I don’t think either of these things are true.
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Every major American newspaper (and news outlet for that matter) needs to then be shut down so that “real journalism” (in your worldview) can in fact take its place.
Totally and completely ridiculous.
I would expect they both are.
Attack the messenger and not the article. We both make very valid arguments that journalism today sucks.They put out a bunch of information to push their agenda, but fail to connect the dots for any critical thinker.
No, the media wants us to question nothing and wag our tails when they tell us too. And most of the population falls for this BS. We are to read the headline and move on. This is the very reason our politicians get away with lying to us like they do. They say it and we believe them.
Hey- MacFiggen’s 22k claim may all be 100 percent related to EV. Or it may just be all related to new regulated safety mandates or just poor design by this specific manufacturer. Maybe not. I don’t know, but this article appears to be written by a 5th grader in some substandard pubic school.
As far as EV- I don’t own one yet. I am skeptical, just as I am of this article.
As an engineer and EV proponent (E-tron GT and Ioniq 5 currently, just sold our Model 3 Dual Motor with 90k miles on it) I’ll call a spade a spade. EVs are more expensive to repair than they should be, in part because of design decisions that push costs onto the consumer.
I see three main categories of repair costs that aren’t transient: 1. Costs due to poor design, 2. Costs due to design that lowers purchase price but increases repair costs, and 3. Costs that are inherent to EVs long term.
Rivian is the poster child for category 1. The truck design is IMHO a somewhat amateurish first effort (similar to Tesla’s S) that carries part costs and complexities the team will engineer out of their next cars. That team is still making mistakes legacy automakers wouldn’t, and it pushes up repair costs.
The Tesla Y is the poster child for category 2: the engineering team made many decisions that reduced purchase price but increased the cost of repair. The front and rear aluminum castings are an example: they reduce the up-front price but you’re not pulling them back like sheet-metal or replacing individual pieces like more traditional aluminum castings, making the chances the cars get written off far higher. Ditto the structural battery pack, which effectively fuses the two most expensive parts of the car together (the battery and the chassis) so that if either gets damaged they are both junk. These are decisions that look good in the showroom but add thousands to the cost of ownership due to higher insurance and increased depreciation.
The final category is currently unavoidable. EVs are inherently more expensive to produce than their equivilant gas counterparts due mainly to the battery. Unlike a gas engine that battery contributes to crash safety and is a key reason EVs have consistently set crash safety records. Unfortunately it’s both more expensive than gas engines and transmissions but also bigger and more easily damaged. Some of that might be mitigated by making the battery more modular (the opposite of the Y) but until pack prices come down it’s something we’ll need to live with I suspect.
The WSJ can be relied upon to push their messaging (a lot of EVs = bad lately) but I don’t find this article particularly shallow. Yes they could have added more perspective but what was there was factual, where I’ll freely admit I’m injecting (informed) opinion in my statements above.
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You should write for them. You are way better at it
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Perfect. So MacFiggen’s repair would have been $2,200 if the article came from the NYT, MSNBC or CNN?
Got it. Glad to see such a variance in actual repair costs based upon what “news” outlet reports on it.
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Short of the structural battery pack, which absolutely is a reason why some EV repairs would be more expensive, what do most of those have to do with them being an EV? Do those problems plague a Chevy or a Lexus EV? If the article had said something as simple as “there was underlying structural issues where what would have otherwise been minor frame damage instead required a battery replacement”, it would have totally made sense and highlighted a causal relationship with being an EV. Instead, you see things in the Rich Rebuild’s video about the Rivian repairs being significantly more expensive because they do silly things like use one time use rear glass or rear spoilers, driving up repair costs due to extra replacements required. That has nothing to do with it being an EV… it’s simply a corollary.
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Said someone who has never owned a Rivian or had to repair one.
For MacFiggen, it had absolutely everything to do with it being an EV.
It had everything to do with it being a Rivian. There wasn’t any evidence provided that suggests it had a thing to do with being an EV.
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If any of this had to do with the actual parts, and if Rivian was designing an ICE vehicle, it wouldn’t have been $22K. The point is Rivian in designing a brand new EV and went with brand new parts that were part of their overall architecture of their EV.
It has everything to do with it being an EV. Just get over it.
Are Chevy Bolt bumper repairs $22k? Do all EVs require the use of single use rear windows? Does the F150 lightning have a bed that’s part of the side body panels?
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Who cares if they do? This has nothing to do with the fact that the Rivian repair cost what it cost as an EV. It’s a brand new EV and that’s the architecture they went with.
This is no different than the ridiculous non-warranty costs as mentioned in the rest of the article that are far above what a ICE vehicle would cost.
You really need to troll back over to your subreddit.
Generally I agree many of these are not EV specific but rather design specific, which is why I separated the categories.
The one argument I could make against this would be that EVs are inherently more cost sensitive because they have to include a $12k battery in the BOM while still competing with gas cars on price. The Y is one response to this- de-content everything (dash, nearly every switch, etc) and do whatever else you can to get the purchase price down (including Gaga-castings that push repair costs). But I don’t really buy this argument, and I think the strategy will end up badly when mid miles Model Ys are retired early, pushing their carbon impact up far further than could have been the case.
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Wow you guys incl @mllcb42 still haven’t muted this guy? Between the EV tax credit and this, there’s always a new topic for him to showcase Eric level displays of doubling down on being wrong and arguing just for the sake of arguing.
But he’s great for coupons for free gas station coffee every other Tuesday.
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But the article isn’t “why repairing your Rivian is so expensive”, it’s “why repairing your EV is so expensive”. Costs that are unique to a niche start up brand are totally valid costs if you buy into a niche start up brand, but if they were inherent costs of an EV, they’d be shared across brands.
It’d be like claiming model X rear door repairs are super expensive because it’s an ev and not because of the design decisions that have nothing to do with the powertrain.
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No, it would be like writing an article about how bad gas mileage is for ICE trucks in general and stating by itself that a TRX gets 12 mpg. It needs no context and needs no further explanation. It is what it is in the context of the article.
You are now arguing with yourself.
EV, solar, and electric storage is just being gauged because of free government money. It shouldn’t cost $8k to install a $4k battery, but it does. Dryer plug install is $300. EV charger install is $1300, all things equal.
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Had some one hit my Nissan leaf rear bumper years ago and repair came up to be over $6k.
It was bumper being hit, and rear lift gate slightly bent by the force due to how light and flimsy it was. Probably not all because of it being an EV but definitely due to how manufacturers try to reduce weight of the car to maximize range, or reducing cost due to price of batteries.
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