roadside assistance

Obvious question but would you not carry a spare wee battery, like a spare tyre? To get you to nearest charge point?

I predict that main dealers will have to get into providing roadside recovery services more and more, and it will have to be given free under warranty cars. EVs are software driven and the day of Joe soap mechanic being able to fix a variety of cars in the hard shoulder are at an end. Bar changing a tyre or maybe a window glass at a stretch, any repair to an EV will required service by someone who is specially trained and equipped with specialist technical gear specific to that make and model.

Having a breakdown crew that can fix and service all brands and models simply won't be possible anymore. Backstreet indy garages in the back corners of business parks will slowly vanish over time.

What's more, there are very very few young people going into mechanic apprenticships. The pay is the lowest of any trade in existence, and it is a hard, thankless job that'll have your back broken in two by the age of 40. When the older lads start to retire, there will be an chronic shortage of mechanics.

And another effect of this I predict is that the lifespan of cars will be shortened considerably. Like up to recently, an older car 12 or 15 years+ could be fixed on the cheap by indy back street garages and kept going for a long time. With how specialised EVs are, service by main dealer or highly specialised repairers will be the only option, and this will be charging top dollar as the special training and equipment keeps their costs very very high. This means it becomes uneconomic to repair older EVs and they become economic write offs.

And another thing is planned obsolescence, which will now be easier than ever. There is nothing to stop manufacturers discontinuing support of models and not making updates, so if an older EV has a problem, the service equipment will not longer have the ability to talk to it. They could even brick swaths of cars remotely over the air if there is a safety recall and you did not get it done voluntarily in a set time.

Ya but all that specialist training and the specialist gear is very expensive.

Backstreet ICE mechanics don't go on any training worthwhile, hence they have much lower costs.

You miss my point on the software updates. What I'm saying is that your old EV might get a fault, or need some part relearned. But if the manufacturer has depracated that model and no longer supports it, the main dealer's up to date electronic service equipment might no longer have the capability of communicating with the old EV, because that model has been wiped from the list of models that the equipment supports.

But kind of happens in a way already. For example, take some an early 00s car that had pre-EOBD ecu. If that had an electonic fault, it would be touch and go if it was repairable because no mechanic in 2022 is going to have a device that can communicate with a pre-EOBD ecu

I would put money on the life of EVs being substantially less than an average-low range ICE car. The level of technological complexity and the sensitivity of it all means once there is a fault, it won't be economic to repair it. Older ICE cars, often anyone with a basic mechanical knowledge could redneck it into keeping going for a few years past its best by date. I have an 04 almera that runs well and anything that did go wrong, I was able to clearly see what it was and get the part and replace it with relative ease. With an EV that just isn't feasible.

No point talking about the likes of RichRebuilds and the like, these lads are very wealthy and can afford to spend big money and make a full hobby of being an ev expert.

I could buy one, but it makes no sense money wise as the purchase cost of it would far outweigh the savings I would get on fuel. So it is actually cheaper for me to drive the old ICE car, which was bough dirt cheap and owes me nothing.

it is for this reason EVs are out of reach of low income ordinary people as they are very very expensive to purchase. Truth be told, they are a luxury good for the well off.