this post was submitted on 09 Jun 2024
663 points (97.6% liked)

Technology

58965 readers
4064 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (9 children)

Wear and tear doesn't kill a car; rust does.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 4 months ago (5 children)

Back in the day you could buy whole (but small) parts, cut away the rusy one and solder in the new one (paint with anti rust paint). Did it on my cheap ass volvo 142 :-)

Maybe you can't do that any more because of complex crumple zones, but I bet we can do better. A car shouldn't just have a life span of 6-10 years.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 4 months ago (2 children)

A car shouldn't just have a life span of 6-10 years.

They don't.

My current daily driver is 18 years old. I expect at least another 10 barring an accident, maybe 30 more years as a spare vehicle. It got a new transmission at 200,000 miles. Engine seems like it'll make it to at least 400k. A replacement is $1500, far less than a new car.

Most cars in my family (approximately 30 cars) are between ten and thirty years old.

I've had 3 cars since 1996, all bought used, and I traveled for work with one. One car I sold to a family member, and it's still being driven.

It's people that choose to not drive cars this long.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Same. We're at 17 and 18 years, and we're looking for replacements because we want something more efficient. We'll probably sell them instead of junking them. We bought one at ~8yo, and the other at ~15yo, each has had minimal issues and I've done most of the work on them myself. Neither have any rust, though we live in a desert, so that's not all that surprised.

Cars absolutely can last quite a while if they're well maintained and designed well.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Yeah but that can for sure be survival bias.

Basically you got lucky, or a brand made a better car for a while, you heard about it and bought one.

To make it sustainable cars should be easy to repair, probably with interchangeable parts etc.

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (5 replies)