Green Machine said:
They just need to have to make it past the warranty period...on most ebikes that is a year.
Actgually, no. they need to have them last well beyond the warranty, and into the period fo the bike's life where other things that are critical begin to wear out, too, to the poionot someone would be considering a new one anyway.
If they don't, then people's perceptions of ebikes are not going to be one of dependability, whihc is what is needed to really make them popular for commuter and grocery-getter replacements, which are the thing that many people would be uisng a car for instead.
If the point is to have them replace cars, get cars off the road, then they msut be perceived as reliable and dependable for much longer than any warranty, just like most cars tend to be, with regular maintenance.
If the point is simply to have ebike companies make money and not lose it on replacing defective parts, then sure, they can be *just* reliable enough to make it past the warranty and then catch fire or have the wheels fall off or whatever,
but that doesn't help the long-term sales, either. It might help a young startup company get going, but it might also doom them, if everything lasts till just past the warranty and then poeple begin experiencing failures of whatever type.
Many companies in the PC business used to have really long warranties, 3-5 years, sometimes more, for most parts in most devices, because the parts were so reliable that they could afford to replace a few here and there.
When they shifted parts manufacturing to cheaper places with less QC, and then shifted unit manufacturing to such places as well, many more problems cropped up much sooner (often immediately upon use) and instead of fixing the problems they simply began shortening the warranties, until many items are down to 30 days or 90 days, occasionally a whole year if you're lucky, and some of them don't even cover all the parts in the unit (some parts have no warranty at all!).
It makes devices cheaper to make and support, but it doesn't help the reputation of the manufacturer. As an example, at one time HP was one of the best brands you could get for anything they made, but I wouldn't have recommended them at all by the time I was ending my PC repair career in 2007. Sure, they were doing it to be price-competitive, but it also lost them market share for consumers who needed something reliable, not something cheap and disposable. The same is true of jsut about every manufacturer, at some point in the last decade or so, if not before.
I still have various devices from 20 years ago that still work perfectly, other than havign had to replace primary batteries in a few of them, and reduced capacity in the secondary batteries for laptops, pdas, etc. But I also have stuff made in the last few years that is jsut about garbage in comparison, often given to me by frustrated owners after they replaced it with yet another new disposable unit.
To make ebikes (and any EV) something people would want to replace an ICE vehicle with, they must be *at least* as dependable and reliable as their ICE counterparts, for *at least* as long. Even if the warranty only lasts a year...most of the units should be designed, manufactured, and tested to last without problems for at least several times that length. If they don't last, why would anyone want to pay that kind of money for them--they usually already have a car they can rely on jjust as much or as little as such a capricious device.
If you want to make them as cheap and disposable as possible, it doens't matter. But that isn't going to entice most people to replace their commuters and grocery-getters with them.
