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.
this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2024
1 points (100.0% liked)
Technology
59672 readers
3514 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
I think we will see that car manufacturers will start to
They started to do this decades ago. Generally any given part in a car might be left unchanged for 5 or 6 model years before it gets changed, often for completely arbitrary reasons. For many cars, if it's over ten years old your only hope for a replacement part is the junkyard.
Or your local friendly 3D Printer mad scientist. Provided they have a metal and a plastic printer.
Yeah, options open up for some massively popular models or otherwise very well loved models. I got replacement gears for headlight motors for a 90s car with pop-up headlights, because people got tired of the OEM design wearing out so easily. I suspect someone trying to keep a Pontiac Aztek going might have a harder time finding enthusiasts keeping things alive.
Or, God forbid, a Chrysler PT Cruiser. I liked the look, shame their drivetrain is universally shit.
load more comments
(1 replies)
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?
Especially if it's made by Delco. Ask me how I know.
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.
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.
load more comments
(1 replies)
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.
load more comments
(8 replies)
I mean most things can, it just isn't profitable...
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.
load more comments
(4 replies)
load more comments
(1 replies)
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.
load more comments
(5 replies)
Same goes for light bulbs
Well yes, but the light would be very dim, if we are talking about incandescent bulbs.
Technology connections had an episode about it.
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.
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".
load more comments
(1 replies)
load more comments
(2 replies)
Last nearly forever? That needs to be broken down into details. Aren't batteries for EV limited to about 10 years of use? And they're a costly replacement?
A good solution would be to make EV batteries easily swappable instead of "charge stations"...
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://www.piped.video/watch?v=hNZy603as5w
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.
load more comments
(8 replies)
If the government regulates them*