I had two breakdowns very recently.

Both cases the batteries were inexplicably completely dead.

One NSX, one Leg End.

I can only presume that a boot or two was not closed and the lights/alarms pulled them right down.

In which case, one cannot blame engineering for user incompetence.

Oddly, the only other actual breakdown I remember was a FIAT 124 when the battery lead fell off. Tools were in the other car. It was Hoddesdon, so I flagged down the first Sicilian I saw (124S) who of course, stopped and loaned me his car's tool box. Sicilians tend to be kindly like that.

There was a 127 whose rotor arm cracked shortly after a truck sat on its bonnet. Implausible it was anything other than a coincidence, but...

I've been fortunate that most breakdowns have happened in the drive, so to speak, or I've been able to fix them on the way.

Probably that is the reason I'd be loath to pay £100K for an unreliable PoS, where a duck tail is the only solution.

not sure the Honda's count

you havent owned enough vauxhalls.. the diesels have a rubber crank pulley which lets go (shock cause rather than absorber), our Vec had that though it drove home ;)

my dads early cars had points and dizzys, they always seemed painful. i recall the manual choke conversions around 1980 were common. i can recall pushing one about a mile trying to make the pos run, these were not old/high miles either...

a tesla or similar is a weird ownership prop, high up front cost, pennies fuel but a test of skill if it fails and big £ if the big ipad fails, as they do.. also fire potential.. hmm

There really is no fire problem with them, you've more chance of a fire in a normal car.

They are very glitchy, though apparently. They have very bad scores in the reliability surveys and getting spare parts means long, long waits.

i have no idea who would fix one LG.. maybe the local sparky will branch out? :D

You're stuck with Tesla for the time being. Apparently they are pretty helpful, but there's not a lot to go wrong mechanically. It's the software that's the scary part.

And if they burn it's next to impossible to put the fire out.

This.
My Nephew who is a firefighter told me the Texas fire authority have told them on no account tackle an electric car fire unless there is danger to life. lithium batteries burn like magnesium, and it doesn't take much to set them off. Bit like Concorde and the metal on the runway.

Sparky? Local fire brigade more like :D

Tesla's problem is it's more of a blacksmith's than a proper car company; too many tiny welded bits instead of big stampings. And by all accounts, a bit of an iPhone interior etc. And outdated battery tech.

Hence my garage client's thinking, though; expertise will be hard to come by once they filter out of the main dealer network. It's not as if they're complicated as such, just very different.

Tesla fires are very few and far between - they've been selling the Model S since 2012 and if there was a real, rather than an imagined problem, it would have surfaced by now.

I'm no fan of Tesla as a company - too much apple-esqu hype and bollocks - but the fire thing is not an issue.

Best to wait a few years before jumping on the Electric Wagon, though. Many more models from proper car manufacturers are on the way.

In 10+ years time, my daily Golf will no doubt be replaced by an electric car. Hopefully I'll not have broken the S2000 by then, so it'll remain.

And by then Tesla will solely be a battery compnay having got out of car manufacturing when the big boys catch up / infrastucure is there.
Although Rimac seem to be doing OK (even though they sound like depilatory products for women)