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Comment by emmender1 | Hacker News Reader

why then is hertz citing high repair costs for EVs ?

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/26/hertz-pulls-back-on-ev-plans...

I dont think the assertion that "EVs have lower maintenance cost" is backed by hard data yet.

And for DIYer like me who want a "right to repair" - EVs dont even have repair manuals - why would i want to buy one - and have the manufacturer own me ?

modern cars are too complex for their own good. the electricals in the car are the worst offenders here. it is too time consuming to debug and fix them.

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Repair != Maintenance.

EVs do have much lower maintenance costs - they basically don't need maintenance.

However, if they are damaged, they have much higher repair costs, and in Hertz' case I can see how this could dominate - I expect rental cars get frequent minor damage as they are driven a lot by people who don't know the cars well and don't care about them much.

It doesn't have to be this bad - car companies could design for repairability, but it's not a selling point and it is a way for them to claw back profits.

"car companies could design for repairability, but it's not a selling point and it is a way for them to claw back profits"

agree 100%, there is little incentive for the car-maker+dealer ecosystem to enable this.

Tesla has incentive to lower repair costs because they also sell insurance.

No, it does not matter if fixing a Tesla is expensive, as long as their insurance doesn't cost more than third party insurance. Quite the opposite - more expensive repairs probably means more margin for the insurers. They are going to get the money back from premiums anyway.

Actually all car companies have incentive to lower repair costs because people look at the cost of insurance when they buy a car, but I don't think it's a big consideration for most people when they are deciding what car to buy. It's normally a negligible cost compared to the repayments for the car.

Repair costs are high when you need to repair them, but you basically never need to repair them, so in my book it's a wash.

I've had two EVs now and never had to bring any of them to the shop. No oil change, nothing.

I'm guessing Hertz might have structural reasons to experience high service costs, perhaps because at their scale it was much more cost effective to service ICE cars in-house, which is probably not an option for their EV fleet at this time (or they haven't tooled for it?)

this is anecdotal but a friend who owns a tesla has had no repairs except 2 battery replacements - each of which would have been prohibitive out-of-warranty.

A battery expert i spoke to said that battery management is a complex mechanism, with lots of software and electronics - and it is not yet modular to enable easy repairs by the local joe mechanic

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