Anecdata says that Japanese cars are the most reliable ones. (Old) Toyotas in Africa are a must. They endure and can be repaired in a local car workshop.

Small Korean cars (Hyundai and Kia) have excellent reliability metrics in EU. They are, in some ways, equivalent to old Toyotas.

They are also backed up by great guarantees (5 years without mileage limit in case of Hyundai, and 7 years from Kia).

African markets used to love Peugeot 504 and Mercedes E 200. Extremely reliable in harsh conditions.

Lexus usually tops the reliability ratings even above Toyota. That’s why I was surprised.

So what happens to Africa when the old cars finally completely disappear, and nothing can be repaired in any reasonable sense of the word?

Probably hard to know, but by now, we're already seeing that blu-ray players are rendered nearly useless by lost remote controls (because they (all blu-ray player manufacturers) no longer build adequate physical playback controls into the set top box, and 99% of blu-ray on-disc software requires a directional keys and an enter key to trigger playback of the main content, which can only be found on remote controls), leading to a necessity for bootleggers that can rip and recopy the main content of the movie to a version stripped of menus, that immediately plays automatically upon insertion.

You can buy a new remote control if you want. It's a little annoying to set up but works flawlessly thereafter. I recently bought an all-in-one remote because my TV's remote broke apart and now I've got one remote for all the devices in my living room.

>blu-ray on-disc software

It's shocking to me that this is even a thing. I looked it up and apparently Blu-ray players are required to execute Java off the disc! How far we've come since the Sony CD rootkit days...

A cursory read over the spec on Wikipedia indicates (among other horrifying things) that it is possible and supported to release a Blu-ray that contains no media, but instead streams it over the internet from the studio's server.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BD-J

> Where can I find more about how it works? Is there a VM of some sort?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blu-ray#Java_software_interfac...

Ah, sorry, I looked it up myself and edited my comment. Bad habit of mine. Thanks anyway.

> So what happens to Africa when the old cars finally completely disappear?

The latest 2019 Land Cruiser (not the US luxury version) is nearly identical to the version sold 30 years ago.

VLC still works...

As for the Toyotas, they can become the Ship of Theseus, they can live forever, as long as there is demand.

Someone needs to design a future-proof upgradable car. Get the design right the first time and then technology upgrades as science advances, but no planned obsolescence.

There's two ways:

- 3D printing + open/royalty free

- Modular car, speaking to a car designer, they said it'll cost a lot, there's safety issues and laws (ie cage)

Wait, is this a thing now? I’ve long cut the cord but back in the day universal remotes could work with every major brand of tv, DVD player, etc

Toyota Land Cruiser is supposedly designed for a 25 year life span. If you want reliability, this would be your best bet. It's not cheap, but has good resale value.

Honda Civic that I had would have automated service recommendations based on some sort of diagnostics or heuristics, and tended to recommend service (oil change and tire rotation with some inspection and sometimes air filter replacement) every 9k miles for me.

I had the impression 6k miles is the standardized recommended interval for most brands (e.g. my current Subaru) but I guess that isn’t true for Lexus?

As I understand it, Buick seems to be doing fairly well along these lines and was a fairly good seller in China for its reliability.

Its reliability was compared to the China-native brands... not to the rest of the brands in the world. Difference is relative.

Hugely expensive service at major service intervals is pretty much the norm with luxury brands.