You say that and maybe some stats prove it but then when insurance rates are significantly higher and we see horror stories of drivetrain failures or battery failures, it makes it harder to jump on board.

>insurance rates are significantly higher

The insurance rates are higher because they gotta cover six months of rental car while some unobtanium back ordered headlight takes 3mo to ship to the one body shop in 100mi that won't actually get around to working on it for another 3mo (I'm exagerating a little here but not nearly as much as I wish I was).

We all pay for it on some level.

Less than ICE vehicles generally, including American and European shitboxes? Perhaps. Better than a Japanese car with a clean history? Not according to the auto loan people at my credit union.

Quite frankly, I trust them a lot more than internet commenters. They have a financial incentive to have good statistics on how cars keep their value. What's more, I trust them a lot more to make recommendations based purely off those statistics, uncompromised by ideology and/or environmental concern. Internet commenters are the same clowns who would have me believe it's rational and practical to give up my car and rely on public transit... in America. So yeah, I bought a Jap ICE car.

The people at your credit union know nothing about car reliability. There have been studies about EV reliability and it is much higher than any ICE vehicles. Battery degradation is averaging 1-1.5% per year, which is basically nothing. Stop spreading misinformation.

Also "Jap" is considered a slur.

Would love to read those studies if you have a link. I keep hearing say that in theory EVs should cost less but then you read things like Tesla having very high insurance costs.

When I search online I see a lot of back and forth. Some claim EVs breakdown more other say ICE (https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-reliability-owner-s..., https://thedriven.io/2024/03/13/the-data-is-in-evs-far-less-...).

It does feel like who makes the car says more about the reliability than EV or ICE at this point.

Tesla has high insurance and potentially repair costs (in the case of an accident) because of how they construct their vehicles; lots of glue and permanent bonding of components. They prioritized ease of construction and not repairability in case of body damage. They would have this issue if they built ICE vehicles too. Mechanical/drivetrain components are repairable.

Modern cars in general are quick to be totaled when they get into an accident because of this general trend. It's not isolated to EVs.

EVs are very repairable, but also just have far fewer moving parts and those they have are put through far less stress than comparable components in an ICE vehicle. It was obvious that they would be more reliable as long as the batteries were not an issue. The batteries aren't an issue, so EVs are way more reliable and will last a lot longer than ICE vehicles. The remaining issue to be solved is infrastructure for people in multi family buildings and road trips. We'll get there.

There's a Consumer Reports survey (note: not a study as widely mis-reported) that gets all the Google results when you search about EV reliability, which paints a terrible "80% worse than ICE" picture. But this is extremely misleading. First, it's lumping together any and all issues with cars from software glitches to a busted transmission. Obviously severity needs to be taken into account, but also many EVs are being either made by start ups like Rivian and Lucid or are on totally new platforms by legacy manufacturers and have had buggy software due to those issues like the VW iD4. But most of these issues do not make the car undrivable and get fixed via software updates, and should not be thought of in the same way as traditional car problems like "my check engine light came on and now the timing has been pulled back and my car is slow." Also, keeo in mind, it is a totally unscientific, self reported survey. So, I would not use it for purchasing decisions.

Instead, I'd look for scientific studies which are unfortunately much hardee to find on today's Google which is so biased for recency and wide reporting. One good resource is this site which at least addressed the battery reliability myth: https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/electric-vehicle-myths

EVs as a category may be much more reliable than ICE. That doesn't mean every EV car RIGHT NOW is more reliable than every ICE vehicle RIGHT NOW.

Teslas are the most popular EV. That fact they're shit to repair DOES matter. It means if you're comparing a Model 3 to an Accord you might end up spending less on maintaining the Accord. Those are the real comparisons consumers are doing right now. Theoretical EV comparisons are worthless.

Their job is to finance vehicles, of course they know about car reliability. Please get a grip.

LMAO. No, they absolutely do not. Tbat is not a prerequisite of financing vehicles. Not remotely. It is absolutely hilarious you think they do.

It's hilarious that you are so mad about this. I suspect you are ideologically compromised in exactly the way I described earlier. People usually don't get so worked up about thinking somebody else is wrong unless there's some sort of political angle.

If I default on my auto loan, all the credit union gets out of it is repossessing the car. They therefore need to know what the car is actually worth and have a good idea of what the car will be worth for the extent of the loan period. If they mess this up they stand to lose money, not just on my car but every car they finance, and they're a conservative financial institution that doesn't like to lose money. Getting good statistics on cars is comparably cheap. It's hilarious that you don't know how this works.

I am not at all "worked up". It is literally hilarious to think loan officers know anything about cars.