Technology

forever cars no make profit line go up

Planned obsolence should be illegal

Like the new LED lightbulbs. Buy one now and they last a year or so. I bought one of them WAY back when they were brand new and horribly expensive and the damn thing still works just fine.

Companies can't stand new technologies that just work. They have to build in planned obsolescence. See also: smartphones, especially iTrash that make you buy a new one every year or two because updates slow them down.

Spoiler: They won't.

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.

With so many fewer moving parts compared to an internal combustion engine, yes, EVs could be durable enough to be handed down from generation to generation. Just keep replacing the few moving parts that wear out. Worn interiors can be refreshed. Electronics are modules that can be replaced with updated versions.

What we have to look out for here though is this overall trend of 'rent everything own nothing', though. Car companies might try to make vehicles lease-only, so you have all the responsibilities of ownership but none of the benefits of ownership, and it's never paid off, you just pay forever.

All cars could last a lot longer if people kept maintaining them and - importantly - didn't damage them. Electric cars are not going to be immune to this, I can't see them lasting much longer on average than ICE cars.

Keep in mind that even when you change out the engine for something with less parts the rest of the car still remains and contains things which will eventually cause issues. For example I bought a cheap van a few months ago and here's some of the reasons it was cheap that are not ICE specific:

• Steering wheel lock mechanism sticking
• Air distribution flap cables kinked/binding so A/C only blew at feet
• Central locking on side door sticking
• Rear shocks leaking
• Front strut mount bushings worn
• Head unit not functioning

Presumably the previous owner just didn't want to spend the money on fixing these issues as they arose, and eventually it added up into a lot of potential expense (if you have to pay someone to fix it for you) and more reasons to sell the car. Such behaviour seems pretty common in my experience and I fully expect it to continue with EVs. It'll be hard enough to get people to even maintain their brakes and change the motor coolant considering the natural reluctance of people to spend money on maintenance and this unfortunately prevalent idea that EVs don't need it.

Funnily enough the main ICE specific problem with that van was just as much an electrical issue as part of the petrol engine - an intermittent secondary air injection error code which ended up being down to a combination of a sticking valve and a fuse with a hairline crack causing an intermittent connection.

Friend of mine bought an EV. Didn't even last a month. He landed in a tree.

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?

What about it's batteries?

They are still chemical so they wouldn't last forever.

Car manufacturers:

I've been taught that capitalism is all about innovation... So I'm sure the perfect long life car is just around the corner, they wouldn't actually just build crappy cars just to force us in a never ending cycle of consumerism, right?... Right?

/S ... in case it wasn't on the nose enough

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.

Surely the free market and competition will deliver what customers want, right? ... Right?!?

I mean most things can, it just isn't 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.

Its really worth reading the whole Article. Im looking forward to long lasting EVs, but I really fear that, what the author also described in his article, may come true. I think we will see that car manufacturers will start to act like hardware company's and start to force you to regularly buy a new car by making your car incompatible to new features or by designing it to fail after a few years.

I bet smartphones could last 3 or 4 years even if companies let them 😏

so do most electronics.

but you know, line must go up.

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?