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Comment by jmclnx | Hacker News Reader

>Yes, if the power fails, the chargers won't work anymore, but neither will any of the gas station gas pumps

When I was young, some gas stations has hand pumps for use of power failures. Is that no longer the case ? I have not heard about hand pumps in decades.

To me, the largest argument is the purchase expense and maintenance. Maintenance is not even mentioned.

In theory maintenance of EVs should be far less than Fossil Fuel vehicles. But time and time again I see articles stating maintenance is far more expensive. This is something I do not understand. I remember seeing articles (maybe ads) ages ago about maintenance of EVs from 100+ years ago, that was the main reason cited to purchase an EV back then, less maintenance and much cleaner.

As for rebates, with the US Election, the idiot that won stated many times he wants to eliminate all incentive for EVs. Not sure if it will really happen, but something people looking into an EV should be aware of.

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As someone driving EVs for more than 10 years; maintenance is far less. The articles claiming maintenance is more expensive on EVs are lying. What has happened is there has been a non-scientific survey by Consumer Reports showing people self reporting more problems with EVs. But most of that can be chalked up to going through a period with A) brand new companies like Rivian and Lucid launching their first vehicles and B) EVs from legacy auto companies being brand new models; typically brand new models have more issues than the same model a few years later.

But note that those problems are warranty issues, as in no cost to the owner.

In the hypothetical case that an EV's battery needs to be replaced, yes that will be a very expensive repair / maintenance cost. But that's not common, no more common than an engine rebuild / replacement; one source I found [0] says about 13% of EVs from before 2015 have had / needed a battery replacement, and 30% of cars from 2011. I can't find any reliable figures on car engine replacements, other than that on average, one is needed after 200.000 miles - but if maintained well, car engines can last much longer.

[0] https://www.recurrentauto.com/research/how-long-do-ev-batter...

1) Batteries very rarely need to actually be replaced. It is inevitable that transmissions and ICE engines will need very expensive large services and always need regulae maintenance that adds up over time.

2) ICE engines absolutely do not and will not last longer than batteries and electric motors. ICE engines ans transmissions just have way, way more moving parts and are being put through far more stress. If you want something that will last for half a million miles or more, buy an EV.

> If you want something that will last for half a million miles or more, buy an EV.

My gasoline powered truck is over 400,000 miles on the original engine. Diesel trucks often go much more.

Miles isn't really a good measurement for engines, we should really be comparing hours, but that isn't necessarily available for all engines.

A typical driver makes 14500 miles per year. If manufacturing learning rates hold, then by the time that driver runs through 200,000 miles, a new battery pack of the same size will cost less than 25% what it cost new.

>In the hypothetical case that an EV's battery needs to be replaced, yes that will be a very expensive repair

Interesting, I would have never seen this as an issue. 100+ hears ago, "Gas" stations would just replace battery pack and charge the ones taken out for the next customer. It was a rather easy job using some kind of crane.

I would have thought the new EVs would have easy access to the batteries. I do remember seeing somewhere there was/is a push to make battery replacement standard and easier. And have one standard battery pack across all models.

What are these ICE vehicles that require so much maintenance? I have three from 10 to 25 years old and the amount of maintenance they require is negligible, at best.

> But time and time again I see articles stating maintenance is far more expensive. This is something I do not understand.

Price gouging.

Understand that manufacturers are earning their money selling spare parts and maintenance. Less maintenance needed? No problem! Increase maintenance cost per item. Even easier to do with "novel" technologies that act as a form of vendor lock-in.

Most of car sales margin for legacy automakers is also car maintenance costs. You have essentially a subscribed customers for years locked in to whatever you charge for parts. A math problem essentially to take a hit on net initial sale

Absolutely agree.

The point I was trying to make was, that with electric cars, manufacturers saw an opportunity to increase the maintenance-related profits, as they are, for the time being, more of a "niche" product, and not something a generic mechanic can repair easily.

> As for rebates, with the US Election, the idiot that won stated many times he wants to eliminate all incentive for EVs.

Interestingly how quickly he started saying F-U to mister Musk..

That's not an F-U to Musk. Musk had stated a while ago that he was against EV incentives.

Without he incentives EV makers will have to lower prices some to compete against ICEs. For Tesla that means lower profits, but they will still be profitable.

For other companies that are still in the "losing money until they can increase volume to reap economies of scale" stage, which is most of Tesla's non-Chinese competitors, he thinks that losing the incentives will devastate them.

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