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Comment by Ferret7446 | Hacker News Reader

>There will be $20,000 economy EVs

The mindset of the group of people that think $20,000 is economy (and that it "will" definitely get done) reflects everything that is wrong with a lot of recent ESG propaganda and policies. That is, ignorance of the state of most of the world outside of rich, first class bubbles.

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New ICE cars are also $20K these days. That's also unaffordable for a lot of people, but they don't buy new cars.

The problem is that EV cars have a finite lifespan on the most expensive component of the car... the battery. It is not modular despite being composed of several individual cells, and often you are not allowed to work on it yourself. Once the battery is dead that's it. You either pay 3k or bust.

This is true, but an EV that needs a battery swap is still carrying along a ton of mechanics that, compared to an ICE vehicle, are likely to be in generally better condition.

People used to do powertrain replacements on used cars, after all. (Maybe still do? The used cars I see are generally in better mechanical shape these days.)

3k? That’s a Prius salvage battery.

EV batteries won’t get replaced in 20k cars anymore than engines are. You total it out at that point.

Engine replacements are complicated. Many specific parts.

Battery replacements may be much easier to complete.

> Engine replacements are complicated. Many specific parts.

If you buy a full replacement engine (as opposed to parts to rebuild an engine), replacement is quick and easy in an ICE. In endurance racing an engine can often be replaced in less than 30 minutes. In non-racing conditions you'd do it a bit slower but it's not hard.

I would imagine that cars built for endurance racing, where this is known to be a common thing, would be designed to make it easy, while cars built for the general public will not have such a guarantee—some will be easy, some will be annoying, and some will be outright pains.

> I would imagine that cars built for endurance racing

At the higher end of professional racing, those are custom built cars.

But for most categories of racing, endurance race cars are just regular street cars. Hondas, Mazdas and BMWs are what I've raced or crewed with.

It's a pipe dream that we could have regulatory sense, but if they were standardised this would not be a problem, you'd just pay $200/kWh or whatever the going rate is at the time.

That's not too far off from the cost for a replacement for the Model S packs. It can be much less expensive than $200/kwh for third party shops, as the bad battery can be refurbished often offsetting much of the cost.

In both of those cases the cost is $x and a mostly functional battery. This is substantially higher than $x and will track with the cost of dealing with whatever anti repair countermeasures tesla puts in place, not the cost of storage..

For all the talk of "anti repair countermeasures", its not really something that we've seen in practice. Refurbishing batteries just isn't a cheap thing to do.

It sounds like there may even be a fully new battery option available for early Model S vehicles in the near future.

https://electrek.co/2021/01/19/tesla-structural-battery-pack...

I don’t want standard boring in my phones (I iPhone) and I don’t want standard boring cars in my car (I Tesla). In both cases I opt into vendor repair lock-in for a better product.

Proprietary monoliths where you have to take or leave the entire package based on what is most profitable is not how you get creativity and innovation.

If you had to rent your cell phone off of ma bell with no other equipment allowed on the network we wouldn't have iphones.

If roads had ford specific infrastructure like the future elon imagines we wouldn't have tesla.

A balance between interoperability, end user control, and freedom for manufacturers is how you get innovation. In the current auto market you have none of the above.

You total it out when the hood gets a dent, so ultimately what does it matter?

EV batteries generally don't die outright. They just lose capacity. So instead of a 300 mile range you have a 250 or 200 mile range. It's still a useful vehicle, just not as valuable.

> EV batteries generally don't die outright.

True. But since every point has at least three counterpoints (true, false and anywhere in between), I will provide a counterpoint.

> They just lose capacity. So instead of a 300 mile range you have a 250 or 200 mile range. It's still a useful vehicle, just not as valuable.

This is true for urban environments where infrastructure is plentiful, and making it to the next recharging station is not a problem.

There are, however, many places on this planet that have resisted urbanisation (for one reason or another). On the A87 highway from Adelaide to Alice Springs in Australia, service stations can be up to 300 kms apart in some places. Losing 150 km of the driving range out of 450-500 kms on a brand new battery means that the vehicle will not be able to make it to the next service / recharging station.

People going across South Australia into Western Australia on the federal highway bring extra fuel along because there are no service stations in between. Yes, people still travel by cars and, no, they can't bring a spare battery with them but they bring extra canisters filled up with petrol/diesel. Also, going up the coast in Western Australia can be a pretty harrowing or even lethal experience if the vehicle runs out of power especially at the turn of dry and wet seasons when weather turns a holiday road trip into a gamble with life.

Cape York in Far North Queensland is not electrifed at all, and is powered locally by diesel generators. Electric vehicles are of no use in Cape York.

I imagine there are multiple similar fringe areas in countries such as Canada, the US (Alaska certainly comes to mind), Argentina, Brazil, Russia, west and nort-west of China and probably many others that require the infratructure to be built first and, until that happens, the liquified hydrocarbons are still the only viable option.

Service stations can be 300 km apart because this seems to be an acceptable distance with gas powered cars. If there is a demand for service stations every 150km, wouldn't you think they would be built?

The remote regions you describe, currently powered by diesel generators (where does that fuel come from?), isn't there an incentive to power them by solar and also charge electric cars that way?

And even if there are some remote spots on earth where electric cars are not useful, how large is the market share for cars for these regions? If Toyota continues to make land cruisers for those regions, what does it matter for eletrifying 99% of all other cars?

Generally with far apart service stations they can't be closer because everything between is desolate. These stations are already on the outskirts of civilization, there isn't support to have people drive an extra 150km to man a service station.

Depending on geography diesel comes from boats, tanker trucks or planes. Solar might start getting some niche use, but it's not reliable even with batteries at a reasonable scale. The main benefit to diesel generators is it's pretty easy to fix and maintain them with minimal equipment. The amount of diesel per person for a generator isn't that much, even smallish planes can carry about a week of diesel for about 10-20 people.

Service station distance is also a factor of gas supply chains. You need gas trucks to stop at stations every so often. They could be closer together, but that means more truck stops and that means more labor costs, etc.

EV charging stations just need an electric grid connection. Some maintenance/labor is still a good idea, but it isn't necessarily the same regularity and overhead costs of a trucking-based supply chain.

Being able to point out niche situations where stock EVs with degraded range would, right now, be a problem is not an argument against shifting to a mostly- or completely-EV world over the course of several decades. It's an argument in favor of making the kinds of changes to our infrastructure that such a transition will require and support.

Maybe these situations will require more service stations be built. Maybe they'll require the development of better towable battery packs. Maybe they'll require the development of specialized vehicles for the, relatively speaking, very small number of people who need to make these trips on a regular basis.

What they don't require is maintaining our horribly-wasteful fossil fuel based transport system indefinitely.

> EV cars have a finite lifespan

But the same is true of ICE cars. Transmission, engine, catalytic converter, fuel pump, alternators (not to mention routine maintenance like oil changes). EV's win on ongoing maintenance, and even if you have to replace a battery at an authorized dealership, you will still come out ahead versus the maintenance cost you would have otherwise paid.

In terms of 'catastrophic battery failure' compared to 'catastrophic engine failure' - not sure the EV would lose that battle either.

In short, yes, EV's have a finite lifespan, but so do ICE cars, and ICE cars are much more complicated, with many more expensive components that can fail, and are extremely expensive to replace.

> Transmission, engine, catalytic converter, fuel pump, alternators

I have driven approximately 700k miles across five vehicles and never touched any of these, nor have I ever been concerned about them, except with the vague idea such things can become a problem around ~250-300k miles.

What I have had enormous trouble with in all ICE cars is the electronics, which if anything are more populous in EVs.

The idea that "EV maintenance is clearly superior to ICE maintenance" seems like a baffling canard to me, aside from relieving me of the very minor burden of changing my oil twice a year or so, and some even more infrequent $20 filter replacements or simple spark plug replacements I've had to do exactly once which required only a deep socket. I've done more maintenance on my desktop computer.

Which miles were you driving on those ICEs? The first 100k will have few issues. Same applies for EVs.

There are teslas getting half a million miles on them already..

Okay. I know a guy with 500k on his Ford Ranger. That doesn’t tell us anything about average maintenance in that time, or over time.

Years matter as well, not just mileage. I have a 20 year old truck and the interior is basically just destroyed from sunlight and time.

Engine work, transmission maintenance or rebuild, replacing fuel pump, belts, alternator, etc. these are all totally standard and very common repairs for ICE vehicles no matter how many miles you say you’ve driven without having to touch them…

EV maintenance costs have been well studied at this point and are lower than ICE, and for very sensible reasons, it’s not a mystery or a canard.

There have been many many studies. Here’s a random one;

https://www.consumerreports.org/hybrids-evs/evs-offer-big-sa...

Very common? You have anything to back that up? I don’t even know anyone whose had to do any of that. I know that people do, but certainly not “commonly” unless they’re driving a very old, high mileage car they don’t want to part with.

I’ve seen lots of electronics failures. This will only be worse in EVs, or at least EVs like Teslas, where things like door handles have been motorized.

The average age of a car is ~12[0] years in Finland. Out of the 7 people I often interact with that have cars, 7 have had those, and a lot of other parts fail

[0] https://moottori.fi/liikenne/jutut/suomen-henkiloauton-keski...

Either there is something especially harsh about Finland's environment, or whatever cars they're making there are uniquely bad. That's absolutely unheard of where I live. 12 years is definitely not what I meant by "old".

Of course a sufficiently old car will be falling apart, whether it's part of the "ICE" or not - the suspension and shocks will be need to be replaced, door seals degraded or positively worthless, interior will be faded and cracking, wheel bearings fail, AC compressor goes out, various sensors fail (my favorite so far was the antitheft sensor)...when everything starts going bad, that's when I would expect the engine to be just be worn; basically, I would expect the ICE to last as long, or outlast, the rest of the car, save any issues on the left hand of the bathtub curve from manufacturing defects that should be covered under warranty. What you're saying is totally wild and alien to me. Mechanics must get a lot of business there.

If EVs are so reliable and maintenance free, why is the Tesla drivetrain warranty only 100k miles on the Model 3? That's no different than many ICE cars (eg I know Kia has the same warranty on ICE cars), and also well within the middle of the bathtub curve for an ICE car.

A thing to consider is the average means there are tons of older cars in the mix, but some new ones slowly creeping in. There are lots of cars from the 90s or even 80s driving around where I'm from. Weather can be quite unforgiving for cars here, temperature ranging from -25C(-13F) to +30C(86F) year round. Lots of salt and some types of pavement seem to be exceptionally bad for timing gears[0]. Owning a car is likely the most expensive thing a normal person can do in Finland.

[0] https://yle.fi/uutiset/74-20000198

I think it's fair to say, based on your own link which is about research into why timing belts are not lasting as long as everywhere else (a third to half the time!), some of this is outlier. And they note that this dust would also abnormally wear brakes, anything rotating, and the car's painted surfaces, which EVs also have.

But for the rest of it, like temperature differences...this is still going to be a major impact on EVs, and like ICE cars, it won't be just the engine you have to worry about.

As I noted upthread, Tesla has the same powertrain warranty that, say, Kia has. It isn't much of a testament to the vaunted EV reliability that the most famous EV manufacturer doesn't have more faith in their electric powertrains than Kia does in their ICE powertrains.

I have driven similar amounts and I've had to replace:

  - Turbo (~1k€)
  - Radiator (300€)
  - Clutch
  - Dual-mass flywheel (1.5k€ combined with the clutch)
  - DPF (would've cost upwards of 2k€, bypassed it for 500€)

And a ton of other tiny sub-500€ fixes I didn't bother keeping track of.

Dunno if you always drove brand-new cars or were really lucky.

For my current EV (2,5 years of ownership) I've had to replace the cabin filter twice and I've filled the washer fluid a half dozen times. That's it.

I’ve had a few electronics failures happen within two years of owning a car. Let’s give your EV a lot longer than two years before we pass judgement on it, though. I’ve had displays fail at 30k, that’s obviously not an ICE problem. (It was bad solder.)

None of my cars stayed with me longer than 220k, but I have never heard of anyone that wasn’t driving cars from the 70s and 80s having to do those things, or with very high mileage.

The drivetrain in an EV is WAY simpler than any ICE. That alone will provide a ton of reliability. There's pretty much just one moving part in the engine and it's pretty binary. It's either working or it's completely broken.

No more weird running issues where it works just fine to 2000rpm, but at 4000rpm makes that weird noise. Or the transmission rattles a bit at exactly 3700rpm, but is fine on other rpms.

Yes, an electric motor is conceptually simpler. Yes, there’s less moving parts. But the powertrain in modern cars is engineered to a point where it is incredibly reliable and can be expected to last to the point where the rest of the car is falling apart too.

There will be plenty of “weird running issues” from software bugs and electronics failures, which are the worst and least reliable parts in ICE cars as well. An EV is not just a simple electric motor packed into a case.

Finally, as I noted elsewhere in the thread, Tesla is offering the same powertrain warranty on Model 3s that Kia is offering on their ICE cars. Clearly Tesla doesn’t have any more faith in electric powertrains than Kia has in ICE powertrains. If the EV powertrain was really so much more reliable than ICE, Tesla would be offering a standard 250k mile warranty on the powertrain instead of the same 100k warranty offered by some ICE manufacturers.

What you're saying doesn't make any sense. Catalytic converters, fuel pumps, and alternators are easy to replace. This doesn't mean that ICE cars just disappear from the road when those components fail.

Anyone with mechanical knowledge, tools, and patience can rebuild an engine or a transmission. It really is not that difficult.

When you have a vehicle with a monolithic conformal battery pack, once you can't buy a new one the car is junk. Unless you just so happen to own a factory you can afford to retool.

Why are you assuming that new batteries will not be available?

There will be a huge 3rd party industry replacing and upgrading batteries for EVs.

It doesn't exist yet beyond some small enterprises because there isn't enough volume: even 10+ year old EVs are still going strong with very few battery issues. We need to wait longer to get any business going.

There was a dude in Finland who replaced and upgraded Nissan Leaf batteries, he had to stop because it was a) impossible to get new batteries due to huge demand b) ran out of customers.

I've thought about doing this, but I envision the legal headaches and DRM that will inevitably creep into the batteries being not worth the effort. It's even possible to DRM at the cell level, and I fully expect OEMs to do that.

The bigger problem is batteries have moved into "structural elements" in the current "skateboard" designs. Removing the batteries potentially damages the foundational structure of the car and may need expensive mitigations.

You can't get DRM "at the cell level". The batteries are just simple Panasonic 18650s, adding some DRM component to each and every one of them would be cost-inefficient and would also cause a huge problem if the chip fails during warranty.

The controllers are black boxes though, but you can get 3rd party units for Tesla batteries _today_. JerryRigEverything on Youtube built his own EV Hummvee on the military chassis using some Model X batteries and all 3rd party electronics.

It wasn't plug and play, but perfectly doable in a semi-well stocked home garage.

Not following you here: Your suggestion for evidence that 3rd party batteries will be available is that some guy in Finland couldn't get enough supply?

A single hobbyist in Finland could run a profitable business replacing Nissan Leaf batteries unofficially. The dude managed to install a 25% larger battery in the car and fool the on board computer to accept it.

Just imagine what can be done with actual resources and R&D.

The current limiting issue isn't skill or technology, but available new batteries. They can't make them fast enough even for new cars, never mind for spare parts.

But when battery production ramps high enough, there's absolutely nothing preventing people from upgrading existing batteries with more modern tech - bigger battery capacity in the same space.

There will also be a huge industry converting "dead" EV batteries to in-house battery backups. A car with 50% battery degradation is a bit iffy, but the battery will still have tens of kWh of usable capacity. Enough to run a house for a day or two in a pinch - or just store cheap energy and sell it back to the grid when the price goes up.

"But when battery production ramps high enough"

If we're talking hypothetically, why not just expect someone to develop a battery that lasts forever?

There are no technological or supply barriers to the battery production ramp-up.

It just takes time to build enough factories to produce enough.

>Anyone with mechanical knowledge, tools, and patience can

Just like everyone with a PC and an internet connection can become a software developer; there are a few steps in between why it doesen't "just" happen

I don't think he is making the argument that anyone can/will do it, but that there is and will be plenty of mechanics willing and able to do the work and able to procure the parts, which he saying will not be the case with replacement battery packs on old cars.

There is some reason to believe this; stories like this [1] are going around, where EV owners have been told they need to replace the battery pack but, by the way, the part cannot be procured.

[1] https://www.wtsp.com/article/news/local/electric-car-battery...

Engines and transmissions last 15+ years, easily 20+ with regular maintenance. Everything else you mentioned is cheap and easy to replace.

Yes, other than the battery, EVs are very low maintenance. But that doesn't matter at all to low income people who usually buy 10 year old cars. They are guaranteed to owe a large repair bill on any car that is available to them.

Batteries last a long time too. The Leaf is a bad example because they messed up the battery management somehow, but there are Teslas on the road with lots of miles and very little battery degradation.

Batteries last well when you have a large one (daily commute is a 15% discharge, not a 90% discharge) and active thermal management.

The EVs I see on the second-hand market for $2000 have neither. It'll be a few years before I can get a used tesla for $2000.

I don't think many people claim that the used EV market is very good right now. It will become a lot better in another ten to twenty years though.

There's an interesting statistical bias in the Used EV Market that first owner life statistics are way up on average versus comparable ICE models. We're edging past the point where that's likely "just" a symptom of early adopters and it may indicate easier maintenance curves on EVs and longer useful lifetimes for EVs and that the used EV market may look very different than the used ICE market. Though as stated, it will likely be another decade or two before we have a stable market to figure that out.

Each of those components can be replaces for much less. I recently spent 700 on replacing the alternator, 12v battery, engine pulley, and spark plugs. That's significantly less than replacing an EV battery.

The economics just seem different. The batteries lose capacity with time, compared to ICE cars that wear out with miles.

> It is not modular despite being composed of several individual cells, and often you are not allowed to work on it yourself.

At least with current tech, battery chemistry makes such replacement extremely tricky without a full replacement. You can technically swap individual packs in a Model S/X battery[0], but it'll inevitably die[1][2] because of how voltage balancing works.

Packs each with their own BMS would be interesting but I'm sure the automakers have already considered the tradeoffs for a lot of ideas like this.

0: https://electrek.co/2021/09/13/tesla-battery-pack-replacemen...

1: https://twitter.com/wk057/status/1437607772959428608?s=20&t=...

2: https://twitter.com/wk057/status/1480403593794621442

> The problem is that EV cars have a finite lifespan on the most expensive component of the car... the battery

Then they get less range, they don't die completely..

This is one of those statements which are true only if you live in California.

A 5-6 year old EV battery is unusable in winter at low-ish temperatures. Not only do you lose range when parked, you can be in real trouble if you’re stranded in a snowstorm.

These issues are manageable with a new car of course!

> This is one of those statements which are true only if you live in California.

I definitely don't live in California.

> A 5-6 year old EV battery is unusable in winter at low-ish temperatures.

A brand new EV gets less range in winter. A used EV gets less range in winter. A used EV in winter gets less range still.

But that doesn't make it unusable, it just changes the use case. A 300km range (when new) EV might reliably get 50% range in winter, and 70% range when 6 years old, combining for 35% of new range when used and in winter - plenty of buffer for an average driver's commute, but wouldn't want to use it for a winter road trip.

> you lose range when parked

Same applies whether it's a new EV or a used. If I were driving an EV in the winter (gets to -20C here regularly), I'd definitely be looking to park somewhere I could plug in - which are pretty common. As is, I drive an ICE, and I have to turn my car on for a few minutes to warm the engine before I start driving (or else the windshield becomes an unusable fogged-up mess before the end of the block)

> you can be in real trouble if you’re stranded in a snowstorm.

Yes, monitoring weather is important regardless of your vehicle choice. The only time I've been stuck in a snowstorm was when knowingly going for a weekend camping trip when a blizzard was forecast. (the solution was bring extra food in case we got stuck)

> These issues are manageable with a new car of course!

Or used. It's all about anticipating a situation.

ICEs have less range in winter too and you're always in trouble if you're stranded in a snowstorm.

What does fundamentally prevent a battery from being worked on? Finite lifespan applies to anything. Not being modular seems like an odd criteria to impose. Surely you can open a battery and work on its sub-parts. Not allowed to work on it? I don't know if you're being sarcastic or not, but vast majority of the world does not have the same set of laws and regulations.

A reconditioned EV battery is literally an old EV battery with new cells. The old cells are recycled, their lithium is mostly reused.

3k is pretty cheap for what is effectively an overhaul of the vehicle. You can easily spend 3k on an ICE car in repairs in the same span of time.

the "several individual cells" are welded together and also a structural component of the vehicle. You are not allowed to work on them yourself to not electrocute yourself to a crisp.

This is quite amusing. Unless the battery has some cliff where it stops working (very unlikely) my anecdotal experience is that the battery has a very slow degradation rate (2-3% over 5 years - great considering I have a 75mi roundtrip commute).

On the other hand, I don't pay for: oil/fluid changes, filter replacements, transmission/engine rebuilds or smog checks. Probably forgetting a half dozen other things too.

Add all that up and it's a free battery replacement in 10 years which I don't even think I'll need.

Chevy Spark supposedly starts at $13600, available inventory seems to start at $14595 + tax, title license and fees. I have never bought a new car so I don't know the + part, but that's got to be getting close to $20k.

If you have a decent older car you can get $5k at a dealer bringing the price down to $10k, tax/tag/title and you’re likely looking at $13k

Ya, the horrible thing is that I’ve never seen a Tesla used for under $20k. Until we can get some used Tesla vehicles at economical price points, EVs will just not be mainstream.

Ok, there is some sarcasm in that. You can get a Leaf for cheap.

Battery cost are still falling 10-15% a year. $100 kWh batteries are here already. ie Tesla battery costs per car ie 50kwh are $5500-6000 Musk is selling $35k+ not because he can't make cheaper cars but because he can make higher margins on expensive cars with battery production capacity he has. We will get high quality cheap electric cars once the battery production capacity is higher than the demand for expensive cars. Which will be here a lot faster than people are thinking.

You're talking about different things - $20,000 is pretty close to the bottom end of new car pricing in the USA. If you want more economy than that you have to buy used, which I'm sure will be an option a few years after those $20,000 EVs are sold new.

And of course people are talking about "economy" relative to the USA, it's where half the people on this site live. Nobody is saying car prices are the same everywhere in the world, and that's not going to be the same with widespread EVs either.

What? Of course those $20,000 economy EVs will be sold in places where $20,000 vehicles are considered "economy" vehicles. Does any car dealer in California consider the price of used cars in Havana before pricing theirs?

If anything, there's no reason why those rich, first class bubbles should be able to buy $40,000 luxury ICE vehicles when the world is slowly burning, but try telling them that, and now those people who just lectured you about "first class bubbles" will brand you a Marxist.

Some people just want the status quo, whatever the ultimate price is. They can't be reasoned with.

Are California car dealers allowed to sell to people in Havana? I thought the embargo was back in place, and America is back to trying to make life as unpleasant as possible in Cuba.

That includes ensuring that Cuba does not use electric cars

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