Re:Tesla: Recalled touchscreens were meant to only last 5-6 ...
by throwawayboise on Saturday February 06, 2021 @07:12PM
(#26051412)
I think we'll see leasing pushed harder and harder. The car will be a monthly payment (which is already the case for a lot of people, whether they lease or buy) and after 5 or 7 years it's simply replaced with the current version, and the old one reclaimed/recycled. That gets manufacturers off the hook for having to support old cars with repair parts and services (the latter being especially important for manufacturers like Tesla that don't have dealerships). Fisker is pushing this "ownership" model with their new EV.
Re:Tesla: Recalled touchscreens were meant to only last 5-6 ...
by mastax on Saturday February 06, 2021 @06:41PM
(#26051228)
Ironically, that was when computers would come with schematics and repair manuals.
Re:Tesla: Recalled touchscreens were meant to only last 5-6 ...
by mr_toad on Saturday February 06, 2021 @09:25PM
(#26052083)
That was partly because it was cheaper to upgrade some old parts than buy a whole new machine. You could squeeze an extra couple of years out of a machine with a CPU or GPU upgrade.
Replacing broken parts was less common. No one really expected to just maintain the machine to the same specs for several years.
IMHO, the only reason people tolerate that is because the culture was habituated to it in the 90s/00s, when personal computers were improving so quickly that you'd likely want to replace yours even if it wasn't broken.
Cars are so expensive and the culture has been habituated to them having increasing life and reliability that I don't think a car company could pull off shortening their usable lifespan without burning their reputation. Until full self-driving capability gets to a deployable state, I don't really see any technological advancement that could ease people into a faster refresh cycle.