I drive a 2007 Hyundai Santa Fe, but I'm not talking about my own experience but I did have a transmission failure in a 1984 mustang in like 1990 or something (I can throw up a dozen or so examples of people I know who've had engine problems). I don't know who you know and why you've never heard of anyone having an engine failure, but I do get the impression you don't know a whole lot about cars. Your personal anecdotal evidence issue is far from proof for or contrary to the fact as that sample size is insignificant.
Hybrid cars should be banned
- Thread starter tongue_of_colicab
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I drive a 2007 Hyundai Santa Fe, but I'm not talking about my own experience but I did have a transmission failure in a 1984 mustang in like 1990 or something (I can throw up a dozen or so examples of people I know who've had engine problems). I don't know who you know and why you've never heard of anyone having an engine failure, but I do get the impression you don't know a whole lot about cars. Your personal anecdotal evidence issue is far from proof for or contrary to the fact as that sample size is insignificant.
Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.
Legend
I had a new engine blow in less than 200 miles. A diesel injector fault (presumably from manufacturing) trashed the whole engine.
tongue_of_colicab
Veteran
Whatever, what do I know? apperently nothing. I dont care. Let me put in like this than. I dont have any numbers (maybe you have?) regarding engine and gearbox failures of decent cars but given how low that probably is regarding the total amount of cars driving on this planet I highley doubt anybody has the, supposedly, better reliability of electric cars high on their list of priority's. Cars will always need to be serviced an no matter what you use there will always be parts that need to be taken care of, be it a combustion engine or a batterypack.
Wow, future news !
I had no idea they could do that.
Seriously, a modified big-**s SUV wouldn't be the best example of a hybrid, environmentally-conscious future vehicle to the general public.
As kyleb said, less moving parts means less service. Coolant, Lubrication and the seals that are required for combustion engines is also a very significant part of the required maintenance.
Reliability and the warranty that goes with it are major considerations for most people in a vehicle purchase. Your doubting that people care about those things just shows that you've never had to make (an expensive) long term investment in something you need to be able to rely upon.
Dude 100k kilometers is nothing. That is like a new car. My first car had >300k miles on it. If you drove old cars you would know they do break. The transmission is what gave out in my case. Got stuck in second gear and I drove for a year like that. Then it started working again for a few months and got stuck in fourth. I gave up then b/c fourth gear was too difficult to drive in.
tongue_of_colicab
Veteran
Yes, but remember those cars were all from the 70's and 80's. Modern diesels are extremely reliable. Im not sure about petrol but they probably are alot more reliable to these days.
Ofcourse something can break, yes less moving parts can mean more reliabilty. Going from combustion to electric engines will remove some moving parts, but it will also add new parts that potentially could brake like energy regenerating units and battery packs. My point is that modern cars are very reliable, I doubt you can question that.
Ofcourse something can break, yes less moving parts can mean more reliabilty. Going from combustion to electric engines will remove some moving parts, but it will also add new parts that potentially could brake like energy regenerating units and battery packs. My point is that modern cars are very reliable, I doubt you can question that.
There is no question an electric engine will be significantly more reliable than a combustion engine. It's not really rocket science to see that. Reducing moving parts plus taking heat and fluid out of the equation is always going to be a huge win for the reliability of mechanical devices.
The biggest losers in a move to electric would be part suppliers.
ShootMyMonkey
Veteran
They are, but they are also spec'ed to much tighter tolerances, so manufacturing error is also a little more possible. Even so, the errors of this nature are often caught by the companies and put out as potential service bulletins that will be fixed for free under warranty if you'd been experiencing it... and hence another reason for people to care about warranty periods. Even so, problems of this nature can often be completely arresting if they go unchecked (e.g. the first-year C6 Corvette had such service bulletins regarding its fuel pump, IIRC), but appear harmless until then, and are indeed minor to repair. But if you count this, then drivetrain problems are actually quite surprisingly common.
I could also mention one GM car (1996 model year) that I know of which had to have its engine replaced after 140k miles, and the failure point happened to be on the head... it wasn't so much that it ran into this problem per se, but that when it was mentioned in front of a GM engineer, the moment you mentioned the name of the car, he knew even before mentioning anything else about it that it had this problem. Known problems not necessarily quite this severe but problems nonetheless are, I would say, something that 100% of all cars (save for brand new models which are yet to expose their flaws) have. That's also why a lot of people don't like to buy brand new updates to a model until that update has hit its second year.
Of course, but the point was the overall number of them. Yeah, the battery packs or the motors or the generators can fail, but the number of potential failure points is significantly smaller -- probably a difference of even an order of magnitude.
Of course, comparatively, the same logic should tell you that hybrids are the most unreliable of all... at least probabilistically.
Depends though on what is actually in there. The (atkinson based?) 1.5l fuel engine in the Prius isn't quite as complicated as some other engines out there.
And who knows what they did to help start and stop the engine while driving that puts less stress on the engine? For instance the fact that the engine only runs at a few fixed rpms and the electricity engine allows it to almost never have to run at low rpms, I think that saves the fuel engine a lot of stress in traditionally weak areas.once again, point taken, but you're nuts. You'll see our logic after a few months. Having a job and planning future wealth is a process of shaving tiny percentages everywhere. Car maintenance hs a big part of one's annual budget in America. For the record, no, i don't miss it, and i don't think everyone moving to the suburbs is any solution to mtr environmental problems, however, car ownership is a huge cost in america. doubting it will get nothing but a lot of
. Most people drive ~50 miles a day. One's annual budget should reserve about $1500 usd, minimum, for repairs and inevitable replacement of your car. That's very conservative. Saving $200 a year on that is great. Even more importantly, car problems are often your biggest looming far in america. Any problems are a missed day of work - often as costly as the repair itself. Electric motors are very nice, simple tech, compared to gas, tho they'll likely get more complex as we improve upon them yarrr. I'm grouchy today. You don't have to be excited about hybrid supercars, just don't rain on our parade! tongue_of_colicab
Veteran
I get your point, its not much different in Holland. Ofcourse everybody likes saving money. But how can you say electric cars are more reliable? Combustion engines are a tried and tested design for a century and there are hundreds of million cars driving every day and most get home without problems. There arnt hundred millions of electric cars out there so you cant say for sure if they are more reliable. They might be in the end, but I wouldnt be suprised to see the first few generations having some ''big'' problems. Cost might also be something to consider. Now I dont have a clue how much a electric engine, battery pack and regenerating unit will cost and how much maintance/replacing those would cost but that might be something to take into concideration if you compare it to the reliabilty of your combustion engine.
The first generation of cars in general use a century ago were... electric! And even then they were very reliable, leaking batteries being the most common problem.
And they still won most races for some time after the internal combustion engine had made major inroads.
And they still won most races for some time after the internal combustion engine had made major inroads.
I think I read, some time ago, that cows manage to brew about 300 litres a day.
ShootMyMonkey
Veteran
Those "first generations" happened long before combustion engines ever appeared in a vehicle. If age is such a big deal, then electric motors and generators and batteries are still older, and they've been tried and true on loads ranging from microwatts to megawatts. Hell, if you wanted to go back really far to something that's been around longer than either of them, then we should do like BMW and look back at steam power.
Fair enough. The only big question mark, though, is the battery pack, and to a much lesser extent, the beefier suspension needed to handle the weight of in-wheel motors. We already know quite a bit about how manufacture regen units and electric motors at a reasonable cost -- it may not look that way when our closest points of reference happen to be one-off toys like the Tesla, research vehicles, and hybrids which shoulder the cost of two powertrains, but that's about the size of it. But battery packs that can handle the load at a reasonable cost without taking up more space than a restroom are still decades away. Fuel cells are disgustingly expensive because of the raw material costs, and of course the infrastructure won't be seen in meaningful volume within our lifetimes.
DuckThor Evil
Legend
Wow, future news !
I had no idea they could do that.
Seriously, a modified big-**s SUV wouldn't be the best example of a hybrid, environmentally-conscious future vehicle to the general public.
This was also in the article...
"What’s equally eye-opening is that the Tahoe’s 21 mpg city fuel efficiency rating is the same as that of the city EPA rating for the four-cylinder Toyota Camry sedan"
City EPA BTW...
These big SUVs have the most room to improve their fuel economy and thus the amounts they pollute, so imo it makes perfect sense to improve them and give credit where it's due. Whether anybody really needs these type of cars in a city is a completely another topic.
