Its really worth reading the whole Article. Im looking forward to long lasting EVs, but I really fear that, what the author also described in his article, may come true. I think we will see that car manufacturers will start to act like hardware company's and start to force you to regularly buy a new car by making your car incompatible to new features or by designing it to fail after a few years.
I think we will see that car manufacturers will start to
They started to do this decades ago. Generally any given part in a car might be left unchanged for 5 or 6 model years before it gets changed, often for completely arbitrary reasons. For many cars, if it's over ten years old your only hope for a replacement part is the junkyard.
Yeah, options open up for some massively popular models or otherwise very well loved models. I got replacement gears for headlight motors for a 90s car with pop-up headlights, because people got tired of the OEM design wearing out so easily. I suspect someone trying to keep a Pontiac Aztek going might have a harder time finding enthusiasts keeping things alive.
The opensource edm machine that is just now gain popularity seems like a great choice for parts! LumenPNP for machine replacement circuit boards on larger scales is exciting to me too ( I hate hand soldering so maybe its just a personal thing lol).
My local maker space built a plasma tourch and table too. Honestly it feels likes all coming together for it to be done
Imagine being able to opt into an long term support branch when you feel your phone starting to lag, unlocked bootloader's, and have user replaceable batteries.
Still mad about accidentally installing the newer version of iOS on my iPad pro. Such a meaningful feature to have security patches without slowdown from newer versions.
I wish more bootloader's came unlocked these days. I got a Google pixel for that, the seven years of promised updates, and parts.
Though I think it would be cheaper to buy a used pixel 8 from eBay and the adhesive from ifixit if I end up braking the screen in a few years I'm more interested in being able to get a fresh battery without guessing if it was salvaged from a heavily used phone.
Edit: phones should be more like the laptops from the early 2000s damnit. I don't care if my phone is a little thicker than a pencil at least it'll hide the camera bump.
I am very anxious even with normal maintenance - heating adhesive up is not something I am capable of now. So was looking at new last-gen Pixels instead, and 7a is $300 :( People I know who have it say it's good hardware, but that's still an insane sum to spend on a phone.
Tbh it's not a bad price looking at what other phones are out at that price. Your looking at a great screen, awesome camera, ok battery life, and snappy enough performance for everyday stuff.
At the end of the day it's what you can afford and what you need. If you have a small repair shop nearby it wouldn't hurt to give it a try, see how expensive the repair might bee. If your current phone is fine then keep using it, if you need a phone on a budget I'd go used, anything new under $200 will most likely be worse than anything you can get used, and if you want something new that pixel 7a wouldn't be half bad tbh.
I don't get how people are replacing their phones so damn often. I buy used flagships that are usually a year or two old and rock them for another 4 years. Note 10+ here, and I've had it for around 3 years now, probably won't upgrade for another 2 years, as it's perfectly fine still.
I had a Sony Xperia something for years, no case. Then I upgraded to a Samsung and gave my Sony to my mum. She cracked the back of it almost immediately lol
My current phone is almost 3.5 years old and I have no intention on upgrading anytime soon, but in the past I did tend to have to replace a phone about every two years. Mostly because POGO (and my being rough with them). Ports being damaged (and me not knowing how to repair them myself and others wanting to charge the cost of a new phone to repair it), being dropped, etc.
I used my 6t for 4 years but it started bootlooping and I needed it for 2fa codes every login on some applications for work. I bought a 10t after a couple of days. Funny enough now the 6t appears stable again, oh well it's the household backup if any others spontaneously die
I just got a new phone despite my previous one being totally fine because it's no longer getting security updates. I've had it for ~4 years with no issues, so I got a Pixel for longer security updates.
So yeah, they totally could last longer if they kept supporting them.
I mean...they can, you just refresh the motor. Tons of ICE vehicles out there with 400-500k miles on them. Hell most semi trucks have millions of miles on them.
A rebuild every x00,000 miles on a Toyota sounds nicer than paying the price of a new pilot every 100,000 miles tbh. Computers don't last though and emissions have made it a huge pain to fix on older cars. Nothing against emissions it's a necessary evil.
If they're easy enough to work on, and the parts market is maintained, yes.
Nothing lasts forever without something going wrong, but we can make it easier to fix. It's a little more true of EVs, because they're mechanically simpler than ICE cars. You added an electric motor (which lasts forever if designed well), batteries (life dependent on the chemistry involved), and some electronics to drive that (caps in there go bad, much of the rest will last forever if not abused). You took away an ICE, an intake system, an exhaust system, perhaps some forced induction, a coolant system (which you might have on EVs, but not to the same level), an ignition system, a shitload of sensors (O2 sensors having particularly short life, relatively speaking), and a fuel pump.
If designed to be worked on, the EV is far, far easier.
I am thinking of doing that when my civic should be legally declared dead. With the insanity that is new car prices and insurance for new cars plus the vanished used car market it just isn't worth it. I want an EV but things have to go back to normal before that happens
Good luck with that. Planned obsolescence is a key ingredient in capitalism. I mean what better way to make line go up than to turn a one-time purchase into a repeat purchase? This shareholders and executives will never be able to step on the working class if they can't gouge customers. Won't anyone think of the shareholders?
I think people need to start being educated about how their climate influences how they can use the electric car. Many people know if they live by the sea or where roads are salted that corrosion is an issue. But people might not be aware that with some EVs, they should leave it plugged in if they're in an extreme climate, so the car can air condition or heat the battery. I caused some battery degradation to my Volt because I wasn't able to leave it plugged in living in Tucson.
That is too general of a statement. I have three EVs in my family, none of them do any temp condition of the battery just by being plugged in. However, EVCC turns off the wallbox when they reach 75% SoC and there is no appointment that day in our shared calendar. Sitting at high SoCs kills batteries, especially in warm climates.
You have a point; some EVs like the Leaf don't even have conditioning. The Volt does have active conditioning, and being a PHEV instead of a BEV has battery charge and discharge limits which were limited by the factory to preserve longevity at the expense of being able to charge to a true 100%. If extra range is needed the ICE is activated instead of stressing the traction battery.
Electric motors can last a really long time, assuming no defects, they should outlast the battery by a Longshot.
That leaves the battery, and an LFP battery should also last a hell of a long time, probably a decent way into a million km before you have degraded to about 80%.
If you got those key items lasting, then it just depends on how well the rest of the car holds up, but replacing small parts while the motors and battery works is probably always going to be more cost effective.
The problem is the battery is a wildcard still.
We know how long those LFP batteries should last in a car, but they're also pretty are in cars and we don't have that real world data yet.
I also fear that OEMs will still gouge us on replacement batteries 15 - 20 years from now when costs are even lower and replacing the battery shouldn't be so expensive.
The battery doesn't have to fail for the car to be useless. One of those circuit boards that holds it all together goes and it's "whoops, we don't make that any more".
“Unlike gas-powered engines—which are made up of thousands of parts that shift against one other—a typical EV has only a few dozen moving parts. That means lessdamage and maintenance, making it easier and cheaper to keep a car on the road well past the approximately 200,000-mile average lifespan of a gas-powered vehicle. And EVs are only getting better. “There are certain technologies that are coming down the pipeline that will get us toward that million-mile EV,” Scott Moura, a civil and environmental engineer at UC Berkeley, told me. That many miles would cover the average American driver for 74 years. The first EV you buy could be the last car you ever need to purchase.“
No way a car would last me and my family 74 years. First year I owned my car I put on almost 35k. Was driving 100 miles back and forth to work at that time. We typically take a road trip from colorado to near Vermont every year for a vacation.
A lot of midwesterns will drive 14 hours to get some where
In the San Francisco Bay Area, it's not uncommon for people that work here but can't afford to live here to have commutes of over an hour with good traffic (2+ hours with heavy traffic) each way. That's the case in a few major metro areas in countries like the USA and Australia.
My commute in the Bay Area is 15-20 mins without traffic, but it can be 50 minutes if there's some incident on the 101 or if I accidentally try to commute during the highest peak period.
I'd love to take a train to work, and I used to take Caltrain every day, but it's just not feasible where I live now.
Round trip was 100 miles every day. This was rural Ohio driving to Columbus so it was not to bad 2 and 4 lane roads till you hit the city most of them time. If we got a lot of snowfall it could super suck but I was from NE Ohio so most of the time it was not that much white knuckle driving. You just listen to a lot of audiobooks and podcasts or call some friends on your hour or so drive home
Sure, there's always going to be outliers. Most people live and work in the same metropolitan area though - they're not driving 50,000km+ a year.
Besides, having a vehicle with 5 times the effective lifetime is going to be a big win regardless of how much you drive it.
Which was also true of ICE cars. The Model T Ford had a major design flaw: everyone could work on it easily, parts were plentiful, and there was no reason to buy a replacement once you had it. In fact, there's enough of them still running, with an associated parts market, that you could still daily one if you wanted to.
So much so that TFLClassics on YouTube in Colorado bought a well maintained model T and drove it to the nearest dealership and had mechanics there change the oil and take it for a spin just the other week.
It would be wonder if they last forever and easly could be repaired. Making it better to keep the car then buy a new one. It just need to be upgradedable to the latest standards that might be more safe, efficient and agree with current law.
But I am pretty that would never exist - too hard.
There's not much room for improvement in terms of efficiency for EVs, except maybe lower rolling resistance tyres and better aero. You generally have to replace the whole car for better aero though unless you don't mind having some bolt on mods 😂
Ok, but it might be in other areas. Example lets see someone invent very high efficiently on solar panels with no weight at all. Or lets get rid of rubber wheels and do sifi so the car can hover over the road.
