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We know these things: (1) legacy car manufacturers don't know how to make cars. They forgot how to make cars decades ago. All components are manufactured by so

We know these things: (1) legacy car manufacturers don't know how to make cars. They forgot how to make cars decades ago. All components are manufactured by someone else, they slap their label on it. If you don't know how to make cars, it is nearly impossible to make new kind of cars. (2) If you don't know how to do something, you can spend some money and learn. Legacy car manufacturers had $250 billion profits, but didn't spend any money on building this capability. Meanwhile, Tesla made electric cars, built supercharger network, built gigafactories, expanded these capabilities globally. (3) Dealers hate EVs. Even if legacy manufacturers make EVs, dealers won't sell them. I've been going to dealerships every year for more than five years, dealers treat you like shit if you wanna buy an EV. Which is understandable, ICE cars have 2000+ moving parts and tons of repairs, EVs have 20 moving parts and zero repairs. They aren't going to make much money replacing windshield wipers. (4) Meanwhile, China has figured out how to do EVs at scale, iterating and improving batteries and EVs. Eventually, legacy car manufacturers will go bust (after taking tens of billions in bailouts). We'll import cars from China either directly or indirectly. If there are too many tariffs, China is going to build assembly plants in Mexico or Canada, sell them very competitively in US. VW sells ID.3 for 16K in China, the competition is intense![2] [1]https://www.epi.org/blog/uaw-automakers-negotiations/ https://www.epi.org/blog/uaw-automakers-negotiations/ [2] https://insideevs.com/news/675842/volkswagen-slashes-id3-pricing-china/ https://insideevs.com/news/675842/volkswagen-slashes-id3-pri...

toast0 3y ago
> Which is understandable, ICE cars have 2000+ moving parts and tons of repairs, EVs have 20 moving parts and zero repairs. They aren't going to make much money replacing windshield wipers. A hybrid can have a 2 year/20k factory oil change interval, and really doesn't need much of any other service. An ICE comes in once a year for an oil change and not much else. Maybe spark plugs and timing belt around 100k... if that even goes to the dealer service and not an independent. Sure, more brake work on an ICE. More tire work on an EV (heavier, probably fancy low rolling resistance tires). Maybe some transmission work on an ICE or Hybrid, but they're all 'sealed' units these days that are not supposed to need anything done to them. Other than that, what does an ICE have that an EV doesn't that needs regular maintenance? We're not going from a 1970s carburated car that needs regular tuneups to an EV.
- RussianCow 3y ago
  > Other than that, what does an ICE have that an EV doesn't that needs regular maintenance? The short answer is: more stuff that can break. What you outlined is true in the best case scenario. Anecdotally, if I had to guess, 20% of my friends and family with cars older than 5 years have had them in the shop for something other than routine maintenance just this year. (And I realize that this is cherry-picked, but many (most?) ICE cars, frankly, are just not that reliable.)
  - caconym_ 3y ago
    > What you outlined is true in the best case scenario. Anecdotally, if I had to guess, 20% of my friends and family with cars older than 5 years have had them in the shop for something other than routine maintenance just this year. (And I realize that this is cherry-picked, but many (most?) ICE cars, frankly, are just not that reliable.) Do EVs fare any better in practice? Just looking at reliability by manufacturer, Tesla's reliability is below the industry average^[1], which you would not expect if electric cars were fundamentally more reliable by virtue of having less "stuff that can break". The related notion that EVs are cheaper to maintain also seems up for debate^[2], and GGP's assertion that EVs have "zero repairs" is risible on its face. I'm willing to entertain the possibility that Tesla is simply a subpar car manufacturer despite being the West's premier EV manufacturer, but either way we are evidently not yet living in a world where EVs offer car buyers freedom from maintenance and breakage. --- ^[1] random google search results: https://www.kbb.com/car-news/consumer-reports-toyota-lexus-make-the-most-reliable-cars-mercedes-the-least/ https://www.kbb.com/car-news/consumer-reports-toyota-lexus-m..., https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2023-us-vehicle-dependability-studyvds https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2023-us-vehi... ^[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/26/hertz-pulls-back-on-ev-plans-citing-tesla-price-cuts-repair-costs.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/26/hertz-pulls-back-on-ev-plans...
    - vel0city 3y ago
      The one thing I'd push back on about these reliability surveys are that most of the things its measuring aren't the drivetrain itself. The most impactful thing for reliability in their surveys are infotainment systems. Having some indexed score of "reliability" when it includes "could the user figure out how to pair their cell phone" and not actually getting the drill down on the different areas of reliability make the score pretty worthless to me when trying to determine if an ICE or an EV is more reliable. Also, with Hertz having problems keeping Teslas repaired, its also not necessarily pointing to drivetrain reliability. Its not immediately obvious from the reporting if the issues they're having are mostly drivetrain or other parts like bodywork and suspension and what not. If a Tesla bumper replacement is more expensive than a Nissan Altima bumper replacement, is that EV drivetrains being more expensive?
dclowd9901 3y ago
You could’ve stopped at 1. US auto manufacturers don’t know how to make anything but trucks. Not that they actually know how to make them, because they’re all pieces of shit, but just that’s the only thing people in the US buy from US manufacturers because no one else makes full size diesel pickups. Not the Japanese, the Koreans or the Europeans. So of course they were handed this project by the feds to expand their EV offerings and completely shit the bed. They’ve been spending decades competing on making the most fuel unfriendly vehicles on the planet. I don’t want an EV, but if I did, American (including Tesla) would be the last place I looked.
- logifail 3y ago
  > no one else makes full size diesel pickups. Not the Japanese, the Koreans or the Europeans (Genuine) Q: Why is it that the rest of the world manages just fine without needing full size diesel pickups? Over here even tradespeople drive panel vans, not pickups.
  - theshrike79 3y ago
    "But you can fit a full sheet of plywood on a truck bed! That's why I need a Ford F-150!" Yea, you could do that with a 90's Toyota Hilux too and it was 75% smaller =) Also you can fit that exact same sheet in a van and it's covered from the elements, along with your tools. It's all about image. Americans think van = "free candy child molester" or "FBI stakeout" and minivan = "soccer mom", which is bad for some reason. Thus, everybody drives HUGE TRUCKS or SUVs, because they've been marketed as cool for 20+ years. Even though a proper mini van would do the exact same thing in a smaller, more efficient package. (also huge trucks are exempt from environmental standards because of a legal fuckup they refuse to fix and thus better profits for the manufacturer)
    - quickthrowman 3y ago
      > "But you can fit a full sheet of plywood on a truck bed! That's why I need a Ford F-150!" You actually can’t fit full sheet goods (4’x8’) into 99% of pickups, there are very few pickups on the road with full-size (8’) beds that can fit sheet goods, most of them have ridiculously short beds, like 5’ long. Take a look at this Chevy truck poster that shows the silhouette by generation, there’s almost no bed on new pickup trucks: https://customcarposters.com/products/chevy-pickup-truck-poster-profile https://customcarposters.com/products/chevy-pickup-truck-pos...
jjav 3y ago
> Which is understandable, ICE cars have 2000+ moving parts and tons of repairs, EVs have 20 moving parts and zero repairs. This is wildly exaggerated, as in completely made-up. The only significant difference is combustion engine internals vs. electric motor, which has a large difference in moving parts. But not two orders of magnitude. The thing is, the ICE has had well over a century of perfecting, so while it is a lot more complex, it is so mature that stuff does not break. In over 35 years of owning many many cars, the number of times I've had an ICE internal component go bad is.. zero. Statistical noise aside, that's not a thing anymore and has not been since the 60s/70s. The car that I've had which has spent by far (far) the most time at the dealer for repairs, was an EV. Nothing to do with the powertrain, just the usual stuff that breaks on cars like window regulators, electrical switches and hatch actuators. All things that are exactly the same regardless of ICE or EV powertrain.
- theshrike79 3y ago
  OK, separate the drive train and just focus on the engine. That's completely fair. All engines need to distribute power to the wheels and those parts are identical. If we don't count the ball bearings, an EV has 1 moving part. A combustion engine easily has an "order of magnitude" more components. And I'm not even counting the gearbox here, which - in a modern automatic car - is clockwork levels of crazy gearing and technology.
  - 01100011 3y ago
    My father in law is a mechanic. He just changed a cooling pump and coolant on an EV. There are also other motors to actuate various components.
    - theshrike79 3y ago
      The actual engine is just magnets and driveshaft. Very little can go wrong. It either works or doesn't. A combustion engine has camshafts and pistons and valve lifters and timing chains (or belts) and dozens more. Every single of those moving parts is a potential failure mode. Add to that all the electronics and sensors we need to run a modern combustion engine, the complexity goes up exponentially. Granted, we have been perfecting the metallurgy and construction of combustion engines for 100 years so they're amazingly reliable considering they work by inducing thousands of explosions a minute while every part moves at insane speeds.
dr_dshiv 3y ago
China. Seriously. People who haven’t been recently don’t even know. Massive changes are afoot. So many new car options! And they all seem to have massage seats.
- donkeyd 3y ago
  Don't even have to go to China. Here in the Netherlands the amount of MG, BYD, NIO, Volvo, Polestar, Zeekr or XPeng on the road here is immense. German manufacturers are complaining people don't want EVs, but that's BS. It's just that the EVs people are actually buying are either American, Chinese or Korean, because they're not insanely expensive. I just opened a lease car comparison site. Under €650 a month I get 11 German(-ish) cars to choose from. 10 of which are VAG, 1 is BMW. In total, however, I have 180+ cars to choose from, many of which are much cheaper than the German ones and are way better equipped.
tonyedgecombe 3y ago
>VW sells ID.3 for 16K in China In the UK they sell for £37K ($45K USD). I don't expect it is the exact same spec but even so it is annoying.
throwawaaarrgh 3y ago
1) is complete nonsense, 2) ignores how Tesla was funded which no traditional car company has access to, 3) is overblown and 4) is because it's a managed economy.
- thelastgallon 3y ago
  If you are talking about Tesla's loan, it was fully paid off. But taxpayers gave legacy car manufacturers a gift of 12.4 billion dollars. Total net to date: -12.4B (https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/list/category/Auto%20Company https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/list/category/Auto%2...), losses from ICE manufacturers. Tesla's loan: $465 million, January 2010, Loan fully repaid in May 2013 (~3.5 years) https://www.energy.gov/lpo/tesla https://www.energy.gov/lpo/tesla Traditional car companies have access to tens of billions in bailouts, which EVs never have and never will. (1) Chrysler Bailout of 1979, $1.5 billion (2) In 2008, $17.4 billion bailout to General Motors and Chrysler (3) In 2009, $3 billion, cash for clunkers
- ryan93 3y ago
  Look up General Motors net income and tell me they dont have access to cash.

toast0 3y ago

> Which is understandable, ICE cars have 2000+ moving parts and tons of repairs, EVs have 20 moving parts and zero repairs. They aren't going to make much money replacing windshield wipers. A hybrid can have a 2 year/20k factory oil change interval, and really doesn't need much of any other service. An ICE comes in once a year for an oil change and not much else. Maybe spark plugs and timing belt around 100k... if that even goes to the dealer service and not an independent. Sure, more brake work on an ICE. More tire work on an EV (heavier, probably fancy low rolling resistance tires). Maybe some transmission work on an ICE or Hybrid, but they're all 'sealed' units these days that are not supposed to need anything done to them. Other than that, what does an ICE have that an EV doesn't that needs regular maintenance? We're not going from a 1970s carburated car that needs regular tuneups to an EV.

RussianCow 3y ago
> Other than that, what does an ICE have that an EV doesn't that needs regular maintenance? The short answer is: more stuff that can break. What you outlined is true in the best case scenario. Anecdotally, if I had to guess, 20% of my friends and family with cars older than 5 years have had them in the shop for something other than routine maintenance just this year. (And I realize that this is cherry-picked, but many (most?) ICE cars, frankly, are just not that reliable.)
- caconym_ 3y ago
  > What you outlined is true in the best case scenario. Anecdotally, if I had to guess, 20% of my friends and family with cars older than 5 years have had them in the shop for something other than routine maintenance just this year. (And I realize that this is cherry-picked, but many (most?) ICE cars, frankly, are just not that reliable.) Do EVs fare any better in practice? Just looking at reliability by manufacturer, Tesla's reliability is below the industry average^[1], which you would not expect if electric cars were fundamentally more reliable by virtue of having less "stuff that can break". The related notion that EVs are cheaper to maintain also seems up for debate^[2], and GGP's assertion that EVs have "zero repairs" is risible on its face. I'm willing to entertain the possibility that Tesla is simply a subpar car manufacturer despite being the West's premier EV manufacturer, but either way we are evidently not yet living in a world where EVs offer car buyers freedom from maintenance and breakage. --- ^[1] random google search results: https://www.kbb.com/car-news/consumer-reports-toyota-lexus-make-the-most-reliable-cars-mercedes-the-least/ https://www.kbb.com/car-news/consumer-reports-toyota-lexus-m..., https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2023-us-vehicle-dependability-studyvds https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2023-us-vehi... ^[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/26/hertz-pulls-back-on-ev-plans-citing-tesla-price-cuts-repair-costs.html https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/26/hertz-pulls-back-on-ev-plans...
  - vel0city 3y ago
    The one thing I'd push back on about these reliability surveys are that most of the things its measuring aren't the drivetrain itself. The most impactful thing for reliability in their surveys are infotainment systems. Having some indexed score of "reliability" when it includes "could the user figure out how to pair their cell phone" and not actually getting the drill down on the different areas of reliability make the score pretty worthless to me when trying to determine if an ICE or an EV is more reliable. Also, with Hertz having problems keeping Teslas repaired, its also not necessarily pointing to drivetrain reliability. Its not immediately obvious from the reporting if the issues they're having are mostly drivetrain or other parts like bodywork and suspension and what not. If a Tesla bumper replacement is more expensive than a Nissan Altima bumper replacement, is that EV drivetrains being more expensive?

dclowd9901 3y ago

You could’ve stopped at 1. US auto manufacturers don’t know how to make anything but trucks. Not that they actually know how to make them, because they’re all pieces of shit, but just that’s the only thing people in the US buy from US manufacturers because no one else makes full size diesel pickups. Not the Japanese, the Koreans or the Europeans. So of course they were handed this project by the feds to expand their EV offerings and completely shit the bed. They’ve been spending decades competing on making the most fuel unfriendly vehicles on the planet. I don’t want an EV, but if I did, American (including Tesla) would be the last place I looked.

logifail 3y ago
> no one else makes full size diesel pickups. Not the Japanese, the Koreans or the Europeans (Genuine) Q: Why is it that the rest of the world manages just fine without needing full size diesel pickups? Over here even tradespeople drive panel vans, not pickups.
- theshrike79 3y ago
  "But you can fit a full sheet of plywood on a truck bed! That's why I need a Ford F-150!" Yea, you could do that with a 90's Toyota Hilux too and it was 75% smaller =) Also you can fit that exact same sheet in a van and it's covered from the elements, along with your tools. It's all about image. Americans think van = "free candy child molester" or "FBI stakeout" and minivan = "soccer mom", which is bad for some reason. Thus, everybody drives HUGE TRUCKS or SUVs, because they've been marketed as cool for 20+ years. Even though a proper mini van would do the exact same thing in a smaller, more efficient package. (also huge trucks are exempt from environmental standards because of a legal fuckup they refuse to fix and thus better profits for the manufacturer)
  - quickthrowman 3y ago
    > "But you can fit a full sheet of plywood on a truck bed! That's why I need a Ford F-150!" You actually can’t fit full sheet goods (4’x8’) into 99% of pickups, there are very few pickups on the road with full-size (8’) beds that can fit sheet goods, most of them have ridiculously short beds, like 5’ long. Take a look at this Chevy truck poster that shows the silhouette by generation, there’s almost no bed on new pickup trucks: https://customcarposters.com/products/chevy-pickup-truck-poster-profile https://customcarposters.com/products/chevy-pickup-truck-pos...

jjav 3y ago

> Which is understandable, ICE cars have 2000+ moving parts and tons of repairs, EVs have 20 moving parts and zero repairs. This is wildly exaggerated, as in completely made-up. The only significant difference is combustion engine internals vs. electric motor, which has a large difference in moving parts. But not two orders of magnitude. The thing is, the ICE has had well over a century of perfecting, so while it is a lot more complex, it is so mature that stuff does not break. In over 35 years of owning many many cars, the number of times I've had an ICE internal component go bad is.. zero. Statistical noise aside, that's not a thing anymore and has not been since the 60s/70s. The car that I've had which has spent by far (far) the most time at the dealer for repairs, was an EV. Nothing to do with the powertrain, just the usual stuff that breaks on cars like window regulators, electrical switches and hatch actuators. All things that are exactly the same regardless of ICE or EV powertrain.

theshrike79 3y ago
OK, separate the drive train and just focus on the engine. That's completely fair. All engines need to distribute power to the wheels and those parts are identical. If we don't count the ball bearings, an EV has 1 moving part. A combustion engine easily has an "order of magnitude" more components. And I'm not even counting the gearbox here, which - in a modern automatic car - is clockwork levels of crazy gearing and technology.
- 01100011 3y ago
  My father in law is a mechanic. He just changed a cooling pump and coolant on an EV. There are also other motors to actuate various components.
  - theshrike79 3y ago
    The actual engine is just magnets and driveshaft. Very little can go wrong. It either works or doesn't. A combustion engine has camshafts and pistons and valve lifters and timing chains (or belts) and dozens more. Every single of those moving parts is a potential failure mode. Add to that all the electronics and sensors we need to run a modern combustion engine, the complexity goes up exponentially. Granted, we have been perfecting the metallurgy and construction of combustion engines for 100 years so they're amazingly reliable considering they work by inducing thousands of explosions a minute while every part moves at insane speeds.

dr_dshiv 3y ago

China. Seriously. People who haven’t been recently don’t even know. Massive changes are afoot. So many new car options! And they all seem to have massage seats.

donkeyd 3y ago
Don't even have to go to China. Here in the Netherlands the amount of MG, BYD, NIO, Volvo, Polestar, Zeekr or XPeng on the road here is immense. German manufacturers are complaining people don't want EVs, but that's BS. It's just that the EVs people are actually buying are either American, Chinese or Korean, because they're not insanely expensive. I just opened a lease car comparison site. Under €650 a month I get 11 German(-ish) cars to choose from. 10 of which are VAG, 1 is BMW. In total, however, I have 180+ cars to choose from, many of which are much cheaper than the German ones and are way better equipped.

tonyedgecombe 3y ago

>VW sells ID.3 for 16K in China In the UK they sell for £37K ($45K USD). I don't expect it is the exact same spec but even so it is annoying.

throwawaaarrgh 3y ago

1) is complete nonsense, 2) ignores how Tesla was funded which no traditional car company has access to, 3) is overblown and 4) is because it's a managed economy.

thelastgallon 3y ago
If you are talking about Tesla's loan, it was fully paid off. But taxpayers gave legacy car manufacturers a gift of 12.4 billion dollars. Total net to date: -12.4B (https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/list/category/Auto%20Company https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/list/category/Auto%2...), losses from ICE manufacturers. Tesla's loan: $465 million, January 2010, Loan fully repaid in May 2013 (~3.5 years) https://www.energy.gov/lpo/tesla https://www.energy.gov/lpo/tesla Traditional car companies have access to tens of billions in bailouts, which EVs never have and never will. (1) Chrysler Bailout of 1979, $1.5 billion (2) In 2008, $17.4 billion bailout to General Motors and Chrysler (3) In 2009, $3 billion, cash for clunkers
ryan93 3y ago
Look up General Motors net income and tell me they dont have access to cash.