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EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

eubusiness.com

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Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#111

Post by pmontra »

odabaxok wrote: post #108

I agree with this too. I always try to repair things first and then replace them if necessary (even if it is a torn shirt or backpack, a broken zipper on a shoe or broken connector on a laptop). Also, I try to buy things which are durable, but a lot of times it is hard to tell what will be durable so I go with the pricier option hoping it will last longer. This is not always true, especially for shoes and clothing, b…

> there's no website which would say this product can be used for X years without breaking.

The problem is the X years.

For electronics that website would be almost useless. I could tell you about the failure modes of my past laptops and phones but would you buy a discontinued product? At best you could hope that newer products of the same brand fixed some of the problems of the past ones and didn't add new issues.

The same applies to most goods because they are replaced by new models yearly or faster.

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#112

Post by oever »

Areading314 wrote: post #26

Manufacturers should be made responsible for disposal. This would provide an incentive to make products last and be repairable.

A better incentive would be to require manufacturers to sell unlimited (yearly) warranty for their products. When you buy a product, you'll get the option to pay a yearly renewable sum that guarantees that any failings from normal use will be repaired.

Such a requirement will make the seller optimize the product for affordable longevity and make it cheap and easy to repair the product.

A significant number of consumers will appreciate the predictable cost for the use of the product and take out such a warranty.

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#113

Post by Dylan16807 »

Shivetya wrote: post #91

Some of their proposals are just the product of people who have no concept of how technology works. Hell some of it reads like an anti-Apple manifesto being that they integrate battery and LED and such. What would a tablet with a user replaceable battery look like? How many years must they last before they are long lasting? If a battery in a laptop last four years for a nominal charge is that sufficient? With regards…

> What would a tablet with a user replaceable battery look like?

https://www.ifixit.com/tablet-repairability

It looks about the same as any other tablet, but with non-fragile latches holding it shut and no glue anywhere.

> If a battery in a laptop last four years for a nominal charge is that sufficient?

No, the consumer should be able to replace the battery every few years and keep using it for over a decade, assuming a typical situation where nothing else breaks.

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#114

Post by odabaxok »

pmontra wrote: post #111
odabaxok wrote: post #108

I agree with this too. I always try to repair things first and then replace them if necessary (even if it is a torn shirt or backpack, a broken zipper on a shoe or broken connector on a laptop). Also, I try to buy things which are durable, but a lot of times it is hard to tell what will be durable so I go with the pricier option hoping it will last longer. This is not always true, especially for shoes and clothing, b…

> there's no website which would say this product can be used for X years without breaking. The problem is the X years. For electronics that website would be almost useless. I could tell you about the failure modes of my past laptops and phones but would you buy a discontinued product? At best you could hope that newer products of the same brand fixed some of the problems of the past ones and didn't add new issues. T…

Yes, it is hard to tell if a new product will last and for them it is useless, but such website could tell which brands are more trusty in this manner.

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#115

Post by PeterisP »

wheels wrote: post #63
runeks wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How does regulation solve the issue that replacing e.g. the touch screen may take many man hours of labor, whereas making the car itself took proportionally less, thus making replacements more expensive? Your experience is a symptom of a high degree of automation in one area (car manufacturing) and the absence in another (repairs), and regulation does not change that.

Much of that can be mitigated in product design. The amount of labor needed to replace something is a function of the extent to which being serviceable is a design goal.

It feels like an unachievable goal if I think about it even if the devices are designed to be very servicable.

Let's use the same example of a hypothetical simple toaster -like device, and assume that you have a specific breakage where fixing it takes 20% of the effort required to make the device in the first place.

I'd say it's feasible that massproduction and automation brings up the efficiency so that this already means that producing the item takes less human hours than fixing the item even if it's easily openable and servicable.

Furthermore, even if you have a scenario where fixing an item takes 20% of the hours to build the item, it's feasible that the local repairperson in a first wold country costs more than 5 times per hour than the cheapest possible place in the world where the item was manufactured.

It is quite realistic that the efficiencies of the global mass production toolchain mean that repairing many types of items doesn't make practical sense no matter how serviceable they are.

A person manually soldering a single capacitor can reasonably cost more than the manufacturing of the entire circuit board and its components - and that's not caused by faulty design, but by the effect of scale and automation; it's not that repair is expensive but that replacements are dirt cheap.

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#116

Post by runeks »

simion314 wrote: post #66
runeks wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't want to have to pay more for durable products. Please let me choose whether I want to buy extended warranty -- many manufacturers already offer it, but I'm not interested it in.

I know that most people change their phones often but there are products that are expensive like washing machine, gas heaters that should be designed from the start to last 5 years or more. If 2 companies build washing machines and they need to increase the warranty time, the one that can do that with less price increase would sell more, the one that planned them to break down faster would lose and have to make a new…

Why don't you just pay for the 5 year warranty if you want it, instead of wanting to make it mandatory that everyone pay?

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#117

Post by toomuchtodo »

ptaipale wrote: post #95
toomuchtodo wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Purchasing power has gone up for those who can take advantage of cheap goods, but as your question insinuates, wages have not gone up; they've been stagnant for decades.

What you get with your wages has changed. Real estate is more expensive; you get less of that with your wages. Mass-produced electronics and other consumer goods is much, much cheaper; you get more of that with your wages.

There's a great Fed press briefing where William Dudley mentions this, and someone heckles him "I can't eat an iPad!"

https://www.yahoo.com/amphtml/news/blogs/lookout/fed-officia...

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#119

Post by TylerE »

oever wrote: post #112
Areading314 wrote: post #26

Manufacturers should be made responsible for disposal. This would provide an incentive to make products last and be repairable.

A better incentive would be to require manufacturers to sell unlimited (yearly) warranty for their products. When you buy a product, you'll get the option to pay a yearly renewable sum that guarantees that any failings from normal use will be repaired. Such a requirement will make the seller optimize the product for affordable longevity and make it cheap and easy to repair the product. A significant number of consume…

That isn't really reasonable. No product is expected to work _forever_. Things fail. ICs go out of production.

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#120

Post by [deleted] »

oever wrote: post #112
Areading314 wrote: post #26

Manufacturers should be made responsible for disposal. This would provide an incentive to make products last and be repairable.

A better incentive would be to require manufacturers to sell unlimited (yearly) warranty for their products. When you buy a product, you'll get the option to pay a yearly renewable sum that guarantees that any failings from normal use will be repaired. Such a requirement will make the seller optimize the product for affordable longevity and make it cheap and easy to repair the product. A significant number of consume…

[deleted]
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