Back in the day most towns had a TV/Wireless set repair shop or two. We have now moved to the flat TV sets and in 2023 most of these shops have closed down and the people who worked in them now do other things. TV sets still break down but very much less than in the past and mostly get replaced than repaired. However, those sets that get collected and sent to other parts of the world, many do get repaired and in those places the repair shops are open, expanding and making a living.

When I look at vehicles in some parts of the world today a whole eco system of repair shops exist in most of their towns: E.g. if your lead acid battery is not charging you take it to the battery shop and rather than get a new one leave it there in the morning and by the evening, they will have remanufactured it to new condition again, same with things like radiators, brake shoes, tyres and so on. In UK we mostly replace these items with new ones and throw the old ones away. I wonder if replacing with new or remanufacturing takes the most skill?

Electric vehicles are still vehicles and will still need things like tyres, windscreens, brakes, seats, bodywork and much more replaced. None of these are impinging on the batteries and their high voltages. These electric vehicles will not have a combustion engine and drive trains like a petrol or diesel car so it will be just this part of the trade that will not be transferable without retraining. The combustion engine eco system will include those machine shops that remanufacture engines and drive trains.

The above may be true in UK but in some countries of the world electric vehicles with the ranges we have today are not useful. If the distance between two towns is say 500 miles over very hilly unpaved terrain as it can be then you would need a battery power source that does not yet exist as far as I know, do let me know if I am wrong, please. In these countries they will probably import all the vehicles traded in and just keep them going for ever by using their ingenuity. There are still parts of the world where there is no electricity to connect to but there are ways to fill a petrol/diesel vehicle again an electric vehicle is not so useful.

I have seen a small but growing eco system expanding around the repair of PCBs. These people have worked out how electronic components work together without reference to circuit diagrams. They have developed methods to use to test to find PCB faults. One person that springs to mind from YouTube is “Northridge Fix”. He specialises in laptops and phones but will attempt any PCB that is broken and economic to repair. Granted he cannot get a bespoke FPGA or the software code for some devices but he does cannibalise PCB’s that are beyond repair for parts. I can see this side of repairing things only increasing especially when there are enough faulty PCBs in cars to make it viable.

In UK today we may not have enough young people entering the vehicle repair trade as we knew it but the trade is evolving. We may not have repair shops as we knew them but they may become more specialised like tyre, windscreen shops etc. Once there are enough PCBs breaking that it becomes favourable to make money in a job repairing them then I am sure this will happen. If we remember around 15 years ago, in UK we were short of plumbers, they could charge high prices as they were in demand and many were making more than a chartered senior electrical engineer could. Once this was known many people left their jobs as engineers, doctors etc and retrained as plumbers. This is the ebb and flow of careers.

When I visit schools to talk about careers in engineering the young people will ask how much can I make as an engineer. I would explain the career and its earnings potential. At this point usually someone will say I can make more on TikTok/YouTube etc sitting in a cosy room just talking about products. How do you get that person from their cosy room out into the elements to get dirty fixing a vehicle?

In a world where we I feel we should have the right to repair a product we own we need to address what the vehicle repair shops of the future will look like and how do we train people to repair these new technologies.

Stephen Chapman said:

At this point usually someone will say I can make more on TikTok/YouTube etc sitting in a cosy room just talking about products. How do you get that person from their cosy room out into the elements to get dirty fixing a vehicle?

Really good points Stephen, in answer to this last one the response may need to be "off you go then, have a go!"  Actually only 1 in a million does, so once they've got that out of their system and realised that they are not going to make any money they may decide to retrain...

Stephen Chapman said:

At this point usually someone will say I can make more on TikTok/YouTube etc sitting in a cosy room just talking about products. How do you get that person from their cosy room out into the elements to get dirty fixing a vehicle?

Really good points Stephen, in answer to this last one the response may need to be "off you go then, have a go!"  Actually only 1 in a million does, so once they've got that out of their system and realised that they are not going to make any money they may decide to retrain...

What really annoys me is my HP printer was printing fine but suddenly stopped with an error message black ink carriage problem. 

To replace the cartridges would cost £47 but to purchase a new HP printer only £40 with 6 months ink.  How to save the planet?? Get ripped off by ink manufactures but not sending the printer to recycle as  transport costs are huge particularly if it goes overseas. 

That is a slightly different problem. Of course the printer costs more than that to make and bring to market, but they can bet that for the first few refills you will buy the approved ink at great cost so the cost is recovered in a year or two.

This plays into the human nature tendency to discount the value of the future - you see this in kids who eat their Easter eggs or whatever, all at once as soon as they receive them, and have nothing the next day. 

Us adults like to think we are better and above that,  but market research tells us not - so a printer of the same spec at a lower cost today sells, rather than one with a lower cost of ownership over a longer period.  If folk were better at visualising this, then printers would be designed for a 50 year life, cost about £1000, and the ink refills would be a few pence a litre. But anyone entering the market with that proposition would not sell enough to stay in business.

Similar marketing games are done with razors and the cost of blades, and mobile phones and the cost of contracts.

This failure to pay today for a better tommorow is probably a deep instinct left over from an era when life was more precarious, and if we did not seize the day, we may not be around tomorrow to do whatever it was. It also does not help when it comes to big issues like pollution and climate change.

The few of us who do think the other way have sheds of tools and bits of wood and 'stuff' saved up for the future, half of which we will never need - we just do not know which half...

Mike.

(I have 2 sheds, a garage, a loft and a car boot permanently full - much to my wife's irritation. But we are ready for most situations.)

Hi,

Had a similar problem with my "instantInk" HP.  Black was not empty but printer said error and would not print.

I spoke with HP support (phone), very helpful, they arranged to replace the black cart (and threw in a colour one too). Arrived in 2-3days installed the new black and problem fixed.  No cost to me other than the regular monthly fees. Great service.  I did need to do a re calibrate with the new cart once installed but other than that, happy customer.

Rgds

mapj1 said:

printers would be designed for a 50 year life, cost about £1000, and the ink refills would be a few pence a litre. But anyone entering the market with that proposition would not sell enough to stay in business.

Or they target the business market who do do that analysis - which some of us ;) capitalise on by buying HP business laser printers for home use: two in the past 30 years, the first one still works but sadly (despite all my best efforts) not on Windows 8 onwards.  Windows updates permitting, the second looks likely to outlast me. And again on the "true cost" point, the cost of toner cartridges is eye-watering, but then we have to realise how rarely we ever buy them. 

mapj1 said:

(I have 2 sheds, a garage, a loft and a car boot permanently full - much to my wife's irritation. But we are ready for most situations.)

I was beating you by one shed, but I have now (almost) emptied that to meet my wife's request for a gardening loo, although of course this means that currently I can't get into my other shed or my workshop. Or sometimes my car... Didn't help that I also had to clear my mother's house this year, which meant that the valve signal generators, valve AVO, and valve tape recorders that I'd left there in 1982 now needed another home!