Hertz is selling 20,000 used EVs due to high repair costs
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Standards, at least partial ones, do already exist. What needs to be done is make following them mandatory.
e.g., ISO 3958:1996
https://www.iso.org/standard/9613.html
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Did you see today's article on BMW using an LLM to help users understand how to use the various features in their cars. This kind of thing might really help people who rent cars and aren't familiar with a particular one.
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That's a kludge, and means the UI was badly designed to begin with.
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It's usually done for much less thanks to the enormous salvage market but can be more for higher end rides. For example a 2022 Maverick engine can be had for high twos/mid three grand then R&Ied for another one or two. For anything recent swapping in a low mileage donor engine or gearbox is typical and cheaper than an overhaul. Having your local shop rebuild a stock engine is rarely cost-effective for modern passenger cars. Used transmissions are more of a gamble so I'd lean towards a volume remanufactured unit.
r/mechanicadvice is pretty decent for those with specific questions.
DIY has never been more profitable because auto shop labor rates are so high while tool prices are modest.
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That was actually an interesting point I noticed on the PriusKing site: they emphasized that they are reconditioning batteries, and defined it as repeatedly deep discharging and recharging it to 100%. Which of course is very different from repairing, and still allowed in New York. I did get the impression that they are also offering repair service but wanted to let that aspect fly under the radar.
I think you are reading too much into a relatively casual description. All this is saying is the same thing we already established: that 309.3.5 was tucked into that section of the code. The far more interesting section in the same document is 752-A. It says:
Note that the first sentence says "storage batteries" - not "storage batteries for powered mobility devices". Also note that in the last section, powered mobility devices are explicitly mentioned, which says that the authors knew what they were doing when they omitted it above.
Once again, they were indeed discussing a set of five laws, four of which did pertain to mobility devices. I don't think what is being discussed in a more general sense can be used to read something in the law that just isn't there.
In all honesty, it really doesn't matter what "many other people" think. It matters what the law says, and when the fire marshall starts issuing citations.
You are probably right about that. It does say "assembled" and "removed from".
I'm not sure how relevant that question is. The context was that supposedly battery repairs supposedly become a viable option. Finding an exact match of a used battery in good condition is never going to be major factor.
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Some other sources refer to Underwriters Laboratory standards in this context. Not sure how helpful that is; I don't think they have jurisdiction about automotive batteries, so it may mean that there are no certified automotive batteries.
It may also refer to manufacturer-refurbished battery packs. So packs from Toyota may still be legal.
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Completely agreed with your post.
Keep in mind that he was trying to make batteries look better in comparison by claiming that once the warranty ends, gas engines for some reason can't be repaired inexpensively any more, but have to be completely replaced.
In reality, of course, you can keep a gas engine running for decades by just repairing the parts that break.
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and once you're done with that you can preemptively post your work to r/justrolledintotheshop where most of those projects end up anyway.
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Bit of spray foam, a 2x4 strapped to the frame, and we're good to go!
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I browsed their website and couldn't find anything like that. What I do see is stuff like:
"We sell only completely tested & rebuilt battery packs with upgraded bus bars, wiring harness, and HV battery ECU computers. We DO NOT sell un-tested salvage yard or “patch-repair” batteries that other low priced services offer."
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In reality, of course, you can keep a BEV running for decades by just repairing the parts that break.
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The FDNY Fire Commissioner has given several speeches and updates on the progress of enforcement and outreach for protecting NYC resident from lithium-ion fires... and yet she repeated only mentioned e-bike stores and e-bike repair shops (listing how many e-bike business fire inspectors visited)
This is from Jun 2023 notice how the the Fire Commissioner explicitly talks about finding every single e-bike repair location, but makes no mention of BEV repair locations.
"we also formed an e-safety task force
comprised of members of fire prevention
and Fire Marshals to handle complaints
and concerns about Lithium-ion batteries
specificallyworking off of a list of more than 200
known e-bike and e-bike repair shops we
have also Enlisted the help of our field
units to conduct inspections
we've also encouraged our field units to
their use their own situational
awareness as they know their local
neighborhoods because we know how
challenging it is to find every single
e-bike and e-bike repair location in the city"
Again in Sept 2023, FDNY Fire Commissioner and Head Fire Marshall give an update ... and the entire focus is on e-bikes batteries (zero mentioned of BEV batteries). Why during these public speeches about lithium-ion fire batteries, are they only talking about e-bike repair shops and only warning public about buying certified lithium ion batteries for their "devices" and "bikes"?
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Yes, I saw that, and took that as their weasle words. Turns out that they are legal because they don't do li-ion batteries "*We ONLY SELL Original OEM compatible Panasonic NiMH batteries!" https://www.priuskings.com/shop
It's weird, though. The reconditioning part was on the same page; they must have updated the Web page in the meantime. I wish I had made a screenshot.
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Sure. It's just gonna cost you a pretty penny because once the battery is gone, you can't replace that.
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The simplest explanation is you're either lying or saw what you wanted to see ¯\(°_o)/¯
"Once the battery is gone" is not how any of this works. BEVs all track battery health, many of them display it in a useful way to the driver (and the rest it can be pulled with a diagnostic tool). With the exception of the oldest Leaf models the batteries wear at about the same rate throughout their lives and it's therefore pretty easy to project a given battery pack's lifespan. An unexpected failure is fairly unlikely. And you've already established that you can in fact replace that, but maybe possibly not in one single city in the whole damn country (and you've still failed to prove that it's actually illegal),
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Of course. A battery either works, or it has failed. There is no in between.
Right. And it's totally useless (in this context), because even if it did tell you when the battery is likely to fail (which it does not), there is literally nothing you can do about that.
Major fallacy. You can't use the linear phase to project the end-of-life, because at some point it stops being linear.
The important point is that with a battery, there is basically nothing you can do to prevent that. With a gasoline engine, you can, with inexpensive repairs.
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What's annoying is that in the late teens batteries like the one in the Bolt were supposed to have been designed so they could be easily be serviced at the module if not cell level (with the right tools; thank you Dr. Kelly for demonstrating that process). Unfortunately, batteries are now integrated inseparably with the vehicle structure (thank you Tesla), are mostly bespoke designs with little sharing across EV platforms so far (meaning low production of battery and vehicle types - Ultium was supposed to fix that for GM, but we have seen how that's (not) working out), and have encountered resistance (after claiming the batteries could in fact be serviced in the field (at dealers)- see GM when questioned early on about battery life in Bolts) to providing proper training and parts. The "refurb" process is well-developed for Prius and Leaf batteries where there's a market for it now that there are many on the road needing life extensions, so the concept is clear. It's the execution that isn't happening, mainly by choice of the EV makers.
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BTW - GM is using the Ultium platform for some of its China vehicles and those are now being produced in quantity so it seems that the production issues are more specific to North America.
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Except there is an in between with rechargeable batteries. Individual cells slowly lose a percentage of their maximum capacity over time. So the individual cells don't just either work or fail, they individually get less effective over time. And BEVs have a ton of individual cells - so even if you end up with a defective cell in there it typically doesn't kill the entire pack, only a subset of it.
Except you can make repairs in many cases. And you're ignoring that we have more than a decade of battery wear data available for modern battery pack designs showing this really isn't a problem over the lifespans people actually use cars for. Yeah sure maybe there's a problem at the 400,000 mile mark but that's not a realistic expectation most people have.
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You still don't get it. All this is related to the slow degradation during the battery life, not to the failure mode at the end of life.
I will grant you that it may be theoretically possible to design battery cars so you can replace individual cells without taking half the car apart, but that's not the reality today.
Engines are generally designed so you can access almost everything for repair without removing the whole engine.
A decade is hardly enough data for something that is likely to fail in 10 to 12 years... And those cars that are actually a decade old by now have mostly disappeared from the road anyway.
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How many ICE cars are still on the road after 10 years v BEV's? Batteries aren't coming down in price as promised 10 years ago with some of them costing more than the price of the car when new. I expect that a rental with extra charging cycles on it won't last very long either if kept in service, but at the same time rental fleets are changed out frequently enough the battery won't be a problem.
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I wouldn't worry about charging cycles; modern batteries do last many of them, and that has been very well tested. I would worry moderately about renters regularly charging to 100%, using fast charging too often, things like that. But overall, I would expect batteries in rentals to last the same as in other battery cars.
Tesla has already come out and said that they don't expect battery replacement to be common, because they expect their cars to be scrapped quite early compared with ICEs.
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Yeah, that's a problem. The used car market is where low income buyers go to get cars. If BEV's "explode" after 10 years the used market will either consist of cars with pitifully short range or still priced out of the low income market. Where do people go? They'd get an ICE vehicle since people have demonstrated again and again that they'd rather pay small amounts over time than a large amount one time, even if the large amount saves them money in the long term.
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I consider myself somewhat of a DIY mechanic myself. "YouTube certified." 
Seriously, though. I've successfully done major surgery and revived multiple modern European cars when numerous shops told me it couldn't be done without full engine swaps (to the tune of $10-15K). I wanted to branch out to EVs since for a while there, you could find GREAT deals on clean examples with bad battery modules. I came up against a major impediment though... software and parts accessibility. There are some folks out there fighting the good fight for Right to Repair (like Rich Rebuilds and Louis Rossmann), BUT until then, we're kinda hosed to keep EVs running in the long term. We need our politicians to start backing us up on this front if we truly want to make used EVs a sustainable commodity. Better for the planet too!
Seriously, though. I've successfully done major surgery and revived multiple modern European cars when numerous shops told me it couldn't be done without full engine swaps (to the tune of $10-15K). I wanted to branch out to EVs since for a while there, you could find GREAT deals on clean examples with bad battery modules. I came up against a major impediment though... software and parts accessibility. There are some folks out there fighting the good fight for Right to Repair (like Rich Rebuilds and Louis Rossmann), BUT until then, we're kinda hosed to keep EVs running in the long term. We need our politicians to start backing us up on this front if we truly want to make used EVs a sustainable commodity. Better for the planet too!
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That's an uphill climb, to put it mildly.I consider myself somewhat of a DIY mechanic myself. "YouTube certified."
There's a bit of panic journalism going on related to EV battery fires.It's not so simple as to say journalists are drumming it up, but they're certainly giving it strong attention.
I imagine that'll be some friction against any right-to-repair movement.
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Not so much EV battery fires in this case, but Li-Ion-battery fires in general. The attention comes from micromobility devices (e-bikes, scooters etc.) because there have been a ton of fires. The repair of car batteries is not yet widespread enough to draw that attention.
But you are right that there is friction with the right-to-repair movement. NYC passed an ordinance banning the repair of Li-Ion batteries with previously used cells. That pitted prominent right-to-repair activists against the NYFD.
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I wanted to get into conversions, as a first step. There's kits where you just bring your own stick-shift car, and you CNC an adaptor or two.I consider myself somewhat of a DIY mechanic myself. "YouTube certified."
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YES! Some of those kits are SO rad. I was eyeballing the conversion kit for the classic VW Beetle. Turns that thing into a rocket and you still keep the manual trans. I just had trouble finding a good donor vehicle. Haha. One day when I have some spare garage space, I really want to tackle a classic car EV restomod conversion.
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You are absolutely correct. "Safety" is THE chief reason manufacturer state for their resistance to right-to-repair. I would give them a bit more leeway on that contention IF they were willing to allow us access to the rest of their parts catalog sans batteries, or even the software... but they don't, so I say they're full of it. Frustrating thing about the battery issues however, is if you're even minimally versed with basic electronic theory and the requisite safety precautions and procedures, EVs really shouldn't be that big of a deal to work on. But then again, you know they're scared from a liability standpoint. Last thing they want is to get sued over a shadetree mechanic catching his garage on fire, but then again I guess that's a risk with ICE vehicles too! Not like we don't already have risky fuel pump replacement procedures anyway!
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The car rental thing is a real problem... I'm driving a car old enough to vote in my daily life, and a couple of weeks ago I was in a rental whose behavior was wildly unexpected.
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The radio turned on when I started the car sometimes, despite the fact that I had it off when I turned the car off.
It would shut off when I started it in the morning to warm it up.
It would honk the horn and flash the hazards randomly if I put it in park while I was sitting in it.
And the lane assist was terrible... I've had a few rentals recently, and the Chevy Malibu was the worst; it would bounce between the lane lines like it was a bowling ball in a bumper lane, and that was when it was behaving well; it was bad enough that I reached out to Chevy and told them it was dangerous.
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In my CR-V it'll do that if you have Lane Keep Assist off -- essentially it is just emergency lane departure pulling you back into the lane and sending you straight for the other side of the lane. With Lane Keep Assist turned on, it keeps the car centered exceptionally.
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Yeah, it's not a universal thing; when I turned it on in a Kia I had recently, it worked great!
I don't think I was turning it to the off state unless the on state is the default when you start the car and does even less than the off state.
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On has been the default state for lane assist on each of the four vehicles I’ve owned with the feature and, to my best recollection, every rental I’ve driven as well. The system shouldn’t be doing very much…assuming the driver is doing their job keeping the vehicle centered in the lane. I‘m usually unaware of it until I have need to “hug” one side of the lane.
Edit to add, Chevy’s Quick Start Guide and Owner‘s Manual for the Malibu (I chose 2022) don’t give any indication regarding the default state. The instruction is: “To turn on or off, press the /
\ Lane Keep Assist button on the steering wheel.” There is also the warning, in both publications, that the system isn’t an “auto tracker” — you need to steer and control the vehicle. When the feature is on the Car between the lines symbol (that I did my best to recreate) will appear on the dash. There’s a bit more detail about how it works in the full manual, but use is pretty much “drive as you normally would.”
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This all checks out with me using it right.On has been the default state for lane assist on each of the four vehicles I’ve owned with the feature and, to my best recollection, every rental I’ve driven as well. The system shouldn’t be doing very much…assuming the driver is doing their job keeping the vehicle centered in the lane. I‘m usually unaware of it until I have need to “hug” one side of the lane.
Edit to add, Chevy’s Quick Start Guide and Owner‘s Manual for the Malibu (I chose 2022) don’t give any indication regarding the default state. The instruction is: “To turn on or off, press the /
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okautoandbody
Smack-Fu Master, in training
The auto repair service keyword typically refers to businesses or professionals who specialize in fixing and maintaining automobiles. These services can include everything from routine maintenance like oil changes and tire rotations to more complex repairs such as engine diagnostics and transmission work. Auto repair services play a crucial role in keeping vehicles running smoothly and safely, addressing mechanical issues, and ensuring optimal performance for drivers.
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