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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

#201

Post by SoftTalker »

senorrib wrote: post #190
SoftTalker wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lawn service that is working 8-10 hours a day can't use battery tools unless they buy a lot of batteries and/or have a way to recharge them in the field (from a gasoline-powered generator, most likely). So their complaint has some validity.

BS. Gasoline is just more convenient and cheaper for them. 40V batteries last long enough that you only need a handful of them to last a whole day.

I have 40V electric lawn mower. It takes nearly the full charge on two batteries to cut my average suburban-sized lawn. Sometimes I can't even complete it on that depending how tall the grass is. Add in edge trimming and blowing away the clippings and then multiply that by a number of lawns or larger properties and I think you would need dozens of batteries.

BTW "more convenient and cheaper" are strong arguments when you're in a competitive business. Lawn services are usually just a guy with a truck hustling for customers. The more lawns you can cut the more money you make. Anything that causes downtime such as running out of charged batteries is going to be a large negative.

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

#202

Post by Tade0 »

jacquesm wrote: post #159
Tade0 wrote: post #14

It's less than (originally Matt Farah's) million mile Lexus: https://www.autoevolution.com/news/mechanic-restores-an-ls-4... Although the current owner's plan to do a cannonball run in it is something I find off-putting. His previous stupid idea was to put a turbocharger and see how long it will last, fortunately his fans dissuaded him from doing it.

They're both Toyota's, but the Lexus cost an order of magnitude more so by that measure it is not nearly as impressive. This is a low end car we're talking about.

Low end cars tend to be more reliable as they're:

1. Built at a larger scale and at lower margins, so thoroughly tested beforehand.

2. Equipped with fewer features which might require maintenance.

3. Using generationally older powertrains oriented for economy, not performance.

That being said Lexus' original differentiator was reliability - particularly versus its peers price wise.

Also I guess this doesn't apply to various four wheeled appliance manufacturers like GM, Ford, Stellantis, Renault–Nissan–Mitsubishi, all of whom do cheap out on essential components.

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

#204

Post by untech »

bigstrat2003 wrote: post #182
burnt-resistor wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Metrication will happen after Americans give up ICE vehicles like the Ford Expedition, ICE gestapo, ultraprocessed hamburgers, and climate change denial. Metric is really far simpler, while Freedom Units are like going back to counting change in Roman-inspired £sd.

> Metric is really far simpler... For the common, everyday use case it isn't meaningfully simpler, which is why the US hasn't switched. The conversions are certainly harder to memorize, but by the time you're an adult you have memorized all the common ones (12 inches to a foot, and so on) so that downside only applies to people who have to learn this stuff (largely children, who don't get a vote). The math is also ha…

When I think about problems with Customary Units, I think not about decimality, but that the units are too disconnected. For example, there are BTUs and HPs that mean the same thing (power), but are wildly non-connected both to each other and to other units. While in SI, a Watt is Joule per second, a Joule is Newton times meter, a Newton is kilogram times meters per second squared, and voila, you have arrived at basic units. Your AC, your PC and your electric car have power consumption in the same units, and the same units are on your bill. This is what valuable, and not Greek prefixes.

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

#205

Post by geodel »

jbeard4 wrote: post #69

> 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. It’s the Tercel of Theseus: if every part has been replaced, is it still the same car? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

Yeah, thats the first thought came to my mind as well. It does give me a great deal of satisfaction when a tool, gadget or anything last long with daily use and limited maintenance.

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

#206

Post by teiferer »

benjiro wrote: post #66
teiferer wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> With EVs, we might get some battery packs and drive trains actually lasting this long. I doubt it. The components in modern cars are not made to last as long. Neither is the software. Ever tried a 15 year old Iphone? A Tesla won't feel much different. Everything is meant to be consumed nowadays, and eventually, sooner rather than later, replaced.

And you get the luxury of paying 50% more, for that privilege (vs a ICE engine). I said it before, give me that BYD (reverse) hybrid engine, that does 1080km on a single tank. Unfortunately, battery tech despite all the lab "super improvements" are not seeing any major gains in the field. And a lot of money has been going into that.

The issue is not EV vs ICE. It's that things are not built to last or to be easily maintainable / serviceable. A modern car is not just like a smartphone you are sitting inside of, it's a server rack full of stuff. Of course that's outdated 1-2 decades from now and nobody is going to provide updated software anymore.

All things equal I'd even expect this to be worse with an ICE because of higher complexity, though the tech is more mature and stable at this point and the ICE manufacturing more traditionalist than the EV space.

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

#207

Post by randcraw »

I was curious what make and model achieved this, knowing that it couldn't be a Honda Ridgeline since their transmissions tend to explode without warning. Mine (a 2019) just disintegrated at 35,000 miles despite my changing out its fluids only two months back.

Maybe my next car will be a Toyota. My 1994 Pickup (like the one the guys on Top Gear couldn't kill) was pretty durable, though the frame did rust to bits at only 60,000 miles.

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

#208

Post by jorts »

randcraw wrote: post #207

I was curious what make and model achieved this, knowing that it couldn't be a Honda Ridgeline since their transmissions tend to explode without warning. Mine (a 2019) just disintegrated at 35,000 miles despite my changing out its fluids only two months back. Maybe my next car will be a Toyota. My 1994 Pickup (like the one the guys on Top Gear couldn't kill) was pretty durable, though the frame did rust to bits at on…

It’s an 85 Toyota Tercel.

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

#209

Post by _heimdall »

iknowstuff wrote: post #187
_heimdall wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ICE vehicles just can't go away quickly enough We do have to either replace them with something else or stop owning personal vehicles. The end goal may be better, but that transition will be long and it will break plenty of things along the way.

It really doesn’t have to. I’d say look at Norway but you’ll dismiss it as a rich country without looking up the actual reason behind their transition’s success. I’d say look at China but you’d say yeah but that’s China. We can make the same decision and move fast in the direction, we just choose not to

Norway has done a great job transitioning, that's for sure. They are a richer country and that helps fund the massive government spending going into the transition, but I wouldn't dismiss their success either.

It helps that so much of their energy production already comes from hydro, that avoids the challenge of replacing ICE vehicles with electric cars in front of coal power plants.

I haven't been to Norway but I have been to Sweden, I was impressed with their primarily electric public transportation. I'd have to learn more about how Norway handled the transition and how it would translate to the US; for example average commute distance, use of public transportation, etc. I'd also be curious how much their government has been spending per capita, they do heavily subsidize the transition with things like tax incentives.

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

#210

Post by Thlom »

SoftTalker wrote: post #201
senorrib wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BS. Gasoline is just more convenient and cheaper for them. 40V batteries last long enough that you only need a handful of them to last a whole day.

I have 40V electric lawn mower. It takes nearly the full charge on two batteries to cut my average suburban-sized lawn. Sometimes I can't even complete it on that depending how tall the grass is. Add in edge trimming and blowing away the clippings and then multiply that by a number of lawns or larger properties and I think you would need dozens of batteries. BTW "more convenient and cheaper" are strong arguments when…

Insane that there's a market for a dude with a lawn mower these days when you can get a good enough robot mower for $1000 ...
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