Hacker News Reader

Comment by lovich | Hacker News Reader

> Conversely, no mechanics in the country know how to work on EVs. EVs only work in the suburbs.

I’m so glad you said this. No one understands how big an issue this is. They only have to look at historical examples like how motor vehicles failed to establish as a market because no carriage workers knew how to work on engines

View on HN

And the funny thing is I bet ICE repair and maintenance skills are a lot more transferrable to BEVs than carriage -> ICE. Most shops have already been servicing hybrids for 20 years now.

It really bothers me when people point to perfectly solvable problems as reasons why we can't have electric cars.

A dead battery cell is unfixable. At best, you have a few dead cells and a mechanic can replace them. But if replacement cells can't be found, or too many cells have died, then it is a full battery pack replacement. This is going to be a big problem for old BEVs.

I can’t tell if you’re trolling or not. I do hope you realise old cars often have their entire engine replaced, right?

That’s also an expensive repair job, but it hasn’t stopped the adoption of ICE vehicles.

An ICE replacement is usually just a few thousand dollars. And that's the worse case scenario. Well maintained ICE cars can last for decades. A mandatory, $10-20k battery replacement for every BEV at some point in its lifetime is a big problem.

A refurbished battery pack costs about the same as an engine replacement.

Very poor visibility on how long a refurbished battery pack would last.

Consumeraffairs review of battery pack replacement costs (https://www.consumeraffairs.com/automotive/ev-battery-replac...) implies that this costs $13k-$17k, so much more than engine replacements for old cars, as long as we're talking about battery packs which have appropriate capacity for full EV, not a hybrid or simply putting in a much smaller capacity than originally installed.

Nobody is getting their ICE engine replaced unless they tuned it and blew it up or never changed their oil.

Just anecdotal but: I bought a new European suv in 2017 drove 68,000 miles, very very gently. Turbo blew and sent debris into the engine, engine lost compression, needs full replacement, dealer quoted $35,000 job. Car was 6 years old, just out of warranty, was 60k new.

Now I drive an EV.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com