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[Richard230]

Consumer Reports has published a survey that they obtained by collecting comments from their members who owned electric cars. After studying the results, they concluded that the current batch of electric cars are not as reliable as gas-powered vehicles. See the attached article.

[Specter]

Consumer reports has not always been exactly neutral or unbias in their reports .
They need page clicks too so are not beyond the hit piece here and there for the attention.
Yah sure, we surveyed XX people and bla bla, but they cherry pick who / where etc to do their surveys and how to spin their conclusions.

 Id say when an ICE manu has to recall millions  of cars for an airbag issue, that is unreliable. and it's across numerous years of manufacturing, THAT is unreliable, you mean you gave us sub par stuff for years?  EV's have not had to recall years and years of the same model yet, so they are MORE reliable in that aspect.

See how easy it is to spin 'facts' ?

Electric vehicles are still new, there are going to be growing pains, as they said.  How about when ICE vehicles first came out, I wonder how EV's would fare in reliability as compared to ICE in it's first 10 years of existence.

What was the car in question?  Was it Tesla's top of the line, or GE's attempt to get an electric .. something out there, at a cheap price.  Hint:  No the 20k car is NOT going to be made as exquisitely as the 100k car.  You get what you pay for.


I think a big part is, in general, stuff is NOT built to last anymore.  We have become a throw away society and things are generally built to be juuuust enough to keep the lawyers off their backs, but not much more!!!  It saves MONEY that way.
Then, lets throw in the fact that they plan to make their money down the road on the continual repairs and fixes it will need, not necessarily the initial sale.  Example.  Radiators Do go bad, it's a thing, so we'll charge them 1200 for a new one to make our money back.  We COULD make one that will last 10 years, but let's make it last 5 so we can sell them TWO of them! 

Another point to look at:

Many of the problems have been fire related.  BUT, the root cause, is it the car OR the battery?  If I get a motorcycle that has a faulty battery and it catches fire, it is NOT Zero / Energica / Livewire's fault, especially when they used a reputable company like Sony / Samsung to make the batteries and they were supposed to be top of the line!  The latest one was a defect in manufacturing the cells.  Well ok, so did you intentionally cut corners or is your QA department just crap?  But the car company will take the hit for your crap battery.

I wonder if the Electric cars would be as unreliable if they were compared to say a Yugo ?

How was the questionnaire worded?

Your Electric Car sucks when compared to an ICE vehicle because of    Choose one  A,B.C etc.

Just some food for thought when you read these reports slamming EV .vs. ICE.  How bad is the bias?

Aaron

[Richard230]

That is why I posted the entire article instead of summarizing it. That way you can make up your own mind how to interpret it.

[TheRan]

I haven't read the whole article but at the beginning it mention panel gaps being something they count towards the "unreliable" aspect, I'm guessing the large amount of Teslas out there contributes significantly to that. Also with electric cars being on average more expensive the owners are more likely to be picky about small stuff like that. Another thing is when an EV goes bad, such as the battery or charging system (two other factors mentioned near the beginning) that usually significantly affects the operation of the vehicle if not puts it out of commission completely. Where as with an ICE vehicle an issue might not be as readily apparent and the owners might just put it down to a quirk of the car if they even notice it at all, and just put up with it instead of reporting it to the dealer especially if it's a cheaper vehicle.

[Fran K]

There are a few more paragraphs if you search out the author and title.  Says story origionally appeared in the Los Angeles times.

It is a subset of the population that subscribes to Consumer Reports.  It does not say if they are on line subscribers or pay for a magazine to come in the mail.  My F150 has crank windows and a tail gate I can take off with no camera.  I think the battery F150 has both of these things more complex go bad.

Just from a motorcycle aspect the part about a long time from when you turn the key or whatever you with a fob to when the thing is ready to go has me thinking about my Ktm.  It isn't supposed to be road registerable here in the USA but it I was to accidentally hit the kill switch on the handlebar It would hopefully in a situation where I could head for the break down lane as it takes a while to come back to life.  Unlike the old carb motorcycle days when I hear stories of shutting off the kill switch filling the exhaust system with charge and then making a boom essentially the instant the kill switch is put to run.

[Specter]

Good points.  A carbureted vehicle, that thing has to get pretty whipped before the car won't run at all anymore.   .vs.  fuel injection, one little burp and it's dead.

The kill switch thing, on the Energica, you have to squeeze the brake while holding the start button, to get the green go back on, and it takes a second or so to go green from startup from dead.  Given the bike is already alive and booted up, it shouldn't have to go through the entire boot up routine again Id think and should go green pretty quick.   This is something I might want to try just to see, hit the kill and see if one can unkill and restart it on the fly.

Fran, the trick with the gas, you'd basically turn off the ignition, it'd kill the spark, but fill the muffler with the air / gas mixture that passed thru the block unignited, then when you hit the switch back on, the spark was re introduced, often times one would have an extra spark plug on the tail pipe itself to 'help' the ignition and you could set off a real boom, or shoot flames out the back of the car.  You could blow the muffler apart too or damage other things real easy as well, and if an unmarked cop was the person behind you when you done this stunt, well.... life gets interesting.

[Fran K]

If you like comments about this I found out that 4 days ago Consumer Reports youtube chanel has perhaps half hour discussions, sort of like you might listen to on the radio on Saturday morning about autos.  24K views in 4 days so not the most popular videos on that platform.  Certainly, one of the least advertisings infested though.

One thing on the youtube segments of intrest to me as I am in Ct and the Mass Turnpike is the way to go if heading east or west with a bit of north added.  The chargers on the pike (It used to be the kind where you get a card when you get on and pay when you get off but now is toll by mail or get a device that might track you everywhere you go) are not working.  Hence favoring the hybrid for reliability.