Disaster Electric vehicles have almost 80% more problems than gas-powered ones, Consumer Reports says - "Electric vehicles have nearly 80% more problems and are generally less reliable than cars propelled by conventional internal combustion engines" "Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles have an even worse scorecard, with an average of almost 150% more problems"

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/electric-vehicles-consumer-reports-reliability-report/

https://archive.ph/ZHob7

Electric vehicles have nearly 80% more problems and are generally less reliable than cars propelled by conventional internal combustion engines, according to a new report from Consumer Reports.

Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEV) have an even worse scorecard, with an average of almost 150% more problems, the consumer group found. By contrast, ordinary hybrid cars are a "bright spot," with about a quarter fewer problems than gas-powered cars, the analysis found.

Consumer Reports' latest vehicle reliability report comes as car buyers can take advantage of a federal tax credit worth up to $7,500 for purchasing an EV and as automakers roll out a host of new models. But consumers have been slower to adapt to EVs than expected, partly because they are often more expensive to maintain than traditional vehicles and require extra equipment, such as a home electric charging port.

"This story is really one of growing pains," said Jake Fisher, senior director of auto testing at Consumer Reports. "It's a story of just working out the bugs and the kinks of new technology."

The findings are based on a survey of Consumer Reports' members about problems they've had with their vehicles in the prior year. The current report included data on more than 330,000 vehicles made between 2000 to 2023, with a few reports about new 2024 models.

EV owners most frequently reported troubles with battery and charging systems, as well as flaws in how the vehicles' body panels and interior parts fit together. Consumer Reports noted that EV manufacturers are still learning to make completely new power systems, and it suggested that as they do the overall reliability of electric vehicles should improve.

Still, Consumer Reports noted that lingering concerns about reliability will likely add to the issues that give many buyers pause when considering a switch to the technology, joining concerns about higher costs, a dearth of charging stations and long charging times.

The problem with plug-ins​

PHEVs may have more problems than conventional cars and electric vehicles because they combine internal-combustion engines with an electric drive, which creates additional complexity, Consumer Reports said. That means there's more than can go wrong.

Consumer Reports rates vehicles on 20 problem areas, ranging from squeaky brakes to EV charging problems, and PHEVs can experience every one of them, it noted.

Even so, the study found that there are a few PHEVs that outperform, with Consumer Reports finding that the Toyota RAV4 Prime and Kia Sportage score above average on reliability. Three PHEVs — the BMW X5, Hyundai Tucson and Ford Escape — earn average reliability scores, it added.

Most reliable automakers​

The most reliable segment of the market was compact cars, followed by sportscars, small pickups, midsize and large cars, luxury midsize and large cars. The top-ranked model for reliability is Toyota's 4Runner, the publication said.

Here are the top 10 automakers, ranked by reliability:

1. Lexus
2. Toyota
3. Mini
4. Acura
5. Honda
6. Subaru
7. Mazda
8. Porsche
9. BMW
10. Kia

The five lowest-ranking brands were Jeep, Volkswagen, Rivian, Mercedes-Benz and Chrysler.

 

[AnotherPleb]

That level of charging will absolutely knacker the battery lifetime and capacity in short order.

You call that a bug, car manufacturers call that a feature.

 

[Elwood P. Dowd]

The eco warrior cum guzzling politicians ACTUALLY THOUGH a $3250 - $7500 tax credit on a fucking $60000+ car would make everyone rush to EVs.

They forgot that even after this retarded credit the goddamn car/suv is still $52k+

There's now a credit (new for 2023) for used EVs. Prior to 2023 there was no credit for used purchases.

Used Clean Vehicle Credit

Beginning January 1, 2023, if you buy a qualified used electric vehicle (EV) or fuel cell vehicle (FCV) from a licensed dealer for $25,000 or less, you may be eligible for a used clean vehicle tax credit (also referred to as a previously owned clean vehicle credit). The credit equals 30% of the sale price up to a maximum credit of $4,000.

The credit is nonrefundable, so you can't get back more on the credit than you owe in taxes. You can't apply any excess credit to future tax years.

At the time of sale, a seller must give you information about your vehicle's qualifications. Sellers must also register online and report the same information to the IRS. If they don't, your vehicle won't be eligible for the credit.

Purchases made before 2023 don't qualify.

 

[cybertoaster]

partly because they are often more expensive to maintain than traditional vehicles

Why exactly? no fuel, less fluids and mechanical shit that can break, barely uses the break pads, why is it more expensive?

Is the batteries shitting the bed isn't it?

as well as flaws in how the vehicles' body panels and interior parts fit together

There's only one brand with that problem...

but at least we're not fucking over the environment for future generations.

These things are almost impossible to recycle and require tons of rare non-renewable materials to be made.

 

[Echo_Ender]

The thing is, we're had almost one and a half centuries of experience with Internal Combustion Engines. And we're getting damn good at them.

Mileage gets better every year, reliability improves, and emissions are a fraction of a fraction of what they used to be a few decades ago.

Electric vehicles have been an option since the 80s. Automakers looked into it and decided against it. Because Electricity works very well for a lot of things, like industrial machinery, precision manufacturing, and small engines.

But it is horribly inefficient for a large-scale, high-output engine. You need ridiculous amounts of electricity to do the same as tiny amounts of fuel. And to even store that much electrical energy when away from a power grid, you need expensive, temperature-sensitive batteries.

Batteries that have a short lifespan, rapidly lose capacity during that lifespan, take considerable time to recharge, require rare, toxic elements to build, and require special, expensive disposal.

this report is about reliability and yall are talking about the impact on the environment

anyways, my experience with these new piece of shit hybrid and EVs are the high end ones. that mother fucking bmw hybrid bullshit is the worst thing i've ever worked on. they're so fucking unreliable. so expensive to repair. non of the high class niggers actually plug in these cars so the hybrid part is always screaming at them to charge it, the car is full of codes about the hybrid battery. a 18 bmw 3 series hybrid battery is over 18,000 doll hairs. my niggers, people are still making payments on cars that need 18,000 dollar repairs.

what is happening here?

People are falling for a scam, that's what's happening.

Automakers didn't avoid electric cars because of "Loyalty to big oil", unwillingness to overhaul production lines, or anything else the EV crowd claims.

Automakers avoided electric cars because they were terrible. Inefficiency, limited range, high maintenance, and higher price were the only result of EVs.

A bunch of "Green Energy" grifters made a ton of false promises, backed by falsified data, about what their EVs could do. Certain idiotic factions in the government fell for it. Now the government at large is either paying a ton in subsidies for EVs or, like the morons in California, claiming they're going to ban all non-EVs in the future.

Now the public at large suffers while the grifters and their companies make money hand over fist. Also despite SpaceX being viable and his trolling of Twitter being glorious, don't forget that Elon Musk made most of his early fortune as an EV grifter.

 

[Manul Otocolobus]

What I think would be cool is a built in battery and then standardized empty space on the bottom of the car for a rented pack that's around the same size or bigger kwhr than your builtiin. Drive over one thing to take away your dead one if you have one, pull forward and a new one pops on. Buy the car without one do all your work, solicitation of prostitution and grocery shopping without the second pack, go pick one up if you want to go far. If it's 7 years old but still has 95% health it doesn't matter you just traded a 6 month one for it cause you didn't own it.

Though I think manus are looking into getting 500kw charging soon which on a crossover sized thing or smaller that's like adding 30-50 miles range per minute. You see gas pumps that slow sometimes and that's gonna work fine for a lot of people.

The problem with rapid charging is that it damages the battery over time. The more rapid the charging, the faster it degrades. Slow charging, such as overnight, is the only type of charging that doesn't severely degrade the battery over time. Also, charging the battery more than 80% or letting it go below 20% also harms the battery. So, a battery really only has 60% of its usable capacity unless you want to sacrifice how long the battery will be useful. You also have to adjust for the temperature that you are driving in, which can reduce the useful milage as much as 40%. So, you have 60% of a battery to start with, then you have 60% of that if its too cold or too hot. Talk about a bullshit deal.

Fucking OVERHEAD CAPACITIVE GEAR SHIFTER????

To me, that is just insane. Who in their right mind would want in there?

 

[Echo_Ender]

The problem with rapid charging is that it damages the battery over time. The more rapid the charging, the faster it degrades. Slow charging, such as overnight, is the only type of charging that doesn't severely degrade the battery over time. Also, charging the battery more than 80% or letting it go below 20% also harms the battery. So, a battery really only has 60% of its usable capacity unless you want to sacrifice how long the battery will be useful. You also have to adjust for the temperature that you are driving in, which can reduce the useful milage as much as 40%. So, you have 60% of a battery to start with, then you have 60% of that if its too cold or too hot. Talk about a bullshit deal.

Yep. The "Superchargers" that can charge in any decent amount of time absolutely kill battery lifespan. And these are $10k - $20k batteries we're talking about, so you can't just keep pitching them after you burn them out with a supercharger.

The bottom line is that it's easy to transfer and store FUEL, but difficult to do the same with actual ENERGY. And while you easily can ship, store, and transfer large amounts of fuel, you can't do the same with energy.

Besides that, the more energy you store, the more of it you lose and the less stable it becomes. Most engineers I know say that anything bigger than a golf cart or small forklift shouldn't be electric for that reason unless it's stationary and wired into the power grid.

 

[Mariposa2.0 LTE]

Lol, cucked by AI again

 

[Cybertonia]

Why exactly? no fuel, less fluids and mechanical shit that can break, barely uses the break pads, why is it more expensive?

Is the batteries shitting the bed isn't it?

There's no shortage of sob stories out there of idiots who buy a 2013 Model S for something like 6 grand on facebook marketplace thinking they got the deal of the century, and a few weeks later the battery shits the bed and they take it to Tesla and get handed one of their famous $15,000 battery replacement quotes.

 

[SpergioLeonne]

EVs will never go fully mainstream until you can swap batteries at a charging station.

I mean, imagine owning a vehicle where you would fuck yourself half to death if you tried taking it to go camping for the weekend.

“Rapid charging” probably fucks the batteries worse than normal, and consumer don’t have the ability to change chemicals or whatever you have to do to rehab batteries. That shit needs to be handled by the industry side, or people will just continue turning against them.

 

[derpherp2]

EVs will never go fully mainstream until you can swap batteries at a charging station.

I mean, imagine owning a vehicle where you would fuck yourself half to death if you tried taking it to go camping for the weekend.

“Rapid charging” probably fucks the batteries worse than normal, and consumer don’t have the ability to change chemicals or whatever you have to do to rehab batteries. That shit needs to be handled by the industry side, or people will just continue turning against them.

The country's trash disposal industry, like any public utility, is also fucked as hell so I don't think adding more eWaste disposal is going to help when they can't even be bothered to do it for literally anything else.

 

[SpergioLeonne]

The country's trash disposal industry, like any public utility, is also fucked as hell so I don't think adding more eWaste disposal is going to help when they can't even be bothered to do it for literally anything else.

Probably not, but there’s the rub. If the batteries aren’t easily recyclable, then it’s not environmentally friendly.

I don’t know enough about this type of battery to really have an idea, which is another reason I wouldn’t buy one.

 

[The Ugly One]

Why exactly? no fuel, less fluids and mechanical shit that can break, barely uses the break pads, why is it more expensive?

Part of the problem is it's heavily skewed toward Teslas, which are massive piles of garbage. They're just poorly-built vehicles, and they'd be pieces of shit with a gasoline engine, too.

Is the batteries shitting the bed isn't it?

Yep...Real Life Tony Stark kind of missed that everything can "break," not just mechanical systems, and there's all kinds of chemical & thermal stuff that can go wrong in batteries. Turns out they're especially vulnerable to temperature extremes. Diesel and steel, not so much.

EVs will never go fully mainstream until you can swap batteries at a charging station.

In order to handle peak hours, a typical filling station needs to be able to service about 50 cars in an hour. Supposing it takes 2 hours to charge a battery pack without damaging it, we need 100 battery packs in reserve. These things cost about $15,000 apiece, so that's $1,500,000 in capital sitting there, cycling in and out all day long. A typical filling station has up to $25,000 worth of gasoline in the tank (8500 gal * $3/gal).

Well, if I'm going to invest 60x the capital, I want 60x the revenue. So unless you can find a way for one of these battery-swap stations to make money 60x faster than a gas station, it's a losing proposition.

 

[neverendingmidi]

Part of the problem is it's heavily skewed toward Teslas, which are massive piles of garbage. They're just poorly-built vehicles, and they'd be pieces of shit with a gasoline engine, too.



Yep...Real Life Tony Stark kind of missed that everything can "break," not just mechanical systems, and there's all kinds of chemical & thermal stuff that can go wrong in batteries. Turns out they're especially vulnerable to temperature extremes. Diesel and steel, not so much.



In order to handle peak hours, a typical filling station needs to be able to service about 50 cars in an hour. Supposing it takes 2 hours to charge a battery pack without damaging it, we need 100 battery packs in reserve. These things cost about $15,000 apiece, so that's $1,500,000 in capital sitting there, cycling in and out all day long. A typical filling station has up to $25,000 worth of gasoline in the tank (8500 gal * $3/gal).

Well, if I'm going to invest 60x the capital, I want 60x the revenue. So unless you can find a way for one of these battery-swap stations to make money 60x faster than a gas station, it's a losing proposition.

Not to mention that if somebody drops off a dodgy battery, you could see the whole investment go up in smoke.

There’s been enough investment in safety backups for fuel, that if an ICE car catches on fire refueling, the car and that particular fueling station might be toast, but not the whole place. Shutting off power to a battery in thermal runaway does nothing, and can set off any battery near it.

 

[No. 7 cat]

Using high speed charging too often wears out lithium ion unless the EV ones have some hitherto unsuspected improvement. EV was one of the fuels in the pioneering era of cars, but as of now, the battery issue (very flammable, not too long lived and expensive) needs resolution.

 

[cybertoaster]

buy a 2013 Model S

I would never buy a used EV thats more than 5yo, and even then you have to check the mileage. Avg. 5yo car is between 60k and 70k miles so if said EV its way above 100k then nope.

EVs will never go fully mainstream until you can swap batteries at a charging station.

There was already a company doing that in partnership with renault using a subscription system and despite it being affordable it didn't catch on, and neither is another company doing the same in china even though their cars are more luxurious and the battery stations more streamlined.

The only place I seen/heard of where the battery swap thing has been successful is in taiwan with these tiny mopeds

 

[SpergioLeonne]

Well, if I'm going to invest 60x the capital, I want 60x the revenue. So unless you can find a way for one of these battery-swap stations to make money 60x faster than a gas station, it's a losing proposition.

To be fair, $1.5 million is in the neighborhood of what it would cost to buy your own McDonalds franchise. Not far off from a gas station.

Startup aside, it would hinge on the cost of the amount of electricity required to charge a battery, and there would need to be a deposit type of situation to mitigate battery attrition.

 

[Sparkling Yuzu]

That does not surprise me about EVs but I'm surprised that hybrids have even more issues. People talk of them like they are more reliable because of the back-up gas but I guess not. I don't think any current tech comes close to the combustion engine still. It sucks because cars are a big greenhouse gas emitter, maybe one day hydrogen will be a thing but who knows.

I wish there were more investment into investigating/improving internal combustion engines with alternative fuel rather than going forward with the "strip mine lithium and put it in literally everything" path that we're headed down at the moment.

Strong agree here.

Elon Musk retardation with his cyber truck.

I saw a comparison between other trucks and the Cybertruck and the Cybertruck has basically no crumple zone in the front, which means your body would take a lot more impact in a crash. Not to mention it probably has a giant battery so if it catches on fire, it will burn for days like a regular EV, except worse.

 

[Party Hat Wurmple]

Probably not, but there’s the rub. If the batteries aren’t easily recyclable, then it’s not environmentally friendly.

I don’t know enough about this type of battery to really have an idea, which is another reason I wouldn’t buy one.

None of that Green stuff is environmentally friendly. The wind turbines create oceanic dead zones. Who knows what chains those will break down The batteries aren't easily recycled and they're fucking explosive. Bill Gates is destroying the planet to mine the entire world's supply of lithium. (That's not an exaggeration) The solar panels are completely unrecyclable. There's only one company that does it on the planet and it's done by fucking hand. And those things go out like light bulbs. All of this stuff is hazardous waste far worse than anything we have capacity for. This shit isn't meant to allow us to function. It's to send us back to the fucking stone age.

 

[Manul Otocolobus]

EVs will never go fully mainstream until you can swap batteries at a charging station.

I mean, imagine owning a vehicle where you would fuck yourself half to death if you tried taking it to go camping for the weekend.

“Rapid charging” probably fucks the batteries worse than normal, and consumer don’t have the ability to change chemicals or whatever you have to do to rehab batteries. That shit needs to be handled by the industry side, or people will just continue turning against them.

You can't rehab a lithium-ion battery. You have to throw it away. It isn't even economical to recycle them given how incredibly toxic and poisonous the recycling process is.

 

[FatMan]

Got my GF a '23 Rav4 Prime (PHEV) late last year and it's pretty sweet. No issues with it so far. Yeah it weighs about 600lbs more than the base Rav, but it has 100hp more than the gas model and 80 more than the hybrid. All in all pretty fun to drive for a 4klb SUV. I didn't get it for any of the green nonsense, but the power jump and cost to operate are both awesome. 95+% of our day to day trips are within the 50 miles it gets in EV mode, and cost per KWh compared to gas makes it so we're effectively getting over 100mpg out of it pricewise. Gets about 50 from the hybrid drive and has a range of almost 600 miles too.

Definitely seems like Toyota has a leg up on everyone else with these systems from all their experience with the Prius.