[Transpire7487]

No normal person can repair a Tesla, it’s basically a trade secret. My brother is a mechanic and servicing Teslas are a non starter due to the complexity. The notion that I can just download a manual, buy some parts and DIY my own repairs is absolutey ludicrous.

The only reason for Tesla to support right to repair is to increase regulatory burden on competitors, stunt innovation and raise costs for their competition. Shame on this anticompetitive behaviour.

[morphle]

I do not agree. The parts of the mechanical drivetrain or the molded plastics can be impossible to obtain before a large number of Teslas have been scrapped and sold for parts. But the battery and electronics can be understood and repaired without schematics. The software reverse engineering is possible. I agree that repairs can be far to time-consuming to be economically viable, but given free labour it can be done.

[api]

EVs could be a gigantic step down in complexity but that doesn’t benefit their manufacturers. It would risk making them a commodity that can be assembled from parts like an old school PC.

Instead the industry is looking at the EV transition as a way to increase costs and decrease customer freedom. This is absolutely artificial and in no way mandated by the technology.

A similar case in computing is what happened with mobile and tablets where a change in form factor allowed lock down to be smuggled in without people asking too many questions. A Mac is now a big overgrown tablet in terms of its CPU and innards but you can install your own OS on a Mac but not an iPad. Why? No technical reason at all.

Right to repair is good but it’s actually less than what we need. We need a huge rebirth of DIY technology and less centralized supplier ecosystems. This may require some regulation but it also requires consumers to stop being so passive and prioritizing shininess and laziness over every single other thing. The “millennial minimalism” era needs to end both as an aesthetic and a framework for consumer-producer relations. (The two are related.)

[morphle]

When we transition to 4WD in-wheel motors the drivetrain and the moving parts could become standard. The inverters could become programmable. We designed programmable networks of per-battery-cell (dis)charger computers that would take the danger out of clusters of battery cells of unequal batteries. When each battery is wired in parallel, not in series not only can you go from 800 charge cycles to 20000 cycles (lifetime nearly 50 years) but you would eliminate fires and prevent short circuits in the power networks. It would thus be possible to build cars completely from standard parts. Mind you, not a single company has tried this yet, but there is no economical or theoretical impediment to build from off-the-shelf components in the next two decades. EV car kits will be poossible and probably cheaper. After an amateur has build one, for example the Dutch Government RDW would test the car for safety for less than a thousand Euro's, like they already do for car, truck and camper conversions. I remember an Scientific American article in the 90's predicting single mechanic African custom EVs as a future possibility.

[api]

We need a Framework for EVs perhaps to get this going.

The EV I want is a simple super reliable easily repairable one.

I personally went for the Nissan Leaf in lieu of this because it’s basically a Nissan Versa with a motor and batteries where the engine and gas tank go. Not good for road trips but a nice city car and decently repairable. (I have an older ICE for road trips that I don’t drive much otherwise.)

[AnthonyMouse]

> EVs could be a gigantic step down in complexity but that doesn’t benefit their manufacturers. It would risk making them a commodity that can be assembled from parts like an old school PC.

But the step down in complexity also makes it easier to become a manufacturer, and as battery costs come down this is likely to happen.

At which point a startup with no other way to distinguish themselves can start selling highly repairable electric cars. Customers figure out that these have a lower ownership cost (whether or not they do the repairs themselves) and start preferring them. The incumbents then follow suit or lose the market.

The main reason this doesn't happen for phones is that the market is so consolidated. The main SoCs are made by only a small handful of companies who don't publish documentation, and producing a competitive one is capital-intensive because of the constraints of the form factor. But even there it may not be permanent -- what's going to happen to phones once there is a fully-documented RISC-V SoC on the market that has tolerable performance and power consumption?

[omgJustTest]

No normal person can cast an ICE header.

Same logic.

[esjeon]

It's not the best example unfortunately. People do build custom headers by cutting and welding various pipes using off-the-shelf tools. Welp, ICE is an old tech (from 18c), so it doesn't take dark magic to fix a whole ICE car mechanically. The real deal breaker is electric controllers w/ proprietary software.

[AnthonyMouse]

That's assuming you need the controller to do the exact same thing in the exact same way as the OEM one. But in many cases people are replacing it because they want it to do something different anyway.

And these functions are in many cases quite simple. You replace the controller for the door locks. It operates a solenoid that locks and unlocks the doors. Maybe they no longer function by calling the call center to have them unlock your car, but maybe you don't want that anyway. They still function if you press a button on your key fob.

[B1FF_PSUVM]

> No normal person can repair

No, it takes two.

Seriously, I've read that some EV makers require that two persons be present when working on the HV system, the second one on watch with a pull-up hook in case the first one seizes up touching some 400 or 800 V DC part.

[rnk]

There are a very few private tesla repair garages that do know how to repair some things. They seem to be run by former tesla repairmen. They have been able to salvage a lot of dead cars. They seem to be mostly in california.

[brandonagr2]

Go to service.tesla.com, login with a free account, you can access all repair information and service manuals for free. You absolutely can download a manual, buy some parts, and DIY

https://service.tesla.com/user/vehicle-models/ModelS