Just because Tesla made a lot of bad choices, that doesn't mean all EVs for all time will always be more expensive.
Electric cars will be cheaper to make than gas vehicles but with much higher repair and insurance costs
Submitted 8 months ago by boem@lemmy.world to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
rimu@piefed.social 8 months ago
ironhydroxide@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
This is what happens when you can DRM every piece of the car. Tesla is being taken as a model, and it’s extremely anti consumer
just_another_person@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I don’t think theyre being used as an example at all. A lot of these first generation platforms are still just trying to figure stuff out, and unless they all glob onto an existing platform, they’ll never deviate from one another. Competition is good, especially to drive innovation in the early days of new fields of products like these. Most of the bigger companies have opened their platforms or pieces thereof, but that doesn’t need to mean open-source. We should rely on legislature and right to repair to reign some of the anti-competitive bullshit they all pull in though, I do agree with that.
abhibeckert@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Sorry but there just isn’t that much to figure out. Cars have had electric motors and batteries for as long as cars have had motors (literally - early cars didn’t have a combustion engine).
You take an ordinary car, bolt a motor and battery to it somewhere, and you’re done. Nothing innovative needs to happen and there should be no repairability compromises.
Dariusmiles2123@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
I’ll probably buy an electric car one day, but I’ll be paying a lot of attention to its repairability. We have to make sure brands understand that « programmed obsolescence » isn’t accepted by everyone!
Badeendje@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Lawmakers should fix that. Nothing a consumer can do here. If you know up front you can avoid a brand, but with the OTA updates and stuff they can just pull a bait and switch.
Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social 8 months ago
This consumer will be doing his part by not buying any car made after 2018
pumpkinseedoil@feddit.de 8 months ago
You might want to take a look at Aptera. If we’re lucky they’ll sell their first cars in 1-5 years
LibertyLizard@slrpnk.net 8 months ago
Why do you think Aptera will be better on this issue? I was very disappointed by the decision not to paint their vehicles. It’s hard to see how that won’t lead to a substandard product.
Cethin@lemmy.zip 8 months ago
I hadn’t heard of them, but looking it up it seems like tech startup garbage. You don’t need to re-invent the car. It looks like they made a silly design just to stand out. It also sacrafices a lot for that design. It’s a two seater with very little storage room and probably not great for taller people like me. It also seems to have very little space for crumple-zones, so I’m curious as to how safe it is in an accident.
randomaside@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 months ago
They listen and say “We hear you but the data shows you much rather have the Witcher 3 running on your dashboard and webcam more easily monetize this.”
filister@lemmy.world 8 months ago
The title is misleading, because nothing stops ICE car manufacturers from adopting the same unicast build bodies of those cars, and then EV will still be more expensive to make but with similar repair and lower maintenance cost.
But I really hope that common sense will prevail, even though I am doubtful.
FluffyPotato@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Unfortunately used EVs are still decades away from being viable since after 10 years you hit the point you most likely start needing to replace the battery. You aren’t buying used if you need to invest more in replacement parts than the car itself.
I’m fine with that though, we need vehicles on rails instead. 80% of all microplastic are from tires.
AA5B@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Batteries don’t suddenly die, but lose capacity over time. I believe batteries are already demonstrating 80+% capacity after ten years, and they should only get better as technology improves.
LFP batteries used in lower end models, such as Tesla Model 3/Y Standard, are expected to hold capacity after many more charge cycles
Oderus@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Replacing EV batteries is very rare, even in older or very used EV’s
FluffyPotato@lemm.ee 8 months ago
They don’t seem to mention how fast batteries actually degrade, how old those vehicles are, what climate conditions they are used or how many charging cycles are on those. It’s all well and good if the 15000 cars have a low amount of battery replacements but without knowing the conditions it’s kinda useless.
Like where I am the temperature goes from -20C to +30C pretty much every year and in those conditions the makers rate the lifespan from 8 - 12 years.
Nurgle@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Tire runoff is nasty. There’s recently been salmon die off in the NW from a preservative chemical in tires.
werefreeatlast@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Time to standardize connectors, control panels, battery sizes, motors etc.
Rooki@lemmy.world 8 months ago
They will never be cheaper. Just the costs of the battery, or they do shady bussiness tricks, like hooking you in cheap initial costs but horeandus repair/replacement bills.
mipadaitu@lemmy.world 8 months ago
An electric motor is SIGNIFICANTLY more simple to produce than an entire internal combustion engine. There are far fewer moving parts on an electric car than a gasoline one.
The battery is a significant cost, but not all cars need to have 300 miles of range. It is also possible that once the market is saturated (i.e. - several decades), that recycled battery packs will be cheaper to produce than batteries built from raw materials.
The major reason why electric cars are so expensive right now is because there are far fewer of them, and the ones that are being made have a target market of an upper-middle class household. They’re luxury/status symbols as much as anything else. Secondarily, there isn’t a large used electric car market yet.
There is a large potential for cost reductions. Assuming technology continues to improve, electric cars will drop below the price of gas and diesel for everyday driving. Internal combustion engines will most likely be reduced to specialty vehicles.
Usernameblankface@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Also, as we realize that we don’t need 400+ miles of range in a commuter car, cheaper battery chemistries make a lot of sense, despite their shorter range per kg or lb
fuckwit_mcbumcrumble@lemmy.world 8 months ago
But the battery pack is far and away more expensive than the engine. Shit far and away more expensive than the engine AND transmission. Shit like half an EVs price is the battery.
BombOmOm@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Yeah, I’m not really sure what the path to the EV being cheaper to produce is. Every EV we have seen is more expensive than its ICE counterpart. And it isn’t like batteries are some new tech that manufacturers don’t know how to make well. No, these are being mass produced.
The higher repair costs come from the fact that while an EV pack is the single most expensive part of the car, and if it is damaged, you now have to replace the single most expensive part of the car.
Higher insurance costs flow from the higher purchase cost and the higher repair costs. So, those won’t come down either.
LesserAbe@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Every new technology is initially more expensive, then as it moves into mass production the cost goes down because of economies of scale - more suppliers, innovations in technique.
Battery costs have gone down an insane amount already, and it doesn’t look like they’re done.
Going further, what percentage of accidents affect the battery pack? The article seems to conflate Tesla manufacturing techniques that make cosmetic repairs difficult with all electric vehicles - just because Tesla has long repairs doesn’t mean all manufacturers do.
It also talks about electric manufacturers going out of business, but is it 15% by number of businesses or by manufacturing volume? Lucid and Rivian aren’t making that many cars in terms of absolute volume, but could go under. Hyundai, Kia, Chevy et al. make a lot more cars and seem unlikely to collapse.
postnataldrip@lemmy.world 8 months ago
I wonder if this kind of thing might make conversions into older cars more viable. If the body and the million computers etc will cost heaps to fix in a newish EV, that might mean an increased supply of electric drivetrains at the wreckers. They’re not exactly a drop-in proposition but having the parts available has to be a good start.
reddig33@lemmy.world 8 months ago
They should be cheaper to repair since there are less parts. The added costs are related to design decisions.
When things are welded together instead of paneled, it’s more expensive. When battery packs have to be replaced in their entirety instead of individual packs or cells, it’s more expensive. Etc. Etc.
podperson@lemm.ee 8 months ago
Exactly. Example: on the Tesla Model 3, many of the panels (such as the rear quarter panel) are glued on instead of bolted/clipped on. So if you graze a stationary object and damage that (it happens), you’re on the hook for a very expensive repair since you need a repair shop that specializes in how to deal with that (plus the actual time to do the repair, which is more complicated). Update the designs to make them more repair friendly and the cost of ownership comes way down.
ShepherdPie@midwest.social 8 months ago
What car has removable rear quarters? I can’t think of any that aren’t welded on to the C-pillar/roof/trunk.
Socsa@sh.itjust.works 8 months ago
This is literally every single car on the road
0x0@programming.dev 8 months ago
Surely you don’t mean to imply built-in obsolescence, do you?