26 ms·

So this article implies that a number of things that we buy previously were built to last longer, and indeed did last longer. The first few examples are kitchen

So this article implies that a number of things that we buy previously were built to last longer, and indeed did last longer. The first few examples are kitchen appliances. In this case I don't really know, but I'm at least willing to listen. Ultimately the evidence is people responding to a thread on Twitter where he solicited complaints. Not so compelling. But then he mentions a "hybrid sedan". Here I'm aware of the data. It's not close. Modern cars are much, much more reliable and durable than ones built at any time in the past. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/automobiles/as-cars-are-kept-longer-200000-is-new-100000.html?_r=2&ref=business&pagewanted=all& https://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/automobiles/as-cars-are-k... [1] https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2021-us-vehicle-dependability-study-vds https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2021-us-vehi...

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
irjustin 3y ago
> Modern cars are much, much more reliable and durable than ones built at any time in the past. Forget "durability" - safety is paramount. Those old cars were tanks, simpler, last longer and easier to repair but absolute death traps and dump smog. [Edit] Guess they didn't last longer, either way I'm happy to leave behind the cars of yester-year... even the 90's a bit sketch (though WAYYYY better).
- woopwoop 3y ago
  They were simpler and easier to repair, but they absolutely did not last longer.
  - edrxty 3y ago
    On average they didn't (oh no, that repair costs more than the "car is worth" as if that's a metric that actually means anything) but it was far easier to keep one running indefinitely. You could take an engine to a small machine shop and get the head and block resurfaced, valves reamed and cylinders lapped. Without any electronics to fail it was just a block of metal that was slowly losing material and a quick hit with a file could even out any imperfections leaving it like new, just with very slightly more displacement. Modern engines are way more reliable because they have coatings and materials that will last nearly indefinitely in most parts of the engine but they're built on proprietary sensors and electronics that need a steady stream of replacements and secret software to debug. We could make cars last indefinitely from a supply chain perspective, but commoditizing software and electronics would make them very marginally more expensive. We absolutely can't have that because, drum roll for the 1000th time, 99% of the population doesn't give a flying fuck and wants cheap shit at all costs.
    - lawgimenez 3y ago
      As someone who drives an “old” Honda 2006, I’m surprised that this machine is still running very good. I could just take it to my local shop and had it fixed in 1-2 days. Based on my logs, I took the car for repair on average of 3-4 times a year. I am looking to purchase a new family vehicle in the future but with all the softwares, screens, and fancy stuffs I am not sure if I liked it. Anyone feels this way?
      - Baeocystin 3y ago
        I really wish there was a new car that I wanted to buy, because my 1998 Jeep isn't getting any younger. But holy crap is the modern car a dumpster fire of shit from a UI perspective. Although it looks like at least some manufacturers are starting to take note: https://futurism.com/the-byte/car-touchscreens-buttons-back https://futurism.com/the-byte/car-touchscreens-buttons-back
        a_t48 3y ago
        My car has physical buttons for climate control, volume, lights, etc but also a nice sized touch screen for CarPlay. I got the last year before VW took away the steering wheel buttons with capacitive replacements, though it sounds like they too are waking that back.
        lawgimenez 3y ago
        Yes that article sums up my feelings on the modern car. But my main concern are the repairs 5-10 years from now. It’s crazy to think that a car would be recalled by just some software glitch if that’s what I read is correct.
      - dehrmann 3y ago
        > I’m surprised that this machine is still running very good I'm not. It's a Honda.
        dl9999 3y ago
        This isn't specifically about Honda quality, but I think it's a nice Honda anecdote. My wife bought a used Accord before we got married. Eventually it died on the highway and we had it towed to the dealer. The engine needed to be replaced because of the failure of a part that had been recalled (when it was owned by the previous owner) had not been replaced. Since it was due to a recalled part, Honda replaced the engine for the price of the oil. We bought Hondas for the next 20 years after that. We still own a 2012 Accord that my son is running into the ground. Our current car is a Volvo, lots of nice features, but I think our next will be a Honda.
  - rpcope1 3y ago
    Depends what era of cars we're talking. There's a ton of stuff from the 90s and 2000s like GM trucks, that I strongly suspect will be on the road longer and in greater numbers than stuff 10 years newer. The mid to late 90s and early 2000's seems to be the sweet spot where fuel injection and simple electronic ignition, and stuff using older designs (engine's, etc.) that had to be built heavier, combined with better metallurgy, better oils, better gas, and so on, meant that the vehicles, when taken care reasonably, would go well past a quarter million miles. There's a ton of stuff now, that given much weird crap is on there and how much stuff is done to squeeze every last MPG out (like a lot of GDI setups, auto start/stop, transmissions that pull into neutral automatically at a stop, etc.) that I really doubt will make it as far. Even as far as repairability, a 90's 4L60E or 4L80 can be repaired way, way more easier by way more people, in an economic fashion than a lot of later transmissions (that you may as well just throw away). I'm sure this holds across other brands too; Volvos come to mind, as the older rear wheel drive red block cars were certainly far better built, more reliability, and had an unbelievably better lifespan than the absolute garbage Volvo has put out after Ford bought them.
- somewhat_drunk 3y ago
  They didn't last longer. https://auto.howstuffworks.com/under-the-hood/diagnosing-car-problems/mechanical/cars-less-problematic.htm https://auto.howstuffworks.com/under-the-hood/diagnosing-car...
  - fipar 3y ago
    Well, they do (present tense) last longer in the sense that they’re still around and working, which of course doesn’t mean newer cars are worse. It’s a bit like saying someone who’s 70 lives longer than someone who’s 7. I think newer cars seem to be more reliable but older cars probably lasted longer than you think, it’s just that your view is skewed due to the market you’re used to (reading your link, while a million miles is a lot, though not unheard of for a taxi, the mention of 17 years as if that’s and old car is something I find surprising. It’s common where I live to see cars from the 60s or 70s still being driven. And I don’t mean maintained classics (though those exist too), I mean just old rusty cars that still work. All this to say that while you’re most likely right about newer cars being more reliable (and they’re certainly safer, which is more important), that doesn’t mean older cars stopped working after 20 or 30 years, it just seems your view is skewed because you live in a place where a 17yo car is considered old.
    - ProcNetDev 3y ago
      The population of old cars that you see driving around today is very different from the population of old cars that ever existed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
      - fipar 3y ago
        I didn’t mean to say all old cars lasted longer but I can see that it came out that way. I just wanted to point out that some are still around, and further, the US is probably not the best market for a study on car lifetime since it seems most people change their cars when they’re still far from being EOL.
    - pixl97 3y ago
- pkdpic 3y ago
  Yeah those old timey pedestrians didn't stand a chance. Seriously though good point I think, but what about crumple zones?
xyzzy123 3y ago
For those goods which are in fact more durable and reliable (e.g. modern cars) the downside tends to be that they are less repairable.
- samstave 3y ago
  [flagged]
eduction 3y ago
Totally irrelevant links — the assertion was about hybrid cars, those links speak to cars overall. The Toyota Prius debuted in the US in 2000. I’d argue 23 years is simply not sufficient to make an argument about long term reliability—particularly given that sales took a while to ramp, and any issues in, say, the first 10 years are likely to be dismissed as teething problems.
- woopwoop 3y ago
  The article was about consumer goods in general, so data about cars overall is more relevant than a single brand. Nonetheless, the Toyota Prius is, by reputation, a very reliable car. Here a used car website used it's data to estimate car model's lifespan, finding that a Toyota Prius has a potential lifespan of 250000 miles, much greater than anything from the 1980s. https://www.thestreet.com/personal-finance/cars-that-will-last-longest#gid=ci02b21239600026b1&pid=6-tahoe-chevy https://www.thestreet.com/personal-finance/cars-that-will-la...
  - yesbut 3y ago
    Not to get too deep into this, in the 80s cars were crap. That is based only on my own personal experience. But I have no idea how reliable cars made 70 years ago were (like the kitchen appliance mentioned in the article). I've seen really old cars still on the road, but those are probably owned by collectors / people that take effort to preserve those types of cars.
    - conk 3y ago
      Cars made in the 40s and 50s were very unreliable, required significantly more maintenance than modern cars. You had to service things like breaker points, batteries and carburetors every few thousand miles. Most modern cars can go 10,000 miles between checkups and major components can go 100k+ miles with no work needed.
  - denton-scratch 3y ago
    In the UK, the Prius seems to be used very widely by taxi companies. In fact most of the Prius's I see are in taxi company livery. To get the best out of a Prius (or, I guess, any hybrid) you should drive it non-aggressively, avoiding steep accelleration and braking. That may have something to do with the longevity of the Prius. I've owned two Toyotas, neither ever broke down, and one of them saved my life (in a crash). If I were in the market for a car, I'd get a Toyota.
spzb 3y ago
There's also a survival bias in that we don't consider the appliances from yesteryear that packed up back when disco was king.
- pkdpic 3y ago
  That's the smartest possible counterpoint to all this, nicely counterpointed. This was a fun read and I agree in sentiment to the rage of all the crap from target that falls apart in 10 minutes but I feel like I've developed an ok sense if when I'm taking this risk and am less frustrated when something cheap fails. Essentially any time I buy anything but a book from Amazon or anything but cereal and vodka from Target. Ultimately I think the crapification of lowend consumer goods has just made me buy less crap, which feels good I think. I've also accepted a pretend scifi narrative in which the only kind of society that doesn't descend into anarchy is one where people are constantly buying and throwing away cheap crap. And as an aside I have one of those crazy juicers but I stopped using it because it scares my wife and smells like burning / ozone.
  - Brybry 3y ago
    Even some Amazon stuff is really good. I used a Kindle 2 e-reader daily for ~14 years and, aside from decreased battery life, it was still great. Sadly I eventually stepped on it one too many times and the screen cracked. I might fix it for ~$20 with ebay parts if I ever get bored enough.
- idontwantthis 3y ago
  Yeah this article would be a lot more interesting if there were a conspiracy to buy up all of the indestructible appliances made more than x decades ago. If they really were that much better then more of them would be around today.
  - coldtea 3y ago
    Not really, since most consumers just go for whatever has the more "features" and is marketed at them.
x0x0 3y ago
Well, the explanation that people are getting exactly the dirt-cheap shoddy crap they demand is correct. You can buy a nice burr grinder from a company that not only sells spare parts for at least 5 years after they stop selling the model, but who also shares youtube videos on how to disassemble and repair the grinder. Mine is 11.5 years old and I replaced the central gear when it stripped around year 7 or 8, after grinding 2-3 coffees a day, probably 150+ kg of coffee, for that time. However, it wasn't cheap, and people appear not to care. Baratza, btw.
- pixl97 3y ago
  I mean for myself buying a cheap burr grinder is probably all I'd ever need, that said I've never chased quality coffee and don't care about it much. For myself I do the 'harbor freight' tool buying method. I buy a cheap whatever first, and if it's something I find useful and demand higher quality then I more research into what quality is with at least some experience. This said, I've also had a lot of cheap tools that have effectively lasted far longer than expected so crap doesn't always fail fast.
  - 10729287 3y ago
    Lidl/Parkside here in Europe seems to be the perfect example. Never been disapointed by one of their cheap products. They're always performing and seems built to last. My little Parkside vacuum cleaner is still doing strong 10 years after I bought it while my 5yo expensive as hell Dyson operates intermittently now and is just screaming for a new battery every time I launch it. More expensive products are also prone to software tricks and planned obsolescence... and unfortunately sometimes just plain crap that capitalize on their good reputation from the past.
    - Freak_NL 3y ago
      Well… It depends. Lidl launched a range of good quality cordless tools under the Parkside Performance moniker last year. The 20V screwdriver and drill seem like solid pieces of work, and are holding up well in my tiny shop. Those are good, and I recommend these to anyone. But many of the plain Parkside branded tools are utter crap. The oscillating sander with exchangeable triangular, rectangular, and circular attachments I got was made of way to little material to be useful. The plastic struts for the attachments (the process of swapping those being horribly inefficient) partly melted with use. The Parkside drill press I have isn't too bad, but I had to fix a mechanical failure where the part which connects the manual up-down thingy to its gear just sheared off because it was a tiny rolled piece of metal sheet instead of a solid piece of 4mm diameter steel. I fixed that (replacing that bit with part of a bolt tapped into the axle) and it is doing fine now, but still.
spitfire 3y ago
> Modern cars are much, much more reliable and durable than ones built at any time in the past Bullshit. Mercedes-Benz W123.
- lastofthemojito 3y ago
  Which was contemporaneous with the Yugo, so the Yugo is also a reliable and durable car? Or is it possible that there have been better and worse cars since the dawn of auto manufacturing?
ggm 3y ago
I think your survivors bias thing is very true. I've used old things which would survive nuclear blast, and still have some. And, old things which were gimcrack rubbish and unusable. Some old plastics de-polymerised badly in heat. A lot of old chrome and tin plating corrodes. Bone handled cutlery is not designed for dishwashers. Sure, the mix master is going strong but it was gold plated when my mother in law got it. Same with the cast aluminium mincer. That said, I fixed a 24 year old magimix by replacing the motor starter, everything else is fine except its on its second polycarbonate bowl since dishwashers: now only washed by hand.
- mikrotikker 3y ago
  My Stihl shopvac finally crapped out. Not sure how old as it came with the house. I went to the Stihl shop to see if they had replacements and they asked me what museum I pulled it from. No replacement motor but still replacement filters so now it's a prefilter for my new Stihl shopvac.
  - ggm 3y ago
    Tried Stihl direct? In any case, a second life as a preclean isn't such a bad end. Or, you could use it to clean the filters on the new one and prolong its life.
coldtea 3y ago
>So this article implies that a number of things that we buy previously were built to last longer, and indeed did last longer Anecdotally, I've lost count of modern kitchen appliances such as blenders, coffee makers, cooking "processors", that have died on me. And not cheap either, basically mid-tier stuff. Any such device with extra digital "smarts" and a monitor in particular is a huge red flag. Whereas I still have some inherited such electric appliances from the 70s and 80s that still go strong (and whenever they did, they're totally fixable).
- chii 3y ago
  instead of buying home consumer appliances, i would elect to purchase appliances that are used in commercial kitchens or working restaurants. They often only buy long lasting equipment, and the market shows it. It's hella expensive, but that's what you pay for.
  - TrueSlacker0 3y ago
    I do this for my home, many of the standard, non mechanical items are the same price as one at a big box store but the quality is immensely better. We had a sandwich prep fridge at the house for a number of years and I loved it. But it was much louder and added about $30/month to the electric bill.
ahf8Aithaex7Nai 3y ago
Of course, cars and engines in particular are more durable today. This is due to technological progress. Cars weren't designed to be unreliable back then, they were unreliable because they couldn't do any better. Two or three years ago, I bought a pair of headphones for 200 euros that looked pretty high quality. They're now so broken that I have to hold them together with gaffer tape. Soon they'll be rotting (or not rotting) in some landfill. It's common knowledge that everyday objects are now deliberately produced in such a way that they don't last long. That's not a conspiracy theory.
- lawgimenez 3y ago
  Latest earphones from Apple has degraded considerably. My old Apple earphones with jack just died this year but it’s 5 years old. Right now, their earphones lightning won’t last a year anymore. I have been buying it yearly for 3 years now.
- fireflash38 3y ago
  I've got a pair of sennheiser headphones from 2011. Work just amazing, despite a decade+ of abuse. Only downside is the pleather on the ear caps wore off, but it's super minor. I bought another pair back in I want to say 2019, and it's been just OK. The inline mute broke, but everything else about them seems just as quality (no pleather ear caps tho - just fabric which I think is an improvement). In between those purchases, I've bought a handful of other headsets, all around 50-120$. They were universally crap. Either shit cables, shit comfort, or just wore out really fast. Anyway, long story short - you can get some lasting quality products. It's super hard to tell when a brand has sold out to the capitalism devil though.
ghusto 3y ago
> Modern cars are much, much more reliable and durable than ones built at any time in the past. I continue to buy older cars because this has been false for me everywhere I've experienced new cars (borrowed, friends, my own). Pointing out lack of data to support an argument that relies on anecdotal evidence is good practice. However: - The anecdotal evidence is strong amongst older people - Data not existing doesn't mean it _can't_ exist I suspect that younger people are just used to things not working, so they don't complain. Then there's the fact that there is no incentive for anyone else to show things could be better (except the old codgers like myself, but we're not a profitable demographic). I scour online auctions for old gear, because I know it'll work. Hi-Fi systems built in the 90s for example, were the panicle of hi-fi. Heck, I even have a CRT from _thirty years ago_ that still works like new (now think of your smart T.V. in thirty years). Forget that, is there anything you've bought new in the last _ten_ years that you still have?
- bouk 3y ago
  Of course the old cars you can still buy now are the reliable ones, because the unreliable ones have long been scrapped
  - ghusto 3y ago
    That, is an excellent point. However, the very reason I buy in them in the first place is that they proved themselves to me _at the time_. Believe it or not, what I'm saying is I never had a bad experience with cars from the 90s, in the 90s.
    - mikrotikker 3y ago
      The prices for 80s-90s 4wds like the Toyota LandCruiser and Nissan Patrols are climbing like crazy... Nissan even still make the 1990 model Patrol (GQ/Y60 frame) for the UN and Saudi Arabia.
    - mlrtime 3y ago
      You never owned a 90s Chrysler product I'm taking it? Absolute complete garbage.
julian_t 3y ago
Speaking of kitchen appliances, we need a new immersion blender and my wife wants a cordless one. The old corded one lasted nearly 20 years, but most cordless ones have non-replaceable batteries and so are going to become junk long before the mechanical parts wear out.
ssss11 3y ago
I was just talking to my wife the other day about smaller items that are not being built to last. You can clearly see in products these days the built in capitalism. We’ve reached a point where I wonder how much more they can milk it. Making things smaller, reducing quality of parts, reducing thickness or length of parts and so on… that day we had experienced: A board game where the plastic has been made thinner and thinner over years until the game really doesn’t function now. A game where you drop a marble in a cylinder on top of plastic rods that slot in sideways and the game is to remove the rods and whoever drops the marble loses… well these rods were so flimsy they didn’t hold the marble up.
LightBug1 3y ago
N=1 ... we're still running my mothers microwave, which she must have bought in the 1980's ... We could get rid of it ... but it just works. Hope we're not radiating ourselves! I couldn't imagine a modern microwave lasting even nearly that long. I'm also running a 2005 Toyota, and a 69 Bug ... cannot imagine any modern car doing the service they've done, and reliably so.
mikrotikker 3y ago
> Here I'm aware of the data. It's not close. Modern cars are much, much more reliable and durable than ones built at any time in the past Is... Is this a joke? My 1991 vehicle made before planned obsolescence has a few questions...
sandworm101 3y ago
Survivorship bias. People look at old things today and say stuff biult long ago lasted longer. But that is only because all the junk from then isnt around anymore. What we have now is only the most durable stuff. Want to see what stuff was like in the past? Try working with knives made without stainless steel, when not cleaning your kitchen knife immediately meant a rust blade the next day. All those classic cars still around today? We forget all the horrible junk cars that nobody ever bothered to preserve.
jesterson 3y ago
> Modern cars are much, much more reliable and durable than ones built at any time in the past May I know the timeframe and your experience on which you base the conclusion? Been driving for last 35 years. Every newer car is crappier in every possible way - comfort, speed, durability, quality, reliability. It's not some subjective observations - some 40-50 years ago automakers were accomodating customers, now they accommodate numerous limitations imposed by governments to make it "safer". And I am not even touching engine limitations thanks to which we have weak motors which roar like boeing at 5k rpm but still doesn't help to move car forward. Cars made in 70-80s easily work for 40 years, if managed properly and made by nissan, mercedes-benz, toyota and sorts. Good luck modern garbage to live slightly longer than warranty without majour issues.
- Klathmon 3y ago
  > limitations imposed by governments to make it "safer". You have scare quotes there for some reason, but by pretty much all accounts cars now are so much safer than before. Like to an insane amount, over a 50% reduction in chance of fatality since the 70s/80s. > we have weak motors which roar like boeing at 5k rpm but still doesn't help to move car forward. And again it's working. Efficiency has increased even more than safety, with new cars getting over double the fuel economy even accounting for the larger cars!
  - jesterson 3y ago
    I find it very wrong to attribute safety to a car rather than a driver. Sure, makers did good marketing selling general populace this notion. Safety cones from driver knowledge how to avoid dangerous situations and hedge risks. “Safety” comes from useless bells and whistles, which give impression of “intelligent” system. Bot sure what you mean under efficiency - at my books efficiency is how fast i can get from point A to B with minimal expense. Low engine volume cars lose it at every point
  - 8n4vidtmkvmk 3y ago
    Fuel economy at the expense of letting me accelerate it seems. I have to turn on sport mode to safely merge onto the highway.
detourdog 3y ago
I used my parents 30 year wedding present Maytag as a washing machine. It never really broke I just finally got a new one. I'm sure it was used from 1960 until about 1995.
Too 3y ago
From [1]: ”after three years of ownership” While I generally agree with you, that data isn’t very conclusive. JD powers also need to be read carefully to not put all problems in the same basket. Malfunctioning engine vs “Bluetooth pairing was laggy with my 8 year old android phone” can be counted in same basket if you don’t look carefully. This brings us to the next thing which is that both expectation and complexity on todays cars are thousand times higher than 20 years ago, both from customers and emission agencies. Given that, it’s amazing how well they still work. Often better than older models. This puts cars in its own exceptional category that is much more difficult to compare. Where’s a freakin juicer, a ballpoint pen or a pair of gloves has no additional expectations today compared to 1940. They just got worse.
limaoscarjuliet 3y ago
Top Gear had a few episodes with old vs new comparisons. Needless to say the not-so-old classics were destroyed by average modern cars quite often [1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw-zCsybNtg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw-zCsybNtg
thegrim33 3y ago
Wow, a cited source about modern vehicles being much more reliable, let's check it out! - I click the link; it's a press release from JD Power which I thought is pretty well known to be a corrupted institution that more or less just sells off awards to whichever manufacturers want to pay the most for them. Oh well, let's give it the benefit of the doubt and read the actual study which surely has data to back their assumptions. - The study isn't actually linked anywhere for me to review - There's a link to " learn more" about the study. I click it, and it's another press release about the study. It has a download button at the top, surely this must be for downloading the study. I click it, and it's a 1 page PDF of the press release with no actual details. - At this point I can click a link to go back to the original press release but nothing to actually read the dang study. All checks out I guess, modern cars are more reliable! Even if I did actually find the full "study" I can absolutely guess that it's entirely based on trash data like random surveys of consumers and would be near worthless without having a single real data point around how often cars/parts break down.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

irjustin 3y ago

> Modern cars are much, much more reliable and durable than ones built at any time in the past. Forget "durability" - safety is paramount. Those old cars were tanks, simpler, last longer and easier to repair but absolute death traps and dump smog. [Edit] Guess they didn't last longer, either way I'm happy to leave behind the cars of yester-year... even the 90's a bit sketch (though WAYYYY better).

woopwoop 3y ago
They were simpler and easier to repair, but they absolutely did not last longer.
- edrxty 3y ago
  On average they didn't (oh no, that repair costs more than the "car is worth" as if that's a metric that actually means anything) but it was far easier to keep one running indefinitely. You could take an engine to a small machine shop and get the head and block resurfaced, valves reamed and cylinders lapped. Without any electronics to fail it was just a block of metal that was slowly losing material and a quick hit with a file could even out any imperfections leaving it like new, just with very slightly more displacement. Modern engines are way more reliable because they have coatings and materials that will last nearly indefinitely in most parts of the engine but they're built on proprietary sensors and electronics that need a steady stream of replacements and secret software to debug. We could make cars last indefinitely from a supply chain perspective, but commoditizing software and electronics would make them very marginally more expensive. We absolutely can't have that because, drum roll for the 1000th time, 99% of the population doesn't give a flying fuck and wants cheap shit at all costs.
  - lawgimenez 3y ago
    As someone who drives an “old” Honda 2006, I’m surprised that this machine is still running very good. I could just take it to my local shop and had it fixed in 1-2 days. Based on my logs, I took the car for repair on average of 3-4 times a year. I am looking to purchase a new family vehicle in the future but with all the softwares, screens, and fancy stuffs I am not sure if I liked it. Anyone feels this way?
    - Baeocystin 3y ago
      I really wish there was a new car that I wanted to buy, because my 1998 Jeep isn't getting any younger. But holy crap is the modern car a dumpster fire of shit from a UI perspective. Although it looks like at least some manufacturers are starting to take note: https://futurism.com/the-byte/car-touchscreens-buttons-back https://futurism.com/the-byte/car-touchscreens-buttons-back
      - a_t48 3y ago
        My car has physical buttons for climate control, volume, lights, etc but also a nice sized touch screen for CarPlay. I got the last year before VW took away the steering wheel buttons with capacitive replacements, though it sounds like they too are waking that back.
      - lawgimenez 3y ago
        Yes that article sums up my feelings on the modern car. But my main concern are the repairs 5-10 years from now. It’s crazy to think that a car would be recalled by just some software glitch if that’s what I read is correct.
    - dehrmann 3y ago
      > I’m surprised that this machine is still running very good I'm not. It's a Honda.
      - dl9999 3y ago
        This isn't specifically about Honda quality, but I think it's a nice Honda anecdote. My wife bought a used Accord before we got married. Eventually it died on the highway and we had it towed to the dealer. The engine needed to be replaced because of the failure of a part that had been recalled (when it was owned by the previous owner) had not been replaced. Since it was due to a recalled part, Honda replaced the engine for the price of the oil. We bought Hondas for the next 20 years after that. We still own a 2012 Accord that my son is running into the ground. Our current car is a Volvo, lots of nice features, but I think our next will be a Honda.
- rpcope1 3y ago
  Depends what era of cars we're talking. There's a ton of stuff from the 90s and 2000s like GM trucks, that I strongly suspect will be on the road longer and in greater numbers than stuff 10 years newer. The mid to late 90s and early 2000's seems to be the sweet spot where fuel injection and simple electronic ignition, and stuff using older designs (engine's, etc.) that had to be built heavier, combined with better metallurgy, better oils, better gas, and so on, meant that the vehicles, when taken care reasonably, would go well past a quarter million miles. There's a ton of stuff now, that given much weird crap is on there and how much stuff is done to squeeze every last MPG out (like a lot of GDI setups, auto start/stop, transmissions that pull into neutral automatically at a stop, etc.) that I really doubt will make it as far. Even as far as repairability, a 90's 4L60E or 4L80 can be repaired way, way more easier by way more people, in an economic fashion than a lot of later transmissions (that you may as well just throw away). I'm sure this holds across other brands too; Volvos come to mind, as the older rear wheel drive red block cars were certainly far better built, more reliability, and had an unbelievably better lifespan than the absolute garbage Volvo has put out after Ford bought them.
somewhat_drunk 3y ago
They didn't last longer. https://auto.howstuffworks.com/under-the-hood/diagnosing-car-problems/mechanical/cars-less-problematic.htm https://auto.howstuffworks.com/under-the-hood/diagnosing-car...
- fipar 3y ago
  Well, they do (present tense) last longer in the sense that they’re still around and working, which of course doesn’t mean newer cars are worse. It’s a bit like saying someone who’s 70 lives longer than someone who’s 7. I think newer cars seem to be more reliable but older cars probably lasted longer than you think, it’s just that your view is skewed due to the market you’re used to (reading your link, while a million miles is a lot, though not unheard of for a taxi, the mention of 17 years as if that’s and old car is something I find surprising. It’s common where I live to see cars from the 60s or 70s still being driven. And I don’t mean maintained classics (though those exist too), I mean just old rusty cars that still work. All this to say that while you’re most likely right about newer cars being more reliable (and they’re certainly safer, which is more important), that doesn’t mean older cars stopped working after 20 or 30 years, it just seems your view is skewed because you live in a place where a 17yo car is considered old.
  - ProcNetDev 3y ago
    The population of old cars that you see driving around today is very different from the population of old cars that ever existed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivorship_bias
    - fipar 3y ago
      I didn’t mean to say all old cars lasted longer but I can see that it came out that way. I just wanted to point out that some are still around, and further, the US is probably not the best market for a study on car lifetime since it seems most people change their cars when they’re still far from being EOL.
  - pixl97 3y ago
pkdpic 3y ago
Yeah those old timey pedestrians didn't stand a chance. Seriously though good point I think, but what about crumple zones?

xyzzy123 3y ago

For those goods which are in fact more durable and reliable (e.g. modern cars) the downside tends to be that they are less repairable.

samstave 3y ago
[flagged]

eduction 3y ago

Totally irrelevant links — the assertion was about hybrid cars, those links speak to cars overall. The Toyota Prius debuted in the US in 2000. I’d argue 23 years is simply not sufficient to make an argument about long term reliability—particularly given that sales took a while to ramp, and any issues in, say, the first 10 years are likely to be dismissed as teething problems.

woopwoop 3y ago
The article was about consumer goods in general, so data about cars overall is more relevant than a single brand. Nonetheless, the Toyota Prius is, by reputation, a very reliable car. Here a used car website used it's data to estimate car model's lifespan, finding that a Toyota Prius has a potential lifespan of 250000 miles, much greater than anything from the 1980s. https://www.thestreet.com/personal-finance/cars-that-will-last-longest#gid=ci02b21239600026b1&pid=6-tahoe-chevy https://www.thestreet.com/personal-finance/cars-that-will-la...
- yesbut 3y ago
  Not to get too deep into this, in the 80s cars were crap. That is based only on my own personal experience. But I have no idea how reliable cars made 70 years ago were (like the kitchen appliance mentioned in the article). I've seen really old cars still on the road, but those are probably owned by collectors / people that take effort to preserve those types of cars.
  - conk 3y ago
    Cars made in the 40s and 50s were very unreliable, required significantly more maintenance than modern cars. You had to service things like breaker points, batteries and carburetors every few thousand miles. Most modern cars can go 10,000 miles between checkups and major components can go 100k+ miles with no work needed.
- denton-scratch 3y ago
  In the UK, the Prius seems to be used very widely by taxi companies. In fact most of the Prius's I see are in taxi company livery. To get the best out of a Prius (or, I guess, any hybrid) you should drive it non-aggressively, avoiding steep accelleration and braking. That may have something to do with the longevity of the Prius. I've owned two Toyotas, neither ever broke down, and one of them saved my life (in a crash). If I were in the market for a car, I'd get a Toyota.

spzb 3y ago

There's also a survival bias in that we don't consider the appliances from yesteryear that packed up back when disco was king.

pkdpic 3y ago
That's the smartest possible counterpoint to all this, nicely counterpointed. This was a fun read and I agree in sentiment to the rage of all the crap from target that falls apart in 10 minutes but I feel like I've developed an ok sense if when I'm taking this risk and am less frustrated when something cheap fails. Essentially any time I buy anything but a book from Amazon or anything but cereal and vodka from Target. Ultimately I think the crapification of lowend consumer goods has just made me buy less crap, which feels good I think. I've also accepted a pretend scifi narrative in which the only kind of society that doesn't descend into anarchy is one where people are constantly buying and throwing away cheap crap. And as an aside I have one of those crazy juicers but I stopped using it because it scares my wife and smells like burning / ozone.
- Brybry 3y ago
  Even some Amazon stuff is really good. I used a Kindle 2 e-reader daily for ~14 years and, aside from decreased battery life, it was still great. Sadly I eventually stepped on it one too many times and the screen cracked. I might fix it for ~$20 with ebay parts if I ever get bored enough.
idontwantthis 3y ago
Yeah this article would be a lot more interesting if there were a conspiracy to buy up all of the indestructible appliances made more than x decades ago. If they really were that much better then more of them would be around today.
- coldtea 3y ago
  Not really, since most consumers just go for whatever has the more "features" and is marketed at them.

x0x0 3y ago

Well, the explanation that people are getting exactly the dirt-cheap shoddy crap they demand is correct. You can buy a nice burr grinder from a company that not only sells spare parts for at least 5 years after they stop selling the model, but who also shares youtube videos on how to disassemble and repair the grinder. Mine is 11.5 years old and I replaced the central gear when it stripped around year 7 or 8, after grinding 2-3 coffees a day, probably 150+ kg of coffee, for that time. However, it wasn't cheap, and people appear not to care. Baratza, btw.

pixl97 3y ago
I mean for myself buying a cheap burr grinder is probably all I'd ever need, that said I've never chased quality coffee and don't care about it much. For myself I do the 'harbor freight' tool buying method. I buy a cheap whatever first, and if it's something I find useful and demand higher quality then I more research into what quality is with at least some experience. This said, I've also had a lot of cheap tools that have effectively lasted far longer than expected so crap doesn't always fail fast.
- 10729287 3y ago
  Lidl/Parkside here in Europe seems to be the perfect example. Never been disapointed by one of their cheap products. They're always performing and seems built to last. My little Parkside vacuum cleaner is still doing strong 10 years after I bought it while my 5yo expensive as hell Dyson operates intermittently now and is just screaming for a new battery every time I launch it. More expensive products are also prone to software tricks and planned obsolescence... and unfortunately sometimes just plain crap that capitalize on their good reputation from the past.
  - Freak_NL 3y ago
    Well… It depends. Lidl launched a range of good quality cordless tools under the Parkside Performance moniker last year. The 20V screwdriver and drill seem like solid pieces of work, and are holding up well in my tiny shop. Those are good, and I recommend these to anyone. But many of the plain Parkside branded tools are utter crap. The oscillating sander with exchangeable triangular, rectangular, and circular attachments I got was made of way to little material to be useful. The plastic struts for the attachments (the process of swapping those being horribly inefficient) partly melted with use. The Parkside drill press I have isn't too bad, but I had to fix a mechanical failure where the part which connects the manual up-down thingy to its gear just sheared off because it was a tiny rolled piece of metal sheet instead of a solid piece of 4mm diameter steel. I fixed that (replacing that bit with part of a bolt tapped into the axle) and it is doing fine now, but still.

spitfire 3y ago

> Modern cars are much, much more reliable and durable than ones built at any time in the past Bullshit. Mercedes-Benz W123.

lastofthemojito 3y ago
Which was contemporaneous with the Yugo, so the Yugo is also a reliable and durable car? Or is it possible that there have been better and worse cars since the dawn of auto manufacturing?

ggm 3y ago

I think your survivors bias thing is very true. I've used old things which would survive nuclear blast, and still have some. And, old things which were gimcrack rubbish and unusable. Some old plastics de-polymerised badly in heat. A lot of old chrome and tin plating corrodes. Bone handled cutlery is not designed for dishwashers. Sure, the mix master is going strong but it was gold plated when my mother in law got it. Same with the cast aluminium mincer. That said, I fixed a 24 year old magimix by replacing the motor starter, everything else is fine except its on its second polycarbonate bowl since dishwashers: now only washed by hand.

mikrotikker 3y ago
My Stihl shopvac finally crapped out. Not sure how old as it came with the house. I went to the Stihl shop to see if they had replacements and they asked me what museum I pulled it from. No replacement motor but still replacement filters so now it's a prefilter for my new Stihl shopvac.
- ggm 3y ago
  Tried Stihl direct? In any case, a second life as a preclean isn't such a bad end. Or, you could use it to clean the filters on the new one and prolong its life.

coldtea 3y ago

>So this article implies that a number of things that we buy previously were built to last longer, and indeed did last longer Anecdotally, I've lost count of modern kitchen appliances such as blenders, coffee makers, cooking "processors", that have died on me. And not cheap either, basically mid-tier stuff. Any such device with extra digital "smarts" and a monitor in particular is a huge red flag. Whereas I still have some inherited such electric appliances from the 70s and 80s that still go strong (and whenever they did, they're totally fixable).

chii 3y ago
instead of buying home consumer appliances, i would elect to purchase appliances that are used in commercial kitchens or working restaurants. They often only buy long lasting equipment, and the market shows it. It's hella expensive, but that's what you pay for.
- TrueSlacker0 3y ago
  I do this for my home, many of the standard, non mechanical items are the same price as one at a big box store but the quality is immensely better. We had a sandwich prep fridge at the house for a number of years and I loved it. But it was much louder and added about $30/month to the electric bill.

ahf8Aithaex7Nai 3y ago

Of course, cars and engines in particular are more durable today. This is due to technological progress. Cars weren't designed to be unreliable back then, they were unreliable because they couldn't do any better. Two or three years ago, I bought a pair of headphones for 200 euros that looked pretty high quality. They're now so broken that I have to hold them together with gaffer tape. Soon they'll be rotting (or not rotting) in some landfill. It's common knowledge that everyday objects are now deliberately produced in such a way that they don't last long. That's not a conspiracy theory.

lawgimenez 3y ago
Latest earphones from Apple has degraded considerably. My old Apple earphones with jack just died this year but it’s 5 years old. Right now, their earphones lightning won’t last a year anymore. I have been buying it yearly for 3 years now.
fireflash38 3y ago
I've got a pair of sennheiser headphones from 2011. Work just amazing, despite a decade+ of abuse. Only downside is the pleather on the ear caps wore off, but it's super minor. I bought another pair back in I want to say 2019, and it's been just OK. The inline mute broke, but everything else about them seems just as quality (no pleather ear caps tho - just fabric which I think is an improvement). In between those purchases, I've bought a handful of other headsets, all around 50-120$. They were universally crap. Either shit cables, shit comfort, or just wore out really fast. Anyway, long story short - you can get some lasting quality products. It's super hard to tell when a brand has sold out to the capitalism devil though.

ghusto 3y ago

> Modern cars are much, much more reliable and durable than ones built at any time in the past. I continue to buy older cars because this has been false for me everywhere I've experienced new cars (borrowed, friends, my own). Pointing out lack of data to support an argument that relies on anecdotal evidence is good practice. However: - The anecdotal evidence is strong amongst older people - Data not existing doesn't mean it _can't_ exist I suspect that younger people are just used to things not working, so they don't complain. Then there's the fact that there is no incentive for anyone else to show things could be better (except the old codgers like myself, but we're not a profitable demographic). I scour online auctions for old gear, because I know it'll work. Hi-Fi systems built in the 90s for example, were the panicle of hi-fi. Heck, I even have a CRT from _thirty years ago_ that still works like new (now think of your smart T.V. in thirty years). Forget that, is there anything you've bought new in the last _ten_ years that you still have?

bouk 3y ago
Of course the old cars you can still buy now are the reliable ones, because the unreliable ones have long been scrapped
- ghusto 3y ago
  That, is an excellent point. However, the very reason I buy in them in the first place is that they proved themselves to me _at the time_. Believe it or not, what I'm saying is I never had a bad experience with cars from the 90s, in the 90s.
  - mikrotikker 3y ago
    The prices for 80s-90s 4wds like the Toyota LandCruiser and Nissan Patrols are climbing like crazy... Nissan even still make the 1990 model Patrol (GQ/Y60 frame) for the UN and Saudi Arabia.
  - mlrtime 3y ago
    You never owned a 90s Chrysler product I'm taking it? Absolute complete garbage.

julian_t 3y ago

Speaking of kitchen appliances, we need a new immersion blender and my wife wants a cordless one. The old corded one lasted nearly 20 years, but most cordless ones have non-replaceable batteries and so are going to become junk long before the mechanical parts wear out.

ssss11 3y ago

I was just talking to my wife the other day about smaller items that are not being built to last. You can clearly see in products these days the built in capitalism. We’ve reached a point where I wonder how much more they can milk it. Making things smaller, reducing quality of parts, reducing thickness or length of parts and so on… that day we had experienced: A board game where the plastic has been made thinner and thinner over years until the game really doesn’t function now. A game where you drop a marble in a cylinder on top of plastic rods that slot in sideways and the game is to remove the rods and whoever drops the marble loses… well these rods were so flimsy they didn’t hold the marble up.

LightBug1 3y ago

N=1 ... we're still running my mothers microwave, which she must have bought in the 1980's ... We could get rid of it ... but it just works. Hope we're not radiating ourselves! I couldn't imagine a modern microwave lasting even nearly that long. I'm also running a 2005 Toyota, and a 69 Bug ... cannot imagine any modern car doing the service they've done, and reliably so.

mikrotikker 3y ago

> Here I'm aware of the data. It's not close. Modern cars are much, much more reliable and durable than ones built at any time in the past Is... Is this a joke? My 1991 vehicle made before planned obsolescence has a few questions...

sandworm101 3y ago

Survivorship bias. People look at old things today and say stuff biult long ago lasted longer. But that is only because all the junk from then isnt around anymore. What we have now is only the most durable stuff. Want to see what stuff was like in the past? Try working with knives made without stainless steel, when not cleaning your kitchen knife immediately meant a rust blade the next day. All those classic cars still around today? We forget all the horrible junk cars that nobody ever bothered to preserve.

jesterson 3y ago

> Modern cars are much, much more reliable and durable than ones built at any time in the past May I know the timeframe and your experience on which you base the conclusion? Been driving for last 35 years. Every newer car is crappier in every possible way - comfort, speed, durability, quality, reliability. It's not some subjective observations - some 40-50 years ago automakers were accomodating customers, now they accommodate numerous limitations imposed by governments to make it "safer". And I am not even touching engine limitations thanks to which we have weak motors which roar like boeing at 5k rpm but still doesn't help to move car forward. Cars made in 70-80s easily work for 40 years, if managed properly and made by nissan, mercedes-benz, toyota and sorts. Good luck modern garbage to live slightly longer than warranty without majour issues.

Klathmon 3y ago
> limitations imposed by governments to make it "safer". You have scare quotes there for some reason, but by pretty much all accounts cars now are so much safer than before. Like to an insane amount, over a 50% reduction in chance of fatality since the 70s/80s. > we have weak motors which roar like boeing at 5k rpm but still doesn't help to move car forward. And again it's working. Efficiency has increased even more than safety, with new cars getting over double the fuel economy even accounting for the larger cars!
- jesterson 3y ago
  I find it very wrong to attribute safety to a car rather than a driver. Sure, makers did good marketing selling general populace this notion. Safety cones from driver knowledge how to avoid dangerous situations and hedge risks. “Safety” comes from useless bells and whistles, which give impression of “intelligent” system. Bot sure what you mean under efficiency - at my books efficiency is how fast i can get from point A to B with minimal expense. Low engine volume cars lose it at every point
- 8n4vidtmkvmk 3y ago
  Fuel economy at the expense of letting me accelerate it seems. I have to turn on sport mode to safely merge onto the highway.

detourdog 3y ago

I used my parents 30 year wedding present Maytag as a washing machine. It never really broke I just finally got a new one. I'm sure it was used from 1960 until about 1995.

Too 3y ago

From [1]: ”after three years of ownership” While I generally agree with you, that data isn’t very conclusive. JD powers also need to be read carefully to not put all problems in the same basket. Malfunctioning engine vs “Bluetooth pairing was laggy with my 8 year old android phone” can be counted in same basket if you don’t look carefully. This brings us to the next thing which is that both expectation and complexity on todays cars are thousand times higher than 20 years ago, both from customers and emission agencies. Given that, it’s amazing how well they still work. Often better than older models. This puts cars in its own exceptional category that is much more difficult to compare. Where’s a freakin juicer, a ballpoint pen or a pair of gloves has no additional expectations today compared to 1940. They just got worse.

limaoscarjuliet 3y ago

Top Gear had a few episodes with old vs new comparisons. Needless to say the not-so-old classics were destroyed by average modern cars quite often [1]. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw-zCsybNtg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hw-zCsybNtg

thegrim33 3y ago

Wow, a cited source about modern vehicles being much more reliable, let's check it out! - I click the link; it's a press release from JD Power which I thought is pretty well known to be a corrupted institution that more or less just sells off awards to whichever manufacturers want to pay the most for them. Oh well, let's give it the benefit of the doubt and read the actual study which surely has data to back their assumptions. - The study isn't actually linked anywhere for me to review - There's a link to " learn more" about the study. I click it, and it's another press release about the study. It has a download button at the top, surely this must be for downloading the study. I click it, and it's a 1 page PDF of the press release with no actual details. - At this point I can click a link to go back to the original press release but nothing to actually read the dang study. All checks out I guess, modern cars are more reliable! Even if I did actually find the full "study" I can absolutely guess that it's entirely based on trash data like random surveys of consumers and would be near worthless without having a single real data point around how often cars/parts break down.