Was it this car?
I believe so. I remember it was something Citi (or City)…and it was really small. They were planning to let customers buy it online and order different options/body styles just like you order a Dell computer. The coolest thing (and what answers the OP) was how they were doing the batteries though. I thought it was such a good idea to rent the batteries instead of selling them (according to the article, and from memory, the batteries they were talking about were something like $30k, while the car itself was only something like $15k…a huge difference). And then reselling the batteries to utility companies after their efficiency started to degrade. It SOUNDED like a very good marketing plan…customers would basically pay about the same in rent for the batteries as they are paying currently for fuel, batteries would be re-used. What’s not to like?
-XT
I believe that they said that the batteries are warrantied for 100,000 miles. What is the warranty on your internal combustion powertrain? And how long does that engine last out of warranty? The batteries should last the same out of warranty.
It seems to me that if the average age of the fleet is over 10 years, the design lifetime must be considerably over 10 years (to offset all the cars out there that are less than 10 years old).
It depends how you define the design lifetime. Sure, there are lots of vehicles older than 10 years. But often, the older vehicles are either exemplary examples, or they are extremely well maintained, or they are run in a dilapidated state.
One way to consider the design life of a vehicle is to look at the available warranty periods. Car lifespans follow a bathtub curve of reliability - initially, there are early defects from manufacturing that get shaken out over the first few years of the vehicles lifespan. This is typically the period covered by the factory warranty. Then you run into a period of reasonable reliability, where the early defects are gone but nothing has really worn out. This is the bottom of the bathtub curve. Then the curve starts trending upwards as parts start to fail on the vehicle from general wear and tear. The ‘useful life’ of the vehicle is measure typically at the point where the curve of the bathtub reaches a set level where parts begin to fail at a fairly high rate.
You can look at car warranties to figure out roughly where this is - the early failure part is typically 3-5 years. The highest reliability, or flat floor of the bathtub, is typically the region covered by the extended warranty (it’s no coincidence that manufacturers try to sell you warranties that cover the period of time where the vehicle is least likely to need repairs). After that, the vehicle will stay on the road for as long as someone is willing to sink an increasing amount of money into repairs and/or as long as it gets lucky and doesn’t suffer a catastrophic failure of some sort.