this post was submitted on 10 Jun 2024
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Buy it for Life

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EVs Could Last Nearly Forever—If Car Companies Let Them (www.theatlantic.com)
submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

If the motor mount is hackable with reasonable effort, and the motor controller's interfaces are open, then in principle... yes.

Yet in reality, companies build extremely complicated cars where premature failure of multiple components can successfully sabotage the whole. :(

I've once needed to repair a Mitsubishi EV motor controller. It took 2 days to dismantle. Schematics were far beyond my skill of reading electronics, and I build model planes as an everyday hobby, so I've seen electronics. Replacement of the high voltage comparator was impossible as nobody was selling it separately. The repair shop wanted to replace the entire motor controller (5000 €). Some guy from Sweden had figured out a fix: a 50 cent resistor. But installing it and putting things back was not fun at all. It wasn't designed to be repaired.

Needless to say, replacing a headlight bulb on the same car requires removing the front plastic cover, starting from the wheel wells, undoing six bolts, taking out the front lantern, and then you can replace the bulb. I curse them. :P

But it drives. Hopefully long enough so I can get my own car built from scratch.