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Electric cars will be cheaper to make than gas vehicles but with much higher repair and insurance costs
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this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2024
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Yeah, I'm not really sure what the path to the EV being cheaper to produce is. Every EV we have seen is more expensive than its ICE counterpart. And it isn't like batteries are some new tech that manufacturers don't know how to make well. No, these are being mass produced.
The higher repair costs come from the fact that while an EV pack is the single most expensive part of the car, and if it is damaged, you now have to replace the single most expensive part of the car.
Higher insurance costs flow from the higher purchase cost and the higher repair costs. So, those won't come down either.
Edit: One thing that could bring down repair costs would be if the EV manufacturers would stop making it so damn hard to swap in your own replacement parts. A battery and electric motor isn't complicated. But repairing either of these parts on an EV is complicated due to DRM and other anti-consumer design choices.
Every new technology is initially more expensive, then as it moves into mass production the cost goes down because of economies of scale - more suppliers, innovations in technique.
Battery costs have gone down an insane amount already, and it doesn't look like they're done.
Going further, what percentage of accidents affect the battery pack? The article seems to conflate Tesla manufacturing techniques that make cosmetic repairs difficult with all electric vehicles - just because Tesla has long repairs doesn't mean all manufacturers do.
It also talks about electric manufacturers going out of business, but is it 15% by number of businesses or by manufacturing volume? Lucid and Rivian aren't making that many cars in terms of absolute volume, but could go under. Hyundai, Kia, Chevy et al. make a lot more cars and seem unlikely to collapse.