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Comment by kotaKat | Hacker News Reader

Is this once again because electric vehicles don’t get pulled into a mechanics shop every 10,000 miles for their oil to be changed and coincidentally inspected at the same time for mechanical defects that could be caught before they get pulled into a TUV annual inspection?

Hrm, I wonder.

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All cars in Germany need an inspection every 24 months (or 36 months from new) - so you'd expect other electric cars to have similar issues here if that was the case.

Other brands do have scheduled inspection though.

Other brands will have dealerships do "pre-inspection" work. The data may be skewed if certain brands are more likely to have pre-inspection done. Some brands even offer it as a free service - maybe they know the public looks at these numbers. Tesla doesn't care, or doesn't have the infrastructure to offer the same service.

Other brands force you into doing yearly/x-1000-km inspections to keep your warranty, even for EVs. If you were to skip their inspection cycle, they may decide not to cover the issue, even if it's clearly a warranty case.

You go to the garage for a Tesla only if it's broken.

In my experience with my M3 2019, I think many people don't even realize they have issues, because the cars are generally silent and decently insulated (the Highland even more so). Also, lots of people pay no attention to sounds and general driving feeling their cars make (e.g. steering wheel shaking, clicks doing certain actions, ...). The main/biggest issues with well-kept Teslas are basically suspensions, for which there is no monitoring/sensors, so the car cannot report to you that something's off.

Example #1: I asked the Tesla service center in Dec 2024 for an inspection, because I was leaving for a country with no service centers. Everything was fine after 6y and ~60'000km, they told me to just break every now and then because otherwise the brake rotors will rust. So it'd have likely failed the TUV inspection only for having a little rust on the rotors, otherwise perfectly fine and driveable.

Example #2: last year (after changing country) my rear axle nuts came a bit loose, not enough to be dangerous but enough that the axle/wheel hub interface would have some play (which could potentially become dangerous if you leave it alone for a few thousand kms). You'd hear a clunk from the back when applying torque from a standstill. My wife and mother in law kept insisting everything was fine, that they couldn't hear anything, that it was all in my head. Took it to the mechanic: rear axle nuts were loose, right more than the left one (and I heard the clunk from rear-right). Fixed with 30min labor. Different people, different reactions.

Now I have the front-right wheel clicking at times that is likely the same issue or may have something to do with suspensions, but again, if you ask my wife, everything's fine. And without mandated inspection cycles, you only learn of issues at the mandatory state inspection.

If this was the case you'd expect a noticeable difference between ICE cars and EVs in the statistics. According to the statistics, EVs are a mixed bag. For instance the Mini Cooper SE and Audi Q4 E-tron have very low defect rates (3.5-4%). Overall defect rates for 2-3 year old EVs seem to be close to that of ICE cars.

Since Tesla have very high failure rates they may be dragging the overall EV numbers down. So the sensible thing to do would probably be to look at reliability of EVs with the Teslas taken out of the dataset and look at what it does to the overall reliability numbers for EVs. I have a feeling it might nudge EVs ahead of ICE cars more clearly.

> Is this once again because electric vehicles don’t get pulled into a mechanics shop every 10,000 miles for their oil to be changed and coincidentally inspected at the same time for mechanical defects that could be caught before they get pulled into a TUV annual inspection?

Last time I saw a TÜV report it was that electric cars show up with a) rather little service checks in between and b) they are too heavy for the axels and that causes wear compared to a regular car.

Other EVs are incomparably better though.

Other EV:s have service inspections as part of the warranty requirements. That means they get inspected by workshops, which means that problems are more likely to be first found during the government inspection.

I don't think the actual quality difference under Equal conditions is a large as the TUV report suggests.

This is the problem with this report. It doesn't mean that the cars break down more often, it means that they are so rarely at the shop that the drivers don't notice the used brake pads, tires etc.

> This is the problem with this report. It doesn't mean that the cars break down more often, it means that they are so rarely at the shop that the drivers don't notice the used brake pads, tires etc.

The average European drives about 12,000 km (~7500 miles) per year [1]. The maximum inspection period allowed by the EU for most personal cars is 2 years [2].

The average person in the US drives about 13,400 miles (~ 21,500 km) per year [3].

So, roughly, the average European vehicle is inspected after a driving distance which is about the same as that which the average US vehicle puts behind it in a year.

I thus doubt that the Tesla numbers from the article are greatly affected by a lack of inspections.

[1] https://www.acea.auto/fact/fact-sheet-cars/

[2] https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/dir/2014/45/oj/eng (chapter III, article 5, point 1).

[3] https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar8.htm

>The maximum inspection period allowed by the EU for most personal cars is 2 years

Your source clearly says that the first inspection needs to be at least four years after registration, so if you now buy a Tesla Model 3, you won't need to have it inspected until 2030. It's how Finland does it, so 4 years to first inspection, then every 2 years until the car is 10 years old, and then every year (4, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12…).

> Your source clearly says that the first inspection needs to be at least four years after registration, [...]

That doesn't mean the first inspection is only required after four years, only that it must be required after four years. The countries can still introduce stricter rules, like Germanys TÜV - the first inspection has to happen in the first three years here.

Thanks for pointing out the possibility (but, as someone else pointed out, it's just a possibility - the EU regulation obviously does not set a minimum) of a double gap for new vehicles. On the other hand, don't new vehicles typically see an extra inspection by the manufacturer/dealer early on? (I don't know).

Again, not just a possibility, but lived reality. The maximum inspection interval here is four years.

Again, just because that's the case in Finland doesn't mean it's the case everywhere in Europe.

The maximum in EU cannot be two years if any EU member state allows more than two years.

The regulation is quite clear: in any EU country, inspection must happen at least every 2 years for vehicles older than 4 years. I understand that Finland allows a 4 year gap after first registration. After that, the max period is still 2 years. Individual countries may also require 2 years (or less) during the first 4.

You'd need to be quite careless not to notice bad breaking on such a heavy car

Not really - EV regen is really good. Even on my 4000 pound Fusion Hybrid, I don’t brake as often as I would in a gasoline powered vehicle because I’m able to coast down on the motor braking itself.

But in an emergency situation you still want it to work and not being rusted away as it is "never" used.

This is a software, not a hardware problem. Suitably intelligent software could gently apply the brakes every now and then in addition to regenerative braking even when it doesn't need to, just to keep the brakes in good condition.

The better you get at this, the more you'll drive around without getting the break pads checked. This also increases the risk of running out of braking power when the car needs it the most, you'll be fine on an easy drive and then rear end the car in front of you or worse.

I’m an American living in a state with no roadworthyness inspections so I don’t have any first hand experience with this. But in previous threads, people have mentioned that the typical thing to do is, at the vehicle service (oil change or whatever) prior to the inspection, you mention “hey, my car needs to get the roadworthyness inspection soon, can you look it over for that while it’s in the shop?”. And if something is wrong, it’ll be brought to your attention and fixed before the official inspection. Then you show up for the official inspection and oftentimes, it goes smoothly. The pro-Tesla theory is that BEVs require less service so people don’t catch these things prior to official inspection.

Seems like if that’s true of BEVs generally one could find similar trends with Nissan Leafs, etc.

In my country, most people do the oil change and the roadworthy test at the same time, but we do drive less than in the US.

It doesn't mean that the cars break down more often, but it does mean that the average Tesla Model Y on the road is in much worse shape than another car of similar age.

EVs have breaks, suspensions, and tires like all cars. A responsible owner should have his car checked out once a year.

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