The EV fact thread

[ALFAitalia]

Anyone whos needed a new complete engine after 2000 miles....like our works FF Range Rover I'm guessing. Things happen.

 

[markjay]

Epic fail. Four years in and required a massively costly battery replacement. Is anyone prepared to defend this?

I can neither condemn nor defend it without further statistical data.

It would be unfair to simply compare the number of BEV battery failures to ICE engine and transmission failures, because there are around 40m cars on our roads but only 1.5m of them are BEVs - of course ICE cars will come out very bad from such a direct comparison, but this isn't statically valid. And, equally, ICE cars will suffer badly if we simply go by anecdotal evidence from frustrated members on here who needed a new engine or transmission due to known manufacturing defects.

The real question here is whether BEVs are overall more reliable than ICE cars, and I don't think that there's enough data in the public domain to answer this question right now. Especially since the data needs to be more granular - for example, AdBlue issues can be very expensive to fix, but they only affect Diesel cars, so in reality these are easily avoided by not buying a Diesel car. Equally, BEV battery failures might be more common with some makes when compares to others, again not an issue if you know what marques are best avoided.

Where ICE cars do have a clear advantage over BEVs as far as potential buyers are concerned, is that there's plenty of info out there if you're willing to look it up. The V6 balancing shafts, the M157 head bolts, the M271 sprockets, the CVT transmission (all of them), and farther afield the Nikasil engines, the Rover 1.8L, etc etc - the info is out there, all a buyer needs to do is carry-out some online research. With BEV, it is far more difficult to find reliability data because BEVs are still far less common than ICE cars, and so yes, it can be a bit of a gamble choosing a BEV marque that has a good reliability record. Which is obviously a problem.

Having said that, there might be a compound answer to your question. How can you defend the two Boeing 737 crashes, that killed 346 people, due to a poorly conceived MCAS system? The answer is that you can't, BUT at the same time, the fact remains that commercial air travel is still the safest mode of transport known to mankind (excluding walking). Is this a valid answer to your question?

 

[BTB 500]

Anyone whos needed a new complete engine after 2000 miles....like our works FF Range Rover I'm guessing. Things happen.

EVs are widely quoted as being extremely simple and reliable though. Range Rovers ... not so much.

A more valid comparison would be the incidence of low mileage major failures per 1,000 (or whatever) EV Hyundais compared with their equivalent ICE models. But no car manufacturer would ever release that sort of data.

Obviously isolated problems can occur in any make/model, which is why you need to look at the big picture. I would still maintain though that EVs are not going to be as intrinsically reliable as is often stated.

 

[Bellow]

I can neither condemn nor defend it without further statistical data.

It would be unfair to simply compare the number of BEV battery failures to ICE engine and transmission failures, because there are around 40m cars on our roads but only 1.5m of them are BEVs - of course ICE cars will come out very bad from such a direct comparison, but this isn't statically valid. And, equally, ICE cars will suffer badly if we simply go by anecdotal evidence from frustrated members on here who needed a new engine or transmission due to known manufacturing defects.

The real question here is whether BEVs are overall more reliable than ICE cars, and I don't think that there's enough data in the public domain to answer this question right now. Especially since the data needs to be more granular - for example, AdBlue issues can be very expensive to fix, but they only affect Diesel cars, so in reality these are easily avoided by not buying a Diesel car. Equally, BEV battery failures might be more common with some makes when compares to others, again not an issue if you know what marques are best avoided.

Where ICE cars do have a clear advantage over BEVs as far as potential buyers are concerned, is that there's plenty of info out there if you're willing to look it up. The V6 balancing shafts, the M157 head bolts, the M271 sprockets, the CVT transmission (all of them), and farther afield the Nikasil engines, the Rover 1.8L, etc etc - the info is out there, all a buyer needs to do is carry-out some online research. With BEV, it is far more difficult to find reliability data because BEVs are still far less common than ICE cars, and so yes, it can be a bit of a gamble choosing a BEV marque that has a good reliability record. Which is obviously a problem.

Having said that, there might be a compound answer to your question. How can you defend the two Boeing 737 crashes, that killed 346 people, due to a poorly conceived MCAS system? The answer is that you can't, BUT at the same time, the fact remains that commercial air travel is still the safest mode of transport known to mankind (excluding walking). Is this a valid answer to your question?

The thing is, ICE could be made super reliable and super durable. BEV hasn't attained that yet - and may never.
ICE failures/problems are due to two aspects. When OEM know how to make something and then attempt to make it more cheaply - and it fails. When ICE has to meet emission targets - which, with carbon neutral fuels would be largely superfluous.
ICE could be made reliable - merely isn't. BEV cannot so far be made acceptably reliable. And, with nothing to suggest it ever will.

 

[BTB 500]

Obviously with ICE vehicles there's a huge history of makes & models that have sold in their millions to look back at, but again all the information out there is anecdotal rather than statistical/factual. "We all know" that the widely used Mercedes M272 V6 engine was prone to balance shaft gear issues for some years of production. But how many 'potentially affected' engines actually had any problem at all, let alone needed replacing? There are probably hundreds of owners on here (I'm one of them), and I don't recall reading of any such incidents ... even after many years of use and high mileages.

It's a matter of record though that Jaguar ended up buying back and crushing 4 year old I-PACE EVs ... I'm not aware of anything equivalent happening with a mass-market ICE car in recent times.

 

[markjay]

ICE could be made reliable - merely isn't. BEV cannot so far be made acceptably reliable. And, with nothing to suggest it ever will.

It's a valid opinion. Other opinions are also available.

 

[Bellow]

It's a valid opinion. Other options are also available.

When you say ''options'' - do you mean 'fantasies'?

 

[markjay]

Obviously with ICE vehicles there's a huge history of makes & models that have sold in their millions to look back at, but again all the information out there is anecdotal rather than statistical/factual. "We all know" that the widely used Mercedes M272 V6 engine was prone to balance shaft gear issues for some years of production. But how many 'potentially affected' engines actually had any problem at all, let alone needed replacing? There are probably hundreds of owners on here (I'm one of them), and I don't recall reading of any such incidents ... even after many years of use and high mileages.

Agreed that there's just not enough data out there to answer the question whether BEVs are overall more or less reliable than ICE cars. Which is what I said in my post... but Bellow seems to think otherwise.

It's a matter of record though that Jaguar ended up buying back and crushing 4 year old I-PACE EVs ... I'm not aware of anything equivalent happening with a mass-market ICE car in recent times.

Not unprecedented. In 2018 in the US, VW bought back between 350,000 to 500,000 vehicles following the Diesel scandal of 2015 - it was deemed a cheaper alterative than to have them retrofitted with AdBlue (a solution that they did apply in some other countries).

In comparison, Jaguar had to buy back only 3,000 cars in the US, and a smaller number in the UK. The issue was a manufacturing defect with the LG batteries, and a very long backlog at the LG plant in South Korea where new and improved batteries were being manufactured around the clock. Jaguar must have worked out that it was cheaper to buy back the cars, than to deal with the battery replacement - and the cost of months of hire cars made available to waiting customers - as well as potential safety issues relating to the defective batteries. Based on my experience with the Tier-1 automotive industry, I expect that LG shouldered much of the cost.

Having said that... I don't think that the VW debacle or the Jaguar buy-back are indicative of anything to do with overall reliability - they are just anecdotal incidents - and in either case the buyback was the bean-counters' decision (other options were available).

 

[markjay]

When you say ''options'' - do you mean 'fantasies'?

Sorry, I meant to say 'opinions' - now corrected, thanks for pointing it out.

 

[markjay]

ICE failures/problems are due to two aspects. When OEM know how to make something and then attempt to make it more cheaply - and it fails. When ICE has to meet emission targets - which, with carbon neutral fuels would be largely superfluous.

No, not all car-related failures are due to cost-cutting or emissions.

The MB SBC braking system was a poor design, unrelated to cost or emissions. As were the very common failure of the Front Passenger Occupancy Recognition System across all models, or the clock spring, or the wiring inside the electrically folding side-mirrors, or the various red paints requiring bare-metal respray, or the corroding rear subframes... or the CVT transmissions and the balancing shafts that I already mentioned. And, the AdBlue system seems to be a particular MB issue - faults with the AdBlue system are much less common with other marques.

In any event, EV manufacturers tend to provide much longer warranties than ICE cars, presumably to reassure the buying public who may have concerns regarding cars with new tech and unknown long-term reliability - making the effect of any failure much less impactful on the owner. In my case, the battery has 8 years warranty, so 4 more years to go, which will be reassuring to whoever buys the car after my lease ends.

 

[MikeInWimbledon]

Epic fail. Four years in and required a massively costly battery replacement. Is anyone prepared to defend this?

What makes you think that a battery replacement is “massively costly?”

My brother, like many others, had his BMW 550i off the road for four months due to some ridiculous N63 engine failure. A loan X5, complete engine replacement & fitting: now that was a massively costly ICE for BMW.

 

[MikeInWimbledon]

Anyone whos needed a new complete engine after 2000 miles....like our works FF Range Rover I'm guessing. Things happen.

Pauses while I think of several "humorous" interpretations of "FF"....

Can anyone explain why people still buy Land Rovers, even though we all know their ICE and general reliability is .... appalling ?

They're all the range on the School runs, and at the Golf Clubs "round here," and their owners talk proudly of their latest warranty claims.

(I could also talk about Porsche ICE, which makes Mercedes look like a paragon of virtue, but I'll leave that to another day)

 

[ALFAitalia]

FF......Full Fat......a proper sized Rangey.....none of this Sport or Evoque nonsense!!

 

[Bellow]

No, not all car-related failures are due to cost-cutting or emissions.

The MB SBC braking system was a poor design, unrelated to cost or emissions. As were the very common failure of the Front Passenger Occupancy Recognition System across all models, or the clock spring, or the wiring inside the electrically folding side-mirrors, or the various red paints requiring bare-metal respray, or the corroding rear subframes... or the CVT transmissions and the balancing shafts that I already mentioned. And, the AdBlue system seems to be a particular MB issue - faults with the AdBlue system are much less common with other marques.

Only one ICE related item there and I've already covered it.

In any event, EV manufacturers tend to provide much longer warranties than ICE cars, presumably to reassure the buying public who may have concerns regarding cars with new tech and unknown long-term reliability - making the effect of any failure much less impactful on the owner. In my case, the battery has 8 years warranty, so 4 more years to go, which will be reassuring to whoever buys the car after my lease ends.

Not in the least bit reassuring - the reverse. If it does in four years what it just did after its first four years I'd be looking at battery replacement without warranty if I bought that car now. Head says 'no'.

 

[SmartAmg]

Only one ICE related item there and I've already covered it.

Not in the least bit reassuring - the reverse. If it does in four years what it just did after its first four years I'd be looking at battery replacement without warranty if I bought that car now. Head says 'no'.

Said it yourself, "if"

 

[markjay]

Only one ICE related item there and I've already covered it...

You are ignoring my other posts: the MB V6 balancing shafts, the Rover 1.9L head gaskets, the Nikasil engines... these are all examples of bad engineering. I also mentioned earlier the faulty Diesel injectors fiasco that affected thousands of MB cars at the time. ALFAitalia provided some more examples.

All these examples clearly contradict what you seem to be suggesting - that bad engineering can only be a cause for faults with paint, suspension, wiring, etc, but never with the engine - all engine faults are the result of either cost-cutting or emissions.

With respect, this does not make sense. Petrol and Diesel engines suffer from a multitude of failures that are simply down to either poor design or manufacturing defects. It's nonsensical to claim otherwise.

 

[markjay]

Not in the least bit reassuring - the reverse. If it does in four years what it just did after its first four years I'd be looking at battery replacement without warranty if I bought that car now. Head says 'no'.

Please read below:

....My thoughts are that until EV batteries become cheaper, due to companies learning how to refurbish them, and the skills required to replace them become more commonplace, I wouldn't want to own an EV whose battery isn't covered by warranty, either the manufacturer's warranty or an aftermarket warranty...

When replacing the battery pack will cost like replacing an engine or transmission with a reconditioned unit currently costs, people will buy second hand EVs just like they buy second hand ICE cars these days. But until then, I agree that owning an EV that is not covered by warranty - especially the battery - is risky business.

 

[Bellow]

You are ignoring my other posts: the MB V6 balancing shafts, the Rover 1.9L head gaskets, the Nikasil engines... these are all examples of bad engineering. I also mentioned earlier the faulty Diesel injectors fiasco that affected thousands of MB cars at the time. ALFAitalia provided some more examples.

All these examples clearly contradict what you seem to be suggesting - that bad engineering can only be a cause for faults with paint, suspension, wiring, etc, but never with the engine - all engine faults are the result of either cost-cutting or emissions.

With respect, this does not make sense. Petrol and Diesel engines suffer from a multitude of failures that are simply down to either poor design or manufacturing defects. It's nonsensical to claim otherwise.

All the 'poor engineering' that led to ICE failures was easily reversible with upgraded design/parts - as they should have been from the outset. In short, done right at the outset then no failures. Even then, the number of engines that have a bad rep are few in number. There are also others that are never heard of - like my 26 year old V8 that never misses a beat and will outlast both of us and any EV. The engine that routinely racks up 300,000 miles with nothing more than servicing. There is no 'done right' for EVs. They suffer random unpredictable failures - with no solution to prevent or make cost viable repairs.

 

[ALFAitalia]

The engine that routinely racks up 300,000 miles with nothing more than servicing.

I'm no fan....but so do Teslas to be fair..... and without servicing - as such!

 

[markjay]

...It's a matter of record though that Jaguar ended up buying back and crushing 4 year old I-PACE EVs ... I'm not aware of anything equivalent happening with a mass-market ICE car in recent times.

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