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No mention of efficiency regulations causing manufacturers to make devices use less power and water? This has been a huge factor with front loading HE washing m

No mention of efficiency regulations causing manufacturers to make devices use less power and water? This has been a huge factor with front loading HE washing machines becoming essentially disposable products. I’m sure it affects other energy hungry appliances like refrigerators being made more cheaply.

etrautmann 2y ago
It’s not obvious to me why those regulations would lead to poorly made products.
- pokstad 2y ago
  The article mentions the switch from analog and mechanical parts to digital and electric equivalents that break more. Part of the reason for doing that is energy efficiency.
- Brian_K_White 2y ago
  It's obvious to me. There are many ways in which a robust, reliable, or strong thing is less efficient. It's a basic fundamental trade-off in everything everywhere, like security vs convenience, like form vs function. A reliable motor that will run forever has big solid castings, big heavy windings (meaning fewer turns in the same volume), and no electronics at all, nor brushes. That means a shaded pole synchronous motor. An efficient motor has thin windings with a lot more turns in the same volume, and light weight rotor construction that can start/stop with less inertia, ,driven by dc power and pwm electronics. The electronic motor is a lot more efficient but has 100x more parts, dies from some part failure 100x more frequently and lasts a fraction as long. A reliable boiler is made out of a thick mass of cast iron with thick walls and not much surface area, and so is an inefficient heat exchanger. An efficient heat exchanger is paper thin sheets of stainless steel and lots of closely packed fins or folds or tubes for more surface area, which burns through or corrodes through or clogs up in a couple years, and cost a lot more to make. An efficient ice engine has a turbo, a reliable engine does not. The very definition of the word efficient usually means less overhead in some form in most contexts, which means running closer to the failure point, which means failing sooner. It's a kind of truism in that sense where the very meaning of the word efficient can be reworded to literally mean less reliable, not because that just happens to be an associated consequence, but because it literally means less overhead, less excess capacity, less redundancy, etc.

etrautmann 2y ago

It’s not obvious to me why those regulations would lead to poorly made products.

pokstad 2y ago
The article mentions the switch from analog and mechanical parts to digital and electric equivalents that break more. Part of the reason for doing that is energy efficiency.
Brian_K_White 2y ago
It's obvious to me. There are many ways in which a robust, reliable, or strong thing is less efficient. It's a basic fundamental trade-off in everything everywhere, like security vs convenience, like form vs function. A reliable motor that will run forever has big solid castings, big heavy windings (meaning fewer turns in the same volume), and no electronics at all, nor brushes. That means a shaded pole synchronous motor. An efficient motor has thin windings with a lot more turns in the same volume, and light weight rotor construction that can start/stop with less inertia, ,driven by dc power and pwm electronics. The electronic motor is a lot more efficient but has 100x more parts, dies from some part failure 100x more frequently and lasts a fraction as long. A reliable boiler is made out of a thick mass of cast iron with thick walls and not much surface area, and so is an inefficient heat exchanger. An efficient heat exchanger is paper thin sheets of stainless steel and lots of closely packed fins or folds or tubes for more surface area, which burns through or corrodes through or clogs up in a couple years, and cost a lot more to make. An efficient ice engine has a turbo, a reliable engine does not. The very definition of the word efficient usually means less overhead in some form in most contexts, which means running closer to the failure point, which means failing sooner. It's a kind of truism in that sense where the very meaning of the word efficient can be reworded to literally mean less reliable, not because that just happens to be an associated consequence, but because it literally means less overhead, less excess capacity, less redundancy, etc.