Comment by torgoguys | Hacker News Reader

Comment by torgoguys | Hacker News Reader

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>70,000 miles is an incredible distance. I am impressed the car held together that long.

Huh? Nothing unusual at all about that. I'm sure others will chime in with even higher numbers, but I sold my last car after I put 200,000 miles on it. It was still working, but did have some miscellaneous issues by that point (no suspension issues though and I did have a gravel driveway for 2/3 of my ownership of the car). Buy a reliable model and you'll find 70,000 to be only middle-age.

(To back this up with some sort of data--a quick search of cars.com for Toyota Camry's (since it's a fairly popular, quite reliable car) shows 4,837 for sale with over 100,000 miles right now. I see pictures of some of those odometers with over 350,000 miles on them. While that's unusual it is FIVE TIMES the 70,000 miles you thought was an incredible distance.).

If something fails on your car after the warranty period, should it be replaced for free then? It's great that some parts last for much longer than the warranty, but don't kid yourself in thinking that Toyota would honor a ball joint or suspension piece for 200,000 miles or more.

If anything, you should be comparing similar vehicles. Compare the Model S to a Mercedes S class, or a BMW 7 series car. For example, a common complaint of these cars is the air suspension goes bad and has to be replaced for $2000/wheel. There's a warranty, and if it happens in that warranty it's covered for free. But if the air suspension goes out after warranty, no one bats an eye and expects it to be covered for free.

Isn't that usually the air suspension though, a item known to go bad and a reason many people opt not to get one?

Yes, that's true a lot of people opt to not get it because of the cost to fix it. But, a lot of "packages" will require it. Like on the Model S if you get the fastest option you can't unbundle the air suspension. (Update: it used to be the case where they made you get that, but now you can unbundle it.)

> If something fails on your car after the warranty period, should it be replaced for free then?

Nope. I didn't say nor imply that. I was expressing surprise that someone would think it unusual for a car to last 70,000 miles, nothing more.

It's a remarkable thing that even as the complexity of vehicles has risen over the years, (I think) the data shows overall longevity and reliability has increased (on average for the whole fleet). Auto engineers and manufacturers are doing something right!

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