Hacker News Reader

Comment by skybrian | Hacker News Reader

Folks, two years is not very long. The optimistic take on this is "wow, we might get mass production of electric cars in two years? Great!"

How long does it take to design and build a car factory, anyway?

View on HN

This is a very good point. But I will see if BMW actually does mass produce EVs.

It's not that expensive. If you can afford $10,000-$20,000 over the life of a car in fuel (plus a few thousand in oil changes and brake jobs), you can afford a $7500 battery. Especially since that pulls thousands of dollars worth of complexity out of the drivetrain.

I think the issue is that it's $7500 in one transaction if a battery goes bad, versus the cost of fuel which is spread out over the lifetime of the car.

Batteries can be repaired, just like an engine. And the battery rarely goes immediately bad. But I think this isn't the main issue, as cars already have to deal with the same problem of being totalled.

A car being totalled is covered by insurance. A car whose engine blows up outside the warranty period is covered by its owner's paycheck.

But as noted by another user, batteries come with long warranties. (100k miles, sometimes)

Do those come strict conditions though? For example: don’t launch the car, don’t use ludicrous mode more than X times over the lifetime of the drivetrain, etc.

I am curious why people fixate on the battery so much. Several of my coworkers have had Teslas for years now. To my knowledge not a single one has had a battery failure. Of all the many complaints about Teslas, I think the batteries are the least of the worries. Plus Tesla would probably cover most battery failures even if they weren't covered by the letter of the warranty, simply because they can't afford to have bad press about batteries failing.

Because they're used to crappy lead-acid batteries that need to be replaced regularly in ICE vehicles and which cause people to be stranded when they fail. Note that the Model Y will get rid of the 12V lead acid battery, which is a good thing (IMHO) if engineered correctly. One less maintenance item.

Also, consumer phone batteries (which are more aggressively charged/discharged and which usually use a different chemistry) don't last more than two or three years before showing significant capacity reduction.

Also, there were some problems with the early-year Leafs (2011-2012) losing range fast in hot climates. (Nissan solved the problem eventually via chemistry. Note this is not a problem for Teslas or Volts/Bolts due to a battery temperature management system able to cool the battery.)

Yes, but batteries come with long warranties. model s 100k 8 years.

I love how every time there's a discussion about car operating costs here, at least someone mentions oil changes as if they were a substantial part.

Many European cars with a long-life oil change program have oil changes as far as 18,000 miles apart. While I haven't averaged quite that high, for me oil changes still account for only about 2% of the fuel costs. With any new car the depreciation in value dominates most other individual costs anyway. (Also, a modestly sized car might only need one brake service if you use it for, say, 12 years, although this is more dependent on driving habits.)

Electric cars retain the value of their battery packs, however. Look up the price of a used Model S, for instance.

And cars retain the value of their gas tanks. The difference is that gas tanks very seldom if ever 'wear out' and are $100-500 to replace. Battery packs are a wear item. Even a 100k warranty seems absurd to me. I have 2 cars with over 200k that need no major work. That steps hard on the narrative that eveltric cars need less maintance. If making cars electric means making them diaposible, Id rather petrol, and so would the environment.

I've only had two ICE cars for a significant length of time, and each time I had to replace failed fuel pumps, both times they were located in the gas tank. They certainly seem to wear out more than rarely to me.

For well-engineered EVs, batteries are definitely not a wear item. Especially in a large-battery (i.e. >200mile range) EV, the battery will easily last over 200,000 miles before significant degradation.

You'll be happy to know that actual battery lifetimes for properly-engineered long-range EVs are similar or better than a typical combustion engine (i.e. over a half a million miles). For instance: https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-battery-life-80-percent-capa... and https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1112465_tesla-model-s-d...

I owned one ICE car for a short time that had its timing chain break, destroying the (interference) engine after just over 100,000 miles.

In a properly engineered long-range (>200 mile) EV, the battery is less of a wear item than the engine in a typical ICE car.

That $7500 battery need to be paid for up front, and consumes electricity that is not free.

Usually financed at a low interest rate. Electricity isn't free, but in my case costs about the equivalent of $1/gallon for gas (locally, gas is currently about $2.40). So overall, still definitely a win.

For gasoline, I consider it as essentially financed as well. Going to the gas station is basically paying off part of the debt I got by buying a gasoline consuming vehicle. Electricity, too, but electricity is much cheaper, and I can get out of debt there by buying a solar power system (unlike gasoline which is not feasible to produce on your own nor store a car-lifetime's worth).

> How long does it take to design and build a car factory, anyway?

On the order of:

5 years to design and build an all-new car.

2-3 for an all-new factory.

1 year to re-tool an existing factory.

>The optimistic take on this is "wow, we might get mass production of electric cars in two years? Great!"

And a bunch of other major car makers,too. It is simply amazing what a change has happened in the last year.

Why are people so focused on looking at the past? I mean, we are going to be living in the future, not the past.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com