The other day I was flipping through the channel and caught a brief bit on one show about massive earthmoving machines, You know, the kind that haul away entire villages at one time, and they said that the machines have an average design life of eighty years! Presumably this means that the thing’s really rugged and easy to service. So why isn’t my car? After all, my car’s more likely to be put into situations where large numbers of lives can be at risk than one of those machines. I realize that making a car more rugged would add to the design cost of the vehicle, but given how litigation happy our society is these days, you’d think that car makers would be doing everything they could to make sure that a car was as indestructible as possible.
would you spend a million dollars on your car? if your willing I am sure someone will build you one that can run 80 years
Kind of as owlofcreamcheese – plus a WAG: if everyone’s car lasted 80 years, they wouldn’t sell as many as they do now, and the profits would drop.
Plus, I’m guessing that over the course of those 80 years they’ll replace large parts of the original machine. Your car could last 80 years if you didn’t mind putting a new engine in every 15 years.
Simply switching to stainless steel wouldn’t add millions of dollars to the price of a car, but would extend the life of the vehicle (in addition to making it easier to service, since stainless steel doesn’t rust easily, you wouldn’t be spending hours trying to free a rusted bolt).
Ice Wolf, I know lots of people who trade-in their car after only a couple of years, not because there’s anything wrong with it, but simply because they want something that looks different or has features not offered in their current car. So while profits might drop to an extent, they wouldn’t plunge dramatically.
dont they build every kind of appliance, vehicle to last a set amount of years? ie washing machines, microwaves etc.
if it lasts 80 years, as above, most people arent going to bother buying a new one.
economic sense.
I always chuckle when people say things like “how come they won’t make cars that last 80 years when we all know they can?”
The reason is that everything has a useful design life. How long would you keep the same car, assuming nothing went wrong with it? 2 years? 10 years? Forever? I’ve only owned 2 cars over the course of 15 years and drove both into the ground. Some of my friends switch ever couple of years. My cars could have probably lasted another 5 years each if I had taken care of them. What is that, about 10 years?
So the manufacterers figure out how long the average person wants the car to last and they design them to last that long.
Having a car last 80 years would cause profits to drop dramatically because cars wouldn’t wear out as fast and they would cost a lot more to manufacture.
There are also design considerations for not having a car last 80 years.
-Cars are designed to crumple in accidents so the passengers don’t get killed. That means you can’t build them like a back-ho.
-Individual moving PARTS tend to wear out. Unless you want your car built with expensive all titanium alloy and carbon-fiber parts.
-Less automotive innovation. Would really want to be driving around in the same gas-guzzling monsters with no power steering or power brakes and a dashboard guaranteed to take off your head in an accident from the 50s?
This is why cars are not made to last for 80 years.
Okay, I’m seeing a lot of WAGing, but none of our resident engineers have stepped in to firmly resolve the matter. I don’t buy the expense argument as stainless steel bolts are nearly equal in price. ($0.20 for a 1/4X2 SS bolt vs. $0.17 for a steel one.)
Also, considering that GM and Ford have been sued over vehicles that were past the hypothetical lifespan given by others, and there’s been no mention in the various lawsuits that the cars had exceeded their design life, and thus Ford and GM shouldn’t be responsible for the problems on the vehicles. (These, BTW, are a mere sampling of the lawsuits which Ford and GM have both been hit with.)
Let me also add the fact that Toyota has built it’s reputation on building long lasting cars (they even ran an ad campaign which featured folks talking about how they put over a million miles on their vehicle), so it seems to me that since Toyota ain’t hurting financially, a car company can build cars with a long design life to them and still be profitable. Honda has a similar reputation and they don’t seem to be hurting, either.
The only answer which I’ve found that has clues to any of this, can be found in the comments of a steam car expert.
So, I’m saying that the question’s still open.
People don’t value longevity in cars as much as you think. They like power, image, novelty, and new features. We could also make cars that get better gas milage but manufacturers don’t because people don’t them.
As to stainless steel, they were used on the Bricklen (?) and the Delorean, but were extremely expensive to replace in crashes, but I don’t know if that was due to scarcity or difficulty in painting, treating, etc. Still, rust really isn’t an issue in modern cars due to new anti-rust treatments. And my Saturn has polymer body panels that essentially look the same as the day I bought it.
If you made cars that lasted that long, you woundn’t have automatic transmissions, heated seats, cupholders, and a 450 HP Corvette. In an extremely competitive consumer market like autos, longevity ranks fairly low on the list.
Cite? What about the various hybrid vehicles that car makers are rolling out right now?
The repair costs of a Bricklin and DeLorean had mainly to do with the rarity of the cars (the cars also weren’t cheap to begin with due to being small volume production cars). Stainless steel is slightly more expensive than ordinary steel, and a bit harder to work with, but not so much that it’s prohibitive. None of what you’ve described about your Saturn explains why car makers don’t use stainless steel fasteners (you know, nuts and bolts) in their cars.
Cite?
I’ve had the same broom for 25 years now; I’ve replaced the head 22 times and the handle 14.