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I see a car as an appliance that should be replaced and recycled rather than fixed for significant issues. change my mind.
by nunez 5y ago
I see a car as an appliance that should be replaced and recycled rather than fixed for significant issues. change my mind.
- Bancakes 5y agoModern cars have reached their endgame for at least a decade. There is nothing to replace and recycle. There are no major upgrades. The whole point of electric vehicles is, excluding the battery, they have almost nothing to wear out relative ICE. The best way to upgrade a EV is to slap a modern battery pack in it like putting a 5000 mAh battery in a OEM-2500mAh phone.
- whatever1 5y agoHave you ever owned a car? The last car that I had to sell because I could not afford fixing had a $5,000 repair quote. Not because of the ice engine. Not because of the gasoline. Because the wire harness was corroded. Stop dreaming that electric cars do not need maintenance. Maybe not as regular maintenance as ice cars, but definitely they will be eoled in the same lifespan as ice cars.
- Bancakes 5y agoI have no idea how you rack up a $5000 bill despite regular maintenance. Was that a used sports car?
- flyinghamster 5y agoRust. In the northern US, we salt the bejeezus out of our roads in winter, and it eats our cars. Modern cars are far better in this regard, but not immune to salt cancer.
- hef19898 5y agoGiven age, that's easy enough if you include work.
- rascul 5y agoWiring harness is a real pain. Many shops won't even do it. The few that do can charge a premium.
- hef19898 5y agoI have a classic from '82. The wiring harness is a mess, at some point people all kind of accessories to the standard wiring, including a second switch for the main head lights and a totally illegal boat horn with a separate switch to turn it off. I figured out the horn and the head lights, since then I decided to not touch it as long as it works. The car has all of three fuses, no way to have a simpler harness. I once asked a garage, for what turned out to be a faulty relay, and I got a conservative estimate of 2k just for diagnostics. It took me almost two weekends to figure the relay out by sheer chance. Replacing, and diagnosing, a modern cars harness for 5k is actually quite reasonable if not even cheap. Especially since the harness rebuild means basically disassembling the majority of the car simply to get access.
- ripe 5y agoIt's true that carmakers have made self-repair inconvenient or impossible nowadays. But wear and tear impacts all cars operated in the real world, not just gasoline cars. An EV is not magical, just another type of vehicle. Its most frequent failure modes are still being discovered as we put more miles on it and gain experience. Source: work in the automotive manufacturing industry.
- MathMonkeyMan 5y agoIt's not your car, it's mine.
- simfree 5y agoThe mindset of a person that leases a car :D In certain situations (eg: the California Fiat 500e leases, where you paid nearly nothing due to tax credits over 3 years) the math can work, but outside of financial engineering from beneficial state and federal tax incentives the upfront cost of the car or the monthly payments plus the increased insurance cost (due to needing to carry full replacement coverage) means the lifetime cost of ownership doesnt pencil out.
- simfree 5y agoA large chunk of semi-precious metals with thousands of parts, significant assembly labor and noteworthy cost that often takes years of the median income to pay for should be near disposable when significant issues crop up? Good luck with that one buddy. Cars ain't that cheap, significant repairs are often cheaper than the cost of a new vehicle.
- 411111111111111 5y agoThat's easily solved. Just raise the cost for the repairs! I wish I was joking...
- piva00 5y agoSignificant environmental impact as well. Disposable anything is the blight of the modern age, here in Sweden I see a small movement towards buying 2nd hand for most things and... It just makes sense for a lot of items: kitchen appliances, sewing machines, power tools, home theater speakers, etc. Reduce, reuse, recycle. Why have we forgotten the first 2 Rs? I learned this in school during the 90s, it's been 30 years and people still have a "disposable mindset". It's terrifying...
- nunez 5y agoYet a large percentage of Americans are perfectly fine with this model for iPhones through the iPhone Upgrade Program and independent carrier upgrade programs. The cost-of-entry should be high, but with a high production rate, aggressive recycling and a consistent user experience, the cost-to-stay should be minimal. Car terminally breaks? Replace it with another one, and recycle the original to make a new one for someone else. Minimal (ideally zero) waste, minimal impact on the environment, easier for all parties (customer is waiting at-most a few days for a new car; manufacturer spends time servicing lower-impact issues that could be addressed remotely at customer's homes; insurance payouts are less complicated since the resolution matrix is smaller), and significantly safer (new car that's known-good vs a repaired car with unpredictable failure modes due to alteration)
- simfree 5y agoRecycling ie expensive and inefficient. Reducing what we use and reusing what we have is the most environmentally friendly option. Plastics, leather, cloth, rubber printed circuit boards and such require significant labor to separate from eachother, and even if that labor is already done the cost to recycle it is higher than using virgin materials, and the result is lower quality.
- bayindirh 5y agoDo you change your appliances when any of their medium sized yet replaceable components break? If yes, what's the cost of recycling said unit and raw material recovery ratio when compared to changing the said part and continue using it? Using items for a longer time by maintaining them is better for environment.
- nunez 5y agoif i could, i would. that's a warranty is for, IMO.