this post was submitted on 01 Oct 2023
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Have you ever fixed an older combustion engine vehicle? You watch a youtube video and a few hours later, you can, in most cases, at least get the car to a state so you can drive it to a mechanic. On modern combustion engine vehicles this is still possible, although a bit more difficult.
Uhhh, EVs? No way you're fixing anything in there.
On an EV, if anything happens to the motor or battery that they need work, you've done something so extraordinarily bad that you've somehow physically damaged them. Under normal use, they shouldn't need maintenance due to the much much less strain put on the motor without the constant explosions and multitude of fluids running through it. It's literally just a motor and a few electronics hooked up to a battery. There's nothing that special about it, and it's been proven to be a pretty reliable setup. Beyond that, they are a normal vehicle with normal replacement parts. Brakes, shocks, suspension bushings...all the same as every other vehicle out there.
You're worried about literally nothing...
What sucks is those components are wrapped together with silicon valley (wannabe) software that's so rushed and poorly planned (except the monetization!) that minor sensor failures take down the whole system. At least it looks pretty.
A few decades of standards and convergence I hope will result in some extremely reliable cars and lots of aftermarket parts.
I’ve been an Automotive Technician for a couple decades now and I can safely say combustion engines have way more parts that fail and if you can use a youtube video to diagnose your ICE (very rarely is this possible) then you’re smart enough to do the same with an EV.
There is way less parts on an EV and they are way easier to fix.
Most EV components you'd need to replace are the same as in an ICE. There's way less that needs to be done on an EV. The expensive bit has an 8 year warranty on most EVs including Tesla.
Tesla cars can only be serviced by Tesla mechanics with Tesla parts, and they have software locks.
https://www.reuters.com/legal/tesla-hit-with-right-repair-antitrust-class-actions-2023-03-15/
Bigger parts sure, but I wouldn't trust a village mechanic with an engine job either.
You can change brakes, suspension, lights, pretty much everything without software locks. Only drive train is locked, which rarely fails and it does so progressively.
Also you can enter service mode now and tell it to reflash the whole car. Need a new steering rack or camera for example? Swap the part, hit reflash and the car flashes the correct vin, coding and software into the part and offers calibration afterwards.
Also built in scantool to read fault codes and do basic diag. More advanced diag needs Tesla Toolbox. Costs $165 for a day of access/$500 per month, but is possible with an ethernet cable and doesn't need a $1800 SAE J2534 box.
Cool, TIL!
In an ICE you can have an air/fuel/electrical issue, and the entire system is designed to overcome the inherent design flaws of the technology, thus making it convoluted and difficult to understand. Not only can an EM be explained and taught far easier than a full ICE breakdown, but you can literally build one as an Elementary school science project with some copper wire, batteries, and magnets. The technology has only one point of failure as opposed to three. If it doesn't work, electricity is the ONLY possible reason.
EM's have a significantly smaller chance of failure due to the simplicity of the design with fewer moving parts, so while current EM's aren't really built to be repaired by their operators, one that's designed to be would be incredibly simple for the layman to understand and repair had they the knowledge and tools available. The technology itself isn't the issue, in fact, I'd argue the average random could learn how to repair an EM in much less time than an ICE, we just don't build them that way currently (like how we don't build modern ICE's to be repaired by their drivers.)
Ok. So do you think EV makers make it easy to repair them? Because they sure as hell don't. On paper you can, I agree with that. But they lock the software and hardware in bizzare ways, so that you have to go to a certified mechanic.
Which is exactly what modern cars are like to fix, what's your point? I specifically mentioned how we don't design them to be repaired by the owner in my comment.
That all sounds very impressive, rocket m00se. Until you get down to the tricky business of actually trying to identify and replaced a single failed cell in a massive factory-sealed battery array. It is NOT easy and there are many traps placed in your way on purpose. I would rather work on a broken ICE vehicle any day of the week.
It's almost like I specifically mentioned that modern vehicles (no matter the powerplant) aren't designed to be fixed by the person driving it, and are created so that special tools/technicians are needed.
I stand by my point, EM's are far simpler and if they were designed like old cars with the owner in mind, they'd be dead simple for someone with next to zero knowledge to troubleshoot compared to the over engineered mess that internal combustion ended up as.
Also, in many cases it’s easier to get electricity than gas in remote locations. Saves a lot of annoying refueling trips.