I would expect that pushing users to only use official dealers is an intent. Something I would expect to see more of, especially given the concept of monetarising the features which seems to becoming more common.

In a competitive environment, you make less profit on the product itself and you need to recoup more of that profit by selling services to your existing customers.

Except that in some circles in the UK at least, lock-in to the dealer has  been seen as a bad thing, and a mix of pattern parts and hobbyist car bashers keep cars going long beyond the point where the dealer will be happy to touch it. - I've been driving since the 1980s,  and have never felt the urge to buy a new vehicle, although I now tend to buy at the 8-10 years point rather than older as I would have done years ago.

Now that may not be typical , and I am aware I keep odd company, but I know a lot of folk who are quite happy to invest time to avoid paying over the odds for repairs etc. I'm not sure what maintaining a 10 to 20 year old EV will be like, but I guess in another 5-10 years we will find out. (as right now I'm driving a machine from 2010 ;-) )

Mike

Peter,

I've only changed one battery in the last 20 years.

Most of my vehicles has been low mileage (4000-6000 per year, you would probably consider that ultra low) and mostly doing short trips. So its not that the battery is being ideally conditioned.

You could say that we don't have the temperature extremes, but we have touched 100 F in recent memory and down below 30F in winter. Its the lows that take it out of the battery.

My current car is almost 8 years old and still on its original manufacturer fitted battery.

Ah, one of my former colleagues has a collection of older cars and bikes - and by that I mean at least 20 years old and going back to post-WW2. These are all self-serviced. The only thing he can't do is issue his own MOT certificate.

As an aside, its interesting to be  driven in a car that doesn't have seatbelts, or indicators, or a roof but will still happily belt along at 40/50 mph. But at least has a spade on the side if you get into trouble.

But the real issue will be that modern vehicle electronics is based upon modern mobile phone technology. Shrinking the lithography also shrinks the lifetime of the silicon. It isn't cost-effective to keep alive the older fabs that support the older processes just for spare parts.

So I suspect you are not going to see the equivalent of a 40 year old Volvo 240 still on the road in the future.

Hello Mark:

The US is so big that one puts a lot of miles on a car even on short trips . Where I live it's about 200 miles to the Florida north border and close to 200 miles to Miami in the south. I have driven from the east coast to the West coast, a couple of times, which is a little over 3,000 mile doing over 500 miles a day. With the old high power iron engines they were only good for about 100,000 miles or two years for me.

The newer engines (Camry for example) one can get 300,000+ miles but the problem is the degraded electrical wiring.

P.S In the old days I used to take the battery out of the car each night when it was really cold.

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay 

Mike:

Have you priced cars recently?

 As of 6 months ago, second hand cars ( 3 years old)  here in the US where only about $2,000 less than new cars. With new cars going for a little under $30,000.

The car market is now going south due to the high interest rates and the companies that sell second hand are taking a blood bath. Companies like Ford are in trouble with their F-150 trucks sales as they were overpriced and their dealer inventory has sky rocketed.

The trouble with older cars is the degrading of the plastic parts like door handles . The dealer wanted $180 for one, while parts supply chains were selling good copies for $30. 

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay 

Hello Mark:

According to what I read recently the proposed new Semiconductor Fab in India will be concentrated on trailing edge technology.

I assume that cars older that 1975 ,that are still running, you have to have additives (lead) added to the fuel.

The other problem is getting the correct air-conditioning fluids (if you have never had A/C forget this).

Having worked for an IC manufacturer who made parts for cars, I have many stories, that I can not tell!

Peter Brooks

Palm Bay 

In my experience, the OEM battery can last as long as 10 years.  It's the aftermarket ones that fail early.

But on my nearly new Renault Zoe (electric), they recommend changing the battery every 4 years, before it has a chance to fail.  I'm not sure that's progress.

Simon Barker said:

But on my nearly new Renault Zoe (electric), they recommend changing the battery every 4 years,

Different battery chemistry ... also different battery function.

I have generally had battery lives in excess of 5 years. My cars have usually been garaged but when we are away cold starts down to -20°C are to be expected.

All of my recent failures have been instant and complete. When the key is turned everything goes dark and the only solution is a replacement battery. The Swiss motoring association, TCS, carries a selection of replacement batteries in it’s patrol vehicles.

The problem appears to relate to the move towards ‘maintenance free’ batteries when the alloying element was changed from antimony to calcium. This reduced the water loss but meant the lead was more prone to cracking, causing a sudden increase  in the internal resistance of one of the cells. Often the available current was too low even to allow the vehicle to be bump/tow started as it couldn’t operate fuel pumps, ECUs etc. If you have the electric hand brake applied when the battery fails you are completely immobilized until you can find the handbook to tell you where the emergency release is.