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Comment by emp_zealoth | Hacker News Reader

Seriously,EV drivetrains last forever? What about battery packs that will be fucking dead after a few years of driving?

Have you ever worked with actual machinery? Electric motors can fail just as well, the windings might break or burn out, the bearings wear out, there is still some gearing in the car as well

Solar and wind is ruinously expensive (just look at german energy prices before and afrer start of their retarded experiment - and remember they pretty much drove out a lot of energy intensive heavy industry to China)

Do you really think its a good thing energy prices go negative because of generators that provide miniscule amounts od total required energy?

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Oi.

Tesla warranties their battery pack and electric motors for 8 years/unlimited miles. Their CTO has stated they expect 10-15 year lifetimes, minimum, from their stationary storage battery packs. Existing Model S data has shown their battery packs only degraded 6% over ~180k miles of use. The drivetrain will last the entire lifetime of the vehicle.

Electric motors are more reliable than internal combustion engines. Full stop.

Wind is cheaper than all other energy sources. Solar is still expensive, but that's what subsidies are for.

Yes, it's absolutely fine for energy prices to go negative when renewables are over producing.

I'll back you up on the electric motors being more reliable than gasoline engines. Gasoline engines by design have all sorts of moving parts where there is sliding friction mediated by partial lubrication[1]. Wear is inescapable.

Simple math gives you an estimate for the max run time of a gasoline engine.

200,000 miles / 30 mph => 6600 hours.

So after 7000 hours of run time a gasoline engine is shot. Industrial electric motors easily achieve run times that are ten times that number as do the power electronics needed to drive them.

[1] Partial lubrication means you have metal to metal contact. Full lubrication ala a pressure fed journal bearing is a different story. There the bearing surfaces are separated by a film of fluid. These types of bearing can an do last for decades.

Thank you for the assist!

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