3 ms·

> at least in the case of a manual gearbox Ok, let's say you go stupid simple for the transmission and have a super basic classic four-speed manual. Right off

> at least in the case of a manual gearbox Ok, let's say you go stupid simple for the transmission and have a super basic classic four-speed manual. Right off the bat, you've got clutch wear. In that e-CVT, there are no sliding clutches. Everything is connected all the time. Immediately, we see a wear component that will eventually need replacing. Not might need replacing, will need replacing. It is a consumable part, designed to wear. You now have cable assemblies which will eventually stretch over the life of the car. Those will eventually need adjustment. Once again, these just don't exist at all with the e-CVT system. Now you have a shifter and gear selector. This will need to slip in and out of other gears. Often this is not a perfect shift, imparting wear on the transmission components. Once again, you don't have a gear selector in an e-CVT, this wear never happens. This wear can cause premature failure of the transmission. This is largely controlled by the skill of the operator, sure. Just a few quick examples. But this is then also an incredibly basic manual transmission, you won't find such a thing on pretty much any recent mass market car. These days you'll see complicated automatics with servos and what not to control the gear ratios, massively more gear ratios, rely on fluid channels to push things around inside, rely on computers to operate them effectively, etc. And as Retric mentioned, there are analoges for most of the hybrid components in a pure-ICE car. You already have a DC motor set to drive the car in the starter motor. You already have an inverter, the alternator. You're not really adding a ton of new things, you're just massively upsizing some of the things you already have and massively simplifying a lot of the other components.

bumby 1y ago
>there are analoges for most of the hybrid components in a pure-ICE car. The error in this is in assuming the analogs have equivalent reliability or cost in each system.* (The original point is about cost of ownership). They don’t. So, while both have batteries, the reliability and cost of each is very different. Same with the ICE component etc. My issue is broad generalizations about reliability without speaking to the nuance. I’m not set against the idea of a hybrid being more reliable or cheaper, but more against the superficial generalization. * also the analogs miss some of the complexity. Yes, both have a battery, but a hybrid requires high voltage and auxiliary batteries, meaning the battery system is by definition more complex.
- vel0city 1y ago
  > The error in this is in assuming the analogs have equivalent reliability The majority of my comment points out how the equivalent analoge on the pure ICE is massively less reliable than the hybrid. Who is ignoring the reliability of the different components here again? Sure, there is a HV and a LV battery. They're both solid state devices and thus generally pretty reliable when it comes to cars. The LV battery faces far less wear. The overall system is considerably more reliable in the hybrid than the same in the ICE. It's near impossible to generally talk about the prices of something like the HV battery, it varies greatly based on what models you're talking about. One car might have a replacement used battery that's good for many years be $700, another might be extremely bespoke and rare and be $10k. If I were to judge prices of pure ICE transmissions based on extremely rare hyper cars I might say an ICE transmission replacement costs $20k or more. The details matter greatly when judging TCO on potentially low market cars.
  - bumby 1y ago
    If your point is you can’t talk specifics about price of ownership, you’ve wasted both of our time during this entire discussion. That’s what it’s about. A better answer would have just been like the commenter below, who said the information is hard to come by. A hardliner stance where there’s a lot of uncertainty isn’t a great hill to die on.
    - Retric 1y ago
      That’s not quite what they said, in 98% of hybrids sold these components are significantly more reliable than in ICE cars. He can’t speak to the last 2%, but I doubt your in the market for a hyper car and really this concerned about TCO.
      - bumby 1y ago
        The hyper car argument is really just a digression and it cuts both ways (which I think was the posters point). If you want to compare hyper car prices, you need to compare hyper gas-only to hyper hybrid. But that’s not really germane to the generalizations being used here. Where is your 98% claim coming from? The other poster made no such claim. The irony is there is published info on TCO from companies like Edmunds and Kelly Blue Book. We can take umbrage with some of the factors or weighting, but it’s a better starting point in real data than anything bright up so far. A claim could easily be crafted using such information that addresses everything I’ve raised (maintenance, depreciation, different designs, etc). Yet the discussion seems almost wholly based on vibes and near-ideological bias. It reads to me as conclusions searching for data instead of the other way around. The best I can tell from that information, TCO is largely a wash. For comparable manufacturers/designs, TCO over the first 5-10 years seems to be about the same. You can pick some designs that favor one side or the other, but in general they are roughly within 10% (usually considerably less) of one another. Given the uncertainty due to the variables in question, it seems reasonable to conclude there aren’t strong conclusions on TCO differences between them.

bumby 1y ago

>there are analoges for most of the hybrid components in a pure-ICE car. The error in this is in assuming the analogs have equivalent reliability or cost in each system.* (The original point is about cost of ownership). They don’t. So, while both have batteries, the reliability and cost of each is very different. Same with the ICE component etc. My issue is broad generalizations about reliability without speaking to the nuance. I’m not set against the idea of a hybrid being more reliable or cheaper, but more against the superficial generalization. * also the analogs miss some of the complexity. Yes, both have a battery, but a hybrid requires high voltage and auxiliary batteries, meaning the battery system is by definition more complex.

vel0city 1y ago
> The error in this is in assuming the analogs have equivalent reliability The majority of my comment points out how the equivalent analoge on the pure ICE is massively less reliable than the hybrid. Who is ignoring the reliability of the different components here again? Sure, there is a HV and a LV battery. They're both solid state devices and thus generally pretty reliable when it comes to cars. The LV battery faces far less wear. The overall system is considerably more reliable in the hybrid than the same in the ICE. It's near impossible to generally talk about the prices of something like the HV battery, it varies greatly based on what models you're talking about. One car might have a replacement used battery that's good for many years be $700, another might be extremely bespoke and rare and be $10k. If I were to judge prices of pure ICE transmissions based on extremely rare hyper cars I might say an ICE transmission replacement costs $20k or more. The details matter greatly when judging TCO on potentially low market cars.
- bumby 1y ago
  If your point is you can’t talk specifics about price of ownership, you’ve wasted both of our time during this entire discussion. That’s what it’s about. A better answer would have just been like the commenter below, who said the information is hard to come by. A hardliner stance where there’s a lot of uncertainty isn’t a great hill to die on.
  - Retric 1y ago
    That’s not quite what they said, in 98% of hybrids sold these components are significantly more reliable than in ICE cars. He can’t speak to the last 2%, but I doubt your in the market for a hyper car and really this concerned about TCO.
    - bumby 1y ago
      The hyper car argument is really just a digression and it cuts both ways (which I think was the posters point). If you want to compare hyper car prices, you need to compare hyper gas-only to hyper hybrid. But that’s not really germane to the generalizations being used here. Where is your 98% claim coming from? The other poster made no such claim. The irony is there is published info on TCO from companies like Edmunds and Kelly Blue Book. We can take umbrage with some of the factors or weighting, but it’s a better starting point in real data than anything bright up so far. A claim could easily be crafted using such information that addresses everything I’ve raised (maintenance, depreciation, different designs, etc). Yet the discussion seems almost wholly based on vibes and near-ideological bias. It reads to me as conclusions searching for data instead of the other way around. The best I can tell from that information, TCO is largely a wash. For comparable manufacturers/designs, TCO over the first 5-10 years seems to be about the same. You can pick some designs that favor one side or the other, but in general they are roughly within 10% (usually considerably less) of one another. Given the uncertainty due to the variables in question, it seems reasonable to conclude there aren’t strong conclusions on TCO differences between them.