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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

#151

Post by ksk »

runeks wrote: post #58
etix wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Extending the minimum warranty can help to make more durable products.

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.

But extended warranty is just insurance, nothing to do with the product being durable or not.

I don't buy the argument that costs will skyrocket. Most manufacturers, won't give a lot of thought to making their products more durable while keeping the costs down, unless pressured, either by consumers, or the government. They're more focused on making money (rightfully so). The incentive to keep making money because their products break often causing people to re-buy, must be removed IMHO.

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#152

Post by taway_1212 »

vidarh wrote: post #37
taway_1212 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A recent example: the GSM roaming (a former giant cash machine against consumers) just got extinguished within EU countries by EU regulation. Wasn't that the European Commission (and not Parliament) though? They seem to be significantly more powerful.

EU law needs to be proposed by the Commission (though the Maastricht Treaty gives Parliament powers to request that the Commission should put forward proposals on their behalf), and then normally approved and/or amended by both Parliament and the Council, with drawn out conciliation procedures if one or the other changes the proposals too much. The complexity stems from the legal status where the EU is in some respec…

Thanks for the writeup! This gives some insight into how convoluted the system is and hence why people don't trust it.

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#153

Post by ksk »

runeks wrote: post #116
simion314 wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

The warranty doesn't make the product durable. Its just allows you to re-buy the same non-durable product using resources from a shared pool.

This is about addressing the fundamental problem.

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#154

Post by RealityVoid »

SeanDav wrote: post #51

I totally support this. I accidentally cracked the touch screen of my car radio console. The car is nothing special, a Ford Mondeo that is a few years old. Cost to replace touch screen module: more than the entire value of the car! That is insane. Effectively, if I want to claim from insurance - crack the touch screen (it is a replaceable module) and have to scrap the entire car. In this case, I managed to get a repl…

This is not really the best example since automotive usually has a higher degree of quality and more thought goes into durability compared to house appliances and automotive producers are obligated to provide spare parts for the lifetime of a car model, @10 or 15 years if I'm not mistaken. House appliances do not have this protection.

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#155

Post by ksk »

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…

>Hell some of it reads like an anti-Apple manifesto being that they integrate battery and LED and such.

Maybe because you are unfamiliar with other companies that do the same?

Recently the little magnet on my 5-6 year old iPad that holds the case has become weak. The ipad itself, works great. Its already out of warranty and it doesn't take a genius to popup open a case and put a new magnet in (instructions to do so are already on ifixit). But the supply of parts is intentionally prohibited by Apple, making such simple repairs impossible. While this regulation is addressing a different issue, citizens should be doing much more to penalize such anti-consumer behavior.

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#156

Post by rebootthesystem »

As I read through some of the comments on this thread what jumped out at me is that products today are designed with DFM in mind rather than DFR. Design for Manufacturing vs. Design for Repairs.

Industrial products are different. There's a class of product that must be designed for easy maintenance. Not so in consumer-land. For example, to replace some of the lights on a BMW you have to remove the front bumper. Crazy.

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#157

Post by marcosdumay »

sly010 wrote: post #142
cwyers wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Repair is so expensive because it's made to be. It shouldn't take several hours of skilled labour to replace an easily broken component like a touchscreen - it should be snap-in. Regulation can address that by mandating reparability. Which can increase the original cost of the good.

> Which can increase the original cost of the good. ... to better reflect it's real cost by including all the otherwise externalized costs.

To cross subsidize some kind of use, raising the cost for people that won't have the product broken.

I'm not saying that it's a net loss, nor that even if a net loss that it isn't worth it. But there is a cost there, and you are shoving it away on your quest to regulation instead of looking at it and deciding its worth.

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#158

Post by makapuf »

driverdan wrote: post #139

> 77 per cent of EU consumers would rather repair their goods than buy new ones This is most likely a misleading stat. You can repair most things if you're willing to spend the money or time to do it. Many consumer goods cost more to repair than it's worth. No one is going to do that.

It can be made way simpler and faster if optimized for this. Products are designed for being cheap to buy, not cheap to use.

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#159

Post by cwyers »

ksk wrote: post #147
cwyers wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Watch this video of a crash test between a 1959 Chevy and a 2009 Chevy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=joMK1WZjP7g The '59 Chevy gets 13.5 miles per gallon. [1] The '09 Chevy gets 25. [2] Yes, modern cars are more difficult to maintain than older cars -- they require more specialized equipment to maintain, parts are more difficult to replace, so on and so forth. Modern cars are also incredibly more fuel efficient an…

The argument is more like 'soldered RAM' versus 'user replaceable RAM'.

Which is done because solder is thinner/lighter than sockets, and therefore you can get a thinner/lighter laptop. There are real engineering tradeoffs all over the place here that are being elided over in order to make "things should be easier/cheaper to repair" seem obvious rather than a complicated set of tradeoffs.

Re: EU Parliament calls for longer lifetime for products

#160

Post by lliamander »

dTal wrote: post #69
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.

This is the fundamental issue, yes. Some thoughts: A large part of the discrepancy is not automation, but cheap labour in the East where many of our products are made. Regulation can help redress than inequality. Repair is so expensive because it's made to be. It shouldn't take several hours of skilled labour to replace an easily broken component like a touchscreen - it should be snap-in. Regulation can address that…

You've made some thoughtful points, but I'm not sure I agree with your conclusion.

In short, repairability is too nebulous of a target for effective regulation. I think the appropriate angle for government intervention is to protect a "right to repair".

> A large part of the discrepancy is not automation, but cheap labour in the East where many of our products are made. Regulation can help redress than inequality...Regulation can address that by mandating reparability.

There are a number of ways to tackle this issue:

* reduce the regulatory and tax burden faced by small repair shops. Increased competition and lower overhead costs will drive down prices.

* reduce the regulations that impact the product design. Engineering is the result of navigating difficult trade-offs; the more aspects of a design we try to "fix", especially through political processes, the more complex the end result will be.

* broaden access to repair knowledge and tools. You don't even need regulatory changes for this one; It's an excellent opportunity for entrepreneurs. Part of the reason older cars are so easy to repair is that the tools and knowledge have become widespread thanks to third-party businesses that have found a way to supply those things cheaply and profitably. YouTube is a DIYer's dream.

> It's also worth thinking about why we consider replacement being cheaper than repair to be a problem at all - if you trust the market, what's so horrible about that? Real time saver right?

Sometimes it's not a problem. Is it better to use a paper towel is biodegradable and produced through sustainable tree-farming, or use a reusable cloth towel that increases demand for environmentally unfriendly washing machines and laundry detergent (and spend money on sewing machines and thread to repair holes)?

> the price of new goods does not reflect their full environmental and social cost

Nor would they with heavy regulation, because the "full environmental and social cost" is incalculable. Furthermore, there is no attempt to measure the costs imposed by the regulations and the net benefits provided (if any).

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