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

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

#71

Post by echelon »

extraduder_ire wrote: post #7
echelon wrote: post #4

Since EVs are mechanically simpler, I'd really like to see a return to kit cars. Perhaps you could buy the preassembled chassis and modify the rest of the car as you'd like. Maybe you could tear down the whole thing and rebuild it. In theory this should be super accessible. You might see a whole community spring up over it. It's potentially a huge market ranging from teenagers to retirees. Lots of people love cars an…

Would be nice, but the economics would be kinda wack with how much of the cost is in the battery pack. Especially when companies like tesla put the same pack in all their cars and determine your "capacity" in software. I'd imagine that would either change, or people would start buying up the lowest-cost EVs just to pull the battery out of them (like "shucking" external drives) and resell all the other parts.

> or people would start buying up the lowest-cost EVs just to pull the battery out of them (like "shucking" external drives) and resell all the other parts.

That sounds amazing.

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

#72

Post by masklinn »

omgJustTest wrote: post #2

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

> You can’t even jump another car with your Tesla

That's pretty common for EVs (and hybrids), since they don't have (or need) a traditional starter engine and only use the 12V to boot up the car they downsize the 12V and / or switch to lithium chemistries.

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

#73

Post by bonestamp2 »

thayne wrote: post #42
blamazon wrote: post #11

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.

Tesla has talked about that. The main issue with swappable batteries is that the whole battery has to be accessible from the bottom or side of the car. This provides design constraints on battery size. Most automakers don't want to compromise on battery size, they want to pack as much battery as possible in the space that's available.

The next biggest issue with swappable batteries is responsibility. If all of the batteries are shared, who pays for a new battery when a battery reaches its end of life? This problem will have to be solved at some point anyway since nobody likes paying $15K+ when their vehicle battery reaches end of life. It would make much more sense to amortize this cost over the life of the vehicle. It would be easy to do that with higher fees of battery swaps, but people don't normally like higher upfront costs even if it works out to the same in the end.

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

#74

Post by api »

morphle wrote: post #48
api wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EVs could be a gigantic step down in complexity but that doesn’t benefit their manufacturers. It would risk making them a commodity that can be assembled from parts like an old school PC. Instead the industry is looking at the EV transition as a way to increase costs and decrease customer freedom. This is absolutely artificial and in no way mandated by the technology. A similar case in computing is what happened with…

When we transition to 4WD in-wheel motors the drivetrain and the moving parts could become standard. The inverters could become programmable. We designed programmable networks of per-battery-cell (dis)charger computers that would take the danger out of clusters of battery cells of unequal batteries. When each battery is wired in parallel, not in series not only can you go from 800 charge cycles to 20000 cycles (lifet…

We need a Framework for EVs perhaps to get this going.

The EV I want is a simple super reliable easily repairable one.

I personally went for the Nissan Leaf in lieu of this because it’s basically a Nissan Versa with a motor and batteries where the engine and gas tank go. Not good for road trips but a nice city car and decently repairable. (I have an older ICE for road trips that I don’t drive much otherwise.)

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

#75

Post by pengaru »

blamazon wrote: post #23
Retric wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is the exact use case where solar roofs on EV’s become very useful. However you can “jump” EV’s, supply power to their 12v system and then charge off of another cars 120v plug, or a portable generator etc.

Similarly, I've always thought it's a no brainer for any ICE car to have a solar roof. At a minimum it can keep a 12v battery from dying over long parking durations or high parasitic drain, and at best it could like, keep a container refrigerated or something.

I once drove back to SF from Castle Lake with a dead alternator by hanging an 85W portable solar panel over the rear window of my mx-5, connected to the battery in the trunk.

It supplied enough juice to run the car with no accessories most of the way back, until a combination of overcast sky and uncooperative route direction started making the car hesitate at the slightest throttle input.

So it'd definitely give a little MPG boost by taking a load off the alternator, in addition to keeping the battery topped up like you said. I was tempted to epoxy a cheap flexible one permanently on the trunk-lid. With the trunk-mounted battery it'd be trivial.

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

#76

Post by scotty79 »

falcolas wrote: post #28
fipar wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Question out of ignorance: what does it mean to jump start an EV? I know what it is for an ICE (and I have a jump-starter-battery always in the trunk, with usb ports it doubles as a phone charger if you’re somewhere without power), but for an EV, I’d guess you either have enough battery charge for it to run, or you need to charge, right?

An EV has two power systems, 12V (typically) for the car accessories, and 120V for the drive motors. And if the 12V system is down, you can’t drive the car (can’t close the contactor that connects the 120V batteries to the system). So, in theory, you could jump the 12V system so you can engage the 120V system.

The design that allows 12V to completely discharge while there's charge in high voltage batteries is idiotic. I ran into that in Toyota hybrid. Why there's no manual override that enables charging of 12V battery? It could be under the hood and turn off automatically when the voltage in 12V battery is high enough.

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

#77

Post by rnk »

blamazon wrote: post #11
omgJustTest wrote: post #2

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

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.

Some AAA services carry a portable charger to recharge your ev, with the goal to give it a small charge so it can go to a nearby charging station for a full charge. https://cleantechnica.com/2022/12/05/aaa-expanding-service-n....

There's nothing magic about it, you have a regular j1772 plug on the end of a generator, or a battery to provide it. Also a few evs now have 120v or 220v AC outlets, that you could put a j1772 into and give another car a charge. Sadly there appear to be no direct DC charging systems available between cars at this moment.

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

#78

Post by sinistersnare »

javajosh wrote: 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?

No, we no longer have that right. We don't live under capitalism but 'necrocapitalism' that only gives rights to those in the in-group.

We must fight for our rights now, they have been alienated from us.

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

#79

Post by prasadjoglekar »

ceejayoz wrote: post #65
FloatArtifact wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

For which we already have laws to deal with. Even without modification, the car can be used to mow people down.

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

#80

Post by wizee »

ceejayoz wrote: post #65
FloatArtifact wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

People have been repairing their own cars for a century, and the world functioned just fine with it. This locking down is a recent phenomenon. Your car is not going to mow down people just because someone other than the dealer serviced it.
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