Nissan Leaf gave BEV a bad name because it had much worse battery tech. Battery longevity is not a problem for modern, or even decade old cars.
EV Batteries Last Way Longer Than Expected - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43001996 - February 2025 (2 comments)
New study shows: EV batteries last much longer than expected - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42228901 - November 2024 (70 comments)
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...
Even more alarmingly, the speed of revisions now is such that vehicles can have parts that were only used for a very short run before being updated and replaced. Your particular vehicle batch may not necessarily have identical parts to other batches even within the same generation. We're a long, long way from the way things used to be, when parts commonality stretched for decades.
There is no way you are driving a 25 year old car without serious maintenance like exchanging the timing belt. Add the frequent oil changes and all other yearly maintenance and it does add up.
Compared to a BEV, where you literally only need to change the break pads, and you may or may not need to change the battery, and the batteries keep outperforming the expected lifespan. BEV are simply mechanically much simpler devices.
While this seems intuitively true, I have some pushback, and I think that the reliability record of e.g older generations of Prius backs me up.
While you do have effectively two cars (an EV and an ICE) crammed into one, you’re not actually using both at full capacity all the time, which cuts down a lot on wear and tear. Your ICE is almost never run under load before it warms up, and is kept running at its most efficient rpm most of the time, your transmission is running under less load since it has help from the electric motors, and is often simpler (the aforementioned Prius does not have a reverse gear for example).
No it’s not nearly as simple as a BEV, but a well implemented hybrid system is absolutely an upgrade from a full ICE vehicle.
Only significant problem was pothole related damage.
In theory this should be true. In reality hybrids eat motors compared to the same engine in an ICE. That's just what happens you have two ways of making the vehicle go to potentially mask "something's funny" type issues and your customer base is people who are buying an appliance based on an MPG number and some math.
With competent ownership (fleet vehicles provide a lot of examples, lots of hyrbrid Fords from the 00s and early examples still around) they come out about the same as an ICE car so you essentially get the hybrid system "for free" from a maintenance perspective. But that's not the median consumer.
Not really. The transmission is an e-CVT in hybrids which has no torque converter, the main part that breaks first in an automatic transmission. Unlike a regular CVT, the e-CVT has no belt, either. The e-CVT basically never breaks, so you basically never have a transmission go bad in a hybrid. On top of that, because the traction battery is so small, it's replaceable for $1-2k instead of $10k+ for a BEV. If anything, hybrids are the best of both worlds. Had you specified plugin hybrids you would have been correct.
A Prius battery will last 150k km or so, but since the car can go 500k km +, that's a couple of battery replacements. A Tesla battery will last about 300k km, but that's longer than the rest of the car will typically last, so you never have to replace it.
Going to 100 mpg is still strictly worse than a battery powered by renewables.
Might as well drive a quiet, renewable powered electric vehicle and let the jets use the synth.
Or take the train.
If you are able to manufacture them in a completely emissionless way. That requires huge energy input though. Certainly has its uses, but too expensive for personal cars I'd think.
What I think would make sense is to use methanol as a seasonal energy store in temperate climates. Manufacture from PV in summer, burn in winter.
It can be scaled up.
A modern Toyota hybrid is far more complex than an electric car, but the fact they are more reliable than a gasoline car is by design, not just good manufacturing.
If you are not replacing your tires after decades, you and those around you should be fearing for their lives.
I didn’t feel the need to mention something that everyone should be easily doing at home for the cost of materials alone.
Most people do not purchase new tires and mount them onto their old rims, themselves, at home. Most people do not know how to set the bead on an automotive tire. Replacing worn out tires with new ones is no less difficult maintenance than replacing brake pads.
Either way, you need to do both on both ICE and BEV equally.
You are aware that the lifespan of a tire is significantly less than the lifespan of the car, right? Have you owned a car and driven it for more than 50k miles?
It seems me you think that what you linked is both common knowledge, and common to do one one's own. And maybe it is among your peer group! But we're talking about the.population at large here. It belongs in the same bucket as brake pad replacement.
And then things like the AC system, electrical repairs (potentially very expensive), dealing with rust, brake lines..
Not to mention, much of the complexity in ICEs comes back to cooling and lubrication, both of which are also concerns in BEVs.
A plug-in hybrid is a much more complex machine than a BEV.
>Hybrids are the worst of both worlds when it comes to maintenance. They have their benefits and are key to fighting climate change, but mechanically you inherit all the problems from both sides.
Also, much more complex is a value judgement. Complex in what way? High voltage electronics isn't exactly "not complex", and the coolant loops in BEVs are more complex than those in regular cars, because the tolerances are tighter.
I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that you mean mechanical complexity, but even then, that's not a given for ICEs. Gas turbines can have as little as one moving part, and there are piston engines that can get away with as few as four (the piston-conrod-crankshaft assembly and a compressor wheel).
At the end of the day, a good design has the minimum amount of complexity necessary to perform a given task, and no more. Given that BEVs are fundamentally unable to replace ICEVs in several niches (e.g. those relying on on-street parking, off-roading), maybe a little more complexity is warranted? As is, they aren't a 1:1 replacement for a standard car, and that's okay, but they're being marketed as such which is a recipe for failure.
And I was using complex as a shorthand for „more things to maintain“.
Maintenance is a function of usage. BEVs still have coolant and lubricants, which means they also have pumps. They have a HVAC system which also means filters and refrigerant. Yes, you don't have to replace spark plugs and a timing belt, but both of those are infrequent and generally easy. You might have to replace brake pads less, but hybrids share that same feature. Hell, hybrids don't even have fan belts, alternators, ignition motors, and transmissions these days. They share nearly all of their underlying foundation with BEVs, for most of the same reasons you would want to go BEV in the first place.
Replacing a BEV set would cost more than the total amount I’ve spent on the truck, including buying it in the first place, fuel, insurance, registration, maintenance, and repairs.