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Tesla, Rivian Put on Fake Show of Support for ‘Right to Repair’

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61–70 of 219 posts

Re: Tesla, Rivian Put on Fake Show of Support for ‘Right to Repair’

#61
post #3

Rather than us fighting for the right to repair, shouldn't manufacturers be fighting for the right to limit our ability to repair? Isn't "right to repair" the default state? The right to repair, modify, disassemble, recombine your own property is a key component of capitalism, is it not?

Freedom is the key component of capitalism, in the purist sense. Including the freedom to trade the "right to repair" for other benefits, such as a superior vehicle due to higher integration, reliability and peace of mind knowing that any work will have been done by authorised repairers, lower up-front cost afforded by vendor lock-in, etc.

If people wish to voluntarily trade vehicles without the "right to repair", that's their choice, that's capitalism. The state intervening in transactions one way or the other is a violation of the capitalist ideal.

Re: Tesla, Rivian Put on Fake Show of Support for ‘Right to Repair’

#62
Repairability is like online security: if companies really cared about it, they'd have built it into the product beginning at the design stage. With most products these days, repairability is actively discouraged at many different levels: components are inaccessible, soldered or glued on, specifications are unavailable, replacement parts are not sold direct to the public, etc. This is all done to shorten product lifetimes such that consumers have to purchase new products more frequently, that's clear enough.

Some companies might realize that there's a market for repairable products and shift tactics, there seem to be a few out there, though not many.

Re: Tesla, Rivian Put on Fake Show of Support for ‘Right to Repair’

#63
post #3

Rather than us fighting for the right to repair, shouldn't manufacturers be fighting for the right to limit our ability to repair? Isn't "right to repair" the default state? The right to repair, modify, disassemble, recombine your own property is a key component of capitalism, is it not?

Freedom is the key component of capitalism, in the purist sense. Including the freedom to trade the "right to repair" for other benefits, such as a superior vehicle due to higher integration, reliability and peace of mind knowing that any work will have been done by authorised repairers, lower up-front cost afforded by vendor lock-in, etc. If people wish to voluntarily trade vehicles without the "right to repair", th…

I think this ignores the complexity cost on the consumer. If every product has a different set of rules, the consumer will not be able to know them or follow them. This is already a big problem with long and unique EULAs for software. This is a market failure due to an inherent information asymmetry between supplier and consumer, favoring the supplier. A similar effect is present in the healthcare industry. It harms consumers and makes the market less efficient. It makes sense to regulate against this effect for that reason. Standardization efforts have yielded a great deal of value for society.

Re: Tesla, Rivian Put on Fake Show of Support for ‘Right to Repair’

#64
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small nit: I can 'jump' (read: charge the battery of) other cars with my model X, as long as the other car is an ICE car. In the frunk there is a panel that pops off and underneath there are (unlabeled) 12V and ground terminals that I can put jumper cables on. However, I have had to get my car towed a mile to a charging station before, I really deeply wish I could have received a jump then.

> I have had to get my car towed a mile to a charging station before It really seems like EVs should have easily replaceable batteries, so that in situations like that you can just have roadside service bring you a charged battery and swap it out. Or for that matter, charging stations could pre-charge batteries, and you pay to swap your drained battery for a charged one.

swapping been done and shipped on production vehicles that are still around. The original tesla model s had this capability. Tesla had a working station in california, it took a couple of minutes to do the swap. It had basically no demand.

Tesla stopped supporting it.

Re: Tesla, Rivian Put on Fake Show of Support for ‘Right to Repair’

#65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right to repair eventually runs head first into security and encryption--how do you allow right to repair and TLS, encryption, secure computing, etc to coexist? Get rid of IoT black boxes like Google Homes? Allow Linux on Xbox? How do you create secure platforms while also giving consumers the keys to their devices? (FWIW I'm not advocating against right to repair, I actually hope it helps to get rid of black box IoT…

Think of it as like Android and unlocking the bootloader. There's a warning that it's running on modified system.

Except this Android can mow down a farmers market full of people if you get things wrong.

Re: Tesla, Rivian Put on Fake Show of Support for ‘Right to Repair’

#66
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I have had to get my car towed a mile to a charging station before It really seems like EVs should have easily replaceable batteries, so that in situations like that you can just have roadside service bring you a charged battery and swap it out. Or for that matter, charging stations could pre-charge batteries, and you pay to swap your drained battery for a charged one.

In that case I was towing a U-haul trailer, which leads to another thing that probably should exist: trailers with supplemental EV batteries. Not sure if the extra capacity is made up for by the extra weight though. (For context my car uses maybe ~1.5 - 4.0 times as much power when pulling the various sizes of U-haul cargo trailers)

Maybe it would be distasteful, but a trailer with an ICE engine that could charge the battery while driving. Might be a trick to make it so that the generator could supply more energy than is consumed per minute.

Re: Tesla, Rivian Put on Fake Show of Support for ‘Right to Repair’

#67
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small nit: I can 'jump' (read: charge the battery of) other cars with my model X, as long as the other car is an ICE car. In the frunk there is a panel that pops off and underneath there are (unlabeled) 12V and ground terminals that I can put jumper cables on. However, I have had to get my car towed a mile to a charging station before, I really deeply wish I could have received a jump then.

> I have had to get my car towed a mile to a charging station before It really seems like EVs should have easily replaceable batteries, so that in situations like that you can just have roadside service bring you a charged battery and swap it out. Or for that matter, charging stations could pre-charge batteries, and you pay to swap your drained battery for a charged one.

I wish there was some standard to add short term battery capacity for EVs and PHEVs. An e-scooter battery can get most EVs 5 miles down the road. A standardized battery pack and wiring harness in the trunk could allow roadside assistance to get you unstrained or rent a bigger pack for road trips.

I'm sure OEMs don't want to warranty 3rd party equipment connecting to their vehicles and making charge/discharge, cooling, securing heavy packs, etc. reliable.

Re: Tesla, Rivian Put on Fake Show of Support for ‘Right to Repair’

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you need to jump start an EV you need to charge it basically. I cant think of a case where it would be needed with an otherwise filled battery.

I just learned that my ICE vehicle can drain the 12v battery overnight if it fails to turn off the accessories circuit. No lights or infotainment etc. were left on. In my case, it was the switch on the park gear flaked out. I imagine a variety of similar faults could cause the same issue in an EV.

My car (a hybrid) has a long-standing bug in the radio system that can make it "freeze" and stay on forever. Only way out once it's frozen is to pull the right fuse (or wait for it to drain your battery all the way).

Re: Tesla, Rivian Put on Fake Show of Support for ‘Right to Repair’

#69

No normal person can repair a Tesla, it’s basically a trade secret. My brother is a mechanic and servicing Teslas are a non starter due to the complexity. The notion that I can just download a manual, buy some parts and DIY my own repairs is absolutey ludicrous. The only reason for Tesla to support right to repair is to increase regulatory burden on competitors, stunt innovation and raise costs for their competition.…

> No normal person can repair

No, it takes two.

Seriously, I've read that some EV makers require that two persons be present when working on the HV system, the second one on watch with a pull-up hook in case the first one seizes up touching some 400 or 800 V DC part.

Re: Tesla, Rivian Put on Fake Show of Support for ‘Right to Repair’

#70

You can’t even jump another car with your Tesla, let alone do repairs.

Because they are apples and oranges and Tesla is using 48v! Jumping a 12v lead acid battery with 48v is a fantastic way to completely fry the ICE vehicle.

AFAIK Teslas use 12V like everyone else, do you have a source for 48V?

However EVs (and hybrids) do tend to have pretty small 12V batteries and I think some of them have switched off of lead-acid: they only need the 12V to boot up the electronics, not to power a starter engine.

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