Surely the free market and competition will deliver what customers want, right? … Right?!?
Good luck with that. Planned obsolescence is a key ingredient in capitalism. I mean what better way to make line go up than to turn a one-time purchase into a repeat purchase? This shareholders and executives will never be able to step on the working class if they can’t gouge customers. Won’t anyone think of the shareholders?
As soon as a car company figures out autonomous taxis you will see them go super modular for repairability
It will be too profitable
My family bought an electric forklift for their factory in the early 90s. I think it is a Yale.
My sister has since taken over the forklift for her company and she has only replaced the batteries and the controller once.
These things are cheap to replace and not as much of a mystery as ICE engines.
I am seeing people replace old Prius hybrid batteries themselves with basic tools now.
I think the only thing I would be concern about is the crash safety for cars. Newer cars are safer. I think that would be the only draw to buy a newer vehicle.
I replaced the main battery in a Gen1 Prius. Fiddly. Had to get a strong buddy to help lift it in and out of the car, but we did it in a long weekend. A full set of ‘used but tested’ cells cost something like $750 but that was probably 8 years ago.
Exactly. Plus the newer cells are more efficient and longer-lasting. You pretty much upgraded your vehicle.
Actually the low cost part of this was that they weren’t upgraded cells. Just tested-good cells from other battery packs. Most of the time it’s just a couple cells in the bigger battery that have issues, and they take those out of the pool and make a good amount of $$$ because we were required to send back all of our cells. Assuming that of the 26 (iirc) cells that 3 or 4 were bad that’s a big profit margin for sure. The car worked great after swapping them out.
That’s awesome. This is such a simple hack.
I was going to scoff at the Prius…the battery is only 1500$.
I need a Prius frame in an El Camino body.
I’m sure someone has a kit for that.
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
Sub Zero, Thermador… High end refrigerators, just look at the price, we decided to forget the idea because of that.
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’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.
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:
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.
I think Samsung is generally considered trash now. I certainly will never buy any of their “smart” objects either, especially not an ad-ridden TV.
I can confirm Samsung appliances are complete trash. Every single one I’ve owned has either died or had a non-replaceable part fail within a couple years. We had a Samsung fridge at one point and one of the door switches failed. No big deal right, easy to replace? No, apparently Samsung used some kind of custom switch instead of the bog standard cherry contact switch that basically everything and everyone has used for decades, and it’s no longer being manufactured.
My dad bought me a ridiculously expensive (like $400) Samsung vacuum that I loved. It was strong, it came apart in really cool ways to make it versatile, etc.
It failed in less than a year.
The $60 Walmart special Bissell that I went and bought to replace it lasted for 8.5 years before the motor burned out (I screwed up and it got too much pet hair in it). I bought the same one again and it’s going on 5+ years with no issues.
Samsung certainly seem very aware of return window timing. 8.5 years is much better!
I wish some of this stuff was more standardized. In an ideal world one should be able to just replace a motor and keep on going. (Like without needing to learn any wiring and so on.)
After some decades they just become so incredibly gross no one without a hazmat suit would try cleaning it again, so they’re replaced.
We have a refrigerator from the '80s that runs like a champ.
Solved the energy problem by putting solar panels on the roof.
I haven’t looked at the statistical data on this myself, but there’s something to be said for survivorship bias.
Not to mention those old fridges are Horribly inefficient on energy
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
180W100W 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.
My grandparents had one of those old locking fridges from the 50s or so. It weighed like a metric ton, but that fucker NEVER broke.
Planned obsolence should be illegal
Won’t anybody think of the poor shareholders? Planned obsolescence is what keeps this whole system running.
I’m a shareholder of $AMD because they worked with Framework to release a modular laptop GPU
Support companies that support right to repair
This is why I want an Onvo with battery swap over a Tesla… Everyone makes fun of me for it, but nobody realizes that if you swap the battery about once a year, then you’re able to preserve the life of your vehicle.
God that’s a pet peeve of mine, people who think they’re the sole component about why something works, when what’s working works IN SPITE of them.
Shareholders definitely qualify.
I think people need to start being educated about how their climate influences how they can use the electric car. Many people know if they live by the sea or where roads are salted that corrosion is an issue. But people might not be aware that with some EVs, they should leave it plugged in if they’re in an extreme climate, so the car can air condition or heat the battery. I caused some battery degradation to my Volt because I wasn’t able to leave it plugged in living in Tucson.
That is too general of a statement. I have three EVs in my family, none of them do any temp condition of the battery just by being plugged in. However, EVCC turns off the wallbox when they reach 75% SoC and there is no appointment that day in our shared calendar. Sitting at high SoCs kills batteries, especially in warm climates.
You have a point; some EVs like the Leaf don’t even have conditioning. The Volt does have active conditioning, and being a PHEV instead of a BEV has battery charge and discharge limits which were limited by the factory to preserve longevity at the expense of being able to charge to a true 100%. If extra range is needed the ICE is activated instead of stressing the traction battery.
Have you ever been driven the Desert Bus from Tucson to Las Vegas on that Genesis game?
Obviously they wont “let” them. Why would they ever do that? They have to be made to do it. But I hope i’m wrong, we will see.
Seriously, no one is going to mention “Right To Repair”? If this was law, and companies had to divulge how there stuff worked and was assembled, as well as sell parts, things would last longer. If every trade zone had a repairablity index, competition would make things last longer still.
States have had no trouble passing and enforcing IP law that allows companies to get away with this. Reverse engineering would be the norm for closed source anything to the point it would be made irrelevant if companies didn’t have the overwhelming weight of the legal system on their side to shut down anyone who dares try open up access to their designs.
Right to repair is great, but we are fighting against the entire weight of the entrenched ruling class to get it passed. It’s going to take a lot of activism, and even then it’s almost certainly going to be watered down and cater to large corporations when it does pass. We need to keep the pressure on them.
I think the EU will be first to role it out at and scale. Like USB-C device power standardization.
It’s going to take effective strategy, because a linear attack on a stronger adversary is worse than waiting.
If this was law, and companies had to divulge how there stuff worked and was assembled, as well as sell parts, things would last longer.
I’m all for it but I think you’re being a bit too optimistic. If we had the right to repair then the prices of repair kits and materials is going to go up most likely. I can think of a few other ways they can make that system obnoxious too.
It’s like everything else. Yeah, the general systems in place could be greatly improved but ultimately the majority of the issues lie with the people at the top who refuse to let us have good things. No matter what laws are passed they will find a way to profit at any cost. The shareholders behind massive corporations are the first priority because no solution we create will work as efficiently as it can unless they are out of the picture.
Regulations can work. Latest is EU’s USB-C phone/laptop/tablet standardization. It’s great! No more crazy range of different laptop power supplies.
Some stuff is pretty much as I want already. Henry vacuum cleaners for example. Tough as nails and easy to get parts and help for. Framework laptop and fair phone aim to be good for repair and upgradablity.
France repairablity index can be rolled out further field.
Things used to be more repairable and last longer. We can reverse the trend down. No need to despair.
It would be wonder if they last forever and easly could be repaired. Making it better to keep the car then buy a new one. It just need to be upgradedable to the latest standards that might be more safe, efficient and agree with current law.
But I am pretty that would never exist - too hard.
There’s not much room for improvement in terms of efficiency for EVs, except maybe lower rolling resistance tyres and better aero. You generally have to replace the whole car for better aero though unless you don’t mind having some bolt on mods 😂
Ok, but it might be in other areas. Example lets see someone invent very high efficiently on solar panels with no weight at all. Or lets get rid of rubber wheels and do sifi so the car can hover over the road.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
Batteries capacity per m^3 and/or per KG is improving over time though, so that’s where the main reason to upgrade an EV would come from.
Electric motors can last a really long time, assuming no defects, they should outlast the battery by a Longshot.
That leaves the battery, and an LFP battery should also last a hell of a long time, probably a decent way into a million km before you have degraded to about 80%.
If you got those key items lasting, then it just depends on how well the rest of the car holds up, but replacing small parts while the motors and battery works is probably always going to be more cost effective.
The problem is the battery is a wildcard still.
We know how long those LFP batteries should last in a car, but they’re also pretty are in cars and we don’t have that real world data yet.
I also fear that OEMs will still gouge us on replacement batteries 15 - 20 years from now when costs are even lower and replacing the battery shouldn’t be so expensive.
There’s an old expression: Any idiot can build a bridge that stands, but it takes an engineer to build a bridge that barely stands.
If a car has a warranty of 10 years, it will last 11 years.
Any idiot can build a bridge that stands, but it takes an engineer to build a bridge that barely stands.
Oof.
In the defense of engineers, they are usually trying to optimize around a few more variables than ability to stand. Cost is a big one.
If a car has a warranty of 10 years, it will last 11 years.
…If it’s well engineered.
You don’t need to defend the engineers.
The expression is saying that engineers build bridges that are efficient and cost effective.
Although I do believe the full quote ends with “bridge that almost collapses”, which would make it more clear.
But battery cells don’t just fail after a specific time. Maybe a component in the battery will like a switch or gasket though.
Motors are highly resilient as well.
I’m not as sure about the motors, but I really am optimistic on the LFP batteries.
The battery doesn’t have to fail for the car to be useless. One of those circuit boards that holds it all together goes and it’s “whoops, we don’t make that any more”.
Sounds like we might need some new regulations around parts availability & stocking up before subcomponents go obsolete.
At some point it becomes an environmental thing just as much as a consumer protection thing.
So just like a regular car.
Indeed just like a regular car.
If cars lasted forever, they’d all go out of business within 20 years.
“Unlike gas-powered engines—which are made up of thousands of parts that shift against one other—a typical EV has only a few dozen moving parts. That means lessdamage and maintenance, making it easier and cheaper to keep a car on the road well past the approximately 200,000-mile average lifespan of a gas-powered vehicle. And EVs are only getting better. “There are certain technologies that are coming down the pipeline that will get us toward that million-mile EV,” Scott Moura, a civil and environmental engineer at UC Berkeley, told me. That many miles would cover the average American driver for 74 years. The first EV you buy could be the last car you ever need to purchase.“
No way a car would last me and my family 74 years. First year I owned my car I put on almost 35k. Was driving 100 miles back and forth to work at that time. We typically take a road trip from colorado to near Vermont every year for a vacation.
A lot of midwesterns will drive 14 hours to get some where
Sure, there’s always going to be outliers. Most people live and work in the same metropolitan area though - they’re not driving 50,000km+ a year. Besides, having a vehicle with 5 times the effective lifetime is going to be a big win regardless of how much you drive it.
At best case 60 miles an hour… Your commute was more than 90 mins? Ugh. That’s awful.
You weren’t clear if that was round trip or not, so possibly more than 180 mins? How did you find time to sleep!?
Round trip was 100 miles every day. This was rural Ohio driving to Columbus so it was not to bad 2 and 4 lane roads till you hit the city most of them time. If we got a lot of snowfall it could super suck but I was from NE Ohio so most of the time it was not that much white knuckle driving. You just listen to a lot of audiobooks and podcasts or call some friends on your hour or so drive home
In the San Francisco Bay Area, it’s not uncommon for people that work here but can’t afford to live here to have commutes of over an hour with good traffic (2+ hours with heavy traffic) each way. That’s the case in a few major metro areas in countries like the USA and Australia.
Yeah Bay Area and LA traffic is next level. My condolences to those souls who make that drive every day
My commute in the Bay Area is 15-20 mins without traffic, but it can be 50 minutes if there’s some incident on the 101 or if I accidentally try to commute during the highest peak period.
I’d love to take a train to work, and I used to take Caltrain every day, but it’s just not feasible where I live now.
I think LA is even worse than the Bay.
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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.
“Why do you hate freedom? And America? And puppies? And apple pie?” -Republicans, probably
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.
I think modern safety standards alone would cost a few hundred million in research, or make it necessary to start from an existing donar car to make the type of thing I’m dreaming of.
I doubt a modern manufacturer would want to partner with a company designed to make basic but everlasting vehicles, so the imaginary billionaire would probably need to buy up whatever car the engineers want to start from in bulk.
Makes sense. That is why all those Japanese carmakers went bankrupt and diesal hasn’t been a thing since the 1950s.
I mean most things can, it just isn’t profitable…
And few people want to work for free or want put aside too much of there personal wealth to help people for things that don’t seem critical (like healthcare for example which has a lot of nonprofit activities).
I hope OpenSource keeps takening off in the field. Communalize the engineering results so we advance together, and lower the cost of manufacturing with diy/small scale manufacturing and maybe we can get better things at costs more can afford without enslaving people.
Planned Obsolescence, baby!
That said, we might be able to make industrial scale recycling an economically efficient activity if we build more durable goods with a longer lifecycle and limit the availability of new territory to strip mine and abandon.
So much of our “cheap” access to minerals and fossil fuels boils down to valuing unimproved real estate as at zero dollars and ignoring the enormous waste produced during the extraction process. Properly accounting for the destruction of undeveloped real estate and the emissions/waste created during industrial processing could dramatically improve how much waste we produce and - consequently - how long our durable goods last.
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But ending capitalism to make good products that satisfy user need kills 100 zillion people.
But it’s also very gay, so it’s probably worth it.
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power density just needs to grow until someone can easily kit-swap a range of battery and motor options into any platform - then we can ev-ify whatever we want to drive around.
After ~20-30 years, rubber gaskets and seals and cable insulation start failing. Plastic becomes brittle, especially if exposed to the sun. How do they solve this problem?
Modularity of construction, so that rubber components can be replaced without scrapping the whole vehicle. Reducing reliance on plastic parts, or improving the ease and quality of plastic recycling, so that we can fix the exterior components without sacrificing the chassis and core parts.
I would think an electric vehicle would have quite a lot fewer things like gaskets and other seals since gas isn’t involved. Other than the normal wear and tear items like brakes, shocks, rotors, etc, battery repair would be the major thing I’d expect to need work. I imagine many mechanics aren’t trained to handle these, so they end up just replacing the whole unit. Obviously this is wasteful though but could be easily solved via training.
Pretty much this, diagnosing and fixing an electric motor is about as difficult as an alternator. Check signal, if good remove unit and swap (core gets remanufactured). With drive by wire and steer by wire and all that most things are equally modular. Gas pedal/throttle unit is pretty much a rheostat with a spring-loaded pedal, steering rack actuators, etc
Then you got ICE which becomes a ship of theseus. If you put enough hours on a combustion engine you go from the simple stuff like hoses and timing belts to having to replace piston rings, bearings, or even the cylinder heads if they get so worn out that they leak and fail compression tests
Spoken like someone that doesn’t work on cars.
Cars used to be much more modular. Newer models of car - much like newer models of cell phone - are deliberately engineered to be difficult to disassemble and fix, in order to compel people to replace the whole vehicle on a tighter time frame.
Yep. Like Tesla with its large castings. Makes the cars unrepairable. EV’s are the worst at this too.
It was a big reason for the surge in popularity of Japanese cars, during the 80s/90s. Honda Civics were famously very easy to mod, leading to the trend of “Rice Rocket” cheap urban street racing cars. That’s fallen off substantially in the last ten years, thanks to Japanese companies becoming infested with Wall Street / McKinley Consultant profit-chasers. Toyota and Hyundai might as well be run by the CEO of GM, the way they build their vehicles.
But a lot of the new Indian and Chinese vehicles are adhering to more traditional modular manufacturing style. They’re also having a really hard time getting their vehicles into Western dominated car-markets, for some curious reason.
Agreed 100 percent. I’ve never touched anything Chinese so I’m clueless there, but from what I’ve seen they are quite far ahead in the EV front. It’s a shame we don’t get the good stuff that Toyota still makes in Australia
True, but even electrical vehicles need lubrication, cooling, breaking fluids etc.
I’m expecting that, as EVs become more common, the car maintenance industry will catch up.
20-30 years for rubber…
You have way too much confidence. Have you owned a car for 10+ years? Almost everything rubber - especially within the suspension system needs replacement within the first 10 years of wear and tear.
My guess is the thermodynamics of a hot engine makes the rubber and plastic parts fail more quickly than they would otherwise.
Not really. There’s no excessive heat outside of the engine bay, but plenty of rubber and plastic. Heck, even my rubber grip on my toothbrush has turned into a mush after some years and it wasn’t even exposed to sunlight, as there are no windows in the bathroom. Organic matter decays, it’s just life.
The engine compartment is what I was addressing. There’s a number of gaskets where failure can destroy an engine etc vastly reducing the life span of the car. Like while it does matter if the tail lights go out you can often reroute a cable for something like that with little difficulty. You cannot reroute the critical degrading components in a combustion engine as easily.
Electric cars are estimated to have 2/3 the maintenance costs of ICE vehicles. Their lifespan is likely only limited by the frame whereas ICE is limited by the frame and the engine. Major fail points of older cars include timing belts and head gaskets.
