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.
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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.
Spoiler: They won’t.
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Exactly. I’m looking for a repairable EV, and so many kinda suck. A lot have big computer modules that control nearly everything, the battery pack uses bespoke parts that aren’t available from the manufacturer, etc. They probably need less maintenance, but they will need that maintenance eventually.
It’s disappointing the direction everything is going.
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While it’s true that EVs can be built with fewer moving parts in the drive system itself, and that companies could absolutely produce longer lasting vehicles if they focused on longevity, there are still a lot of parts of a vehicle that simply will not last beyond a certain point. The moving parts of an EV still cover everything in the suspension, wheels/brakes/steering, and a number of other components that are very costly to replace, not to mention the underlying frame/unibody of the vehicle itself being vulnerable to wear over time depending on the conditions it’s driven in. “The few moving parts that wear out” still covers a huge swath of a vehicle, even if you take the engine and transmission out of the equation.
Well-built EVs with a focus on longevity and repairability could extend the lifespan of the average people mover by a great deal, but at the end of the day cars will by nature eventually reach a point where the cost to repair some major core component becomes too great to justify, outside of rare or collectable cases.
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the one pain point would be the batteries, and those have no reason to not be easily maintainable and highly universal. They’re all modular and often times even using the same cell types.
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18650 of 21700 yeah.
Some of them use rather proprietary cells, the cybertruck for instance. Uses really large cells.
But generally it’s very easy to standardize it.
Probably not a bad thing if your primary concern is the environment.
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.
Batteries will be very expensive, however. The battery company is still quite greedy, eyeing for 5~10x growth in the near future - and that requires raising battery prices by at least twice.
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.
Another reason on my list why to never buy a Tesla.
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.
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”.
That says you cannot replace individual broken cells in a Tesla pack. That doesn’t say you can’t replace the pack
Aren’t all the cells worn in a ten year old battery?
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?
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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.
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.
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.
I have a 12y old car and have no such issues.
I guarantee you’ve become use to the slop in nearly all of the components.
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.
Especially if it’s made by Delco. Ask me how I know.
Friend of mine bought an EV. Didn’t even last a month. He landed in a tree.
Lemmy: Capitalism caused this.
In a socialist system cars would be tree proof.
“landed”?
Yeah, got launched when drifting off the road
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!)
He luckily only has 4 broken ribs.
Car manufacturers:
I would love to see a car company create a vehicle platform with battery replacements central to the design of the car. Make larger packs out of smaller units so their larger models (or simply longer range models) simply use more of the smaller pack units. Recycle old packs back into making newer ones to reduce the need to mine more materials.
Sure, charge me enough on the replacement to keep this cycle going. Buying a car you know will get battery (and therefore range) upgrades as time goes on is a no-brainer.
Imagine the goodwill and free word-of-mouth advertising you would receive if you went the extra mile and open sourced all the software for the vehicle and allowed users to modify it if they wanted. Make the car not look like dogshit and I imagine you’d do well.
This already exists.
Look up Nio. They already have fully automatic battery swapping stations for cars leasing the pack. You literally swap the whole pack instead of charging when it’s empty.
Takes less than 10 minutes
That is very interesting and their cars look appealing.
I think in the US, a company may have a better time selling the whole car including battery and still offering quick replacement when it comes time to upgrade.
I’m about to search more but do you happen to know if Nio is selling in the US?
Edit: Dang… Not selling in the US yet. And with these new tariffs it’s not looking good.
Yeah I agree, would be nice if the sold packs were as easy to replace as the leased ones are, but I doubt it.
I hope other makers come with a similar solution in the future. Being such a vital part and known to slowly degrade it should be easier to replace.
Nio
Ugh, looks like they designed their door handles just like Tesla did. Are EVs in general adopting that design standard? Cuz thanks I hate it.
Luckily no, not all do.
We specifically chose a car with normal handles because ice/snow is a bitch with the motorized/flush ones
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.
I bet smartphones could last 3 or 4 years even if companies let them 😏
What are you even doing, throwing your phone on the ground? How does your phone not last that long
I don’t get how people are replacing their phones so damn often. I buy used flagships that are usually a year or two old and rock them for another 4 years. Note 10+ here, and I’ve had it for around 3 years now, probably won’t upgrade for another 2 years, as it’s perfectly fine still.
Trade in value drops very rapidly for non-iphones after a year or two. You can often get 50% back on the purchase by trading in a functional phone.
If you buy a new phone every 2 years or every 4 years, it’s often about the same total out of pocket cost (with a lot of exceptions)
I’ve never paid more than $150 for a phone, and that’s recently for a 2 year old pixel.
I can keep multiple spares around for the price of a new phone.
I buy used, why would you pay 1k+ for a phone… that’s insanity.
Imagine being able to opt into an long term support branch when you feel your phone starting to lag, unlocked bootloader’s, and have user replaceable batteries.
Still mad about accidentally installing the newer version of iOS on my iPad pro. Such a meaningful feature to have security patches without slowdown from newer versions.
They don’t?
I’m still using my OnePlus 8t. Phones lifespans are fine. If you can’t keep your phone working for 4 years, that’s on you.
I see no reason to upgrade until support is dropped.
I used my 6t for 4 years but it started bootlooping and I needed it for 2fa codes every login on some applications for work. I bought a 10t after a couple of days. Funny enough now the 6t appears stable again, oh well it’s the household backup if any others spontaneously die
My Samsung a70 doesn’t get major software updates anymore. I’m OK with it. I’ll use this as long as possible.
For security reasons, don’t do that. Don’t use things older than the supported android version. It’s fucking Linux. It gets vulnerabilities.
I just got a new phone despite my previous one being totally fine because it’s no longer getting security updates. I’ve had it for ~4 years with no issues, so I got a Pixel for longer security updates.
So yeah, they totally could last longer if they kept supporting them.
Wait, are you saying my phone should last less time than it does?
My current phone is from 2017.
so do most electronics.
but you know, line must go up.
This is basically like saying combustion vehicles could last nearly forever if you replaced the engine every now and then
I mean…they can, you just refresh the motor. Tons of ICE vehicles out there with 400-500k miles on them. Hell most semi trucks have millions of miles on them.
A rebuild every x00,000 miles on a Toyota sounds nicer than paying the price of a new pilot every 100,000 miles tbh. Computers don’t last though and emissions have made it a huge pain to fix on older cars. Nothing against emissions it’s a necessary evil.
New pilot? I dunno what any of this means
Honda pilot. I don’t know how to answer vague questions.😅
I am thinking of doing that when my civic should be legally declared dead. With the insanity that is new car prices and insurance for new cars plus the vanished used car market it just isn’t worth it. I want an EV but things have to go back to normal before that happens
It’s easy to do, and engines don’t cost much on ebay.
Fortunately Honda makes vehicles that are very durable, so it’s not like everything dies at the same age of the engine.
“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
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
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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?
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