Comment on The march towards an all-EV future hit a major roadblock. What went wrong?
f0h@beehaw.org 11 months ago
I’ll probably be on the market for a new car in the next few months… and clearly EVs are on my radar as I live in an area with an high penetration of this sort of vehicles.
However, other than prioritizing low-maintenance, environment impact and fun, I do really care a lot about serviceability.
While it’s true my current car require oil/filter changes, random maintenance and all, I can do pretty much all those things by myself (unless complex stuff comes along, ofc). In the 12 years I owned my car I only had to rely on an expert mechanic once to replace the pinion (some dumbass hit me while backing up); that was relatively cheap as the mechanic had access to parts and the vehicle is very repairable.
I get that more EVs => more ecosystem => more expertise and so on and so forth. But until you have the freedom to take your Tesla/Hyunday/WV/etc to a random mechanic that can use after market parts and service the car the same way the manufacturer does , I think I’ll have a bit of a hard time. As of now this sort of “mechanics” are a niche and in case of need your only choice is the manufacturer network.
TL;DR love EVs, clearly the future; but self-reparability/maintenance are still not there.