technological marvels enable them to achieve great durability... worse in overall terms where some electronics is going to fail somewhere and suddenly the entire car won't start. So i don't think you're wrong to say in specific benchmarks EVs are crazy reliable. But from what i've seen and understood of modern cars, complexity and interdependence of secondary subsystems make them super brittle and very highly likely to end up in a landfill under a decade after leaving the factory. In fact we already have stats on that where car recalls keep on increasing (more than x4 in a decade), and EVs are not exempt from that as they seem to have ~2x more probability to be recalled (on average) than an ICE car.
muzika 4y ago
I fix wrecked cars for fun, and have fixed about 10 Teslas so far. I would say model 3 and Y are easier to work on than most ICE cars. They have fewer parts, most parts are relatively easy to replace, there are no fuses to replace, no light bulbs to replace, and they have service manuals for all repair procedures available for free online. Price for parts is still high and they charge too much for their toolbox diagnostics software though.
- RektBoy 4y ago
  >toolbox diagnostics software though. cough crack cough
- muzika 4y ago
  Btw yesterday I took off a rear motor off a model Y. Probably took me about 2 hours to remove. So much easier than removing am engine or a transmission from an ICE car. Most difficult part to replace is the HV battery- it’s a whole day job. The biggest problem with EVs right now is that there are not enough third party (affordable) shops that are willing to work on them.
  - ok_dad 4y ago
    Would it be possible for me to convert a classic car to electric if I got my hands on a drivetrain and battery? I used to fit V8 engines into old cars so I can fabricate stuff, but I’m worried a bit about the battery voltage and safety.
    - Gibbon1 4y ago
      GM is working on electric crate engines. Supposedly delayed due to covid and supply chain issues.
    - p_l 4y ago
      There are companies offering conversion parts and people self-building EVs out of ICE cars if you look for them online. Haven't looked up much, as for me a car is just a money sink, but they exist.
Reason077 4y ago
> "With reduced ability to repair them..." I disagree with the idea that electric vehicles are inherently more difficult to repair. If anything they are simpler, more modular, and with a greatly reduced part count, will in general require less specialised knowledge to undertake common repairs compared to modern combustion vehicles. > "But repairs are simply not possible, even by qualified mechanics if they don't have access to proprietary diagnostics software" Tesla, for one, makes its service manuals available for free to anyone. Their diagnostic software ("Toolbox 3") is also available to anyone, but with a paid subscription.
dkjaudyeqooe 4y ago
Those concerns are overblown, it assumes that the only choices will be aggressively closed cars. Even today people are swapping out Tesla management systems on batteries and motors for third party systems and avoiding the software issue wholesale. People have also hacked solutions to keep the existing systems in place. Finally regulation is a given if car makers keep down the unrepairable path. Since electric cars are mechanically much simpler they will be easier to repair and cheaper overall. Currently economies of scale have not kicked in but when they do (and battery tech improves) the most popular cars will be very cheap, lower range models with standard parts made by third parties. You need to look at consumer electronics and home appliances for the likely model, not the high-end car business model that dominates the electric car industry at the moment and is transitory.
- XorNot 4y ago
  Yeah there's a vibrant Tesla hacking community already, and companies selling control modules that'll plug right into the powertrain so you can drop it into the unexpected vehicle of choice. Once the volume of production goes up that market will become global. Once EVs filter into the Shenzen markets, parts availability at various price/quality points will explode.
mhh__ 4y ago
The whole point is focusing on CO2. The environment as a whole is not one gas but one (type of) gas is the one that's going to cause global pain rather than merely local irritation
CapricornNoble 4y ago
I keep wondering if there is a good business opportunity here... I've mentioned similar thoughts before, but a shop that specializes in providing and/or installing standardized "restomod packages" with tuneable ECUs, modern solid-state power management[1], reliable sensors, wire harnesses, and other supporting parts (silicon coolant hoses, oil cooler upgrades, etc.) across a range of popular 90s/2000s vehicles, or even "de-teching" more modern cars like current-gen BMWs: great-driving RWD chassis, rock-solid B58 inline-6...but....monthly subscription for heated seats?! GTFO... Pull all the electronics out and replace with a race-grade harness connected to Denso (aka Toyota) sensors! Then drive for 20 years with nothing breaking. Basically expanding what I call "the Singer treatment" to a line of vehicles beyond air-cooled 911s[2]. [1](I'm not an ECUMaster distributor but I like their products) https://ecumasterusa.com/collections/power-management/products/ecumaster-pmu16-power-management-unit https://ecumasterusa.com/collections/power-management/produc... [2]https://www.latimes.com/lifestyle/story/2019-11-16/driven-porsche-911-singer-vehicle-design https://www.latimes.com/lifestyle/story/2019-11-16/driven-po...
vardump 4y ago
> The guy that blew up his Tesla was right That Tesla was completely stripped from all drive train components, including battery, before blowing it up. Those parts are now in use in an EV conversion project, in a Mercedez Benz G-Class vehicle, working just fine. So only an empty Tesla shell was blown up, everything else was repurposed.
Youden 4y ago
In the EU, vehicle manufacturers are required by regulation 2018/858 to give access to diagnostic tools to any repair shop. See Article 61 of 2018/858 [0]. At the moment it's a bit of a pain but there's an upcoming amendment to standardise the access process. [0]: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A32018R0858#d1e4194-1-1 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...
bryanlarsen 4y ago
As a relatively non-car guy, Tesla's are so much easier to do maintenance on than gasoline cars. Mostly because there is so much less to do. Here's my maintenance schedule, which is more than what Tesla recommends. - replace wipers as necessary - rotate summer & winter tires semi-annually (cold climates) - inspect & lube brakes annually - test brake fluid biannually - replace cabin air filter biannually - replace A/C dessicant bag every 6 years. So if you learn how to test your brake fluid (really easy with the right gauge), replace the cabin air filter and lube your brakes, you only have to go in for maintenance once every 6 years. All of those things are easier than changing your oil on a modern car IMO.

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
I bought a VW Golf several years ago. Sales guy showed off user-replacable zero-screws bulbs as a major improvement. Which was sort of true, since my previous card, Ford Focus, required unbolting and removing headlight to replace it's bulbs...
- nbevans 4y ago
  A major improvement would be LED headlights which have a MTBF that is so high that they can essentially last for the lifetime of the vehicle. Zero "bulb" replacements. (LED headlights exist BTW, and I'm sure there are VW Golf trim levels that include them nowadays)
  - mantas 4y ago
    The problem with LED headlights is they cost a fortune. And you can't have a standardised aftermarket replacement. Of course they're nice if nothing wrong happens. But with old cars, eventually it will fail. Meanwhile for classic lights, you can polish the glass, maybe reflector, put in new bulb and it will keep working forever.
  - Kon-Peki 4y ago
    MTBF is great for the manufacturer, but not for the individual customer that gets one that fails prior to the MTBF. It is a mean value, after all.
- Angostura 4y ago
  Oh God - flashbacks to trying to replace a blown bulb in my Focus. "This will be easy". Two hours later and some bleeding knuckles later, took it to the garage for them to swear at.
pjmlp 4y ago
That is leasing taken one step further, sadly.

Quekid5 4y ago

Seems to be a matter of regulating the industry to require repairability by 3rd parties?

Ralfp 4y ago
Not really. It doesn’t matter if I’ll get to choose between $10000 first party battery or $8000 replacement. Both of those prices are outside of my reach.
- ajsnigrutin 4y ago
  This is only true, when the whole battery fails. If a few cells fail, the replacement is cheap... if the battery is actually designed in a way individual cells can be reached (physically) and replaced.
  - throwaway0a5e 4y ago
    If the current state of vehicle repair is any indication the only people who will replace "a few cells" will have a shop located in a rough part of town, not speak english and will require you to pay cash and the HN crowd will deride them and their business model for the most part.

jliptzin 4y ago

Maybe that’s balanced by requiring less repairs? In 4 years in my tesla all I had to do was change the tires. By that time in my ICE vehicle I had been to the mechanic and/or jiffy lube at least 15 times

jerrya 4y ago
I have an eleven year old Ford Focus and it's had an oil change twice a year and apart from tires, that has been the extent of the maintenance it has required. Given the price of new cars, there's no way I can justify getting rid of my Focus. That was back when a former Boeing engineer was running Ford after Boeing promoted a bean counter over him.
- AdamN 4y ago
  I think those smaller cars are also more durable. Heavy SUVs just have higher loads and need more complexity to support them ... which leads to a higher failure rate.
- theshrike79 4y ago
  Yep, _some_ ICE cars are crazy reliable. Oil and air filter changes according to schedule and you're good for a decade. But _all_ EVs are crazy reliable too. The engine has one moving part and it either works or doesn't.
  - southerntofu 4y ago
    > But _all_ EVs are crazy reliable too. The presenter in the linked video argues that all cars - EV or ICE - are getting both better and worse. Better in purely mechanical terms where technological marvels enable them to achieve great durability... worse in overall terms where some electronics is going to fail somewhere and suddenly the entire car won't start. So i don't think you're wrong to say in specific benchmarks EVs are crazy reliable. But from what i've seen and understood of modern cars, complexity and interdependence of secondary subsystems make them super brittle and very highly likely to end up in a landfill under a decade after leaving the factory. In fact we already have stats on that where car recalls keep on increasing (more than x4 in a decade), and EVs are not exempt from that as they seem to have ~2x more probability to be recalled (on average) than an ICE car.

muzika 4y ago

I fix wrecked cars for fun, and have fixed about 10 Teslas so far. I would say model 3 and Y are easier to work on than most ICE cars. They have fewer parts, most parts are relatively easy to replace, there are no fuses to replace, no light bulbs to replace, and they have service manuals for all repair procedures available for free online. Price for parts is still high and they charge too much for their toolbox diagnostics software though.

RektBoy 4y ago
>toolbox diagnostics software though. cough crack cough
muzika 4y ago
Btw yesterday I took off a rear motor off a model Y. Probably took me about 2 hours to remove. So much easier than removing am engine or a transmission from an ICE car. Most difficult part to replace is the HV battery- it’s a whole day job. The biggest problem with EVs right now is that there are not enough third party (affordable) shops that are willing to work on them.
- ok_dad 4y ago
  Would it be possible for me to convert a classic car to electric if I got my hands on a drivetrain and battery? I used to fit V8 engines into old cars so I can fabricate stuff, but I’m worried a bit about the battery voltage and safety.
  - Gibbon1 4y ago
    GM is working on electric crate engines. Supposedly delayed due to covid and supply chain issues.
  - p_l 4y ago
    There are companies offering conversion parts and people self-building EVs out of ICE cars if you look for them online. Haven't looked up much, as for me a car is just a money sink, but they exist.

Reason077 4y ago

> "With reduced ability to repair them..." I disagree with the idea that electric vehicles are inherently more difficult to repair. If anything they are simpler, more modular, and with a greatly reduced part count, will in general require less specialised knowledge to undertake common repairs compared to modern combustion vehicles. > "But repairs are simply not possible, even by qualified mechanics if they don't have access to proprietary diagnostics software" Tesla, for one, makes its service manuals available for free to anyone. Their diagnostic software ("Toolbox 3") is also available to anyone, but with a paid subscription.

dkjaudyeqooe 4y ago

Those concerns are overblown, it assumes that the only choices will be aggressively closed cars. Even today people are swapping out Tesla management systems on batteries and motors for third party systems and avoiding the software issue wholesale. People have also hacked solutions to keep the existing systems in place. Finally regulation is a given if car makers keep down the unrepairable path. Since electric cars are mechanically much simpler they will be easier to repair and cheaper overall. Currently economies of scale have not kicked in but when they do (and battery tech improves) the most popular cars will be very cheap, lower range models with standard parts made by third parties. You need to look at consumer electronics and home appliances for the likely model, not the high-end car business model that dominates the electric car industry at the moment and is transitory.

XorNot 4y ago
Yeah there's a vibrant Tesla hacking community already, and companies selling control modules that'll plug right into the powertrain so you can drop it into the unexpected vehicle of choice. Once the volume of production goes up that market will become global. Once EVs filter into the Shenzen markets, parts availability at various price/quality points will explode.

mhh__ 4y ago

The whole point is focusing on CO2. The environment as a whole is not one gas but one (type of) gas is the one that's going to cause global pain rather than merely local irritation

CapricornNoble 4y ago

I keep wondering if there is a good business opportunity here... I've mentioned similar thoughts before, but a shop that specializes in providing and/or installing standardized "restomod packages" with tuneable ECUs, modern solid-state power management[1], reliable sensors, wire harnesses, and other supporting parts (silicon coolant hoses, oil cooler upgrades, etc.) across a range of popular 90s/2000s vehicles, or even "de-teching" more modern cars like current-gen BMWs: great-driving RWD chassis, rock-solid B58 inline-6...but....monthly subscription for heated seats?! GTFO... Pull all the electronics out and replace with a race-grade harness connected to Denso (aka Toyota) sensors! Then drive for 20 years with nothing breaking. Basically expanding what I call "the Singer treatment" to a line of vehicles beyond air-cooled 911s[2]. [1](I'm not an ECUMaster distributor but I like their products) https://ecumasterusa.com/collections/power-management/products/ecumaster-pmu16-power-management-unit https://ecumasterusa.com/collections/power-management/produc... [2]https://www.latimes.com/lifestyle/story/2019-11-16/driven-porsche-911-singer-vehicle-design https://www.latimes.com/lifestyle/story/2019-11-16/driven-po...

vardump 4y ago

> The guy that blew up his Tesla was right That Tesla was completely stripped from all drive train components, including battery, before blowing it up. Those parts are now in use in an EV conversion project, in a Mercedez Benz G-Class vehicle, working just fine. So only an empty Tesla shell was blown up, everything else was repurposed.

Youden 4y ago

In the EU, vehicle manufacturers are required by regulation 2018/858 to give access to diagnostic tools to any repair shop. See Article 61 of 2018/858 [0]. At the moment it's a bit of a pain but there's an upcoming amendment to standardise the access process. [0]: https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A32018R0858#d1e4194-1-1 https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=CELEX%3A...

bryanlarsen 4y ago

As a relatively non-car guy, Tesla's are so much easier to do maintenance on than gasoline cars. Mostly because there is so much less to do. Here's my maintenance schedule, which is more than what Tesla recommends. - replace wipers as necessary - rotate summer & winter tires semi-annually (cold climates) - inspect & lube brakes annually - test brake fluid biannually - replace cabin air filter biannually - replace A/C dessicant bag every 6 years. So if you learn how to test your brake fluid (really easy with the right gauge), replace the cabin air filter and lube your brakes, you only have to go in for maintenance once every 6 years. All of those things are easier than changing your oil on a modern car IMO.