> even cars are doing it Cars are not doing it. Like I said: provide a source that isn't your own suspicions and anecdata. I am a shareholder of an auto insur

> even cars are doing it Cars are not doing it. Like I said: provide a source that isn't your own suspicions and anecdata. I am a shareholder of an auto insurance company, and our actuaries would know if cars were doing it. There is a lot of very high-quality data about vehicle reliability, and major trends are very visible. Car companies are often stupid and/or evil, but they can't (and don't) precisely plan obsolescence. Car usage is a huge bell curve, with the average American driving ~15k miles/year, but large groups of people driving far less or far more. You couldn't possibly plan a car to fail at X years.