MAINTAINED TO LAST
While booting up this old 90s PC that I use for my morning internet
browsing (and most of my Gopher hole editing), I heard the
distinctive whirring of a failing fan bearing for about a minute.
So it seems one of the fans is due for another drop of light oil
under its sticker (on the other hand, my thermometer says it's only
9degC in here, so maybe it's just that. Nice sunrise though, I'm
off to watch that for a bit....).
Hmm, colder out there. Anyway, this oiling business reminded me of
my Jag, which I recently discovered missed an oil change because I
was so pre-occupied with getting the blower motors working (hmm,
more fans). If these PC fans were really designed to last then I
guess they'd be specified with a particular re-oiling interval, or
ideally designed so that they can be opened up and all the grit
collected in the old oil cleaned out. For that matter they ought to
have used ball bearing fans in the first place, or even those fancy
mag-lev ones.
The difference is that cars are traditionally built around the idea
of lasting in conjunction with maintenance. Electronics were like
that once too - valve radios, and especially TVs, were expected to
need a visit by the repairman at least once every few years. But
electronics improved and they became more reliable as well as
cheaper. So overall the cost to consumers of buying a replacement
item became less compared to getting it repaired, while at the same
time they were trained through advertising to always desire the
"new" model. So the sweet-spot between lifespan and cost was found
and only by chance has electronics hardware exceeded its commercial
goals by lasting in PCs like this for over 25 years. But still only
if someone like me finds ways to repair the other weak points like
the fans, and also the BIOS battery which was originally
encapsulated in hard epoxy within the RTC module without any
external electrical connection.
Cars on the other hand don't last very long without maintenance,
and cost the average person a lot to buy new. So they're made to
repair. That's actually become a pretty rare thing with consumer
goods - from TVs to appliences like microwaves, and even things
with small petrol motors like lawn mowers and chainsaws, the
assumption has fallen strongly on replacement rather than repair.
But cars aren't immune to this either, because over the years they
have become much more reliable, benefiting from advances ranging
from improved lubricating oils to more efficient engine designs. At
the same time manufacturers have increasingly tended more towards
designing them to be serviced and repaired using only the custom
equipment and techniques available to their own servicing
departments, whereby they can control the cost and convenient
availability of repairs to fit within a framework for the product's
intended lifespan.
Unfortunately I think electric cars are likely to be the final step
to removing this differentiation between the repairability of cars
and that of other consumer goods. The cost of buying a car will
still remain very high for the average consumer, but without an
internal combustion engine the number of routine maintenance items
should be significantly reduced, with the one important exception
being that of the battery (assuming, as it seems to be, that
Lithium-Ion or similar batteries continue to be the dominant means
of powering electric cars). With batteries intended to last only
5-10 years, and replacements costing a significant portion of an
electric car's original price, the incentive to replace rather than
repair at that point will be quite significant for most owners. One
can imagine that mechanical components such as wheel bearings that
remain in electric cars but commonly need to be replaced within a
similar time-frame might then be designed such that they are less
easily repaired, since in the first place many owners would be
unwilling to undertake such jobs on an old model with a failing
battery. Then those few who would be willing to replace the battery
are confronted with other limitations to their options for repair,
just like people trying to maintain other old consumer goods.
Oh and on the topic of electronics, the motor controllers and
associated advanced electronics in these electric cars rely very
much on custom-made components such that replacing them after the
manufacturer stops supplying spares would be a job equivalent to
"repairing" a vintage computer by substituting a Raspberry Pi for
the main board. Being pushed to the limits of power control
technology, I doubt those parts will keep working for as long as
the average CPU chip either.
- The Free Thinker