this post was submitted on 29 Nov 2023
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Having just bought a ten year old plugin hybrid, I feel like I have two engines to worry about now. They’ll let you buy an extended warranty for the ICE but it’s a big fat no for the HV battery. If the battery totally dies, which it will, it’s $6k+ to replace it. I feel like an EV has an 8-10 year lifespan because after that, you better have the cash on hand to replace the battery. I’d prefer a super efficient ICE car that can run for 500k+ miles with proper maintenance. Then again, I’m a cheap old bastard who misses those reliable beater Hondas and Toyotas.
What's so mind boggling stupid to me is that full evs are mechanically so much simpler.
Their reliability should be fantastic.
But no oems cheap out on things like contactors in the battery.
Batteries should also be treated as consumable. Easily replaceable, maybe even in parts.
Electric motors seem like they should last forever too.
But nope, instead we get skimped cars with too big batteries, and seemingly no money spent anywhere else.
Manufacturers need to remember that planned obselesence only works when you know what your doing, and right now they early don't.
They're still overbuilding the modern steering column right now. EVs haven't started hitting the junkyard yet.
How so? Is it because they're switching to electric vs hydraulic?
No, I'm referring to the historical accounts of Henry Ford sending out engineers to see what hadn't failed on the Model T once it started hitting junkyards all over the US in the early 1910s. The engineers came back and said that almost universally, regardless if the vehicle had been crashed or not, the steering column still worked in over 90% of junked Model T's. When Henry Ford found that out, he redesigned the steering column to use 75% of the materials previously used.
The point of planned obsolescence is that, much like organic systems like our bodies, almost every single system in the product is built to minimum tolerances, so once one system starts to fail, all the systems fail at the same time.
HF may have been a racist Nazi asshole, but he literally built planned obsolescence the same way that nature did. There's no point in wasting energy to build something that will outlive its other complementary components by several lifetimes.