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Comment by sippingabonedry | Hacker News Reader

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Neglecting a cabin air filter isn't going to make your EV fall apart. You can neglect that on an ICE too. Imagine how much worse these people would have it with an ICE vehicle - neglecting oil changes, oil filter, brake fluid, radiator coolant, air intake filter, spark plugs, valve cover gasket, power steering fluid, putting the wrong gas in, topping off with the wrong oil, etc...

For some time now, neglecting radiator coolant and power steering fluid has essentially no impact. (The service interval on my coolant is either 150k or 200k miles.) Power steering is usually electric these days. I'm not sure what would ever call for valve cover gasket maintenance, unless you're removing it for some reason.

"Topping off" with oil is not really a thing, generally, unless you have a very old car with engine problems. Nor can you put the "wrong gas" in, typically, unless you have some sort of specialty car that "requires" (you could get away with it for a long time) higher efficiency gas or you have a diesel - and someone who went the extra mile to get these will be aware.

EVs also have brake fluid, so that's something EV owners also have to pay attention to - but like ICE cars, you can pretty much can just ignore it. It's not recommended but nothing is likely to happen.

I own my EV for 6 years+ already, still runs like new. Yeah, I do not know how to change my air filter, someone in my family changed it, and I only been in service once when my 12 volt battery died.

I was able to drive there, they did some breaks fluid change for free and thats it, meanwhile my friend with a bmw spent ~$2.5k in service since 3 years he bought it.

The only expense I had is changing tires, that i did in a regular tire shop.

Yeah keep laughing.

... if you own a Tesla (I do, I know what I'm talking about) you should service your brakes after every winter, you should also change your brake fluid after two years but that can be stretched for a bit. And the AC needs real service after around 4 years.

Still less than an ICE.

No one is changing their brake fluid every 2-3 years, EV nor ICE lol.

Are you saying EV owners are new to car ownership? Do you have sources for your claims? I have a hard time following your logic.

I'm pretty sure that the experience needed to perform the vast majority of maintenance work on an EV can be gotten in a week of interactions with ChatGPT.

Whereas something like doing your own oil change requires a lot of preparation to get right and then you still have the issue of disposing of the oil.

Obviously for repairs you are more screwed with an EV than with an ICE.

> Whereas something like doing your own oil change requires a lot of preparation to get right

No, it doesn't. It's very simple on most cars, and certainly you could also see it with a YouTube video. Remove one (drain) bolt. Drain oil into a bucket. Put the bolt back. Fill the car up from the top with the oil listed on the cap in the amount listed on the owners manual. Take the bucket of oil to the nearest auto part's store and dump it there for free.

If you change the filter too, you just...unscrew the filter and screw a new one back on. Make sure you the whole filter came off (the gasket didn't separate) and smear a little oil on the new one.

There are some minor variations on this process depending on the exact model of car, but that's it. Variations might be stuff like "the drain bolt is normally covered with a plastic cover that requires a screwdriver" or "the manufacturer recommends you replace the washer on the bolt." (It doesn't actually matter.)

> and then you still have the issue of disposing of the oil.

I mentioned it above but because I see this comment a lot: your auto parts store or even Wal-Mart will take your used oil. Disposal is not an issue.

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