People HATE the maintenance requirements of cars. If Tesla can establish their cars as almost never needing service with a usable life of something closer to 1 million miles and decades of use then suddenly paying a premium for their models can be spread over much greater periods of time.
Personally, I wish they would decouple the platform from the comfort center. Have chassis form factors for various purposes (single person/roadster, crossover, truck, utility, etc) and branded “comfort centers” housing the human interface stuff. Make it so the comfort center can be changed out when ever and keeping the same underlying platform.
It only took Kia 6 years to out-Toyota Toyota, that is to go from producing the worst mainstream cars in the us to the best in initial and 3 year quality metrics (and well above Toyota).
(2009 when they built first US production line to 2015).
I agree with both of you, cheekily. I genuinely can’t wait for Toyota to do a full BEV. I realize they say mainstream BEVs are a pipe dream still, but I think it’ll happen eventually.
That is a seriously high bar, and extremely unlikely (there are lots and lots of things on a car that break that have nothing to do with the drivetrain). I think a better first goal is to get the reliability up on par with the other domestic manufacturers, and get the repair time down to something comparable as well.
I got pretty close a few weeks ago to picking up a Model 3P but the maintenance stories spooked me. I am just not enough of an EV/Tesla enthusiast to deal with that on my commuter car.
The one thing I actually truly care about is the financial risk of large repairs. (For example, I had an issue which unexpectedly forced me to spend $3-4K on camshaft-related major engine work.)
Maintenance itself (oil changes, minor repairs) is something I'd like to eliminate, but that's a lower priority. Electric cars score better here, but it's not my top concern.
The real, key issue (to me) is whether the drivetrain is expensive. If it's expensive to build, and if it can fail in a way that something needs to be replaced, then it's going to be expensive to repair if/when needed.
And both gas cars and electric cars have expensive drivetrains, just for different reasons. On a gas car, major engine and transmission work is expensive. On an electric car, battery pack replacement is expensive.
Maybe one is less expensive than the other, so there could still be a net win here, but I definitely don't think electric cars have completely escaped the problem.
Biggest long term maintenance expense in an EV is battery replacement, which best estimates right now put the industry at roughly a 15-30 year replacement rate. Depending on how you finance it, a battery replacement should be doable for <= $150/month average, and that's assuming a full replacement. (Depending on one's range needs/usage patterns some people might be able to make 20-50 years on the capacity degradation curve of a vehicle's original battery before needing a replacement, given current evidence.)
Electric motors have way fewer moving parts and fluids and currently are generally expected to outlast any car frame they are put in.
Most EVs advantage regenerative braking so break maintenance cycles are also longer to comparably sized ICE vehicles.
The other maintenance risks are the exact same between an EV and any other car, things like: HVAC, plastic degradation, rust, and accident damage.
The one unique Tesla risk on a 15-year horizon is their software updates. Their penchant for over-the-air software updates is handy in the short term, but possibly a risk in the long term lifespan of a vehicle. Though that's a risk Tesla would hopefully be incentivized to avoid (for bad PR at least), and possibly a mitigatable risk.
Most cars have a vigorous service schedule that is an endless sea of tire rotations, brake servicing, oil changes, belt replacements, among all of the unexpected maintenance of thousands of moving, wearing parts.
A Tesla or a comparable EV, in contrast, is a cartoonishly simplified variation with magnitudes fewer parts and maintenance needs. The probability of an EV requiring less maintenance than a ICE car is 100%.
Of course right now those EVs come at a premium, but as they hit the mainstream this is going to be a critical differentiation.
Same! Mine's a 30 year old Volvo wagon and a 32 year old sedan. Besides oil changes, I've spent about $2000 in the last 5 years of ownership. I was only left stranded once, but that was because the NAPA in the middle of Nebraska didn't have the part I needed to get back on the road. I would doubt that the same NAPA has many Tesla parts in stock as well.
If Tesla is to ever have the same reputation, it will be because they made issues trivial to diagnose, dead simple to replace and allowed other manufactures to make replacement parts.
However, this whole argument is moot, because the era of the 15-30 year daily driver is over anyway. When my ignition computer failed, it was $35 to swap one out from a junkyard. You just have to unplug the old one, and plug in the new one and off you go. What's the procedure for replacing a computer on a 2018 Tesla in the year 2038?
Furthermore, any new car has little maintenance to really worry about within the first 100k miles. If you are upper middle class in a bougie area, you're probably buying a new car before maintenance is really an issue anyway. (cue everyone chiming in that their Subaru's turbo blew up 100 miles outside of warranty)
As the saying goes, ask people what they want and they'll ask for a faster horse.
It isn't obvious to me people are asking for vehicles to last a million miles, people aren't clamouring for current vehicles that have done a million miles or are old enough to have done. That million mile car is also going to be a 20+ year old car, with 20 year old safety features, and 20 year old phone integration, and its also going to take 20 years for Tesla to establish that reputation.
That's not to say you're wrong, but it will take a fundamental change in peoples understanding of car ownership closer to how they own houses, that will take time, longer than Tesla has.
Brake pads should last twice as long on an EV because the motor is used to recuperate energy. Here's a good braking demonstration with the Audi e-tron descending Pikes Peak:
twice? You only need brakes on an EV to stay still at the lights or in an emergency brake. That is it. The brakes last well over the entire lifetime of the car.
Personally, I wish they would decouple the platform from the comfort center. Have chassis form factors for various purposes (single person/roadster, crossover, truck, utility, etc) and branded “comfort centers” housing the human interface stuff. Make it so the comfort center can be changed out when ever and keeping the same underlying platform.