Cyber truck

[Michael 38]

It’s crazy isn’t it; my van was written off before Christmas and I had to replace a tail light (part LED) which cost £210 from Nissan. My CLS350 has LED rear lights and the indicator stopped working so would fail an MOT. That one was £200 second hand off eBay. Previously I would have paid a couple of quid for a bulb.

It’s obviously not an EV thing though, manufacturers scalp everybody for parts (and Labour if you can’t do it yourself, although that’s the main dealers).

Most new cars have led lights and some older cars have them failing already dread to think how much it will be on something like a bmw suv if a couple of led headlights pack in and can’t be repaired

[Tooks]

I read an article recently that electric cars of all makes are starting to be produced with an all in one space frame that everything is mounted on that are very difficult and expensive to repair after an accident but cheaper to produce instead of being modular where individual pieces can be replaced at the moment see what that does to insurance prices.

I’m only aware of Tesla (Model Y), BYD and CATL using structural battery packs, and there’s no doubt it’s a good option for lowering manufacturing costs and making EVs cheaper and/or more profitable. Like every new technology though, you can view it as a problem or accept that in time and when there’s money in it they will be as easily repairable as any other vehicle. To be fair, any vehicle in a serious enough collision that the structural battery pack is damaged would probably be written off whatever construction method or whatever was powering it.

Most current EVs are built like ICE variants, such as the BMW 3 series EVs, all of the Stellantis (Opel/Citroen etc) or built on an EV specific ‘skateboard’ chassis such as the VW MEB platform. All are easily repairable.

You may have noticed thousands of Tesla’s on the roads already running ‘giga castings’, they certainly aren’t uninsurable or unrepairable. They’re not cheap to insure, for sure, but that’s mainly because even the basic RWD ones are powerful sub 6s to 60mph cars, and no performance car is cheap to insure really.

There’s a good wired article about structural battery packs, might have been the one you read?

https://www.wired.com/story/cell-to-...tric-vehicles/

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Most new cars have led lights and some older cars have them failing already dread to think how much it will be on something like a bmw suv if a couple of led headlights pack in and can’t be repaired

Yes, certainly starting to see more ‘one eyed’ cars about with a failed DRL or some such.

[Franky Four Fingers]

I’m only aware of Tesla (Model Y), BYD and CATL using structural battery packs, and there’s no doubt it’s a good option for lowering manufacturing costs and making EVs cheaper and/or more profitable. Like every new technology though, you can view it as a problem or accept that in time and when there’s money in it they will be as easily repairable as any other vehicle. To be fair, any vehicle in a serious enough collision that the structural battery pack is damaged would probably be written off whatever construction method or whatever was powering it.

Most current EVs are built like ICE variants, such as the BMW 3 series EVs, all of the Stellantis (Opel/Citroen etc) or built on an EV specific ‘skateboard’ chassis such as the VW MEB platform. All are easily repairable.

You may have noticed thousands of Tesla’s on the roads already running ‘giga castings’, they certainly aren’t uninsurable or unrepairable. They’re not cheap to insure, for sure, but that’s mainly because even the basic RWD ones are powerful sub 6s to 60mph cars, and no performance car is cheap to insure really.

There’s a good wired article about structural battery packs, might have been the one you read?

https://www.wired.com/story/cell-to-...tric-vehicles/

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Yes, certainly starting to see more ‘one eyed’ cars about with a failed DRL or some such.

And to think that less than a year ago we were being told that battery tech would stall and mileages wont increase that much…experts on here, what do they know hey.