this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2024
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The one thing stopping me is seeing how they fare long term with the overwhelming amount of electronics added to the cars.
Hopefully car manufacturers goes a different direction as electronic and appliances company went. Everyone I know that are into EVs went through 2 or 3 different one in the time I've owned my ICE car (~10 years). Most because of their lease ending and wanting the absolute newest but others due to battery issues making the car a total loss due to replacement cost.
I’m not optimistic about this. The finance “geniuses” have seen how much money software and electronics companies are making from subscription models and trying to put them into even combustion powered cars. I think it’s BMW that’s already started trying to put heated seats on a subscription model. The equipment’s already in the car but it’s disabled unless you pay them a monthly fee.
I mean that’s not really a problem specific to EVs. But yeah I also drive an aging car because I don’t want one with 10x more failure points.
I'm hoping that as EVs become more common, conversion kits become a thing. Both straight-electric and PHEV; I would love to pull the oversized engine from my truck (it's a 4.0 in a Ranger, wtf, it doesn't need that kind of power) and replace it with a diesel-electric motor-battery-generator combo. With a half decent battery, I would be running on electric 95% of the time; for the other 5% (which is camping on rough trails, no I'm not renting a truck for it), there'd be the diesel generator backup
Technology is moving so fast that this seems like a reasonable approach to me.
Which is also the reason why I wish to wait for the technology to stabilize a little.