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Why I think Tesla is building throwaway cars

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Re: Why I think Tesla is building throwaway cars

#91

Post by chrisbennet »

atomical wrote: post #61
gioele wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To me, a car that you can't service yourself is worthless. A car that needs the manufacturer's permission to activate is not your car--it's owned by the manufacturer. How many cars sold in 2016 can be activated without the manufacturer's permission? If you break your engine control module, who, if not the original manufacturer, can provide you a new one that works for your car? (Serious question, no sarcasm.)

I think it's possible to buy an ECU from a parts dealer. You wouldn't have to necessary go directly through the manufacturer. You might also be able to get one from a junkyard.

It's not uncommon for modern ECU's to need to be "coded" to work with the car.

Re: Why I think Tesla is building throwaway cars

#92

Post by JupiterMoon »

mikeash wrote: post #88
MagnumOpus wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

10k gallons costs you $18,000 or less right now "while gas is cheap" - for a TCO of $20,000 in 20 years (plus cheap-ish repairs) - and you are driving a Merc. The model 3 (once you can actually get hold of it) will cost you $35,000 up front, plus about $7,000 in electricity for 200k miles at prices of 13-15c/kWh, plus about two battery replacements - battery lifetime is 8 years or 125k miles - at $10,000ish a pop - f…

The battery warranty is 8 years. Lifetime is not certain at this point but is likely to be longer.

If you read the article it points out that there a great many exemptions in the warranty. I wonder how many "owners" will be able to have their battery replaced under warranty?

Re: Why I think Tesla is building throwaway cars

#93

Post by mikeash »

Spooky23 wrote: post #71

It's pretty easy. They don't want an aftermarket for the cars because the batteries will wear out, essentially cannot be replaced, and you'll see lots of Teslas in the side of the road. I still don't understand why these cars exist. You pay a premium that vastly exceeds the fuel savings vs a comperable gasoline vehicle. The warm fuzzy feeling associated with saving the earth is low value to me. They also aren't magic…

Why do you say the batteries cannot be replaced? Swapping a battery literally takes five minutes. The cost of a new one is high, but will likely come down.

As for why these cars exist, it's simple: they're awesome cars. They're powerful and quiet and have advanced technology. Never mind environmental concerns, not having to visit the gas station is just very convenient.

Not emitting (local) pollution is a nice bonus, but it's pretty far down the list.

Re: Why I think Tesla is building throwaway cars

#94

Post by mikeash »

JupiterMoon wrote: post #92
mikeash wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The battery warranty is 8 years. Lifetime is not certain at this point but is likely to be longer.

If you read the article it points out that there a great many exemptions in the warranty. I wonder how many "owners" will be able to have their battery replaced under warranty?

The battery warranty covers nearly everything. The only exclusion is intentional damage. Even accidental damage is covered. I see nothing in the article that says otherwise.

Re: Why I think Tesla is building throwaway cars

#95

Post by loopbit »

pcarolan wrote: post #70

This sounds a lot like the open vs closed system debate we had/(have?) with computers. I'm glad that in my youth I could wrench on the internals of a PC and I'm glad that in my 30s I never have to because my Mac 'just works'. Also, this debate is older than I am: http://www.amazon.com/Zen-Art-Motorcycle-Maintenance-Inquiry...

If you had read Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance you'd known that it has very little to do with actual motorcycle maintenance, apart of using it as a tool to make its point.

Re: Why I think Tesla is building throwaway cars

#96

Post by pyb »

After reading the article, really I don't think Tesla is offering particularly worse conditions than any other manufacturer. Their 8 year guarantee is actually pretty inclusive, and now it's transferrable as well. The lack of indie garages is the only item in his list I agree with, but things could change in the future, as the pool of ex-Tesla mechanics grows.

Re: Why I think Tesla is building throwaway cars

#97

Post by feld »

chrisbennet wrote: post #91
atomical wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's possible to buy an ECU from a parts dealer. You wouldn't have to necessary go directly through the manufacturer. You might also be able to get one from a junkyard.

It's not uncommon for modern ECU's to need to be "coded" to work with the car.

Yes, and if there's a problem with your car that needs an ECU firmware update ... you tend to have to have that done by an authorized dealership.

Re: Why I think Tesla is building throwaway cars

#98

Post by ge0rg »

the_mitsuhiko wrote: post #86
ryandrake wrote: post #45

One of the things that makes a car valuable is having a healthy aftermarket. It looks like, from this article anyway, Tesla is doing anything they can to make sure there is no aftermarket for their vehicles. To me, a car that you can't service yourself is worthless. A car that needs the manufacturer's permission to activate is not your car--it's owned by the manufacturer. And, when the manufacturer places a threateni…

> I think we're going to start seeing "jailbroken" Teslas soon after they start falling out of their warranty period. You sure about this? Because I am sure many of the Teslas are just leases and with how the calculation looks it's more interesting to get a new car at the end of the leasing period than to try to buy it out.

Even with leasing, the used cars won't be immediately destroyed, so it's reasonable to assume they will be sold to people, and these people will have an interest in inexpensive maintenance and repair.

Re: Why I think Tesla is building throwaway cars

#99

Post by dmoy »

Spooky23 wrote: post #82
qume wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would wager that 80% of cars that are crushed (which weren't in an accident) could be repaired (if broken) or 'fixed up' to operate better than the last owner thought possible for less than a days work and perhaps a few hundred dollars. I do appreciate your point, but I think people are far too afraid of older cars and they are scrapped too soon. I was hoping to convince some folk in this tech community that old ca…

You may have luxury of feeling that way -- most people do not. The average age of the US auto fleet is significantly older than it once was. 10+ year old cars are like 5-7x more common than they were 10-15 year ago. Hell, I drive a 2003 model year car that isn't going anywhere.

Look if Cuba can drive around on their fleet of ridiculously old cars, then it can be done. It just might not be super easy or labor-cheap.

I think what GP is getting at is if you start optimizing first for reuse, there's a lot of cars we wouldn't need to build.

Re: Why I think Tesla is building throwaway cars

#100

Post by neffy »

AndrewKemendo wrote: post #77

So maybe this is a dumb question but does this mean that whomever builds an "open" EV will win in the long run? My guess is not and people will just get locked into their "platform" vehicle in the same way that you are locked into Apple devices.

Not a dumb question at all. I would say that it means that there's a very real business opportunity for anyone who wants to compete with Tesla and takes the open route. Beyond that who knows, but the very fact that they're shutting down analysis as much as possible (they probably don't really care that much about hackers, it's the reverse engineering shops that all the major car manufacturers run that would be their big fear), suggests that what they have is easy to copy. Or reinvent.

History, I suspect, will be on the side of the battery makers.

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