[oplav]

I’m running into a similar situation with an electric Ego lawn mower. 1 year old mower stopped turning on, took it to the authorized repair center for warranty work, some PCB needs to be replaced but it’s back ordered for months. I ended up having to buy another lawn mower for the summer.

I’m grateful for the easy warranty process that Ego has, but it’s got me thinking if shifting to electrical means harder to come by parts for repair.

[syedkarim]

What’s strange is that it’s just a PCB. It should not be an issue for them to stock or quick-build a circuit board. They can’t possibly still blame the chip-shortage bogeyman.

[FireBeyond]

Interestingly, this is one of the theories for why Tesla's parts situation sucks.

While you could also argue that they make things complex for themselves by having these rolling updates rather than using a Model Year system...

Elon, as is well known, is FANATICAL about the quarterly numbers. Burn the midnight oil to pump up the deliveries, etc., etc.

The thing with that, every part that's on a shelf waiting to be sold for warranty or accident repair is a part that can't go on a new car and boost the numbers. Wall Street doesn't give a shit what your parts market numbers look like, it's "How many Teslas did you build this quarter?" so there's a lot less incentive to fully stock that market - Tesla already has the sale booked and the money in their balance book.

[shalmanese]

That may be a theory but there's a much more mundane theory that explains the crunch of the last few years:

Tesla sold about 100,000 Model 3/Ys to Hertz for rental in 2021.

Hertz rented a ton of EVs to people who were only used to the acceleration curve of ICE cars.

A ton of those people unexpectedly crashed those cars [1].

This clogged up Tesla's repair channels and blew out the timeline for everyone else.

[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2024/01/18/business/why-do-people-ke...

[FireBeyond]

> Hertz rented a ton of EVs to people who were only used to the acceleration curve of ICE cars.

Maybe, but I am not as sure. I've not ridden in a private 3, but in a Y and S, and I had a Hertz Model 3 for a week.

I don't know if there was a firmware difference or such, or just my individual model, but the acceleration on it was garbage. I'd stop, put my foot all the way to the floor, and wait half a second or more for ANY movement, and when it did move, it accelerated like my girlfriend's A4, if not slower.

(Or, perhaps, things happened as you described, and as a result, they nerfed the acceleration - this was last year).

[ac29]

Tesla passed 1M sales of Model 3 alone in 2021, and cumulative sales of 3/Y are now well into the multi-millions. Unless Hertz drivers are orders of magnitude more crashprone than new Tesla operators in general, I dont think Hertz's 100k units should have made a major impact on Teslas repair pipeline.

[Retric]

Which is strange from a financial standpoint. Individual parts generally have a massive markup compared to the total cost of a car.

There was some magazine that once did this with a Honda motorcycle and the total cost for parts was 6x what the bike would cost when new.

[nxicvyvy]

It's not a financial standpoint, it's a perception standpoint.

[SkyPuncher]

I’ve entirely stopped caring about warranty as it’s only ever left me in this situation. I’d rather just buy a new thing or pay for an out of warranty channel to fix it as quickly as possible (often possible with non-one parts).

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

My father's gas lawnmower is ~40 years old and never had an issue. Snowblower is 50+ years old but has had 1 engine replacement.

[WheatMillington]

To be fair, the only gasoline engines with this kind of lifespan have had significant maintenance over their lifetimes. Regular oil changes, spark plugs and air filters and other servicing. The idea that gasoline engines are inherently more reliable than electric just doesn't match the data.

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

My father doesn't do any maintenance.

[cj]

For what it’s worth, I bought a new gas mower at Lowe’s last summer, and had to buy a new one this summer because I couldn’t get the old one started.

Granted, I probably could have spent a few days figuring out how to repair the old gas powered mower from last year, but it was oozing oil everywhere and I would have just been following YouTube tutorials and endless trips to the hardware store or waiting on parts from Amazon.

(Just sharing this anecdote since neither gas nor electric are perfect!)

[vel0city]

Anecdotes everywhere.

A friend of mine spends an hour or two rebuilding or cleaning his gas lawnmower every year. Another friend had a brand new one fail the first time he fired it up. Meanwhile my Ego has gone several years with literally zero maintenance other than five minute blade sharpening.

My dad's gas trimmer was constantly unreliable and never easy to start. My Ego trimmer once again has been fine for several years without any maintenance other than winding the string.

[giraffe_lady]

When electric lawnmowers have been around for 50 years we'll have the same anecdotes about them.

[2OEH8eoCRo0]

https://oldlawnmowerclub.co.uk/forum/history-and-technical/m...