forever cars no make profit line go up
Time to make a billion dollars on something else, then start up a car company designed to fail. No investors, design a car for a 60-70k buying price, few bells and whistles, but built to last indefinitely with basic maintenance. Start the company planning to practically close it down just after the last preorder customer has their car delivered and become a maintenance company with a few employees to make replacement parts and install them. If demand rises, redesign for the new times, ramp up and do it all again.
Who wants an infinite lifespan car anyway? Everything else would be getting safer and more fuel efficient. Might as well get around on horse and buggy.
For one most engines are pretty much at their peak efficiency, for two practical safety features reached peak between the mid 90s to the early 00s. Most modern safety features are ironically enough not all that safe, for example lane assist makes people pay less attention or it tries to assist in the lane and overcorrects. I see the latter rather frequently in my area since windy roads, usually the damned things are trying to avoid the white lines of the shoulder and overcorrect over the yellow.
Competition, in theory, should combat this. It does, but it should.
Cars do have failure modes other than rust, like crashes. Having not yet read the article, I expect crashes still destroy cars.
Edit: having read the article, it was not a dense technical work and was disappointing on specifics.
Having worked on and had every major brand (and some obscure ones) in my family, there’s a reason Japanese cars are considered the most durable.
We’ve driven numerous Toyotas and Hondas 300k+. Some we still have, 30 years old or more.
Working on Toyota and Honda is generally much easier and far less frequent than other brands.
You can see how American car companies enshittify things when there’s a joint platform (Ford/Mazda, GM/Toyota, Chrysler/Mitsubishi). Invariably the American version is inferior, and even the Japanese company version often suffers with some of the same shitty design/engineering choices.
I refuse to ever again own an American vehicle, or even one of the joint platforms. I’ve had both - they suck to work on, require more frequent repairs, sometimes to things that just never fail on Japanese cars (especially electronics and control systems… Looking at *you" Jeep/Chrysler).
Makes sense. That is why all those Japanese carmakers went bankrupt and diesal hasn’t been a thing since the 1950s.
What about it’s batteries?
They are still chemical so they wouldn’t last forever.
Batteries can be replaced. An EV that could run 1 million miles would still need maintenance - I think the point is that they could be designed to last.
Planned obsolescence is so wide spread we don’t even notice it, but lots of products are designed to fail either through cheaper components or deliberately flawed design. That means we have to go and buy a replacement. It is also generally cheaper.
So we either have cheap products that will break or seemingly expensive products but they last for a very long time. But in the long run the cheap products generally cost you more to buy than one expensive product.
I don’t think the wider population would accept the compromises necessary for a million miles vehicle. There is always a balance between component longevity, cost, performance, features, and safety.
They can exist but I don’t forsee wide adoption due to it being wildly expensive and/or bare bones in terms of contemporary features.
I think the big part with cars is people want the new shiny thing.
The only people I’ve ever met who didn’t trade in a for shiny and new were my fellow cheap bastardin’ mechanin’ types who just don’t care.
Plus, too many people think cars must be serviced at “stealerships”, and I’ve seen what those lying bastards tell people their cars need. Like a 2 year old Toyota with 25,000 miles needing $4000 of engine leak repairs. On an engine that Toyota has manufactured since the 80’s…they don’t leak, they don’t even die. Hell, they still use a timing chain rather than a belt, so that’s maintenance it’ll never need.
Csrs don’t need replacing anywhere near as often as most people replace them. As I said elsewhere - my current daily driver is 18 years old, everything still works. It’s required very little regular maintenance over its life. Transmission was replaced at 200,000 only because a cooling line leaked into the transmission, which destroys the clutches eventually (it went 50,000 miles after the line failure, even towed stuff at max load).
Yes, the batteries would need to be replaced but that means designing them to be replaced.
Unlike the Tesla model Y which built the battery into the frame and filled it with foam so that it absolutely cannot get replaced. Musk said the way to replace the battery is to send the entire car to the scrap yard and recover the lithium from the shredder.
That’s patently false, according to https://www.findmyelectric.com/blog/tesla-battery-replacement-cost-explained/#:~:text=Absolutely.,will likely also be similar.
My 2013 Model S has 235,000 miles on it and still l drives like it’s brand new. I haven’t yet had to replace the battery pack but when that day comes, it will almost certainly be worth the cost.
Says it’s true
Here is the link where Sandy Munroe determined the Model Y pack is non repairable and it includes Elon Musk’s reply tweet saying the pack should be seen as “high grade ore”.
Friend of mine bought an EV. Didn’t even last a month. He landed in a tree.
I’m sure if we spend enough time working on it, we can figure out how this is all OPEC’s fault. /s (jeeze tho I hope your friend was okay!)
Probably turned off traction control and floored it. EVs have some pretty solid acceleration and weight a bit more than their ICE counterparts.
Nope, he drove 80km/h with traction control, but lost consciousness somehow. No lines on the road (out in the German countryside) so no line assist. Car went straight when there was a very mild turn, so he drove off the road, into some uphill ridge whi h launched him, woke up when flying through the air after which he landed in a bunch of trees. This is where he landed. He luckily only had 4 broken ribs.
Handing out driving licences like they were sweets instead of actually testing people’s ability to drive, maybe?
This is often the issue. Not in this case though. He had his license for 24 years, while driving from the south of Germany to the Netherlands back and forth twice a month. He never had an accident before.
It can’t possibly be that. We have to abolish trees - that’s the real answer!
Will use 4x as much electricity though, ugh.
https://www.cleanenergyresourceteams.org/your-old-refrigerator-energy-hog
Anyone know of any refrigerators today that are as durable as older ones and have today’s efficiencies, but without the smart features and other junk?
Average refrigerator today still lasts 13 years though, and while they’re made cheaply they also are cheaper (at least as a portion percentage of the average paycheck).
https://reviewed.usatoday.com/dishwashers/features/ask-the-experts-why-dont-new-home-appliances-last
I’ve heard that in the US fridges are generally different, with stuff like active fans and nonsense like that. Is that true?
Because every fridge I’ve seen in Europe is mechanically extremely basic and I’ve literally never seen or even heard of one breaking. In my experience fridges are one of the only things that have remained phenomenally simple in design and extremely unlikely to break.
If someone told me their fridge broke, I’d genuinely assume they were lying. That’s how reliable they are.
I mean there’s so many different fridges you can buy but I’ve only heard of two dying. One was a compressor issue but that’s all I know about it. The other one was a valve or something went bad but with the help of youtube my brother was able to diagnose it and replace the part. Apparently that’s the most common failed part on at least that brand of fridges
Every LG and Samsung major appliance I’ve had has broken within 5 years.
Refrigerators, washing machines, and dryers.
Prior, I only ever had 80s era American tank energy hogs. Switched back to American brands in the last few years, so too soon to tell if they’ll work out better…
Here’s to hoping.
Oh, and having dealt with LG warranty for both electronics and major appliances, I’ll never buy another LG product that isn’t a monitor.
LG monitors are the only higher end LG product’s I’ve owned that have survived well past the warranty date.
Well there are evaporator fans in modern refrigerators in the US. They serve an important role though helping with defrosting, improving cooling efficiency, and evenness of cooling throughout the fridge.
https://refrigeratorguide.net/maximize-cooling-efficiency-best-refrigerator-evaporator/
Usually only very small refrigerators are without them now.
It is another point of failure though, but should be pretty easily repairable. I mean it’ll still be able to cool without the fan, but it’ll be running much more to try and compensate and keep things cool though.
If you know the YouTube channel technology connections, here’s a fun video of him messing around with a fanless style refrigerator:
Sub Zero, Thermador… High end refrigerators, just look at the price, we decided to forget the idea because of that.
The only durable ones are industrial refrigerators like they have at restaurants. Other than that, at least in the US, avoid Samsung and LG (have compressor issues) and buy American made (better build quality). But you’re looking at 10-15 years regardless. Some other notes:
- ice machines should be in the freezer, if you have one
- the fewer the features, the more reliable it is
- Maytag and Whirlpool are pretty reliable
I don’t know for the US market but for French/European market there is a database of the reliability and reparability of appliances brands.
Buy a chest freezer and convert it
Or buy a fancier chest freezer that can swap to a fridge with a button press
Got mine for Xmas 2 years ago, cost like 800 bucks? Bigger than a normal fridge, uses $2.78/month in electricity in freezer mode here in expensive electricity land
Downside: you have to dig for you shit. Upside: in the summer, good
I haven’t looked at the statistical data on this myself, but there’s something to be said for survivorship bias.
Can confirm. Use a fridge from 1974. 2 years ago thermostat failed. Replaced with digital one for $15. Now have a nice digital readout of the temps. Thing uses 180W 100W when running, less than bigger newer ones.
It’s even more ecological to keep it running since it still has the nasty ozone layer killing coolant that would partly evaporate when trashing it.
EDIT: 100W just checked the type plate.
Car manufacturers:
