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Car has more than 1.2M km on it – and it's still going strong

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Re: Car has more than 1.2M km on it – and it's still going strong

#21

Post by diggan »

epolanski wrote: post #15
SilverElfin wrote: post #2

> Over the years, nearly everything on the vehicle has been replaced or repaired, and Campbell says the only original part is likely the body, and even that has had work done on it. To me this makes it less interesting. I would be amazed if the original parts (outside of what gets replaced for maintenance) lasted that long. But it’s hard to judge how durable the car is when everything has been replaced

I mean, it depends on the kind of work to be honest. Has he ever had to replace the whole engine or something? Because if you get chain timing issues on a 2010 BMW diesel, you ain't repairing that, it's more expensive than a new car.

> you ain't repairing that, it's more expensive than a new car.

Sometimes we're more connected/sentimental about specific physical items, than the prices themselves. I kind of feel like you have to be a special sort of person to own a BMW, so wouldn't surprise me that same "special" person would pay more to repair their specific car than replacing it with an identical one but without that issue.

Re: Car has more than 1.2M km on it – and it's still going strong

#22

Post by realusername »

mrweasel wrote: post #17

There are some calculations that makes replacing a old gas or diesel powered car more environmentally friendly, as compered to buying a new electric car. I do wonder where the tipping point is though, and if there isn't an environmental argument to be made that not only should government bad the sale of new internal combustion engine cars, but they should also ban cars with an expected lifespan shorter than e.g. 15 -…

The calculation I've seen put it around 50k km, depends of how good the local grid is of course.

Re: Car has more than 1.2M km on it – and it's still going strong

#23

Post by hdgvhicv »

jose_mr wrote: post #5
moffkalast wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A literal ship of Theseus, arguably it's not even the same car.

But when exactly did it stop being the same car?

And what if you took the other parts and built a separate car from them?

Re: Car has more than 1.2M km on it – and it's still going strong

#24

Post by griffzhowl »

bot403 wrote: post #18
jose_mr wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But when exactly did it stop being the same car?

Fun fact, on average most (not all though) of the cells in your body are brand new after 7 years. When do you stop being you and take a new name?

This kind of thing is repeated often, but I don't think it's true. For one thing, how would tattoos last so long then?

More relevantly, I don't think neurons are replaced. There must be some material churn in the atoms and molecules that make them up, but even then different for different molecules - e.g. I don't know how much of our DNA molecules get replaced over a lifespan from the repair or other mechanisms.

Re: Car has more than 1.2M km on it – and it's still going strong

#25

Post by eptcyka »

diggan wrote: post #21
epolanski wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, it depends on the kind of work to be honest. Has he ever had to replace the whole engine or something? Because if you get chain timing issues on a 2010 BMW diesel, you ain't repairing that, it's more expensive than a new car.

> you ain't repairing that, it's more expensive than a new car. Sometimes we're more connected/sentimental about specific physical items, than the prices themselves. I kind of feel like you have to be a special sort of person to own a BMW, so wouldn't surprise me that same "special" person would pay more to repair their specific car than replacing it with an identical one but without that issue.

Doubt there’s a BMW enthusiast that will go out of their way to repair a 2010s diesel.

Re: Car has more than 1.2M km on it – and it's still going strong

#27

Post by hdgvhicv »

mrweasel wrote: post #17

There are some calculations that makes replacing a old gas or diesel powered car more environmentally friendly, as compered to buying a new electric car. I do wonder where the tipping point is though, and if there isn't an environmental argument to be made that not only should government bad the sale of new internal combustion engine cars, but they should also ban cars with an expected lifespan shorter than e.g. 15 -…

If externalities were correctly priced in to fuel, rare earths, rubber, road wear etc then it would be easy to see, the cheaper the better.

But they aren’t, not even close. Oil is massively subisidised by the military before the environmental costs. Brake particulates and tyres don’t cover the cost of microplastics and lung damage, heavy cars don’t pay anywhere near the damage they cause to the roads and bridges etc.

Due to this you can argue pretty much whatever you want by ignoring certain costs depending what you want to come out with.

My petrol car is 20 years old, it’s done 70,000 miles, it weighs about 1,000kg and burns through 300 litres of unleaded each year to do the 3,000 miles I do in it.

I suspect scrapping and replacing this with even a small electric car would not be globally environmentally worthwhile. There may be improvements to local air quality assuming regenerative breaking etc, that may be offset by increased tyre and road wear though, even ignoring the impact of the co2 to generate the 80kWh a year it would require.

Re: Car has more than 1.2M km on it – and it's still going strong

#28

Post by swarnie »

> This car has 1,253,070 kilometres on it — and counting.

> When it turned over from 999,999 kilometres to 000,000 kilometres in September 2017

The idea of averaging 31k miles a year is just insane to me. My car hasn't done that since i bought it new 8 years ago.

Re: Car has more than 1.2M km on it – and it's still going strong

#29

Post by franze »

> Over the years, nearly everything on the vehicle has been replaced or repaired, and Campbell says the only original part is likely the body, and even that has had work done on it.

aka

This is my grandfather’s axe. My father replaced the handle. I replaced the head.

Re: Car has more than 1.2M km on it – and it's still going strong

#30

Post by e4325f »

moffkalast wrote: post #3
SilverElfin wrote: post #2

> Over the years, nearly everything on the vehicle has been replaced or repaired, and Campbell says the only original part is likely the body, and even that has had work done on it. To me this makes it less interesting. I would be amazed if the original parts (outside of what gets replaced for maintenance) lasted that long. But it’s hard to judge how durable the car is when everything has been replaced

A literal ship of Theseus, arguably it's not even the same car.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAh8HryVaeY
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