Hacker News Reader

Comment by southerntofu | Hacker News Reader

> I get that it doesn't make sense to offer parts for 20yo cars

Why not? Personally i believe a hardware manufacturer should be bound by law to sell parts for any vehicle it sold in the past, as long as it exists. Yes even if it was produced 40 years ago. There's no reason for it to be otherwise.

If this was mandated by law all the tiny incompatibilities that they introduce with very varied models will suddenly go away because they'll be careful to make products that can actually be maintained and repaired decades from now with spare parts compatible with different models.

Some people use cars who are more than 50 years old and they're just fine. Same goes for washing machines, drills, bikes... We have to stop this capitalist nonsense that keeps on producing single-use items that end up in the trash in the coming months. IT'S INSANE!

View on HN

“a hardware manufacturer should be bound by law to sell parts for any vehicle it sold in the past, as long as it exists”

Cars would get extremely expensive. Imagine Ford still having to supply model T wheels and engines.

They either would have to have kept a production line and employees knowing to operate it around, or have stocked ‘enough’ parts, where ‘enough’ is very hard to estimate up front. Also, stocked parts deteriorate, so for, for example, tyres, they would have to keep a production line running.

And that’s the easy case. At least Ford can ballpark know how many model T’s still exist. what if a car of a model that we thought didn’t exist anymore gets discovered in a barn?

And of course, that wouldn’t work in cases where manufacturers get bankrupt.

> or have stocked ‘enough’ parts, where ‘enough’ is very hard to estimate up front.

On the building where I live, the company which does the elevator maintenance offered a significant discount on the replacement of the control system in the machine room with a more modern model (which uses less energy). Their reason: including us, they had only two clients left which used that older system, so once both upgraded to a newer (and more common) model, they would no longer need to stock replacement parts for that older model.

I also know people who work in banking.

¿Some? ATM machines have hard disks, and are certified with specific models.

You would be surprised what a hard disk with 1/100 the capacity (or even less) of a $100 one costs.

It's extra silly since there's always a robust aftermarket for any reasonably popular car. You can buy new Model T parts in 2021. A lot of modern cars are built on shared platforms, too, so the odds of someone still making parts go up since the engine is probably the same as 20 other models.

I'd expect each new model to be launched as its own business, licensing out the design.

Said business would eventually declare bankruptcy and stop making the parts

Which would happen a lot more frequently in this counterfactual.

>It's extra silly since there's always a robust aftermarket for any reasonably popular car.

One difference is the difficulties in making some 'parts' now. It's one thing to make a fuel pump for a 1950's car, quite another to duplicate a controller board, often with obsolete parts and secret software, that runs the convertible top.

Another is that a lot of parts are more monolithic than they used to be and harder to design/build. Look at headlight assemblies.

It doesn't help that with the increasing amount of software and electronics in a modern car (a Tesla being the leading example), the auto industry is acquiring the product lifecycle times and forced obsolescence of the PC industry.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com