Sure you can replace a lot of the things that rust until the frame goes, but it starts to get expensive. Pumps, hard to get to filters, starters, alternators, struts and other suspension bushings and components, engine timing components, and transmissions are liable to just go well before the life of the motor is up.
If parts are dirt cheap and your wrenching is free it's doable, but kind of a headache. If you pay someone else to wrench I think it's not a great idea especially for some models and brands.
Yeah, I live in the Northeast US and, with one exception, rust has been the proximate cause of retiring every vehicle I've ever owned (as well as a few expensive near end-of-life repairs I shouldn't have had done).
The situation is much better than it was 40 years or so again but, if you drive a vehicle in the winter around here, you're still looking at a realistic maximum life of 10 to 15 years before everything just starts falling apart.
I have a 20 year old Honda Del Sol I've garaged in the winter for about the last 10 years. Whenever I take it into the Honda dealer there are always mechanics that want to ooh and ahh over it because they said you basically don't see them around New England any longer.
Car's don't rust like they used to! One of my favorite childhood memories was seeing from my dad getting so mad at his '78 Toyota Celica (we called it the Rustola) that he kicked a hole in the door and got his foot stuck inside.
It's phenomenal how much improvement there was in rustproofing between even '70 and '90. If a '90-'00 car hasn't been crashed and not driven in very salty conditions, you can find them with essentially no rust even now.
Well, and in a few Chrystlers and a Ford I've been familiar with, the trannie. Kind of a race between the two factors.
Right now, I have an older Subaru that would be good for at least a few more years, except the rust has compromised the gas tank. And dropping that means dropping the drive train. And you can get it back together -- but how many parts do you end up having to replace, because the rust has gotten to them too badly. And then you're closing in on the value of the car.
If/when we switch to composites (and/or aluminum), with an electric drive train maybe localized at the four wheels, or at least "compartmentalized" and swap-able (1), then maybe the rust factor and overall longevity will improve. Maybe... I'm waiting to see what creative means corrosion demonstrates to further its entropy under this scenario.
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1. And for the record, I'd still prefer a "hybrid" design with backup on-board generation from some type of chemical fuel, at least until electric penetration is thorough and cold-weather capacity is secured.
[1] https://www.engineering.com/AdvancedManufacturing/ArticleID/...
We're short-sighted to require cars to show MPG before purchase. They should all require a spreadsheet showing Total Cost of Ownership dependent on expected annual highway/city mileage as input.
What's gas cost? How much extra is the hybrid? What's the scrap value?
Though I guess you can lookup insurance rates to figure out the scrap value (some cars are worth more parted-out than running).
Without UV constantly hitting your tires and interior, they last longer. Your electric water pump runs less/lasts longer. But that's all I can think of, but it's harder to measure the general impacts of ambient being, on average, 20C less.
I think we should just send every car from the NE down South once it's 6-8 years old to balance the wear. The rust process will largely stop.
That said, none of my ~25yo vehicles are failing inspection for structural rust, they're all failing because the fenders rust out where the wheel sprays everything.
All aluminum construction would mitigate a lot of that. When aluminum oxidizes, it tends to form something hard, as opposed to flaky rust. Electric vehicles could be optimized for delivery fleet use with a highly modular construction and a smooth underbody. The modules could be removed for repair while a spare one is swapped in. (This is currently done with M1 Abrams tanks.) Electric drive-trains also require less maintenance, and the open cargo space of a delivery van can facilitate easy access to mechanicals even though the underbody has no openings.
PS: Ford is moving the F150 to aluminum adding ~500$ per vehicle but also saving weight. Which should net to zero via added fuel economy.
They have been using some electric vehicles in NYC: https://about.usps.com/what-we-are-doing/green/vehicles.htm
The VT Hackney option looks pretty cool: https://www.trucks.com/2018/03/15/new-photos-electric-mail-t...
https://cleantechnica.com/2017/05/19/show-me-the-data-the-tr...
When you purchase the car the default is also set to 80% and the delivery person tells you that you should usually have it set to 80% unless you are going to go on a long trip.
Just looked it up it’s $899 for the G35 and $913 per year for the Tesla.
It helps to not have had an accident or a ticket in over 10 years.
Although, it's very possibly a legacy of planned obsolescence (the good cost-saving kind) where the engine would last 200k so the rest of the car was only made to last 200k as well. Perhaps as engines start to last far longer, the rest of the car will be built to match.
I think this is the answer. If a critical component of the car only lasts X miles, then building any other piece to last more than X miles is pure waste. As counterintuitive (and annoying) as it might seem, having all the parts of the car fail around the same time actually indicates that it was engineered perfectly.
My understanding is that this is why tires need to be replaced after 5-6 years and are not safetiable thereafter. The dried out rubber is much harder than when it was first made and no longer grips the road as strongly.
At least in the past, you could replace broken parts or rig them on/off, but now everything is controlled by a stereo or touch screen which is $2,500 from the dealer and good luck finding a replacement in 10-20 years.
I mean, first? finding a weird part is finding a weird part... and you are totally right that the electronics are the new weird parts and that way too much of the system is in the head unit, but... there have always been weird parts... and if you don't have a machinist (or these days an EE) friend helping you out, if you have a car with a weird part, you spend time in junkyards. (or the modern equivalents. Ebay has made finding weird parts so much easier)
My impression is that this is all as it has always been, except that it is easier to find weird parts than it was, and that if you want to make/rig a part, these days, you call up your EE friend rather than your machinist friend (and I have far more EE friends than machinist friends)
Me personally, I'm more comfy swapping out broken electronics modules than I am swapping out bolted-on metal parts, but either way, it seems like a pretty similar sort of thing.
My understanding is that the ECU controls the fuel injector, though, and that most of the inputs and outputs are fairly well known; and I'm told that it's a pretty simple control loop with the oxygen sensor, the TPS and mass airflow sensor. All in all, if it came down to it, I think I'd have better luck building an ECU from scratch than building a carburetor from scratch, after having fixed carburetors and fuel injected systems. Machining to those tolerances is hard.
(To be clear, I wouldn't put money on me personally doing either one of those things. I fix computers for EEs, and I'm no machinist. I'm just saying, micro-controllers aren't that hard if you are trying to do a simple thing... machining to carburetor tolerances really is.)
My understanding is that most cars don't have any sort of encryption between the ECU and the sensors; it's all stuff that someone with basic ee training could figure out with 20 year old equipment. If you have a popular/fancy car, people will sell you aftermarket/performance ECUs that are not recommended for use by the manufacturer, so while it's possible that it's a lot harder to do than I think it is, there's existence proof for the possibility.
Those things take a great amount of effort and time. The complexity is pretty big. Granted, I mostly work on instrument clusters, and I believe they are one of the biggest systems in the car, but the complexity is huge. I found it hard to carry the mental model of the whole system in my head.
After-market ECU's are deff possible, because you do a couple thousands of units at a time. But doing it for one ECU, I think not. Not if you put an upper-cap on the effort you are willing to expend. You're probably better off just buying a new car at that point.
The OBD port will tell you everything that went wrong, no SatNav and knobs/buttons everywhere.
Battery issues are going to be way more expensive on an electric or hybrid car than an ICE car, which I think would be the primary downside.
In the short term, Electric cars win, hands down, they're cheaper to run per mile, but over a 20 year lifetime for a vehicle, I think ICE vehicles will tie or prove slightly better than an electric vehicle for costs.
The maintenance costs we've paid keeping our ICE running would pay for a full replacement of our electric motor in about 3-4 years.
The maintenance for our electric so far has been new tires and windshield wipers.
(No data on electric vehicles - oh well)
As for electric car reliability, this is a "theory vs practice" question.
In theory electric cars should be vastly more reliable due to their simplicity. Electric motors have 1/10th the complexity of an ICE, and electric drivetrains tend to be simpler.
In practice we have a lot of experience in building well executed ICE cars. Regardless of the complexity I would bet that a Toyota beats a Tesla for any test of longevity.
This is often an irrational short-term optimization; while it's often much cheaper to get a used beater with a functioning (for now) powertrain instead of replacing engine or transmission, replacement will often last far longer and with lower operating costs and downtime.
which bespoke electronics do you mean which are unique to EV? and do you really think their failure rate compensates for all those ancillary systems made redundant?
One of my cousins owns a transmission repair shop, and from what he says at holiday gatherings he always has more customers waiting in line than he can ever hope to get to. Seems like some people out there are rebuilding their transmissions.
What usually kills the body is corrosion. Eventually, fatigue damage will set in and the body will crack.
Compared to something pre-a ton of electronics? Doubt it. All of those ICs and PCBs are individual failure points and likely to have fairly limited production runs. Then add in ever-changing battery technology...
Just look at Tesla, they will not work on (or provide parts for) anything with a salvage title and look at the first roadster, completely different batteries than they currently use that if allowed to discharge 'completely' are ruined and need to be replaced.
So for an EV you probably have individual computers/chips for anti-lock brakes, traction control, parking assist (if applicable), charging, multiple diagnostic chips, transmission, infotainment, ignition just off the top of my head. With Teslas you'll also have driver assist stuff, all of the chips involved with it phoning home and collecting/reporting data back to Tesla as well. Those are all failure points using components that are likely mostly in-house and not available from OEM sources with Tesla too.
I imagine Tesla has some control over your vehicle too if you attempt to circumvent some things not unlike how their power wall will disable itself if it can't contact the servers within a relatively short period of a few days (I believe it's a few, it might be 24 hours) so if they ever for some reason go out of business that may severely impact usability. The original roadsters are a different battery than being used in current-production Tesla vehicles and I doubt in 10 years they're going to go "Sure thing, we can custom make the 2 of you that are still driving your roadsters new batteries".
The stuff in a car coming off the line today is generations more complicated than what was being put in a car 20 years ago.
I never had problems with anything electrical related until owning a 'modern' carn, my 2013 impala which has had multiple faulty sensors, a wiring harness that would randomly turn stabilitrack on and off while driving, would randomly fire abs while breaking, throws off 3 check engine lights from various emissions systems any time humidity is up, etc.
N=1 but most of the issues I've had with my Impala Chevy has had across multiple generations of multiple vehicles in the past decade from cars and trucks. One of the emission sensors that is faulty in my car is used in at least 2 generations of 3 different models and a search of one of the codes it throws comes up on a dozen plus forums.
A quick google on just ECM/ECU/PCUs make it seem it's common enough for them to fail in vehicles and those are usually programmed to your VIN. Looks like corrosion from moisture, cracked traces, vibration damage, etc are all common causes.
Hell, even TPMS sensors fail regularly enough and some of those can get a little pricey and will throw codes until you replace them.
Modern vehicles are full of cheaply made electronics that fail.
Another quick Google query shows that the average age of a modern vehicle is 11.4 years. Sticking with Tesla, the vehicles are only warrantied for 4 years or 50k miles and the batteries and powertrain for 8 or 100-120k miles
And as I stated previously they've already completely changed their battery tech once meaning the supply chain for new batteries for the original Roadster is effectively non-existent and given they are now 10 years old, they are outside of warranty and Tesla has zero obligation to manufacture replacement batteries, with ICEs it's extremely unlikely diesel or gasoline will suddenly be controlled by one supplier and be cut off from the market.
With ICE cars you have multiple people manufacturing secondary market parts (even for stuff like ECUs), with the most well known electric car company you have the manufacture as the only one making parts AND they do not sell them to consumers and they will not work on anything with a salvage title.
Working on an EV is also not really something you can do yourself if you do have access to parts. ICE vehicle you can realistically work on any part of the vehicle yourself, at home, with rented tools and a repair manual or YouTube videos from rebuilding an engine or transmission, replacing ball joints, changing brakes, replacing fuel line, completely rewire the vehicle, anything.
Sure on an EV you could change a ball joint or a suspension, but you can't work on the powertrain. You can't work on the power plant. You can't really work on any of the wiring either. The most important parts of the car pose potentially fatal shock if start monkeying with them.
The reality is the cost of new parts and replacements becomes cost prohibitive. You’ll spend more continually on the upkeep versus purchasing a new car.
But the mail trucks are perfect candidates for replacement with electrics.