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This is more prevalent in the computer industry over the automotive industry. For instance, Apple has been purposely slowing down the OS of their older device in order for you to come in and buy the new one.
I have an iPad 2 that was fast up until the release of the most recent iPad and now it crawls.
I think that planned obsolescence is indeed prevalent in manufacturing industries, including automotives. Being a very old industry, they probably have very detailed MTBF(Mean Time Between Failtures) and MTTF (Mean Time To Failure) data on record of most materials and design and likely very accurate.
So they can, actually engineer cars to have a finite lifespan, and do so with a measure of accuracy. Also perhaps new manufacturing technologies that can produce parts faster with a sideeffect of a reduced lifespan may help in increasing sales when they are having a competing model that is equal in pricing.
However, it’s not entirely a good or a bad thing in my opinion. New technologies arise all the time, and it’s simply not cost effective or possible to bring an older model up to date, so obsolescence is perhaps not the absolute evil people paint them to be. (except for people who keep their cars for sentimental reasons)
But to say that a manufacturer does not consciously plan for obsolence.. is perhaps a half truth.
Sometimes they probably will, if the cost is too attractive to not implement.But as an owner of a 25 year old car from the 90s, and also an owner of a relatively new car (okay, I lied, it’s newer than my other one, at 2010), I have noticed that certain lifespan of wear and tear items have decreased, especially of rubber bushings, door seals, and interior plastic.
My older 25 year old car still has working original door seals and most of the interior bits (one panel was deteriorated, it simply cracked with age, and pulling it out, it came out in pieces. (I even have spares on hand in case it starts to fail/deteriorate, planned maintenance lol.)
come 2016, it’s still soft and pliable and doesn’t come off in pieces. While my other one, has a few seals and bushings and various interior plastic that already deteriorated and has gotten replaced.Perhaps it’s just the luck of the draw, but I honestly do think that planned obsolescence is something a manufacturer implements to keep their bottom line healthy. Good or bad, probably a little bit of both. You can’t make things last forever. But if you can, is it worth the cost?
I think most people’s concern is due to the fact that cars are updated yearly now, and due to the complexity in electronics of newer cars, some lemons sometimes come through and causes owners undue dealer visits, and gives rise to the fact that manufacturers are putting in absurd amounts of planned obsolescence (1-2 years) just so they can keep the market from being saturated.
I know I would do planned obsolescence if I was heading the company. 10K hours of operation is a reasonable target for MTTF (1 year) if used 24 hours a day, but who does that kind of driving?
Reason.. who’s going to buy my 2019 model when it comes out if the market is saturated with my previous product?
Oddly from the other end of the spectrum, I think seeing many older models still being driven on the roads today instil an air of confidence in the brand/manufacturer that is important when considering a new/used car purchase.
Probably one of the reasons why I stick to Toyota and not Audi, VW or anything French or Italian!Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Alot of the reason you see older vehicles on the road still is due to guys like Eric, myself, and most of you guys keeping them going. With some vehicles that’s a full-time job, and with others (like my ’86 Grand Marquis), it’s fairly easy to do.
GM has been building total junk (compared to what they used to build) for the past 20 years (longer with certain models). It takes quite a feat to keep them going. My ’89 S10 Blazer I just sold was a good example of that … but that truck was 10x better than the ’00 Jimmy I ended up parting out, due to never ending electrical gremlins in every system on that truck. I ended up taking the ’00 4.3 out of the Jimmy, stripping all the electronic crap off it, slapped an Edelbrock intake and carb on there, and a HEI distributor, and mounted it up in the ’89 S10 Blazer. It suddenly became one of the most reliable cars we owned! If not for the warp-speed body rot, I’d have kept it around.
But back on topic …
Just thinking about how everything from cars to toasters USED to last, it’s hard not to suspect they’re purposefully engineering everything to fail. Just reading some of the comments on Youtube made me remember this. Like 70 year old refrigerators that still run, or, as in the case with my ’86 Grand Marquis, the fact that it’s 30 years old this month, with 230k on the clock, and still has the ORIGINAL OEM fuel pump, power steering pump, starter, and up until last year, injectors. Only reason I replaced the injectors is because I broke the plastic shield off the base of one of them after removing it to clean it. I ended up selling the entire set of 8 on eBay – the guy who bought them for his classic car engine swap said they all tested within spec, except for ONE. That one was only out of spec 3%!
I suspect nothing on the road today will be capable of running in 3 decades, unless totally rewired, or rebuilt.
ItS easy to think planned obsolescence is a real thing. But your right about its the quality of materials used versus the cost of production versus the demand of product.
What people (manufacturers) seem to be losing sight on are the two number 1 vehicles in history. Not the mustang, not the tesla, not a ferrari. There are the model T, and the VW bug.
Why? Cause they were built to last! Easy to build = easy to maintain. Today’s cars (vehicles) would never makeep it back in the day. The amount of maintance required for today’s cars would not go well. Yes today’s cars are safer, better comfort, better perfomance, more “green friendly”. But our tool boxes alone tell the story of what is required to keep one running today versus one of years back. I remember reading an article back 8n the 90 that had a statement from VW saI’d something like “one of ous main competitors are ourselves, from our Beetle ”
One of the greatest cars of all time had nothing to do with performance, comfort, or safefy. It was all about reliability. Ask why did Toyota and Honda do so well? Reliability. The biggest problem is our general acceptance of failure of products. Over all we are ok saying a small amount and be ok with it not lasting, than paying a large amount and requiring it to last. Who has a piece of furniture that was bought new recently and is expecting that to be passed down for 3 generations? I have one piece, and that’s my bed. And that’s cause I built it myself. Things today are just overall aren’t made to last. And that goes for the modern automobile too.Hi Eric A big welcome from the UK.,I own a 2004 Mercedes e320 cdi. back in 2002-2006 these cars were fitted with an SBC unit in place of the regular abs system the idea being more reliable and responsive breaking which it does exceptionally well, however these units were with a counter which means after so many million taps on the brakes a warning malfunction message appears saying brake malfunction visit workshop their is absolutely nothing wrong with the brakes they work perfectly these units are none user serviceable and can only be obtained and fitted by Mercedes their was eventually a guarantee placed on them but only it the vehicle has been serviced by Mercedes from new; unfortunately my car has had several owners since new and servicing was not always carried out by MB I had to foot a bill of £1,500 this has been known as the kiss of death for so many of these older cars.
Kevin.Yeah, if people keep buying this stuff and not complaining about it, the manufacturers will continue to feed us this sh*t sandwich.
I recall complaining about all the problems my ’07 Silverado had when it was 2 years old, with barely 30k on the clock, over at GM-Trucks.com. I got attacked by people, calling me a “whiner”, because I expected more for $30k. I couldn’t believe what I was reading! Had quite a few internet battles over there. I don’t get attacked anymore – I think after the ’14 -’15 Silverados came out with more problems right out of the gate than any other model in GM’s history, maybe they finally saw the light.
Funny we’re on this topic – my buddy just texted me about a guy at his work that bought a ’15 Silverado. Just got it back from the dealer after the #6 cylinder had bad rings – a whopping 7k miles on the clock!! GM has really hit rock bottom …
Yep, I was going to post about the same thing about Mean Time To Failure. There are books of just bolts and how long this thread pitch on this metal will hold this torque, etc. It started really post WW2. Companies realized that they sold all this stuff to new families, but how will they stay in business if everyone has the blender that will last 50 years. So they figured an average blender should last 7 years (for example, I don’t know the real data). Long enough you feel you got your value out of it, but short enough that you create a revolving customer base.
Look at the 7th Gen and 8th Gen Civics. The 7th gens were built a little too well. so the 8th gen they change stuff out to last a long time, but not as long at the 7th gen. Then the 9th gen the same thing, 10th gen the same thing. the average car is now 11 years old. Most are built to last about 10 years or 150k without major work. This is unless you live in the northeast. Salt, bad roads, etc eats your car faster here. Wonder what happened to rust proofing? It was a big thing in the 80’s, the manufacturers started offering it as a add-on, thus forcing the businesses that did it out of business now. Now it is available, but when was the last time you saw it being pushed. It makes the car last too long.
Here in the UK its a known fact that if you own an MG model F. (convertible roadsters from the 90s) your head gasket will blow every 40k
for this event to be known to the general public (including people who dont own one of those) seems rather fishy,
however this “design flaw” has cost MF its reputation for building reliable cars. being a pretty rare brand to be seen new cars nowadays.Eric makes a good argument. But i am with stilllearning on this one. with the level of technologie that exists nowadays. any brand could easily make a car to last for 30 or 40 years by default. after all Toyota, Honda, Izuzu have been famous for their incredible reliability every since i was a kid. i currently own a 18 year old Celica. with very few flaws to complain about.
I can’t exactly comment as to weather or not planned obsolescence is a real thing, at least in the automotive industry anyway. The consumer electronics industry however is most definitely guilty of it (I’m looking at you Apple). Software, phones, tablets, computers, there have been examples of planned obsolescence in all of them. And since people in general tend to just throw them out and get the newest, shiniest, thing as soon as it comes out they can get away with it for the most part. Obviously though no company (regardless of industry) will admit to it. Doing so would not only throw their reputation in the dumpster, but it also illegal.
As an aspiring engineer you are right about them Eric. While I can’t speak for everyone for the most part no engineer wants to design a crap product. Doing so would be pretty counter intuitive and could ruin their future job prospects. In fact as to how things are made engineers have the least say overall in the entire process. They get told that the product they’re working on, weather it be a car, phone, refrigerator, etc, has to do x,y, and, z, it has to be a certain size, look a certain way, and cost within whatever budget is set for them (which is usually arbitrary and far below desirable). Most of the time they don’t have much choice other than to design in lower quality parts because their budget simply won’t allow them to do so otherwise.
From America’s finest news source:
Toyota Recalls 1993 Camry Due To Fact That Owners Really Should Have Bought Something New By NowAbout 100 years ago, a light bulb cartel limited the operational lifetime of incandescent bulbs in order to maximize profits and stabilize the market. However, a light bulb is relatively simple and inexpensive compared to a car or truck. Also, autos usually can be repaired, so they don’t fall into the planned obsolescence (or mandatory replacement) category, IMHO. Hopefully, the future will not include a subscription-based model for car ownership – i.e. pay for X years of ownership (not leasing).
[quote=”dblisle” post=157567]This is more prevalent in the computer industry over the automotive industry. For instance, Apple has been purposely slowing down the OS of their older device in order for you to come in and buy the new one.
I have an iPad 2 that was fast up until the release of the most recent iPad and now it crawls.[/quote]
Same thing happened to me, so I replaced my IPAD2 with a Samsung Galaxy tablet and couldn’t be happier.
Oh it’s real. Maybe not in the sense that a car will ‘self destruct’ after so many miles or years, but rather as u/stilllearning suggested, by using materials with a shorter MTBF. As far as the engineering to a shorter MTBF, I’ve seen the symptoms of it myself in some models when they change something to be ‘better’ and it’s really the opposite. But because they can save $X on every model it’s worth the risk of having to fix a certain percent of early failures.
I’m sure all of us who have turned wrenches for a living have seen makes or models that need certain components replaced by a certain mileage.
With increased safety standard enforcement, there’s actually more incentive for manufacturers to design in shorter lifespans. If a manufacturer can remove a higher number of vehicles from their risk assessment of future recall liability, it’s to their benefit. So if you calculate that by say 15 years, only 30% of a lesser designed vehicle will still be on the road, versus 50% of a better designed vehicle the difference in liability would be enormous. Using the Takata recall as an example, if an extra 10% of the effected vehicles are off the road because they were simply too expensive to fix. That’s 3.5 million cars that do not need to have the recall performed, over the regular attrition rate.
I’m also going to throw it out there that some of it is people looking through rose coloured glasses. Most of the reasons why people state their older cars are better is due to simplicity. As u/Vlad2 pointed out, 2 of the best selling cars ever were the Model T and the Beetle, both of which where stupid simple designs of another time. The Model T was essentially designed to be repaired by someone who doesn’t know how to read.
Yea, cars aren’t designed to “fail” all at once. But you know when you get rid of a car, in theory anyway. It’s when the cost of monthly/yearly repairs outweights a new car payment. For us, that is longer down the line than somebody who has their cars repaired.
If you have to pay 300 for a water pump to be replaced, and then 500 for a shop to replace 2 wheel bearings, that car will be traded in, often at the time these bills hit, “cause I can get something new without the problems.” Now we would toss in a water pump for 30 bucks plus antifreeze, and 200 in parts for the wheel bearings, knowing both items are wear items. But when that parts bill starts to add up and every month, I am working on it, its time for it to go. Thus Mean Time To Failure kicks in. But at 135k, can you really complain…
Out of curiosity, I researched the origins of the word planned obsolescence… Thinking it was rooted in some other industry.
To my surprise, IT IS rooted in the auto industry from the 1924. GM vs Ford. GM churned out yearly model updates, rendering the previous generation obsolete with incremental technological advancement. Ford lost the battle as it stuck with the ‘make it last forever’ philosophy, as customers perceive newer models as better (they probably are).
There’s a lot more info about it. apparently so much so that more than a few books are written on the subject.
#TIL planned obsolescence actually first coined within the automotive industry. not the non-automotive manufacturing/computer industry as I initially thought.
Well, I do learn something new everyday.
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