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Why does the car media ignore the known issues of control module and motor failures?
A Tesla battery might last 200K, the rest of the car is shit.
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/tesla-musk-steering-suspension/
But that’s because it’s a Tesla.
A Tesla battery might last 200K,
you do realize it’s 2026, and tesla is no longer the only maker of EVs?
tbh, the media already lavishes way too much attention on musk and tesla.
The article focused on the batteries of multiple EV manufacturers? Also the Tesla battery is still useful without the crappy car container. Just pull it out when the control module and motors fail, and use it as a battery backup. Sell the car for scrap, if they’ll even pay for it.
Why does this title make it sound like they are upset?
This sounds better to me: EV batteries are lasting longer than many drivers expected.
I’m not afraid of the batteries. My parents’ original Prius made it to 150,000 miles on the original pack before it was totaled in an accident.
I’m worried about all the electric gimmicks in the cabin breaking, and the cameras recording me and everyone else and selling the data, and getting into an accident because I had to swipe through five screens to adjust the temperature.
My leaf just has buttons for all the things that normally have buttons. There is a touchscreen, but you can use buttons to control it.
Its possible but I think its cheaper to just use a screen, and we all know that nothing is more important than Line Go Up.
Right! I’d go for an electric with none of those gimmicks (and non of all those mainenance-heavy ICE attachments) … just an 80s-style cushy car with battery, radio & music player … in a minute.
Hello future Slate owner!
yeah looking forward to the slate and the telo (it’s so freakin cute!)

but prob will end up with the slate. now I have to find a 3d printer big enough to make body panels lol
I mostly agree but there are two things I really want a car to have: adaptive cruise control and air conditioning pumped through the seats. And the thing is that everyone probably has two tech things they can’t live without, and everyone’s two things are different.
Yeah, we’re at 110k miles on our original batteries (standard hybrid) and not seeing a significant drop in mileage yet. The dude at the dealership kept trying to convince me that the batteries would go bad every 40k and it’d be 8 large at least for a new battery. I wouldn’t have bought new if I could have gotten that one damn feature I wanted used, and that damn safety feature has literally kept us out of accidents.
I still can’t eat my lunch in the back seat in a parking lot without getting hit by a car though. Fucking wreck magnet I am.
That’s not just electric cars, thats just included as fascism grows.
It’s actually just cheaper to build a screen then all the knobs. It makes economic sense for the company bottom line
But it’s also the reason Teslur leads all brands in crash rates. EU is banning screen interfaces.
Well EU car companies are also going bankrupt… Wonder why 🤔🤔🤔
NO SHUT UP ITS BECAUSE OF FASCISM /s
sorry I couldn’t hear you
Id hope not, we’re communicating with text :)
I cannot wait for the day we can communicate not only visually and aurally but through our phones with smell. Like send your loved one a flower that bees have been trying and failing to eat. And send to your annoying sibling a bouquet of farts every hour on the hour for their birthday, playing pachelbels Canon and chiming the time in ass like churchbells
Ngl, lemmy, reddit, and all major social media wojld STINK so bad
It’s completely self proclaimed, but I’m a battery guy and electronics and automotive repair type of guy. Right down to rebuilding my gen 2 Prius battery that now has about 300,000 miles (482,000 km) on it, including when the original battery failed.
You should worry about both of those things if you’re buying used.
Prius batteries last so long because they keep a pretty narrow charge\discharge range, despite the total batteries capacity.
But beyond that, the EV batteries in almost all the fully electric vehicles on the road don’t have a km used until failure issue. They have an age issue. Lithium batteries have a shelf life, so to speak. It doesn’t matter if the battery has 30,000 km on it or 300,000 km. None of them will last beyond 20 years before they start going bad and there’s nothing you can do about it.
That being said, LifePO4 are absolutely the most chemically stable and long lasting lithium based battery currently in any EV’s. if you’re in the market for an older EV with a lithium battery, either plan on replacing the entire battery at some point (check how much it may cost you. Ranges from $6,000 to over $25,000 in some cases) or at least find one that uses LifePO4 as the battery.
Jury is still out on the semi solid state or solid state batteries. Sodium based batteries “should” outlast the vehicle they’re in, but there aren’t many in production outside of China yet and they aren’t as energy dense so will typically be in shorter ranged vehicles.
It totally sucks that everything is littered with hard to get to and expensive to replace electronics they all use. It will be a pain trying to have a classic ev in the future when caps start leaking everywhere and you can’t find replacement necessary to function touchscreens.
None of them will last beyond 20 years before they start going bad and there’s nothing you can do about it.
there’s a useful life for ev service, and there’s a useful life after ev service. seeing these arrays being recycled for power storage is the way.
that said: good luck getting all the complex shit in an ICE car to last 20 fuckin years lol. something is gonna give. EVs seem complex, but it’s far simpler than the array of shit needed to make gas blammo work as motive force for transport.
Thanks for the tip: When buying a used RV it’s how old the batteries are plus how many miles.
And I don’t care that there won’t be “classic EVs” because I haven’t seen one other than the Slate that seems more than an appliance.
This is why i only buy used old cars. Until we have cars without spyware I’ll never go electric.
Laws required:
- zero cameras on or in cars.
- Everything required to be user repairable (within reason. Obviously a battery pack may not be fixable)
- headlights shall be below xxx lumens on bright, and or have a 3 position switch to change them from “blind everyone” to “pretty bright” to “low beam to not blind every person oncoming”
Why can’t we have nice things? (Billionaires is why). Imagine how much our lives would improve from these laws.
Why do you associate spyware with electric cars? EVs have the same level of spyware found in ICE vehicles.
Yeah, every new car does. I’m against new cars basically.
zero cameras on or in cars
Backup cameras are really nice actually, especially if they have that little grid showing you where the car is going to turn into.
Those back cameras have saved billions in insurance claims.
And the lives of hundreds of children.
Also the little sensors (so cameras) that tell you when someone is in your blind spot
I’ll consent to a backup camera. I have never had one and never needed one but I can see the appeal. I’d advocate for extra convex mirrors on side mirrors too, they are awesome, like the 2014 fiestas have!
backup cams are required on new cars in some jurisdictions, including u.s., canada, european union…
I could also see that being a sinister move to normalize cameras in cars. As usual “safety!!!” Is the death knell of privacy.
Oh park your paranoia.
Youre blind if you dont see thats the exact reason for it. You also think flock promotes safety and data centers are solely for fun generative image creation I’m sure. Nothing nefarious at all going on.
You really should be putting your full ID on here to post so we can verify it. Since that’s also “safe”.
Interesting that you guys call them backup cameras - makes it sound like it’s a redundant camera to be used when one fails - as we call them reversing cameras here in Aus.
I’ve always been one to use my mirrors when reversing and saw no need for the reversing camera but then I bought a new car and it definitely does help in certain situations. More than anything, it’ll help me detect a child behind the car better if that ever happens. I still mostly use my mirrors but it’s handy to have the video there to refer to if needed.
They’re cameras used to back up a vehicle. “Back up” can mean “to produce a redundant copy of,” or “to move backwards.”
I’ve had one for six years… Still forget it’s there unless I’m backing into a really tight spot and happen to notice the screen when I’m looking side to side at the mirrors.
I was like you a few months ago, and then I started digging. This is an excellent time to get your hands on really good value 2nd hand EVs.
Some of the early Tesla competitors came out with EVs that were essentially ICE platforms with physical buttons and no spyware and way better build quality and without the FSD AI garbage that caused more accidents than if humans had been driving.
And there are new brands that are hearing the anti-screen sentiment and bringing out new models with physical buttons too. Now that solar is plateauing, EVs will become ubiquitous and charging networks are the next rapid expansion of the electrify everything.
Re your laws: I believe the EU just passed a law that all new cars now need to have cameras for driver attention monitoring. I think this comes from the insurance lobby.
The cameras also prevent theft.
I mean, fucking idiots are napping on highways.
For sure. The volt was a sweet idea IMO and simpler than people think.
Yeah, that camera thing is bullshit. I’d be ripping those out or taping over them instantly. I think insurance company ceos should have a camera shoved up their ass so we can see what they had for dinner. Only fair. Maybe an IMAX camera so its ultra HD.
The only electric vehicle I’m interested in is the Slate truck because it doesn’t have any of those things.
Right there with you my human. If only the range didn’t suck (I live in big country) and it was 4WD!!maybe there will be community mods who knows.
Yeah, 4WD would be great. I’m also hoping they make other types of cars. A simple electric roadster with RWD would be awesome, as would a small, simple electric hatchback.
Oo ya a cool hatch would be sweet. Something in the form of a Renault 5 turbo style and I will buy it on the spot.
Put the batteries in the front for authentic lift-off oversteer!
I’ve heard there are 4WD ideas for the future, either an add on or future model
Feared? This is good news wTF is with the “feared”?
I think it’s the F in FUD. As in the fear that completely clueless people have. Like imagining that you absolutely must have trillion billion miles of range or you’ll never get anywhere and people will laugh or something. That kind of fear.
Poorly worded headline
Phrasing sucks. I think it means “consumers refuse to buy second-hand EVs because they fear that batteries would lose a shitton of capacity. Turns out, they’re fine. The batteries, we mean.”
Which is both good news (yay for good capacity on second-hand cars) and bad news (because EVs depreciate super fast and I’m counting on it to afford one, and may not depreciate as much anymore).
I think the manufacturers and car salesmen fear it. Not the consumers.
It’s one of the often cited fears amongst consumers who are already skeptical about EVs. Range and charging times are the other two.
Fear that their battery will last longer than expected? Uhh what? Why on earth would the consumer fear that?
EV batteries last longer than drivers feared
The headline is literally the exact opposite of that.
Now can they make one that doesnt look like shit
Why is distance travelled being used as a metric for batteries? Shouldn’t it be charge cycles like phones have been using forever?
Because that’s generally how people measure a car’s age.
Ok but is it a good way to measure the lifespan of an EV?
Because it’s one people are used to and can understand.
It’s also independent of any diagnostics that the manufacturer provides and will lie about to make their cars seem better
Let’s say I’m in the market for a used EV and I’m trying to decide between two cars and they both report 90% capacity remaining. How should I choose if longevity is a priority? Should I go by mileage or should I look at charge cycles used?
At that point I would definitely look at the mileage. You also need to consider the wear/tear on the suspension, transmission, brakes, steering, etc. I’ve seen far too many people put off regular suspension maintenance leading to other complications later on down the line. If a worn suspension can fuck up motor mounts and tie rod ends, I’d imagine they can rattle those battery packs as well. So I wouldn’t think of mileage so much as the “age” of a car so much as it’s “experience”. Much like how we measure the “age” of aircraft in flight hours. More flight hours = more stress on the frame.
So yeah, more getting to the actual spirit of your inquiry; mileage is gonna matter more to longevity for the vehicle as a whole over charge cycles. On top of that, the battery on the higher mileage vehicle is at higher risk of some form of mechanical failure despite same capacity/lower number of charge cycles.
transmission
Do EVs have a transmission?
If the power isn’t transmitted from the motor to the motee (wheels), there’s not going to be motion.
A less confusing term used for the unit between a motor and a differential in an EV is reduction gear. But all the moving parts and their supports, the power transmission, is a point of wear worth considering.
Yes. Sure, usually not like a traditional ICE transmission with multiple gears, but still a transmission.
Point taken about other components being the limiting factor. My only point is that if two cars have similar miles/kwh but vastly different ranges, they could both end up showing 90% with 150,000 miles but the car that did that with the smaller range is much more impressive.
You should go by warranty remaining on battery. Either one of those could develop a dead cell tomorrow, or they could last 20 more years with no worries. Battery aging is unpredictable on the level of an individual battery pack, you can only predict averages of large fleets. When I used to refurb Macs, I saw failed (swollen or low capacity and about to start swelling soon) batteries with <100 charge cycles and completely fine batteries with 2500 charge count and of course everything in between. 1000 was the expected lifetime per Apple.
in what world do used cars have warranties?
EV battery warranty is usually 8 years, most EVs get dumped way before that because nobody wants to take the risk of owning a very expensive paperweight if the battery fails after the warranty is over. Though there are stories of scumbag manufacturers saying the warranty won’t cover more than the value of the car, so you might not even get a new battery fully covered by the battery warranty, as the battery can be more expensive than the car.
Reputable dealers will also sell used cars with their own warranties and then there’s CPO cars from the main dealers.
I wouldn’t trust the internal diagnostics because car makers have an incentive to lie.
Other components wear with the mileage so I’d look at that.
Yeah, you use energy driving the car, so in turn you would need to charge it. Now there will be a difference if you charged only on fast chargers vs like at home on a level 2 since faster charging degrades the batteries more.
Because nobody is recording charge cycles and also from average efficiency data you can extrapolate estimated charge cycles close enough
Why do we buy ICE cars based on distance driven and not total engine revolutions?
Because both are dumb and distance is a reasonable proxy for usage level. Almost regardless of the specific kwh/km efficiency, an EV that has driven distance X has had Y cycles within a range of values that aren’t different enough to matter.
Well if we were measuring only engine wear, total revolutions would perhaps be more useful than distance driven, but we usually buy an entire car, and the suspension wears the same regardless of whether you’re gunning down main street in first gear or fourth, as does the driver’s seat, as do most things other than the drivetrain.
If we’re only measuring gradual battery wear, which this article is about, charge cycles and fast charger usage matter a ton more than when buying a used EV. Not all charging is equal and smart enough battery management systems know this, I would hope they increase cycle count faster when needed.
At the end of the day none of it matters anyway. Degradation isn’t really an issue for new EV batteries. Worst case scenario you’re stuck with like 90% of the initial capacity after 10 years, boo hoo. The unsolved issue is bad cells which can develop after one charge cycle or after two thousand charge cycles and there’s no way to predict them as of yet. They also take down the entire pack until changed, though individual cells can be replaced by qualified technicians outside of dealerships (dealerships will never do it for you).
i’ve been eyeing for an ev car to replace my current ice for couple years now. sure you can charge ev relatively easy these days IF youre living in a city. I dont live in an advanced country, and i like to road trip to remote places. when i look into the charging infrastructure in those remote places i’d be stranded and my car would be useless. currently im still not willing to give up one of my escapades even if i only do it once or twice a year and no matter how much gas fuel i’d save im still not willing to dive into an ev right now. maybe when solid state become a thing but until then alas… currently im in no mood for betting whichever come first, the infrastructure of the tech
I’m really happy with current li-ions, I was working with >400wh/kg 18650s like 10 years ago. But I’m still waiting for the next jump in storage tech. It’d be awesome to be solid state, and push 1kWh/kg. Its possible and going to happen, I just wish all this money being funneled into batteries was still going to R&D like we were doing with that “impossible” 400wh/kg goal that has now just become available to anyone who had the connections and cash.
paywalled, just wanted to see the context around claiming battery longevity was something to be afraid of 🤨
What a title. Well, my EV has over 170,000 miles on it. I’m never going back to a ice car.
150k km isn’t that much, is it?
93205.68 miles, so still up there but under what I had in my first car by the time I traded it in for $300.
It’s like the general age of an average ICE vehicle before it’s ready to be retired
Whut? It’s like the general age of an average ICE vehicle before the second out of its total 10 owners over the years takes ownership. Just because you don’t realize poor people exist, doesn’t mean they don’t exist. Poor people can’t afford a 150k km vehicle, let alone a 0 km vehicle.
So we’re not the most wealthy. We’re Statesian so that puts us up there globally, I get it, but when the adaptive cruise control came out we scrimped and saved so we could get a car with one that was safe. So not tesla. Ours is Toyota, I think Mom’s is Honda, my siblings trend to drive Nissan since I had (notice the grumpy past tense) an uncle there and the family discount was nice.
It took us a year of aggressive belt tightened fuck you Toyota spending to pay off the rest of the car, but we got the only 0km vehicle I will ever buy (okay, more like 30 but the first 50 don’t count)
I’m actually amazed at the amount of straw you stuffed into that straw man. For your understanding, I am Lakota. I KNOW what being poor is. Fuck you very much.
Are there battery technologies on the horizon that either improve on this, make them lighter, or less expensive to replace?











