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Fear Mongering About Range Anxiety Has To Stop — CT Governor Calls Out EV Opponents (cleantechnica.com)

submitted 10 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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Fear Mongering About Range Anxiety Has To Stop — CT Governor Calls Out EV Opponents::Several state governors are fighting fear mongering as they attempt to reduce transportation emissions in their states.

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[–] UID_Zero@infosec.pub 50 points 10 months ago (47 children)

I was among those worrying about range until I spent 5 minutes thinking about what I actually do on a daily/weekly/monthly basis.

We'd still have my wife's ICE van, we both work from home, and 99% of the time my work-related travel is local (within 5 miles). My wife's van can pull the camper for our camping trips, or for our longer drives.

I have no good reason not to get an EV for my next car.

[–] cryostars@lemmyf.uk 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Repairability is a big one for reasons not to get a new ev for me

[+] helenslunch@feddit.nl 7 points 10 months ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (3 children)

[deleted]

[–] cryostars@lemmyf.uk 8 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

Because they are relatively new in the automotive world. I can take my '08 CRV to just about any auto parts store in America and get just about any part I need (or take it to about any third party repair shop with the same results). Good luck doing that with most EVs especially Teslas. Tesla is the most egregious example as they are anti right to repair and have seemed to take a page out of Apple's book as far as locking down their supply chain for parts.

Hopefully this will get better with time as third party shops have time to acclimate themselves and their technicians to EV architecture, and EV-specific parts become more available. Though the latter I feel is highly dependent on manufacturers not trying to turn EVs into phones in terms of repairability/serviceability.

In the meantime, as an average Joe without a lot of money, I really like the idea of keeping my relatively low cost older ICE vehicles because if shit hits the fan, if I can't fix it relatively cheaply, there will likely be multiple shops that can without it costing me an arm and a leg and/or taking weeks or months to wait on the manufacturer to supply the parts needed.

[–] spongebue@lemmy.world 13 points 10 months ago (2 children)

There really aren't that many components to these things, and few of them are moving parts. There's no water pump, alternator, starter, or A/C compressor on an accessory belt (there is an A/C compressor, of course, but it's powered more like a home unit). No oil changes to worry about. No pollution/exhaust system. There is a coolant system for the battery, and a transmission, but neither of them have nearly as much wear as an internal combustion engine with its, well, internal combustion. The transmission is a bunch of fixed gears that don't need to shift. Brake pads hardly get used since the car primarily uses regenerative braking.

Yeah, Tesla kinda sucks when things do go wrong. I definitely avoided them. But if a car is less likely to break down, I'd be ok with a little trade-off in availability for what little would actually break.

[–] AA5B@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

Looking at the tires on my Tesla, eventually replacing those looks scary

[–] cryostars@lemmyf.uk -4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

I think this argument is kind of a misconception. Just because an EV drivetrain has fewer moving parts than an ICE doesn't necessarily mean it's more reliable. There is a decent AP article from November 2023 that touches on this and suggests that EVs are actually far more unreliable than traditional ICE vehicles. I would link it but I can't figure out how to remove all the tracking junk from the URL.

Regardless I really like the idea of one day owning an EV so I hope most of these issues will be worked out as the technology matures.

Edit (source): https://web.archive.org/web/20231207233608/https://apnews.com/article/electric-vehicles-consumer-reports-gasoline-vehicles-charging-eed9c3b8d86c1f7708b7c6e2d4dbf55e

[–] hark@lemmy.world 8 points 10 months ago

I think the reliability numbers are skewed because there are a lot of corners being cut. For example, Tesla sells the most EVs, but they had played fast and loose with quality control to keep their numbers pumped up. Then there are cheaper auto manufacturers entering the market because the barrier to entry is lower with EVs and their quality control is all over the place. Given the same quality control as the larger automakers, EVs should be more reliable. Dealerships have fought against selling EVs because they miss out on lucrative service visits.

[–] spongebue@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago

Not necessarily, no. But when many of these moving parts turn at a couple thousand RPM under normal use and often get used a couple hours per day, that's a lot of wear and room for error

[–] DreadPotato@sopuli.xyz 1 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

Aside from battery and the electric motor itself, mechanical parts are easy to come by from other sources than Tesla. Parts related to e.g. suspension, brakes and steering are all easily bought without involving Tesla at all, and can be changed by any mechanic.

[–] zeekaran@sopuli.xyz 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Because third party repairs are often unavailable or void the warranty. Cars are becoming a subscription service to dealerships.

[–] David_Eight@lemmy.world 0 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I think the cost to replace the battery is an issue.

[–] Delascas@feddit.uk 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

You replace the battery of an EV just about as often as you replace the engine block in an ICE car. Both do happen . . . but very, very infrequently.

[–] anotherandrew@lemmy.mixdown.ca 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

That doesn’t sound right. I’ve got 200,000 miles on my 2015 Passat TDI, and expect another 100,000 easily with minimal repair/maintenance cost.

What’s the service life of the battery of a ten year old EV? The electric motor should be almost indestructible, but I have serious doubts that the battery capacity will still be reasonable after the same amount of time, even if you baby it.

[–] Delascas@feddit.uk 9 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

I'm on my 3rd EV . . and none of them have been a Tesla. I am FAR from a Tesla/Musk fanboy . . .but they do release the exact data you are asking about. Here you go . . 12% degradation after 200,000 miles.

https://electrek.co/2023/04/25/tesla-update-battery-degradation/

Roughly speaking, EV's lose range at a similar rate that ICE engines lose horsepower.

https://carbuzz.com/news/10-reasons-why-engines-lose-horsepower-over-time

But a 10 year old Tesla is worth much more than a 10 year old BMW . . .

https://ark-invest.com/articles/analyst-research/ev-batteries-value/

Here is a Nissan Leaf used as a taxi . . .100,000 miles with no noticeable battery degradation . . .

https://www.speakev.com/threads/c-c-taxis-100-000-mile-nissan-leaf-full-battery-included.8804/

[–] David_Eight@lemmy.world 3 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I'm wary of any data coming from Tesla themselves.
That's kind of comparing apples and oranges. Also an engine rebuild is also considerably cheaper than battery replacements.
That link sounds more theory than reality. A lot of "if" and "may" used in that article.
100,000 miles over ten years isn't much. Reaching that amount of miles is considered less than the minimum for modern cars. And it's only one example, I've seen examples of the exact opposite.
How old and how many miles did the EVs you've owned have when you sold them?

There's not a ton of data on older EVs so it's kind of hard get a clear picture on their longevity. I know they're constantly improving and I'll eventually get one, just not today 🤷🏻.

[–] Delascas@feddit.uk 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I cannot disagree about being wary of Tesla . . I certainly am. Here's an article about data from 6,300 EV's from 12 manufactures. Also includes a cool graphing tool . . . https://electrek.co/2019/12/14/8-lessons-about-ev-battery-health-from-6300-electric-cars/ Graphing the data: https://storage.googleapis.com/geotab-sandbox/ev-battery-degradation/index.html

As for my own EV's . . I was an early adopter with the 24kWh Nissan Leaf - only had about 65 miles of "real world" range. Didn't keep that long and traded it for a VW eGolf . . . 125 "real world" miles. Had that for several years . . .but traded it early in 2023 for a VW ID4. With 300+ miles, I no longer think about range. None of them had/have more than 30,000 miles . . .and I never noticed any degradation at all. The impact of cold weather is a MUCH more more noticeable issue!!

[–] David_Eight@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

That's still at max, 6 years of data. Am I reading that right? But, to be fair there's no indication of a dramatic drop off, at worst that data is incomplete.

I wouldn't be worried about buying a brand new EVs. My problem is that I exclusively buy 3-5 year old cars because that's the most cost effective way to buy them. So if I bought a 5 year old EV and owned it for another 5 years it's a 10 year old EV which is the very edge of the data is be able to find. That kind of unknown is a bit unsettling along with some other personal use case issues.

Thank you for the info though.

[–] spongebue@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

A few things to casually point out:

EV batteries are mandated by law to have an 8 year, 100K mile warranty. It's fair that you'd want it to last significantly longer, but if these things were built to go kaput immediately after with very little buffer from the warranty period, you're risking a lot of "below average" batteries having to be replaced under warranty - not to mention the reputation of these companies being absolutely shot as they ramp up EV production if they all went out immediately after.

Most modern EV batteries are built with a battery management system. Basically a heating and cooling system and such that you don't see in consumer electronics very much, meant to keep the battery system happy and healthy. The biggest exception to this is the Nissan Leaf, which is based on painfully outdated designs that never really improved from when they first came out almost 15 years ago. Many of those cars have cooked batteries and you would be right to be concerned about it.

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