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Comment by thelastgallon | Hacker News Reader

We know these things:

(1) legacy car manufacturers don't know how to make cars. They forgot how to make cars decades ago. All components are manufactured by someone else, they slap their label on it. If you don't know how to make cars, it is nearly impossible to make new kind of cars.

(2) If you don't know how to do something, you can spend some money and learn. Legacy car manufacturers had $250 billion profits, but didn't spend any money on building this capability. Meanwhile, Tesla made electric cars, built supercharger network, built gigafactories, expanded these capabilities globally.

(3) Dealers hate EVs. Even if legacy manufacturers make EVs, dealers won't sell them. I've been going to dealerships every year for more than five years, dealers treat you like shit if you wanna buy an EV. Which is understandable, ICE cars have 2000+ moving parts and tons of repairs, EVs have 20 moving parts and zero repairs. They aren't going to make much money replacing windshield wipers.

(4) Meanwhile, China has figured out how to do EVs at scale, iterating and improving batteries and EVs. Eventually, legacy car manufacturers will go bust (after taking tens of billions in bailouts). We'll import cars from China either directly or indirectly. If there are too many tariffs, China is going to build assembly plants in Mexico or Canada, sell them very competitively in US. VW sells ID.3 for 16K in China, the competition is intense![2]

[1]https://www.epi.org/blog/uaw-automakers-negotiations/

[2] https://insideevs.com/news/675842/volkswagen-slashes-id3-pri...

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> Which is understandable, ICE cars have 2000+ moving parts and tons of repairs, EVs have 20 moving parts and zero repairs.

This is wildly exaggerated, as in completely made-up.

The only significant difference is combustion engine internals vs. electric motor, which has a large difference in moving parts. But not two orders of magnitude.

The thing is, the ICE has had well over a century of perfecting, so while it is a lot more complex, it is so mature that stuff does not break. In over 35 years of owning many many cars, the number of times I've had an ICE internal component go bad is.. zero. Statistical noise aside, that's not a thing anymore and has not been since the 60s/70s.

The car that I've had which has spent by far (far) the most time at the dealer for repairs, was an EV. Nothing to do with the powertrain, just the usual stuff that breaks on cars like window regulators, electrical switches and hatch actuators. All things that are exactly the same regardless of ICE or EV powertrain.

OK, separate the drive train and just focus on the engine. That's completely fair. All engines need to distribute power to the wheels and those parts are identical.

If we don't count the ball bearings, an EV has 1 moving part.

A combustion engine easily has an "order of magnitude" more components. And I'm not even counting the gearbox here, which - in a modern automatic car - is clockwork levels of crazy gearing and technology.

My father in law is a mechanic. He just changed a cooling pump and coolant on an EV. There are also other motors to actuate various components.

The actual engine is just magnets and driveshaft. Very little can go wrong. It either works or doesn't.

A combustion engine has camshafts and pistons and valve lifters and timing chains (or belts) and dozens more. Every single of those moving parts is a potential failure mode. Add to that all the electronics and sensors we need to run a modern combustion engine, the complexity goes up exponentially.

Granted, we have been perfecting the metallurgy and construction of combustion engines for 100 years so they're amazingly reliable considering they work by inducing thousands of explosions a minute while every part moves at insane speeds.

I keep hearing about these things from people telling me how great it is that EVs have so few moving parts yet in almost 3 decades of owning ICE vehicles I've never had to do more repair work under the hood than change a starter, a water pump and an alternator(once each). I've been stranded thanks to bad software, but that's not specific to ICE. Owning an ICE isn't all that much work. Oh wait, oil changes, but those are pretty easy.

The last time I owned an ICE vehicle (a diesel VW Passat station wagon) I had to replace during the 4(?) years I owned it:

- Diesel Particulate filter - Turbo - Clutch - Dual-mass Flywheel - Radiator

Each was 1000-2000€ except for the radiator. The DPF would've been a 2k€ operation, but I found a sketchy mechanic who just drilled it out and chipped the car to think the DPF was just fine. I paid in cash, didn't get a receipt =)

Then a tiny hex shaft broke in the bottom of the engine. It was the only thing running the oil pump to the engine and the only official repair was to replace the whole bottom part of the engine as a whole. Estimate: 2000€++.

It was fixed with liquid metal or something by a different sketchy car mechanic and I sold it immediately.

It isn't more work until it is. Modern ICEs have been refined for over 100 years. Most are very reliable. But if a timing belt or valve breaks, or the automatic transmission, or... yeah you're looking at a very, very expensive repair most of the time.

Yeah, a well maintained reliable ICE engine isn't a problem but once issues start coming, they don't stop.

And there's the "well maintained" -bit. Unless you know to do it yourself, you're gonna get gouged by Jiffy Lube or something.

In the years of my car ownership I've seen failing engine seals, multiple kinds of EGR failures, catalytic converter degradation, intake manifold baffle solenoids fail, fuel pump failures, thermostat failures, and more. And that's just failures, not all the preventative maintenance like changing spark plugs, changing timing belts, fluid replacements, valve clearance adjustments, and more.

Meanwhile the maintenance schedule for my EV drive train is a fluid change every 150,000mi.

Same here, cabin air filter change yearly.

The first "real" maintenance is at 150k km where they do something to the battery cooling system. After that the next one is at 300k. I have no intention of keeping the car that long.

(of course there's the regular tire changes and brake repair, but it's not enforced by the manufacturer)

> Granted, we have been perfecting the metallurgy and construction of combustion engines for 100 years so they're amazingly reliable considering they work by inducing thousands of explosions a minute while every part moves at insane speeds.

Agreed! If neither electric nor IC engines existed and we started developing both from scratch today, clearly the electric motors would be reliable within a year (I'm guessing, but probably) and the IC engines would take decades of development and manufacturing maturity to match the reliability.

But, that's not the world where we are. The ICE does have more than a century of development already so Honda/Mazda/Toyota/etc can manufacture an IC engine that'll go 200K+ miles with zero problems, so for a consumer buying a car today, the powerplant is not the source of trouble (whether EV or ICE). It's the rest of the car that needs repairs.

(An ICE engine should not have any explosions occurring, that's pinging and will damage the engine. It needs to be a controlled burn. But I'm nitpicking on the word.)

Isn't the difference between a controlled burn and explosion just the outcome? If everything is fine, it was controlled, otherwise it was an explosion =)

In my opinion the future will be an EV drivetrain. The only question is how do we store the energy to run the electric engines.

Batteries are a decent solution, but I'd love to see more range extenders like the Chevy Volt / Opel Ampera. Put in a 10-20kW battery, a 20-40 litre gas/diesel tank and a highly optimised generator that only charges the batteries.

Ta-dah, best of both worlds. You've got a reliable engine (steady RPM, steady output, no need to turbo it for power etc.) and a drivetrain that produces instant torque and is highly reliable.

> If we don't count the ball bearings, an EV has 1 moving part.

They have four wheels (with, if you’re nitpicking, have many parts: the wheel itself, the tire, disc brake, brake pads, electronics for ABS, screws to put them together), and suspension (probably a more heavy one than ICE cars), don’t they?

(and doors and a trunk that can be opened, and handles to open the doors and trunk, and a steering wheel that has to be turned, and sun visors, and fans for cooling and heating, and, for modern cars, AC, likely with moving parts, and probably a few more moving parts)

The "EV" was referring to the electric motor. We're talking about engines here, not the moving parts in the seats.

The actual electric MOTOR has one moving part. An internal combustion engine has hundreds or thousands, depending on the model.

Sorry, misread your statement because it used the term EV incorrectly and replied to a statement that said the number of parts in an engine doesn’t matter because that tech is so well-understood that it rarely breaks down.

Because of that, I think saying the engine has only one moving part isn’t a good argument in a discussion of “Electric cars require much less maintenance than ICE cars”

> An internal combustion engine has hundreds or thousands, depending on the model.

Can you tell me which ICE has thousands of moving parts?

I've rebuilt several engines and can't think of anything that comes close.

In fact I have a fully disassembled (top and bottom) 4 cylinder engine sitting in the garage as a long term project and I'm pretty sure it's less than a hundred parts, although I haven't really counted. Certainly not multiple hundreds.

There's a manner of thinking wherein a car's engine is a part that you replace if it breaks. The fact that it has a lot of components inside it does not matter, from a certain point of view. One or a million, if it breaks, you yank it and replace it.

Another point of view of course is that each piece is one more way to break.

> The thing is, the ICE has had well over a century of perfecting

Just a reminder that EV has had well over a century of perfecting too.

You know perfectly well that that isn't true. There wasn't any perfecting going on because the relevant class of EVs simply didn't exist and wasn't technologically possible for most of that century.

Electric motors have had well over a century of research, development and production. Same with batteries and specifically lithium batteries has been commercially available for over 3 decades.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicl...

A combination of battery and electric motor is an obvious solution for powering a vehicle. This is nothing new, revolutionary or disruptive. It has been tried many times before and has always failed for certain reasons. It will win, but not overnight.

> The thing is, the ICE has had well over a century of perfecting, so while it is a lot more complex, it is so mature that stuff does not break.

Actually, it's so mature that it breaks exactly when the manufacturers want it to - after warranty.

Just like you can optimise a 3D-printed shelf to have a shape that's almost fully load-bearing and thus uses less material, you can produce a part that can be stressed a certain number of times before it breaks.

This practice crossed some kind of threshold in the latter half of the last decade, because every manufacturer is now in on it.

So cars are indeed "getting worse", because the margins of reliability are now much thinner than e.g. 20 years ago.

Which is a problem why ? Is it such a cartel that there is no competition on providing marginally more expensive parts with a meaningfully longer warranty ?

> Actually, it's so mature that it breaks exactly when the manufacturers want it to - after warranty.

Not sure, all of my cars are way out of warranty (in nearly every case I've bought them way out of warranty already) and they keep going strong.

But you say the latter half of the last decade, so perhaps. My newest car is a 2013 (oldest is 1988).

> In over 35 years of owning many many cars, the number of times I've had an ICE internal component go bad is.. zero. Statistical noise aside, that's not a thing anymore and has not been since the 60s/70s.

If ICE cars never fail, I wonder what all the auto mechanics are doing? 282,637 automotive repair companies are currently in business, with 614,433 employees. How are they surviving is nobody is getting their ICE cars repaired?

I've had interactions with a few hundred people (at least) over 2 decades and every single person had their ICE car in the shop for repairs, small and large.

ICE cars also have major scheduled maintenance, somewhere around 90 - 120K, you have to replace timing belt and a bunch of things.

Car dealers don't make any money on selling new cars. Nobody buys a new car unless its priced a few thousand below MSRP (the past 2 years are an aberration). Dealerships make money on service. This is the same model as inkjet printers.

ICE cars are so horribly unreliable and bad, even new ones, there exist special laws just for them: lemon laws.

> ICE cars are so horribly unreliable and bad, even new ones, there exist special laws just for them: lemon laws.

Cars in general are complex and expensive, Tesla EVs run afoul of lemon laws all the time: https://insideevs.com/news/433383/tesla-warranty-repairs-goo...

> 282,637 automotive repair companies are currently in business, with 614,433 employees. How are they surviving is nobody is getting their ICE cars repaired?

Collisions. The most expensive repair I've had is bodywork after a small fender bender. Way more expensive than maintenance or even pretty substantial repairs like an alternator replacement.

That's not to say that ICE cars don't ever need repairs for mechanical failures, but for such a complex machine they're extremely reliable.

> If ICE cars never fail

Well I never said that. I said that components of the IC engine itself fail exceedingly rarely (in my personal experience, never).

"The car" is a far greater system than just the engine or motor. The powerplant (IC or electric) is a tiny percentage of the car as a whole.

It's all the other stuff that fails and keeps cars in the repair shop.

My second EV spent multiple weeks at the dealer to fix a window regulator that kept failing. Other things that often fail are electronics, actuator motors, wiring glitches, shocks, etc. All parts which are common to all cars, regardless of how it happens to produce horsepower.

> ICE cars are so horribly unreliable and bad, even new ones, there exist special laws just for them: lemon laws.

Ok you're clearly biased, since the above is not true. Lemon laws are not specific to ICE cars. They apply to EVs and plenty of EVs get repurchased due to lemon law criteria. I personally know someone who lemon law'd a Tesla. Lemons laws trigger if a new car spends an inordinate time at the dealer being repaired for whatever reason. Our EV (with the window regulator problem) came within a week of meeting lemon law criteria.

I think for very well maintained and new cars, maintenance is low. For a normal human used car, there are unknown unknowns! :D

Consider the engine + transmission + exhaust + fuel, many moving parts all that can cause a fail closed of your car. Fuel system alone has a pump, filter, injectors, injector booster (looking at you bmw!). All that goes in the trash.

I will grant that EVs have new exciting things like coolant loop and pump for batteries so we don't get off that easy. Zero belts however, not a timing anything in sight, and the old coolant vs oil battle for heat movement is over.

Transmissions too can be a huge source of pain, modern ones are great, but if you end up with something <2012 or a CVT, who knows what could go wrong? Ton of solenoids, some fluid that can burn, for CVTs a lame belt...

It's a lot, EVs totally simplify that. In my mind my biggest worry is that all that stuff is software controlled now, which could be better but might be worse if we look at the average quality of code...

> Which is understandable, ICE cars have 2000+ moving parts and tons of repairs, EVs have 20 moving parts and zero repairs. They aren't going to make much money replacing windshield wipers.

A hybrid can have a 2 year/20k factory oil change interval, and really doesn't need much of any other service. An ICE comes in once a year for an oil change and not much else. Maybe spark plugs and timing belt around 100k... if that even goes to the dealer service and not an independent.

Sure, more brake work on an ICE. More tire work on an EV (heavier, probably fancy low rolling resistance tires). Maybe some transmission work on an ICE or Hybrid, but they're all 'sealed' units these days that are not supposed to need anything done to them. Other than that, what does an ICE have that an EV doesn't that needs regular maintenance?

We're not going from a 1970s carburated car that needs regular tuneups to an EV.

> Other than that, what does an ICE have that an EV doesn't that needs regular maintenance?

The short answer is: more stuff that can break.

What you outlined is true in the best case scenario. Anecdotally, if I had to guess, 20% of my friends and family with cars older than 5 years have had them in the shop for something other than routine maintenance just this year. (And I realize that this is cherry-picked, but many (most?) ICE cars, frankly, are just not that reliable.)

> What you outlined is true in the best case scenario. Anecdotally, if I had to guess, 20% of my friends and family with cars older than 5 years have had them in the shop for something other than routine maintenance just this year. (And I realize that this is cherry-picked, but many (most?) ICE cars, frankly, are just not that reliable.)

Do EVs fare any better in practice? Just looking at reliability by manufacturer, Tesla's reliability is below the industry average^[1], which you would not expect if electric cars were fundamentally more reliable by virtue of having less "stuff that can break". The related notion that EVs are cheaper to maintain also seems up for debate^[2], and GGP's assertion that EVs have "zero repairs" is risible on its face.

I'm willing to entertain the possibility that Tesla is simply a subpar car manufacturer despite being the West's premier EV manufacturer, but either way we are evidently not yet living in a world where EVs offer car buyers freedom from maintenance and breakage.

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^[1] random google search results: https://www.kbb.com/car-news/consumer-reports-toyota-lexus-m..., https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2023-us-vehi...

^[2] https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/26/hertz-pulls-back-on-ev-plans...

The one thing I'd push back on about these reliability surveys are that most of the things its measuring aren't the drivetrain itself. The most impactful thing for reliability in their surveys are infotainment systems. Having some indexed score of "reliability" when it includes "could the user figure out how to pair their cell phone" and not actually getting the drill down on the different areas of reliability make the score pretty worthless to me when trying to determine if an ICE or an EV is more reliable.

Also, with Hertz having problems keeping Teslas repaired, its also not necessarily pointing to drivetrain reliability. Its not immediately obvious from the reporting if the issues they're having are mostly drivetrain or other parts like bodywork and suspension and what not. If a Tesla bumper replacement is more expensive than a Nissan Altima bumper replacement, is that EV drivetrains being more expensive?

I don't disagree, but from the consumer point of view I don't think it really matters unless repairs are much cheaper—which the Hertz thing, though admittedly just one data point from a company trying to justify a big move, contradicts. It just illustrates how EVs are in fact cars, and aren't magically free from most of the same old reliability issues drivers already deal with.

BEV evangelists commonly steer reliability comparisons toward the drivetrain, since it in theory ought to be more reliable (at the very least it will have fewer moving parts), but I don't think my earlier comment was in an explicitly drivetrain-specific context. As you say, there are many other facets of vehicle reliability that matter.

It's also worth mentioning that modern ICEs seem to be exceptionally reliable even with the bare minimum maintenance, which makes sense given the maturity of the technologies involved. Transmissions maybe not so much, but the obvious answer to that IMO is hybrid drive systems—series hybrids, simple planetary gear systems, etc. Everything on the road today ought to be a hybrid, since they're arguably the most impactful way to distribute our limited battery production capacity. A standard hybrid battery is something like 1/100 the capacity of a BEV battery.

Ok, but still then these links don't mean too much either way with these other ideas. If a Tesla bumper replacement is expensive compared to a Ford, that's not speaking to the repair costs of EVs that's the repair costs for Teslas. There's nothing inherently more expensive about an EV's headlights or whatever compared to a similar ICE.

Is a Volkswagen EV generally more expensive to repair than a Volkswagen ICE? Do your links answer that kind of question?

And you're talking to a person literally commenting from the auto shop after shelling out a couple hundred bucks in maintenance on a 2017 ICE, maintenance that I literally won't have to do on my EV. So kind of funny having someone suggest the EV is more expensive when it's going against my lived experience, right now.

This comment thread was started by a person who claimed that "EVs have 20 moving parts and zero repairs". That is the context in which I posted these links, because it's total bullshit and said links trivially prove it.

But—since you asked—just Googling around, recentish CR data^[1] (late '22) do seem to show that Tesla isn't a low outlier in terms of reliability, being joined in the lower echelons of EV reliability by such manufacturers as "Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Jeep, GMC and Chevrolet." All well-established manufacturers that seem to be having just as much trouble building reliable EVs as Tesla.

All these data, though obviously incomplete, point strongly in a certain direction: that an EV powertrain is not a magic bullet for reliability or repair costs. Do you have any material reason to suspect that the obvious conclusion isn't the correct one?

> And you're talking to a person literally commenting from the auto shop after shelling out a couple hundred bucks in maintenance on a 2017 ICE, maintenance that I literally won't have to do on my EV. So kind of funny having someone suggest the EV is more expensive when it's going against my lived experience, right now.

Anecdotes like this are are just as irrelevant as the EV sob stories that constantly make the news, which is why I haven't posted any of the latter. But if we're doing that, did you catch that crazy story^[2] about the Tesla owner who was told their battery suffered "water ingress" after driving in the rain and that they'd have to shell out $20k for a new one just like that? What a bummer!

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^[1] https://insideevs.com/news/622136/tesla-consumer-reports-rel...

^[2] https://www.autoblog.com/2023/10/16/tesla-owners-heart-misse...

From your second article:

> “Remember, in the likes of GM and other OEMs, there’s decades of establishment of a broad national parts supply network. There’s an aftermarket of parts that that is there that is less mature obviously in the context of Tesla,” Scherr said, adding that margins and other EV issues would improve as Hertz looks to “diversify” that part of its fleet.

It sounds like they aren't saying anything about rates of issue, but rather cost. A Malibu could have 10 issues for every 1 of the same issue on a Tesla (e.g bumper replacement), but if the Tesla costs $2,000 to fix and the Malibu is $150 to fix, the Malibu is going to win. But one would expect that as the Teslas continue to become popular, cheaper parts will arrive.

Yeah, all other things being equal I would not expect EVs to be more expensive to repair unless batteries are failing at an unexpected rate. But since the majority of EVs on the road today are Teslas, I think it's still relevant to consumers.

Sure, I bought a first model year FCA car, so I understand. It's ICE only, and has been in the shop a lot (I should have pursued lemon law remedies, but it wasn't really that bad...). But it's never been powertrain issues. Bad crimping of connectors in wiring harness led to assistance features disabling, paint issues, multiple issues with infotainment, door beeper went out, problems with sliding doors, whatever recalls, 12v battery failed early, and the replacement failed a month after. All of that kind of stuff happens to EVs too.

Some day, I'm sure I'll add a spectacular transmission failure on this particular vehicle, and that wouldn't have been an issue with an EV, or at least not in the same way (EVs do often have some sort of gearing, and could be sensitive to manufacturing or assembly errors in the gears and bearings, but it's usually mechanically simpler than a 9 speed automatic)

> Some day, I'm sure I'll add a spectacular transmission failure on this particular vehicle, and that wouldn't have been an issue with an EV, or at least not in the same way (EVs do often have some sort of gearing, and could be sensitive to manufacturing or assembly errors in the gears and bearings, but it's usually mechanically simpler than a 9 speed automatic)

Mechanically, my CR-V hybrid's "transmission" is two electric motors and two lockup clutches geared for different cruise speeds. Given the reliability of modern ICEs, it seems like the best of both worlds from a complexity standpoint (not that reliability necessarily correlates in a straightforward way).

My C-Max has a mechanically simple hybrid transmission, but they screwed up manufacturing (bearing failure), so it was replaced under warranty. That did drive revenue to the dealer, I guess.

You’re forgetting: starters (in the same way), alternators, exhaust systems

I haven’t had major engine issues, but I’ve spent a lot of money on these systems

Starters are electric motors, EVs certainly have those. Alternators, are electric generators, which EVs kind of have, but different. Hyrbids usually omit separate starters and alternators (I think), because they've already got motor/generators and may as well use those.

Exhaust / emissions, yes. Emissions systems are notoriously flakey.

A bird and a plane both "fly" in the sky, but they aren't the same. A helicopter and a plane can both transport people in the sky, but they are also very different.

To claim that an EV has a starter motor and an alternator is misunderstanding at best, wrong at worst. An EV doesn't have a have a starter motor than cranks a huge mechanical engine. An ICE's alternator converts AC to DC, it has a DC/DC converter.

Here's an start for a RAV4 Prime, a plugin hybrid vehicle: https://parts.lakelandtoyota.com/p/TOYOTA_2023_RAV4-PRIME/St...

And here's an alternator for the same vehicle: https://parts.lakelandtoyota.com/p/toyota_2021_RAV4-PRIME/Al...

Electric vehicles certainly have their own issues (which may or may not be worse, depending on your point of view), but one of their advantages is fewer moving mechanical parts.

China. Seriously. People who haven’t been recently don’t even know. Massive changes are afoot. So many new car options! And they all seem to have massage seats.

Don't even have to go to China. Here in the Netherlands the amount of MG, BYD, NIO, Volvo, Polestar, Zeekr or XPeng on the road here is immense. German manufacturers are complaining people don't want EVs, but that's BS. It's just that the EVs people are actually buying are either American, Chinese or Korean, because they're not insanely expensive.

I just opened a lease car comparison site. Under €650 a month I get 11 German(-ish) cars to choose from. 10 of which are VAG, 1 is BMW. In total, however, I have 180+ cars to choose from, many of which are much cheaper than the German ones and are way better equipped.

You could’ve stopped at 1. US auto manufacturers don’t know how to make anything but trucks. Not that they actually know how to make them, because they’re all pieces of shit, but just that’s the only thing people in the US buy from US manufacturers because no one else makes full size diesel pickups. Not the Japanese, the Koreans or the Europeans.

So of course they were handed this project by the feds to expand their EV offerings and completely shit the bed. They’ve been spending decades competing on making the most fuel unfriendly vehicles on the planet.

I don’t want an EV, but if I did, American (including Tesla) would be the last place I looked.

> no one else makes full size diesel pickups. Not the Japanese, the Koreans or the Europeans

(Genuine) Q: Why is it that the rest of the world manages just fine without needing full size diesel pickups? Over here even tradespeople drive panel vans, not pickups.

"But you can fit a full sheet of plywood on a truck bed! That's why I need a Ford F-150!"

Yea, you could do that with a 90's Toyota Hilux too and it was 75% smaller =)

Also you can fit that exact same sheet in a van and it's covered from the elements, along with your tools.

It's all about image.

Americans think van = "free candy child molester" or "FBI stakeout" and minivan = "soccer mom", which is bad for some reason.

Thus, everybody drives HUGE TRUCKS or SUVs, because they've been marketed as cool for 20+ years. Even though a proper mini van would do the exact same thing in a smaller, more efficient package.

(also huge trucks are exempt from environmental standards because of a legal fuckup they refuse to fix and thus better profits for the manufacturer)

> "But you can fit a full sheet of plywood on a truck bed! That's why I need a Ford F-150!"

You actually can’t fit full sheet goods (4’x8’) into 99% of pickups, there are very few pickups on the road with full-size (8’) beds that can fit sheet goods, most of them have ridiculously short beds, like 5’ long.

Take a look at this Chevy truck poster that shows the silhouette by generation, there’s almost no bed on new pickup trucks: https://customcarposters.com/products/chevy-pickup-truck-pos...

Yes, it's ridiculous. Modern trucks are SUVs with an open trunk.

And most SUVs are just minivans with a meaner case and bigger rims :)

The shortening of pickup truck beds over the past few decades is such a joke. It reveals how many of the claims about needing a truck for practical reasons are bs. Nowadays they are mostly inefficient vans that people happen to think look cooler.

There are lots of things you can put on the back of a truck without fear that are too dirty/grimy/smelly/wet to be comfortable throwing in the back of the van. Most of the "work" an American truck sees is light yard work and maybe moving around dirt, seed, mulch, lawn decorations, or small machines. The rest is fully recreational or stylistic. Trucks are really, really nice to have and no one would be judgemental about whether you "really need one" if it weren't for global warming. Most Americans also couldn't give less of a shit about global warming no matter what they say.

Ground clearance and 4-wheel drive mostly. Depending on where you live in the US, the scope of non-paved surfaces you may need to drive on occasionally can be quite a bit larger than most of the developed world. I used to have a cheap second car, a full-size 4WD Bronco, that I used for purposes that might require it when I lived in the US mountain west. During winter or when going over some unpaved mountain passes, I'd use the Bronco. In some areas even a good high-clearance AWD like a Subaru was taking a risk. Many people don't need it and most people don't need it all the time, but when you need it you need it.

There are well over a million miles of unpaved roads and highways in the US. These usually have insufficient traffic to justify the cost of putting in a proper road bed. Equally, if you do get stuck out there because of poor road conditions, you may be stranded for a long time. American trucks, for good or ill, are designed to drive on these kinds of roads all day without falling apart.

I have a high-clearance AWD today and have a lot of experience driving on these types of roads. There are still occasional times when I "nope"-out of a road and turn around due to road conditions that really recommend a proper 4WD truck. It has happened in more parts of the US than I think people expect.

EDIT: Another common use case in some parts of the US is towing heavy things like boats, in places where every other person seems to own boats or other types of large vehicle trailers. Never my use case though.

This applies to some people but I think is really overstating things. Only ~10% of 4x4 vehicles ever get driven offroad, and most of the US population has paved roads everywhere they want to go. Vehicles that get driven offroad invariably get a lot of scratches, mud, etc, and the vast majority of trucks I see around town are absolutely pristine in that regard.

There are plenty of legit use cases for a high clearance 4x4, but I think the vast majority of people claiming that they need one are being disingenuous, and really just want to feel like their commuter car is cool.

Diesel trucks tow heavy equipment (10k+ lbs) very fuel efficiently which is a common use-case in the states without needing to resort to a semi. Where I live a large number of people also own travel trailers and boats, which also lend themselves to diesel pickups.

I own a smaller truck myself (Ford Maverick) and tow a ~3000lb trailer with it regularly in the summer. My fuel economy goes from 30 mpg -> 11 mpg while towing. If I had a diesel, it would have virtually zero impact on mpg.

My take: it’s actually really awful trying to tow a trailer through the mountains without a diesel pickup.

Now, most people aren’t doing that every day, every year or ever, but a person thinks “what if I ever need to tow my airstream through the Rockies like they show on those commercials?” And they buy the vehicle with the most utility.

Other places that have mountainous regions, like South America, do have a lot more diesel trucks and 4x4s, so geographic region does play a part.

Curious why the American car hate. I drove a Honda for more than a decade and thought I'd be a Honda driver for life, until I got a Tesla. I love it. From now on I'll be getting Teslas or Rivians or whatever else premium EVs happen to be the best, regardless of whether they're American, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, German, etc.

American car means the 'big three' automakers. GMC/Chevrolet/Buick, Chrysler/Dodge/Jeep/RAM, or Ford/Lincoln

Big three makers have very poor average quality, often ending up at the bottom of reliability lists.

Tesla, from my expertise as a car builder, is just very sloppy. Poor panel fitment, door alignment, chintzy cheap materials for the price, and ultimately the smoke and mirror show that is FSD. Even if you manage to find one without all these issues, you still have a power source that essentially expires after 10 years and costs as much as a car to replace.

Yeah it's really just the "EV" part that I like about the Tesla. Not ever having to pay for gas at a gas station and the fast acceleration. If just Toyota or Honda would release a long range mid/large electric SUV or van, not make me deal with dealership salespeople to get one, and make them easy to get, I'd get one of those next.

I’m right there with you. I have no idea why they’re dragging their feet on it.

> You could’ve stopped at 1. US auto manufacturers don’t know how to make anything but trucks. Not that they actually know how to make them, because they’re all pieces of shit, but just that’s the only thing people in the US buy from US manufacturers because no one else makes full size diesel pickups. Not the Japanese, the Koreans or the Europeans.

That's because of protectionist laws, aka the chicken tax: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tax Asian/European manufacturers were squeezed out of the light truck market. US manufacturers then had this lucrative niche they marketed the hell out of.

I had no idea this was a thing. That explains it.

>VW sells ID.3 for 16K in China

In the UK they sell for £37K ($45K USD). I don't expect it is the exact same spec but even so it is annoying.

1) is complete nonsense, 2) ignores how Tesla was funded which no traditional car company has access to, 3) is overblown and 4) is because it's a managed economy.

If you are talking about Tesla's loan, it was fully paid off. But taxpayers gave legacy car manufacturers a gift of 12.4 billion dollars.

Total net to date: -12.4B (https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/list/category/Auto%2...), losses from ICE manufacturers.

Tesla's loan: $465 million, January 2010, Loan fully repaid in May 2013 (~3.5 years) https://www.energy.gov/lpo/tesla

Traditional car companies have access to tens of billions in bailouts, which EVs never have and never will. (1) Chrysler Bailout of 1979, $1.5 billion (2) In 2008, $17.4 billion bailout to General Motors and Chrysler (3) In 2009, $3 billion, cash for clunkers

Look up General Motors net income and tell me they dont have access to cash.

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