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Comment by prepend | Hacker News Reader

This seems expensive but it an out of production vehicle with a unique fuel source and not really supported.

He bought the car in 2015 so he’s lucky to get 8 years. Especially since Hyundai only provided a 5-year warranty. That seems pretty crazy to spend US$100k on a vehicle with a new technology.

When the Prius first came out they offered an 8 year warranty (or maybe 12) on the hybrid system. And that’s more familiar to mechanics than this fuel cell tech.

Tl:dr; don’t do stuff like this unless you’re ready to lose all your money. The owner got 8 years of utility out of the vehicle.

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> He bought the car in 2015 so he’s lucky to get 8 years

Well now I understand why manufacturers say transmission has lifetime oil in there... because some people think that 8 years old car is... an old car that could as well be done?

I could afford buying new car and paying xxx/€ per month, but I choose to buy ~10 year old car and if I'm lucky it has <200k km on odometer. But then I'm debt free.

If I'd be paying xxx/€ per month and having a broken vehicle after 8 years, I'd be very disappointed to say the least.

The point isnt that 8 years is a reasonable lifespan for a generic car, rather that getting 8 years out of a car with early stage, novel tech is not so bad

The article called it "third generation"

Additionally,

1. Your car is easier to repair

2. It is easier to find mechanics for repair

3. You get the treasure trove of pre-existing repair videos/guides in case something goes awry and you want to DIY.

>He bought the car in 2015 so he’s lucky to get 8 year

I disagree with eight years being adequate for a modern car. I'd argue 10 to 15 years is more reasonable. I know it's unique system but even so it should last at least a decade.

Years ago cars were crap past three or four years. Any cars I had in the 80s as a teenager were bought used since cars four years old were very rough (rust, general wear and tear, electrical, carb issues, leaks). Anything 10 years old was ancient. Now my Mom had a 10 year old Toyota Camry and it's like a three year old car.

I visited Cuba and pretty much all the cars were ancient, like 30-40 years old. Not sure how they pulled that off! (I think it was a Ship of Theseus kind of situation...)

Those cars are simple enough that easy repairs can be done by anyone with a bit of skill and standard tools.

In addition a lot of the parts that wear out can be manufactured locally with a manual lathe/milling machine/welding, or simply be replaced with a similar enough part that you make fit with a bit of elbow grease.

I remember Jeremy Clarkson going there once and talking about this 1950s MG MGA but when he started it there was a Lada engine inside.

Good weather makes a huge difference as well.

Cars that will survive decades in California will rust out in a few salty, winter years in Canada.

I’m driving a 16 year old Honda with over 200k miles. Runs great.

Warranty length is not and should not be the expected lifetime of the product. You don't expect your phone to die the day the two years of mandatory warranty (or whatever the length is where you're from) runs out, do you?

I expect the manufacturer to not fix anything past that date. Other than that it’s the reputation of the manufacturer. Some brand last long, some don’t.

This is a new product line from a brand that, although getting better, doesn’t have a great reputation for quality or longevity.

I think it’s unpleasant, but is part of my critical thinking skills for not buying fancy, unproven tech from Hyundai. Especially for $100k. If I bought that, I would treat it like buying a baseball card or a kayak or something.

There's warranty and there's estimated life. Nobody claims that their cars should be salvaged after warranty period. Producing repair parts for 20-30 years after the car has been sold is a norm. I owned 20-year old BMW and I was able to order parts for a reasonable price from BMW dealer, they were genuine new parts.

We got a 2002 Honda Insight near the end of its life (2nd battery, 3rd transmission). Nifty little vehicle but it showed the early iteration design all over. It was obviously not a mass production item; theres lots of "tuner" type details.

If you're the type of person to treat a car as a pet and replace major subsystems anyway; this kind of prototype thing can be great fun. I'm trying to get my nephew the e-scooter builder interested in redoing this car's heavy electrics from the engine back; it's got 300k miles on it but it can burn another transmission off at least, i think. If the wife lets me (its her car) I'm so tempted to explore the madmax weapons opportunities offered by that big chonky battery pack just sitting there.

> That seems pretty crazy to spend US$100k on a vehicle with a new technology.

He bought the car for US $55,074 (inflation adj:$71,805 per article)

Assuming the replacement lasts another 8 years, that's $14,206 / year.

But I'm sure they'd throw in free oil changes.

Yup. It really needs to be stressed that hydrogen-powered cars are a mix of compliance and "halo" vehicles - vehicles designed to showcase the bleeding edge of what a manufacturer can do.

Halo vehicles are usually focused on performance, and any car enthusiast can tell you that they can be a nightmare of compromises, unique-to-the-model low-volume (and thus very expensive) parts, and so on. Enough to look good and work well for the press and the first owners. The high development costs are a write-off, but that doesn't mean they'll eat the cost of the parts outside warranty.

For example, the first Audi RS6 had a biturbo V8 shoved into a mid-size engine bay. The battery was relocated, almost as an afterthought, to sit smack dead-center in the back of the trunk, just bolted down in a carpeted box.

8 years and only 80-90K kilometers, that's not a lot. And we should expect better from cars, they should last at least twice that long with regular maintenance, and five times as much range.

The average age of a car on the road in the US is 11 years. That implies that most cars are driven until they are at least 20 years old.

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