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Comment by burger_moon | Hacker News Reader

From reading articles on here for years about Teslas, it seems one of the major selling points is that you are expected to not have you car in a shop getting maintenance unlike ICE vehicles. I think most people forget about all the other stuff in that conversation then never considered what it takes to actually get a Tesla serviced because you'd expect it to be like every other car getting repaired.

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I've owned a Toyota, a Mazda, and two Hondas, and some Ford diesels, all with ICEs. All were over ten years old when I got them and beat to crap. None of these vehicles have ever needed engine repairs. But they all needed work on the suspension, brakes, and electrics. And I've never heard anyone talk about an actual engine breaking, apart from carbeurated motorcycle engines. If other people's experience is the same, I'm surprised that this particular EV marketing point makes it past the bullshit detector.

I'm also kind of disappointed that repairability isn't an EV marketing point, as electrical systems are easy to work on and diagnose compared to mechanical systems. Oh well, maybe the USA and China go to war then repairing and building becomes an American patriotic virtue

I've had gasket seals need repair and a bunch of emission related things have repeated issues like O2 sensors and then some engine-related things like throttle position sensors. But as you said many of the big ticket items were suspension issues.

There are also a host of other non engine related things that plague older vehicles like AC, power doors/windows, etc.

Wouldn’t electrics have the same (or more due to weight) suspension issues?

Or does the lower vibration change that aspect?

What I really want is dynamic suspension that adjusts based on location. We already have cars going over every road: we could measure where the pot holes are or where the road is smooth.

> as electrical systems are easy to work on and diagnose compared to mechanical systems.

I'm not sure I agree with that. ICEs have a culture of DIY repairs. Sure, that could develop around electrics and hybrids, but HV electrical systems are dangerous. I'd say they are much more dangerous than ICEs.

> HV electrical systems are dangerous. I'd say they are much more dangerous than ICEs.

Everything is dangerous. Gasoline is a volatile liquid carcinogen that bursts into flames when exposed to temperatures that numerous parts of the vehicle operate at, unless it evaporates first, in which case it explodes. An ICE engine block weighs several hundred pounds and can crush you to death. If you repair your brakes or steering improperly you may first discover it as your vehicle sails through a red light at a busy intersection or swerves out of control into oncoming traffic. If you stick your hand into a fan or belt and then it starts moving, you may no longer have a hand. Or an arm. Or enough remaining blood to stay conscious and call for help.

There are ten thousand ways for idiots to kill themselves. But most people are not idiots, and have a strong personal incentive not to get themselves killed, which means that none of them are a justification for prohibiting people from repairing their own property.

Have there been any deaths from EV electrics?

Most of them operate around 400v, which isn't super dangerous (touch it, and it might kill you, but there's also a good chance you'll survive).

They also have far more protection subsystems than a typical house or factory. For example, if you cut into a high voltage wire in a car and touch it with wet fingers, the battery contactor will disconnect before you can touch the other wire to cause a fatal current.

Actually the more electronics you have the harder fault isolation gets. Simple mechanics are rather easy in that regard.

That's mixing three issues though. The fact that Teslas have stuff that can break (obviously true), that they're having supply chain problems with parts that cause long delays (seems true given the linked article), says absolutely nothing about the frequency of Tesla failures. By all accounts they seem to be quite reliable, as you would obviously expect given the lack of the whole fuel/combustion/exhaust and cooling subsystems.

> By all accounts they seem to be quite reliable

Consumer Reports ranks Tesla #27 out of 29 manufacturers on reliability, and removed its recommendations for their cars. Several other surveys have similarly put Tesla's reliability dead last or nearly there.

Part of that ranking is due to the baked-in assumptions: for instance you don't lose points for needing an oil change every year. That's just "normal". The fact that a Tesla doesn't need an oil change, somehow, doesn't give it more points with reliability, but if you think from first principles, it should.

It does need a $400 annual service though, which you can pay for up front.

Not needed anymore: https://www.greencarreports.com/news/1122251_tesla-eliminate...

This appears to be at least in part a reaction to the backlogs at service centers described in the original article:

With hundreds of thousands more Teslas hitting the road, all those service visits—along with repair work—have reportedly backed up the company's service centers. Now the company has reportedly put an end to those extended service plans and is hoping instead to highlight electric cars' inherent reliability—and hopefully reduce the wait times at those service centers.

Not sure if that logic, we are not able to maintain our cars fast enough so we get rid of scheduled maintenance, flies.

The word “reliability” makes me think of unexpected maintenance as opposed to expected maintenance. Reliability for me has more to do with being able to start the car at any time and drive away without something randomly going wrong due to cheap parts or construction errors.

The reliability rankings are based on the rate of breakdowns reported by surveys of Consumer Reports subscribers. It doesn't appear to be an index or functional scheme in the way you're hinting at (100 points to Gryffindor for not needing an oil change!)

> But reliability has been a weak spot for Tesla. According to our survey results, problems with the suspension, especially with the 2017 model year, have been an issue for the Model S luxury sedan, while hardware problems—especially concerning its unique falcon-wing doors—have plagued the Model X SUV (neither is currently recommended by CR). And now our latest survey data has surfaced numerous problems reported by Model 3 owners as well, which is why CR has removed its recommendation for the vehicle.

And as it happens, CR do recognise that engine and powertrain problems are much rarer:

> By contrast, CR members have reported few problems with Tesla’s unique electric powertrains, which may be due in part to their relative simplicity when compared with traditional internal-combustion engines

https://www.consumerreports.org/car-reliability-owner-satisf...

You also don’t lose points for having to carefully plan long trips around supercharger availability.

Reliability doesn’t measure maintenance. A Toyota Prius is more reliable than a Chrysler 200 because of the quality of engineering, assembly and components.

And if your Toyota breaks, there will be a million howtos in fixing it, colour matched tear offs and spares made for the next eleventy decades.

I worked on a Toyota issue and was amazed at how quickly a broad could-be-anything code became « when you get that, 99% of the time it’s X ».

Reliability is part of RAMT (Reliability, Availability, Maintainability, Testability), with the overall aim being Availability. Whether you get this by short maintenance and repair times, long stretches between maintenance and repairs or a combination doesn't matter that much.

If you add up to 5 weeks to your repair time due to logistics that is a big issue. And again one coming from the supply chain domain, as do production hell and distribution hell. And al of that has nothing whatsoever to do with Tesla's being EVs.

Roughly, reliability is measured in mean Time between failure. Oil changes are part of routine maintenance and are such part of Maintainability. The overall metric that matters is Availability which, ultimately, also takes things like logistical delays into account. If you oil change takes half a day the impact is marginal compared to waiting weeks for spare parts. Not the least because you run a while on old oil without issues.

Links? I'm aware of the one survey on the model 3 (it was a survey of car models, not manufacturers). Not sure where the several others are, but would be curious to check.

I don't have everything bookmarked, but here are a few supporting links from a quick Google search:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/10/24/tesla-...

https://www.consumerreports.org/car-reliability-owner-satisf...

https://www.businessinsider.com/survey-uk-drivers-say-tesla-...

Companies which operate car fleets are finding Teslas too unreliable to be commercially viable. They're experiencing too many defects with the cars and the repair times are too slow:

https://www.thedrive.com/tech/27725/tesla-fleet-company-stru...

Fleets also (rightly) worry about the resale value.

Which could brake Tesla's sales in the long run. All the Premium OEMs, and a lot if the others, are making a big chunk of their business with fleet customers. If you cannot support fleets that is a big problem.

Just how you want to run a robo-taxi business with these issues is everybody's guess.

True, but given a logistics delay of 5 weeks, as the OP stated, is in itself a big problem. All self made it seems as well. If you want vertical integration you have to execute on it. If the frequency of defects is rather high as well (no idea if that is true or not) that really hurts.

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