Also huge respect to his belief that things people bought should always be repairable by the owner (with some reasonable learned skills).
They are. That (fortunately) doesn't stop people from still trying, and succeeding. Look up Louis Rossmann and Apple products for a analogous example.
By contrast, for modern electric cars weight and size has so much margin that it's basically a non-issue aside from the complications of fitting the battery into the chassis.
It means that car companies have far, far less of a genuine engineering-driven reason to make devices that are impossible to repair at home or in small shops.
Really cool video, btw. The message is spot on!
Treating electric cars as "these are mystery devices that must be repaired only by us, because reasons" does the world an enormous disservice.
Extremely unappealing to me.
It has all the complexities of a cluster on wheels, tons of software systems and as a result is hard to diagnose properly.
So the first 'fancy equipment' you will need is a set of proper diagnostics equipment, which is - given the complexity involved - most likely supplied by the manufacturer or not at all.
What Tesla could do - but which they would hate because it is part of their competitive edge - is to release full schematics and software listings, but no other ordinary car manufacturer does this, nor are they required to by law.
Good thing too because if the Toyota ECU was anything to go by the industry would look pretty dumb.
Repairing something that you own that only affects you is different from repairing something like a car that could affect others. As a completely fictional example: incorrectly repairing a complex brake system could pose a danger to other drivers and lead to an -otherwise avoidable- accident.
EDIT: some responses are focusing too closely on the example of brakes- perhaps it’s not the best way to illustrate my point. Say, instead, your engine broke or your self driving car’s software was malfunctioning. Should you still have the right to repair?
And if you think a certified mechanic never makes a mistake, you are sorely mistaken.
It is mainly a legal liability issue. Those are safety critical parts and the manufacturer doesn't want to be the one getting sued if someone dies in such a vehicle. If the chassis of the car breaks or deforms in an accident because it has been "repaired" after a previous crash and someone gets hurt because of it, that's not the same thing as someone screwing up the brakes. Most people will sue the manufacturer claiming a manufacturing fault, not the mechanic as most mechanics don't repair things like that (car is considered totaled in such case).
E.g. in most of Europe a "franken-car" like that wouldn't be even able to pass the mandatory inspection and get registered in the first place. Once the car is considered totaled and bought out by the insurance, they must destroy it so that potentially compromised parts can't find out their way back on the street again (they still do but that's another issue).
The consequence is that these "chop shops" resort to buying the registration from an owner of one wreck on a black market (e.g. because they caused the accident and didn't want to get their premiums increased, so they didn't claim it from their insurance - in that case they are left with an useless registration and no car) and "build" a new car to match the registration, which is then sold.
It is of course illegal and selling a car like that is fraud (the client would never buy it if they knew the history or not for the asking price). That is also often where most of the stolen cars end up - a stolen car cut up into parts is worth more than selling it whole (and way less risky too).
So while I admire the guy's technical skills, here I perfectly understand why Tesla is steering waaay clear of him. This is definitely not the same thing as Apple's laptops - a laptop is not 1-2 tons of metal barreling down a motorway at 100 km/h with a firebomb under the seat.
I genuinely don't want to live in a world where I can't get replacement parts to fix my vehicles, and this is one more example of why I don't like Tesla.
Everything you do affects everyone else, that's no excuse to take away freedom.
"No risk no life."
There could definitely be degrees of freedom for repair on specific items, much like there’s a degree of freedom of usage for particular items.
The right to own should not necessarily imply a right to repair for all types of items.
the right to repair doesn't necessarily mean you have to do it yourself.
To me, the right to repair means the right for a 3rd party to completely understand the innards of a piece of equipment. This way, the manufacturer cannot lock you in, nor can they charge exorbinant prices for repairs. It's really and extension of a free-market. Compete on quality and price, rather than by monopoly or coercion.
Mind you, right to repair is a separate question from right to use on public streets. The former is between the manufacturer and the owner, the latter is between the owner and the public/the state. There may be additional requirements to be allowed to use a repaired vehicle on public streets, but the important point is that that is none of the manufacturer's business, the requirements are set by the state, not by the manufacturer.
Indeed. This is usually called "roadworthiness" and varies between states. In fact, this is why the whole custom/car modding/hot rod culture can exist --- and from what I've seen, it's not been detrimental to overall safety. The vast majority of deaths come from idiotic/drunk/distracted drivers, not problems with modded/repaired cars.
That's not realistic for a repaired car. You can't crash-test a one-off vehicle which is the only way to determine structural soundness of some of the repairs he is doing.
That's also why such car "recycling" is generally not done. If anything major in the chassis/body is damaged, the car is usually a total loss - it is not economical or even possible to safely repair it and nobody could guarantee the safety of it.
The best he can do is to become an authorized mechanic for Tesla (not sure whether Tesla has such program, never owned one). But then he would likely be legally unable to use salvaged parts in his repairs, only new ones.
Do you see a dystopia emerging from such laws?
[1] cosmetics aside obviously
If you are barred from repairing an item by law or policy then you do not own that item
In any case, where would you stop? If we decide that only manufacturers are qualified to service things which could potentially affect other people, then the list grows very large in a hurry.
We've had mechanics, including owner-mechanics, working on far more complicated machinery than an electric car for a hundred years. It's not nearly as hard as inexperienced people believe.
Everything should have a diagnostic procedure and a replacement procedure. All of the other car companies manage to do at least that, and they also somehow manage to make replacement parts available too. As a bonus of the internet age, you can publish updated service manuals when unexpected failures are found and a diagnostic procedure and recommended remediation are built.
Bad software updates should be fixable by flashing a known good version. I don't expect to have support for 3rd parties to modify firmware to make fixes (but one could hope).
If the engine in my out of warranty vehicle breaks, I can (attempt) to fix it myself, bring it to an independent mechanic to fix it or replace it (again, myself or others). If I value the coolness of my car over time and money, I can even replace a functional engine with something better, for some value of better, and subject to environmental regulations.
The mechanic at the garage told me that torquing nuts is tricky because if you under torque the nuts come loose. But sometimes they rust and you need to torque them more than the manufacturer spec. In that case he said that could also lead to failure. He said "we've all been there" to my glum attitude about screwing up the repair.
Repairs are not always simple. Hopefully there are other protections in place if one component fails.
One notable exception here being farm equipment, where modern farmers want highly-automated equipment to reduce labor costs, but they also want to be able to maintain their equipment themselves.
I'm an experienced shadetree mechanic. Rebuilt a couple engines, hotrodded a motor or two. There are all kinds of things that I could have done that would make a vehicle unsafe for public roads. I didn't do those things though, because I wanted a machine that worked, not a machine that was broken.
My hunch is that in the real world, people that fix cars themselves are no more dangerous than professional mechanics.
Well, if you do anything with very little experience it will be a more dangerous affair. That's why most people would ask more experienced people to help or would be an apprentice to more experienced people until they are ready to do their own work solo.
You don't watch a youtube video and then jump straight to replacing or upgrading your brakes, steering or suspension.
> Also, mechanics get sued for malpractice right?
Only in sue happy countries.
Others have pointed out that it is not dangerous, so I’ll point out that it is emensely rewarding to do this kind of work yourself. Enlist a competent buddy and give it a try.
Do modern cars have anything to mitigate this?
I've worked on the brakes on multiple cars and never once took one out for a test drive without triple-checking that I didn't make some stupid mistake that would put other people in danger.
Don't get me wrong, I had a couple cars with dodgy brakes over the years but always made sure they were good enough at the time I was driving them -- had this '53 Dodge that I had to bleed the brakes every time I wanted to take it out for a spin because the wheel cylinders were pitted and slowly leaked but always made sure to do a proper job because other people's lives were at risk too.
Imagine the completely hypothetical situation where your self driving car was malfunctioning due to an OTA update. As the owner of the car, would you say you have a right to go into the software and now modify it?
All I’m saying is that there should absolutely be some limit to what you have a right to repair, independent of your ownership.
Yes, if it's my car I would absolutely say I have that right. The way I operate my car is my responsibility too.
Would you say that operating a car safely carries less responsibility than repairing one safely?
When you earn that license to operate your car, part of the deal is that you shouldn't operate your car if you think it might not be safe. That requirement does not go away depending on who fixed it last, or for that matter, the car's entire history.
I think there are some serious issues with regulating people's repairs (or just tinkering with) of their own stuff. For a start; I can't imagine a practical implementation of this "car repair license" which would solve any realistic problem, so to me it sounds like a proposal for mostly-useless bureaucracy.
Beyond that, I (and my employer) put a lot of value on the knowledge I've gained to be able to competently, to your example, fix my own brakes (two weekends ago, I replaced a wheel bearing - seems to be working fine). I think that adding barriers to technical work effectively dumbs down society in general. It also encourages waste - if the cost of a repair increases (as it probably would, if the licensing requirements increased), then the broken thing is more likely to be discarded wholesale, rather than repaired.
Maybe we should move on from this car discussion, and consider other regulated machines in common use. Radios, in particular, seem like an interesting parallel - they operate in a public space and carry safety risks. When radio regulation started, radios were similar complexity to concurrent cars, but now are largely software controlled. Do you think you should be legally prevented from changing the driver/firmware in your WiFi radio or cell phone?
Essentially I dont expect Tesla to allow me to make changes to their system that's indemnifying me from risk.
Au contraire.
An EV uses a combination of traditional friction braking and regenerative braking, with a sophisticated algorithm to appropriately shift between methods.
If the batteries are fully charged, that means less regenerative braking.
If a vehicle is driven aggressively the batteries are probably already hot, so less energy should be dumped back into them when braking. But at the same time, the friction brakes are probably being overused. How to keep them from being destroyed?
What if a car is yawing or drifting? When stability control kicks in, some combination of friction braking and regenerative braking may be warranted. How much at the front axle, how much at the rear axle, how much at each wheel?
If this were "dead simple", why did Formula 1 teams need a few years to work out their braking issues at the start of the current turbo hybrid era?
We're no longer in the days of a master cylinder responding to pressure from a driver's foot by simply sending hydraulic fluid to drum brakes.
Sure, simple maintenance such as replacing brake pads in most cars can still be DIY. But "repair" in general is no longer simple.
I think there are many cars on the road that literally fit that description, and certainly it's still legal to drive such. More cars that you'd think have rear drum brakes.
The complexity of electronic aids is not really germane to the complexity of maintaining brake systems when you normally don't get failures and if you do there's going to be a code that tells you.
Sure, legacy. But this entire discussion started with Tesla. Which has a much more sophisticated system. Even the entry level current generation Honda Civic LX has 4 wheel disc brakes (which, granted, aren't much different than drums).
not really germane to the complexity of maintaining brake systems
The poster I responded to said "fixing them". I consider that to be much different than your word "maintaining". Maintaining is much easier than fixing. Tesla probably keeps their codes secret and won't sell you any replacement electronic parts anyway. The practical result of this is IMO quite the opposite of "dead simple".
At some point of actuation the Tesla car should have a mechanical backup when depressing the brake pedal, right? I really don't think it's pure brake by wire.
Unlike locomotives and street cars, few electric cars have a resistor bank for dumping braking energy when the batteries are fully charged. So a fully charged battery does reduce braking performance.
The Amiga came with schematics... that seems like a parallel universe now... and then I realize that was what some kind of golden age of openness to me, probably seems very closed and uptight to what computer scientists in the 60s or so did and experienced. And hey, isn't Linux incredibly complex? What if someone tinkers with the sourcecode, breaks it completely, and ends up exposing very private email someone else send to them to them? What if someone uses a Raspberry Pi to automate their garage door, instead of buying a "professional product", and another person gets harmed or even killed? Those things can happen, and then that person is liable for what they did.. isn't that enough? Or at least enough in most cases?
If people repairing cars leads to a lot of accidents, then it's the job of lawmakers to study, recognize and deal with that. It's a farce for all sorts of products being hard to repair because people repairing their stuff is less profitable than them buying more, and then to justify that with safety. If it's about safety, then you have to hand over responsibility. If you find out a new food you invented can carry a new disease if not stored properly, inform the authorities so they can make rules for everyone, instead of doing your own little thing and not telling anyone. Some companies probably don't want that because proper laws would deal with it in respects to how dangerous something is, how much expertise is needed, and so on... not just solely "how much additional money can we squeeze out of it".
So it's not about safety (that's not in reference to your comment which I believe is sincere, but in reference to what many companies are doing), that simply doesn't mesh, it's about the desire to control and exploit, to channel people into what companies need/want instead of channeling companies into what people need/want. Being exploited and manipulated in this fashion is a net decrease of safety. That just about everybody who exploits is in turn the exploited pet of others in other areas, that everybody who presumes to be a magician to the plebs is in turn a pleb in the sight of another magician, that doesn't make it better or more fair, it makes it a maelstrom. Our tools get faster and bigger, but we become consumers instead of makers, parrots instead of sources. We hop from raft to raft on a windy river, rather than building and expanding and improving our world. That is just so boring and also dangerous, besides sorely lacking dignity. Anyone who works to change that, no matter in what capacity, I support without ifs and buts.
Generally speaking and kind of a tangent, but how much damage is done to the mind by making the world and the objects we use to function and socialize more opaque, so that we become to resigned to either consume or watch? That's hardly on our radar, but I would count on it.