An EV drivetrain is extremely simple and reliable. They are dragging their feet on purpose to extend their returns on ICE investment, not because it's "too hard".
"An EV drivetrain is extremely simple and reliable"
I don't know why it is so popular to repeat this over and over because it seems palpably ridiculous to me.
Everybody has plenty of experience with electrically powered appliances, and many if not most of them only last a few years. I'm not suggesting this is inherent, just that there is no reason to consider them simpler or necessarily more reliable.
If there were washing machines or smartphones that you could expect to last decades, then I would find the idea of EVs being super reliable more plausible.
They think in terms of platforms, their next gen platform has all kinds of other requirements (think >100 processors, sensors etc.). The good news is that their next gen platform will be electric and that they hiring >5000 new software engineers to build out the user experience.
Unless EV door handles and airbags are that much more complicated, I must be missing something. The problems with EVs are support infrastructure and profitability, NOT reliability and complexity.
I don't know why it is so popular to repeat this over and over because it seems palpably ridiculous to me.
Everybody has plenty of experience with electrically powered appliances, and many if not most of them only last a few years. I'm not suggesting this is inherent, just that there is no reason to consider them simpler or necessarily more reliable.
If there were washing machines or smartphones that you could expect to last decades, then I would find the idea of EVs being super reliable more plausible.