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Your 1969 MG Midget is enormously polluting and a death trap in a crash. The turn signal is small and dim and barely visible to other motorists in bright sunlig
by avalys 3y ago
Your 1969 MG Midget is enormously polluting and a death trap in a crash. The turn signal is small and dim and barely visible to other motorists in bright sunlight. The ride sucks and the reason it’s easy to repair is there’s almost no interior structure or noise or thermal insulation to remove.
Over a 200,000 mile design lifetime, a modern car is way more reliable and way less work to repair than your MG Midget (by virtue of not breaking as often in the first place). Yes, today’s cars aren’t designed to be collector items that will sit and rot in a barn not being driven and get easily restored by amateurs in 50 years, but why should they be?
- akira2501 3y ago> a modern car is way more reliable and way less work to repair than your MG Midget Modern cars are often more work to repair. They're not particularly modular, and to the extent that they are, they often bury one module under several layers of others. It requires you to disconnect and move working parts and assemblies to uncover the broken one. Modern cars also use replaceable assemblies to speed up repairs, but it also means that even for small problems like a damaged wire in a harness, you often have to rip out the entire system it is "inside" of and replace it completely. The manufacturer has tons of ways of requiring you to "over replace" parts like this on a modern vehicle. > but why should they be? That's not an excuse to make them as disposable as they've become. You can't use "the climate" to blindly turn this into a black and white issue.
- User23 3y agoUsing climate change as justification for enshittification is a good way to feed denialist narratives.
- tourmalinetaco 3y agoNot to mention the irony that they use climate change to support polluting the environment with waste.
- m463 3y agoI think a better example might be a similar era john deere tractor. It was designed to replace expensive human labor and was designed to be simple and to be fixed. I also wonder about the original humvee, which I think was designed to be "user" serviced in the field.
- kazinator 3y agoMost modern cars will be in the landfill while that 1969 MG is still running. The disposability has to be factored into the environmental impact.
- froggit 3y ago> Most modern cars will be in the landfill while that 1969 MG is still running. Most MGs have been in the landfill for decades. It wouldn't be a surprise if this car had been sitting on blocks in a garage for decades. It's disingenuous to imply this car is still running for any reason other than because it has an owner that both wants to restore it and has the ability to do so. I suspect once its restored there's a fair chance that it'll park in a proper garage and be driven a couple of times a month on nice days during summer until the days start cooling off and it gets stored for winter.
- ecef9-8c0f-4374 3y agoand you can restore it. I use a leased company car, electric. My boss wanted to buy it first, but (according to him) the battery is irreplaceable. What ever that means.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- freetanga 3y ago>modern car is way more reliable and way less work to repair than your MG Midget My current car, which cannot be jumpstarted since it has a 48v battery for ignition and driving, and has dash-breaking OTA updates requiring a visit to the dealer or a proprietary 1200 usd software, and can be easy stolen by unplugging a headlight and feeding data into the common bus, would disagree.
- 3seashells 3y agoWrong. 2/3of a cars pollution are produced in production. The fuel consumption, polluting as it is, needs 20+years to catch up to the gestation environment damage of a car. Perverse as it sounds, old rusty clunkers are more environmental friendly.
- iudqnolq 3y agoThe numbers are a lot more complex than that. 2/3 is a plausible but not incontrovertible number for cars manufactured now. It's reasonable to assume the ratio is significantly worse for older cars.
- grantcox 3y agoThis sibling comment (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38439016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38439016) and google searches do not support your numbers - the CO2 impact of producing a car is roughly equivalent to one year's use, both are give-or-take 5 metric tons.
- tribaal 3y agoThe EPA seems to disagree with your numbers: https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/electric-vehicle-myths https://www.epa.gov/greenvehicles/electric-vehicle-myths
- AirMax98 3y agoIs it a death trap? Totally. But you could put a cat on it and dramatically reduce emissions. Consider also that initially producing a car is a major contributor to the environmental impact of a car.
- gpm 3y ago> Consider also that initially producing a car is a major contributor to the environmental impact of a car. Not if you drive it very much/for very long. See this graph [1] (from this article [2]) for instance. Note that they're evenly diving 173,151 miles across the 13 "years" (and don't ask me why they decided to make the x-axis "years"). And that's with a modern fuel efficient car, not some ancient one. [1] https://graphics.reuters.com/ELECTRIC-VEHICLES/EMISSIONS/rlgpdrmjmpo/chart.png https://graphics.reuters.com/ELECTRIC-VEHICLES/EMISSIONS/rlg... [2] https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/when-do-electric-vehicles-become-cleaner-than-gasoline-cars-2021-06-29/ https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/when-d...
- stefanlindbohm 3y agoLast I calculated this, a new car emits in the range of 8-15 tonnes CO2e (lower range for gas cars, upper for some EVs before they started guaranteeing renewable energy in production). Driving emissions numbers I remember off the top of my head are Swedish averages, around 2.5 tonnes CO2e per year (15000 km/year). This is averages for the Swedish car fleet, which tend to be smaller models and more modern than many countries. So: sure, production emissions are a big factor, but driving the car can easily win the efficiency savings back in a fraction of the car’s lifetime.
- graemep 3y agoYes, but not everyone drives an average amount. I drive about a third of that. On the other hand I also know people who drive a multiple of that.
- guenthert 3y agoNot sure about that. Some actual engineer may speak up, but it's my understanding that old engines were often run 'rich' and catalytic converters are somewhat fragile and won't last long if too much unburned fuel enters them.
- vGPU 3y agoGive it a rest. If you actually want to make an impact on pollution, stop buying cheap Chinese junk and campaign for a nuclear power plant.
- dang 3y agoCould you please stop posting swipes and personal attacks (e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38415461 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38415461)? You've been doing it repeatedly, unfortunately, and it's against the site guidelines. You can make your substantive points without any of that, so please do. If you wouldn't mind reviewing https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be grateful.
- HWR_14 3y agoThe reason it's easy to repair seems to be that the wire is accessible. That turns out to have nothing to do with LED vs. incandescent signals or the lack of a catalytic converter. It probably has nothing to do with crumple zones either. It may have something to do with the lack of cabin insulation, but I honestly doubt it. But the point being made about repairability (and simplicity) seems good.
- exabrial 3y agoYou missed the entire point of what I wrote.
- fuzzfactor 3y agoPlus the MG is not just considered a collector's item today, it was originally designed as a pleasure craft, not exclusively for transportation.