Time to make a billion dollars on something else, then start up a car company designed to fail. No investors, design a car for a 60-70k buying price, few bells and whistles, but built to last indefinitely with basic maintenance. Start the company planning to practically close it down just after the last preorder customer has their car delivered and become a maintenance company with a few employees to make replacement parts and install them. If demand rises, redesign for the new times, ramp up and do it all again.
Having worked on and had every major brand (and some obscure ones) in my family, there’s a reason Japanese cars are considered the most durable.
We’ve driven numerous Toyotas and Hondas 300k+. Some we still have, 30 years old or more.
Working on Toyota and Honda is generally much easier and far less frequent than other brands.
You can see how American car companies enshittify things when there’s a joint platform (Ford/Mazda, GM/Toyota, Chrysler/Mitsubishi). Invariably the American version is inferior, and even the Japanese company version often suffers with some of the same shitty design/engineering choices.
I refuse to ever again own an American vehicle, or even one of the joint platforms. I’ve had both - they suck to work on, require more frequent repairs, sometimes to things that just never fail on Japanese cars (especially electronics and control systems… Looking at *you" Jeep/Chrysler).
forever cars no make profit line go up
Time to make a billion dollars on something else, then start up a car company designed to fail. No investors, design a car for a 60-70k buying price, few bells and whistles, but built to last indefinitely with basic maintenance. Start the company planning to practically close it down just after the last preorder customer has their car delivered and become a maintenance company with a few employees to make replacement parts and install them. If demand rises, redesign for the new times, ramp up and do it all again.
“Why do you hate freedom? And America? And puppies? And apple pie?” -Republicans, probably
I haven’t even read the article yet, and my cynical ass came to the same conclusion based on the headline. 😣
Competition, in theory, should combat this. It does, but it should.
Cars do have failure modes other than rust, like crashes. Having not yet read the article, I expect crashes still destroy cars.
Edit: having read the article, it was not a dense technical work and was disappointing on specifics.
Having worked on and had every major brand (and some obscure ones) in my family, there’s a reason Japanese cars are considered the most durable.
We’ve driven numerous Toyotas and Hondas 300k+. Some we still have, 30 years old or more.
Working on Toyota and Honda is generally much easier and far less frequent than other brands.
You can see how American car companies enshittify things when there’s a joint platform (Ford/Mazda, GM/Toyota, Chrysler/Mitsubishi). Invariably the American version is inferior, and even the Japanese company version often suffers with some of the same shitty design/engineering choices.
I refuse to ever again own an American vehicle, or even one of the joint platforms. I’ve had both - they suck to work on, require more frequent repairs, sometimes to things that just never fail on Japanese cars (especially electronics and control systems… Looking at *you" Jeep/Chrysler).