You think the motor in the Telsa costs 24 large? I'd say you are off by an order of magnitude.

What are the big-ticket repair items on an gas car? The engine and the transmission. Electric motors are maintenance-free, and the Telsa doesn't have a transmission. Also, there is minimal vibration and heat compared to a gas engine.

I would guess maintenance costs on an electric car are 1/4th of a gas car. Except the battery pack, of course. That will eventually need to be replaced.

On what basis? I know he didn't cite, and I'm not trying to put the burden of proof on you, but I'm curious why you think this. As in, I'd like to see some data (from either side).

I did some brief searching and he is correct that [45]00 HP brushless motors seem to go in the low five figures (at least on Ebay, which I know is not representative of Tesla's costs). I'm happy to believe Tesla's cost less, but I'm not sure.

Here's a pic: http://insideevs.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/Screen-Shot-...

Then of course there is the cost of the cooling jacket and the electronics. I can't estimate that readily.

TL;DR: What is a sub-one ounce object made mostly of silicon that costs more than a thousand dollars. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116...

In that case, you are paying for the IP, not the silicon.

The Tesla motor is a simple design, no magnets, no brushes. I assume they are hand-built. Some, but not too much precision machining required.

Think about how much precision goes into a 2TB hard drive that costs $100 retail.

I can see where you get your belief -- I wasn't questioning that it is a reasonable one to hold. But I am asking for evidence that compels me to a confidence level I'd actually bet on. Data will be required. Thought experiments are not sufficient.

(Don't get me wrong, I'm not accusing you for failing to provide data. It may not be publicly available. And it is not your duty to give me this. But that is what I am asking for, and if you don't have it, you don't have what I want, your duty or no.)

The fact that you can't find brushless motors online that retail for less than $10k is not convincing, because it's a new use case, a unique design, and they're not selling them outside of cars. You don't know what the pricing is. As far as materials, that amount of copper isn't going to help it get to $10k.

EDIT: Oh sorry, I mistook you for the originator of this thread, jesusmichael. He asserted that, not you.

Novice operator - the operator of the motor itself is the control electronics, not the driver. If the operator can do something to damage the motor, the design is faulty.

Industrial electrical motors and control electronics like those in robots have completely different tolerance requirements, and are made in relatively low volumes, and so there are fewer units to support development costs.

The novice operator and put the machine itself in a situation in which it will not operate correctly, extreme cold, flood, etc. Steep grade + Lead Foot = burnt coil. While I do agree with you to some extent... there is some user input... but motors in Tesla... are still pretty complex..

"Common wisdom" does not create a burden of proof for detractors, especially if the common wisdom is never, that I can find, backed up with evidence. That is absurd. It would be like saying that the burden is on non religious people to prove that Jesus is not god because billions of people think he is.

But I do think that it's backed by evidence. There's no multi-gear transmission, and while there are moving parts, and other than the wheels/brakes, they aren't bathed in liquids that need regular changes and they aren't subjected to combustion and various other destructive forces that an ICE is constantly subjected to. There's relatively little force transmission hardware needed. The motors themselves should be relatively low-friction, and mechanically are much, much simpler than internal combustion engines (compare a breakdown of the parts of an ICE vs. electric motor, they're in completely different leagues). Air-fuel mixture control, turbochargers, and all manner of other chemical energy management systems are replaced by solid state electronics.

Also I doubt R&D cost for an electric motor is high because the technology is mature.

If it's a commodity item (like most electric motors, but maybe not the one in the Tesla), with a competitive market, you might be able to estimate cost by looking at open market pricing, but for something like SpaceX, that clearly doesn't work.

Tesla is closer to SpaceX in thinking than it is to most car companies, especially startup car companies.

General Purpose 350HP motor. $25K http://www.globalindustrial.com/p/motors/ac-motors-2-phase/3...

In general these motors have tight tolerances and aren't the motors in your electric shaver

The entire car cost $70K...

1. That motor is a low speed motor, as such it is massive. It weighs 3044 pounds. The Tesla motor runs at nearly 10 times the speed, and ought to be roughly a factor of 10 lighter. 2. See how the price drops by almost 10% when you buy more than 5 of these motors? Now imagine you are buying 20,000+... 3. You can bet the manufacturer of the motor (Baldor) did not get $25k for it. I imagine the markup for the reseller is of the order of 30-50%, on top of other costs such as transport. These do not apply to Tesla.

I am pretty sure even $6000/unit is an over-estimate.

I have some information from an occasionally reliable source that the entire car costs around $20,000 to make. This is the "incremental cost", after tooling, R&D etc has been paid for. This is apparently about the same as a top level mass produced luxury Benz - for the Benz, the much higher inherent production cost is offset by the scale and efficiency of their production line.

http://green.autoblog.com/2014/02/26/why-teslas-35000-model-...

That $20k motor is much less advanced than what's in a Tesla... So @ $24k I think its a bargin... what is the rest of the car? Aluminum and Plastic and a couple of computers...

"Oil change" for an electric motor is fundamentally nothing like the oil change you do for an internal combustion engine. A piston engine operates at much higher temperatures, and cannot fully isolate leakage from oil compartment, causing a tiny amount of oil to get burned with fuel as it operates.

"Oil change" in an electric motor is much more like lubricating other moving parts of the car or other machinery, not the engine of a gasoline car.

In addition to that, an electric car (at least the Model S), is much much simpler in design. The motor is basically connected directly to the wheels, removing a ton of parts in the process. It's simpler to start and simpler to cool. Yes, it can still break, but it's much more similar to your hard drive failing than your traditional car.

For all the parts that are removed there are a couple added, in the recombinant braking system, power control systems and programmable suspension.

The grease in the sealed bearings will break down at some point. A spinning motor especially one in a magnetic field has a very low tolerance for vibration and balance. There is also a great deal of heat generated at high torque. I hear the S is going to have liquid cooling. So there is another system that will need to be addressed.

I would hardly call a Tesla a simple design. Its in fact very complex.

Also, do you have a source on the $24,000 for their motor? That seems awfully high given that the thing is about the size of a loaf of bread. Hard to see what could make it so expensive.

In addition to the motor, the schematic diagrams above seems to many moving parts that typically need work by 120,000 miles. Eg: steering (likely) differentials (likely) and in various parts of the suspension (internal). Whilst the specifics may be debatable, most of these items are wear items and require fluid changes and/or replacement internals. Things also like wheel bearings will need some preventive maintenance. If this spreadsheet was for a 50,000 mile interval or a lease perhaps you'd overlook these. A chassis for $30K+ with 120k on the clock would bring customers looking at the cost of these services, I would venture. One way luxury brands (at least in the past have) maintained the price premium of their new vehicles is to make the 100K and up maintence quite expensive.

Because that's the actual maintainance cost of a car. Modulo nobody's engines need replacing in 10 years. Oil changes are 30 bucks once a year at a Walmart/jiffy lube.

The post that kicked this particular thread off even said as much but everyone seems more interested in arguing about the possible cost of the worst case than considering the actual costs of the probable cases: all the little shit.

But that alone doesn't tell me much. There's a pretty wide gulf between a gas motor that needs regular preventive lubricant changes every few thousand miles and other parts, e.g. wheel bearings, that are sealed and lubricated for the life of the part and can be expected to last a couple hundred thousand miles.

"Electric motors need oil changes too" implies something closer to the former than the latter.

I'm not saying tesla's require oil changes as a gas engine does... oil will last quite a long time when not contaminated by hydrocarbons.

But even sealed bearings need to be repacked after so much wear. To parts can't move against on another without generating heat, which will degrade a lubricant and allow wear.

When you build large numbers of integrated devices (be they washing machines, cars or cell phones), individual unit costs of components are always much lower. That's why we mass produce things.

I'd kind of like to see an elaboration of this, though:

> oil will last quite a long time when not contaminated by hydrocarbons

as I was under the impression that oil consists 100% of hydrocarbons.

Are there voting guidelines for HN? Am I in the wrong here?

>The statement that electric motors have fewer moving parts so they last substantially longer is a fallacy

No, it is true on all counts. I'd explain in detail, but this is so weird I dont really know where to start.

>90% of a vehicle's maintenance has nothing to do with its motor

Rubbish. In a gasoline (or diesel) powered car, the majority of maintenance is to do with the engine and its auxiliary systems such as fuel delivery, ignition, cooling, starting etc.

>electric motors need oil changes too

This is the best one of the lot. Not sure if a moron or a troll.

However you really don't have the slightest idea about the motor that's in the Tesla. Which is a 3 phase induction motor. There's a lot that goes into converting DC battery power to AC and then controlling the torque. Heat is another issue that will have to be dealt with as well and the latest announcement from Tesla is that they will be adding a water cooled system to the induction motors in the future.

A property serviced gas motor doesn't need much more beyond oil and spark plug changes and can last for several hundreds of thousands of miles. The majority of the consumables are in the wheel systems, tires, brakes, suspension, bearings, heating and cooling the cabin, etc.

I'm sure you're an idealistic kid that thinks green is good... and knows that ignition=starting, but the fact remains that gas engines have a 100 years of service history and electric car motors don't which means...

I am the engineering manager for the Australian branch of one of the world's largest oil and gas contractors. I graduated with 1st class honours in mechanical engineering, and have 25 years of work experience. Idealistic - yes, thinks green is good - yes, my career notwithstanding. Kid - I wish...

>However you really don't have the slightest idea about the motor that's in the Tesla ... ... There's a lot that goes into converting DC battery power to AC

Actually, I have a pretty good idea about both of these things. A really very good idea in fact, helped a bit by my visit last week to the factories that make high speed AC motors and inverters that drive them.

>knows that ignition=starting

Dude, just stop already.

I disagree on the downvoting response to the comment. The answer to a flawed argument shouldn't be downvoting. The answer should be a dismantling of the assumptions and the argument.

Downvoting is a tool for silencing a comment. Some comments should be silenced. Trolls, childish behaviours, one-liners should all be silenced. Generically, stuff that does not lead to a productive discussion.

I know many people genuinely believe the stuff written on the comment I was referring to. This is not a comment that should be silenced. Better than silencing the guy through downvotes would be to correct him and enlighten all those who believe electric motors require oil changes.

There aren't formal guidelines. The informal practice has always been that downvoting for disagreement is ok, but when people see a comment that has been downvoted unfairly, they upvote it back to par.

We're open to changing that, but we look at the data pretty closely and the current balance strikes me as about right. We can't read all the comments, though. If you see a comment that has clearly been unfairly downvoted (i.e. is faded out when it shouldn't be), please tell us about it at [email protected]. If there get to be very many of these, we'll start thinking about how to change that.