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My understanding is that the failure rates are so low on electric motors, you won’t need to fix lots of problems like on an ICE-powered vehicle. As someone that has owned a lot of shitty gas cars and had to repair them myself, I’d relish the chance for an electric.

While this is true with regards to the motor, battery, etc. the rest of the car is the same as standard vehicles and will fail in the same way as today's cars do. So if the AC fails, some computer board fries, suspension gets messed up, etc. you're still back at the shop.

Yes, but those components (mostly) haven't changed. They're also (mostly) not part of the "standard" maintenance which dominates ICE vehicles post sale profitability. Another reason dealers don't want to sell EVs.

Agreed. They’re also likely to be components a nondealer may fix.

The motors yes, but the power electronics components in motor controllers, MOSFETs and IGBTs, have a notoriously short life, especially if heavy power cycling with short t_on and t_off occurs.

Those things are pretty easy to replace with a hot-air soldering station.

Unless they're conformally coated.

Why would they do such a thing? Conformal coating is good for harsh environments if the electronics are actually exposed to the environment (like liquids), but in a car that's not the case, it's protected in a box and usually put inside the cabin too.

Also, conformal coatings are very, very bad for heat transfer. Power MOSFETs usually need to be heatsinked; conformally coating them would work against that.

Tesla drivetrains had a high failure rate possibly due to arcing through their ball bearing causing pitting. The Tesla problem is likely resolved, but I’m not confident these (non-Tesla) electric motors won’t have high failure rates too. Other simple things like battery pack power relays fail more often than you’d expect, costing thousands to replace a ?$50? part.

I’m a few years into my first electric and would feel more comfortable with a solid supply of reasonably priced parts and service manuals.

Give it time. As long as right to repair isn't killed off by lobbying (John Deere can piss off), the secondary parts market will slowly catch up.

There is an inherent risk to working on these vehicles w/out proper training--just like working on your home's electric has risks if you don't know what you're doing.

They said the LED light bulbs would last 20 years. Last week I had to replace 5 of them that failed all at the exact same time, 6 month old bulbs. Clearly there was some kind of power surge or disturbance that the power electronics didn't like; but yet here we are.

The LEDs themselves likely will last 20 years (though losing some of the brightness). The power electronics that feeds them off 110V (or 220V) is tiny because it has to fit into the lamp's base, cannot be too expensive for pricing reasons, but is still much more complex than the LED crystals. It has a much higher failure rate than the light-emitting parts.

I'm sure that electric car manufacturers will have the same things to say when people point to previous claims of extreme longevity.

Does that matter if we get off of oil in the interim? It seems the argument should be for continuous improvement in the manufacturing process and a closed loop recycling system for failed components and batteries.

`let lifetime = max(...components_lifetime)` is like `let size = to_greeklish(base10(hard_drive_capacity))`. Some people don't care, but the people who do care are not going to thank you when they optimize on the basis of the appearance of a promise with an actual performance that is opposed to its appearance.

An electric motor is not a cheap newly made LED light bulb? We know how long electric motors last since we have been using them since 1832. They seem to last a very long time.

I haven't had your bad experiences with LED bulbs either though, mine seem to be lasting great so far.

LEDs last almost forever if they work within their parameters (mostly the temperature is important). They degrade quickly if they overheat. And above let's say 5W they will overheat if they are made out of plastic.

So - these plastic ones are designed to fail, so why put a proper electronics there? So they skimp on power regulator as well (and that's probably what killed your LEDs).

Buy LEDs with metal radiators - they are more expansive, but they aren't designed to fail in a few months and should really last decades.

This may be pessimistic, and relating back to the higher level comments on the auto side. Watching how current automotive manufacturers have gone due to the bean counters demanding higher margins - I don’t know that we can expect them to default to the better quality hardware. If they do, I’d expect it to be during the formative/adoption years and again decline toward higher margins.

I've analyzed some failed LED bulbs, and what fails is the power supply. The LEDs themselves were likely still good, but especially the cheaper bulbs have inadequate cooling and very cheap & crappy power supplies.

Automobiles nowadays are more like electronics with more sophisticated ECUs and drive-by-wire technologies on throttle, breaks etc. With self-driving on the horizon, they are going to be more compute intensive and be more powerful in computing than your smartphones and your average personal computers. Btw, electric vehicles are more suitable for self-driving due to the electricity requirements of AI computing.

Are you ever going to be able to fix them yourself if they are broken? Probably not (unless you have a electronic shop with all the equipments and are savvy in electronics like iFixIt guys do, but even then you can't fix a IC chip if it's fried.)

Just like an iPhone, as it's more integrated and smarter and more powers, the repairability is going down. So get used to it.

PS: on the flip side, more IC chips in designs generally provide a more solid and reliable product (probably with exception) and cheaper the cost due to economy of scale in manufacturing and reduced in labor, which is why you can have an EV with 200miles of range with less than $10k price tag.

My grandfather was a mechanic. In the 80s ECUs became the normative and he was unable to keep up with the electronic side of mechanical work and had to retire. I was talking to my mechanic last week about this and he said he would probably be out of a job in another decade because the next generation of mechanics are going to be electricians.

> "I will probably ve sticking with my Subaru and get my wife (who is looking for a new car after hers died) an early 00s vehicle that I can still repair for less than ridiculous prices."

A simple counter-argument is that an early 00s vehicle will break a lot more than a newer car. So even if you can fix it yourself or repairs are cheaper (which is questionable), a new car would break down a lot less often.

A counter argument to your counter argument, in point of example would be any Land Rover / Range Rover vehicle. If you've owned one, then you know - at a certain point they start falling apart. It doesn't matter what model year they are. On the whole, it's a certainty (with some rare outliers that run forever). The newer model years have considerably worse repairability. I'm lucky in that my 2012 is still relatively easy to work on.

Repairing older model years _tends_ to be cheaper as there are more surplus parts as more vehicles are retired. I've never lived in a county that didn't have several junkyards.

Reliability, repairability, and durability varies greatly by year, make, and model. Newer model years do not mean that all three factors always improve, and frequently mean that some or all of those factors regress. JD Power, Consumer Reports et al run yearly technical reports on nearly every vehicle out there if you're curious.

Land Rover has a long reputation for being unreliable, so that's not a very good argument. If you want reliable, buy a Japanese brand, not a British one.

Land Rover is Indian, not British - bought by Tata in 2008.

Where is the car engineered and manufactured? I'm pretty sure it's not India, just like Volvos are not engineered or manufactured in China.

I agree with your sentiment, but I think you should look at the bigger picture. Subarus have a reputation for being easy to repair, a testament to thoughtful engineering. But most other brands are not that accessible, whether they're electric or ICE. So you might as well say you'll only buy Subaru rather than you wouldn't buy electric or hybrid.

Next, long range electric cars are a new technology and the tools and parts needed to repair them are still exotic. This is likely to change as electric cars become more common. Ideally, I'd recommend selecting electric cars that use standard components so they can be easily swapped or repaired. I don't know that these standards will ever arise, and that's not really how it worked out for ICE cars. But if the ability to repair and maintain your vehicle is a priority, that's a quality you should be looking for.

"Subarus have a reputation for being easy to repair"

Replacing a single headlight bulb in recent Subarus is an hour long job. You get to remove the wheel and wheel well cover. Nice $250 job to replace both at the dealer. Daytime running lights that burn out extra quick just adds to this insanity.

How often do you have to replace headlight bulbs? And if it only takes an hour, why on earth would you spend $250 at the dealer to do it? I don't know about you, but I certainly don't get paid $250/hour at my day job (don't forget that car dealer mechanics don't work at your home or workplace, you have to bring the car to them and sit there while they do the job).

DRLs don't burn out quickly if you don't cheap out on them. Get the car model that has LED DRLs and you won't have this problem. Only crappy models with halogen bulbs still do this. If you're driving a car with halogen bulbs, you're driving an unsafe car according to the IIHS, which won't award a good safety rating to any such vehicle: only cars with HID or LED lighting qualify. Night visibility with halogen is atrocious.

Because the damn lights keep breaking every year and are not user serviceable unless you happen to have access to a garage and know how to remove the bumper to access the headlights and swap them.

I can just bring my car to the dealer and avoid dealing with all of this crap.

What kind of crappy car do you have that requires removing the bumper?

Mine isn't the easiest in the world to change bulbs on, but it's not that hard, as you just have to pull out the fender liners a little to get to the bulbs. But with HIDs, I've never needed to do that, and likely won't for years to come. I guess paying extra for HIDs ends up paying for itself...

Replace both at the dealer. So $100/hr labor for each and $50 for parts and tax. In the Bay Area the labor cost for every skilled/semi-skilled job costs at least $100/hr. Plumber, electrician, tree trimming, etc.

I would assume its newer? My headlights are cake to replace. But my Subaru is from nearly two decades ago.

The original comment probably should've included "older". In general most older cars are easier to repair. Just replaced my headlights a couple days ago in 01 forester. Took about 3 minutes. Changing a fog light in my 11' 328i is insane. Had to take off the wheel and go in from the wheel well instead of just having screws on the front. Seems intentional sometimes.

Honestly, her car will probably be a Subaru for this reason. Thinking a Forester since they are a bit larger and she needs the space for kids/horse tack/dogs/etc.

I highly value the ability to fix my own problems if I want to. Same reason I prioritize FOSS. I can fix issues myself.

Eventually I will probably be forced to move on, but my cars downfall will be rust and I estimate it has another decade at least before that happens.

Side note: my brother and I were raised in compact sedans. I don’t recall any issues. I get that with more kids, a third row would have been important, but the crossovers most people are buying (including the Forester) don’t have that. Can someone explain this “need space for kids” thing?

For us its width. My Legacy isn't wide enough for three car seats. A Forester is. A third row would be amazing, but Subaru doesn't make such a vehicle and Subaru is basically a requirement for me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subaru_Ascent is being built and has 3 rows of seats. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subaru_Tribeca was the previous version, which they stopped selling in 2014 because of poor sales. I've seen them on the street and they were not attractive.

Yeah, the Tribeca did not look nice at all. Wasn't aware it was a 3 row though.

This new one looks pretty nice, and it confirms what I thought I had heard on the radio the other day about a 3 row Subie. See what the wife thinks...

I can imagine the car industry is big in lobbying against "right to repair it yourself" laws.

Isn't this a matter of having mechanics and electricians certified in maintaining electric cars? Presumably as these cars become more popular electricians will flock to this line of work because that's where the demand is going.

>When they diagnosed it I did some research and discovered that I could replace it, but much like the market for HVAC parts, I wasn't allowed to purchase the part...

What are you talking about? You can buy all the automotive HVAC parts you need on Ebay or elsewhere. I did this for my ex-wife's car a couple years ago; with the help of a friend and his hose/gauge set, we replaced the compressor and recharged the system. It wasn't too hard.

Did you try looking on Ebay for the controller you needed?

For my '15 Mazda (non-hybrid), I can easily buy any part I need online from various OEM parts stores.

I meant HVAC for a house. Needed a part for my furnace and I had to get someone to buy the part for me because there were no 3rd party parts and Trane only sells to licensed HVAC. Felt like I was 18 and trying to buy alcohol.

Had to do this myself about 10 years ago.

A delay relay in my AC burned out and wouldn't allow the unit to shut the fan down. Shut the breaker off, went up, pulled the main fuse pack, pulled the cover, found the relay. Pretty much a burnt husk of plastic.

Looked at the wiring diagram inside and in my manual for the unit (it was built in the early 1970s, when full documentation for everything was pretty standard), just to double check everything along the way was still ok. It all looked ok, so I went online to find the part - and ran into the same issue. For a simple relay.

I wasn't going to pay several hundred dollars to someone to change out a relay. That's dumb.

So I got in contact with my local Burning Man community, and someone on there was an AC repairman. I let him know what I had found, and he set me up with an invoice to purchase the part at a local HVAC parts place. Got the part, installed it, and it hasn't been a problem since.

I can understand the reasoning of needing licensed professionals for certain things, but basic electro-mechanical repair of appliances shouldn't be one of them. It wasn't always this way, either; I'm not sure when it changed (probably sometime in the 1960s), but before then it was almost expected that a homeowner would do his or her own repairs and maintenance on their home.

That said - likely the change came about in part due to shoddy electrical work that you can almost always find on homes that haven't been renovated that were built before such rules and regulations went into effect...

it's a transitional period, a bit like smartphones, you can't put your fingers on the part, you have to have hot air gun, lenses etc etc. Repair shop will transition but so far the status was : electronics are not for repair..

When EV will be a major % people will fix because it will be regular market/customers. Also as other people said, EVs are 10x, if not more, simpler than ICE so we may (depending on QA) need less repairs.

Also I believe that swappable parts will become the norm, quick swap batteries ala Tesla, etc etc

I'm more electrically minded, so in some ways I find the opposite to be true.

Electric cars are not fundamentally less fixable. Mechanics just don't know them yet.