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Comment by sandworm | Hacker News Reader

The threat to the car companies is that all-electric cars could dramatically decrease demand. They hope the complexity of fuel cells will keep demand going a few more decades.

An all-electric car could have as few as a hundred moving parts. A few motors and connecting rods, some suspension componants, fans and a couple manual controls. You just don't need the thousands of tiny metal bits necessary to keep a gas/diesel engine ticking over. Better yet, those parts you do need can be generic. Electric motors are nothing special, nor are batteries. Since they do not mechanically interact they don't need to be as engine/vehicle specific as parts today. Once EVs become the norm, and the teething problems of EVs are worked out, aftermarket replacements will be everywhere.

Build a car from non-rusting carbon fiber, fill it with easily replaceable generic parts, and you've got a recipe for vehicles lasting decades. THAT's what the car companies really fear.

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> THAT's what the car companies really fear.

No it's not. Cars today are all basically the same and have been for decades. People aren't buying new cars because the components are failing. Generally it's for a new interior, new technologies e.g. support their new iPhone and lifestyle changes.

This may be true for some people but a lot of people I know buy a car when the old one falls apart.

the average car ownership time is somewhere around 6 years[1]. It feels like 3-year leases are becoming more and more common so I wouldn't be surprised to see this number drop significantly in the future.

[1] http://www.kbb.com/car-news/all-the-latest/average-length-of...)

I suspect the vast majority of people who drive cars until they fall apart are not buying the car when new, so aside from propping up resale, those users are not terribly relevant to manufacturers.

That "aside from" bit is extremely important. If car resale values drop, new car buyers will on average buy less frequently, and be willing to pay less when they do buy.

For what it's worth, my dad's diesel Nissan Patrol is about 20 years old now and still running fine. I mean, it's a bit clunky, but it does the job - and the 4wd has got me through some snowy roads, too. Good car. Beyond fuel economy, I don't see why that car needs to be decommissioned any time soon.

So today's cars already last for "decades".

Any car will last for as long as you're willing to pour money into it. There becomes a breakeven point where maintenance costs increase such that it's cheaper to buy a new car than to keep the old one running. There's a good deal of variety in where that point occurs, due to different models having different reliability and different maintenance costs. Whether you're willing and able to do your own work on the car is also a big factor.

It may not have happened yet for that Patrol, but most cars are at that point by then, and it will probably happen soon on that one.

Lots of cars are kept beyond that breakeven point too, either for reasons of nostalgia, or because it's more palatable to spend your money in a continuous stream of small maintenance costs than to put down a big chunk up front.

Also though we have not had decent electric cars for long we've had electric golf carts for a while and googling the recommended life for accounting purposes it is 5 or 10 years. Just because a vehicle is electric doesn't mean it will last for ever.

Average car life on the road today are pushing 11 years. That's average.

That's actually borderline miracle considering how complex average car is.

With average new car price going pushing $32,000 mark, people would avoid making large purchases like this even every 10 years.

Sure they would love to change it every 5 years, but it's out of the question for most families.

Car companies fear being commoditized, because it's already a very competitive industry.

With global supply chain, computer aided design, parts sharing, and talent poaching, car business is already commoditized than many realize and it is very difficult to differentiate.

Long gone are the days of unique-company know-hows when a Mercedes Benz was literally 3-4 times better than cars that cost 3-4 times less because it offered many things others weren't capable of producing.

More so than electric vehicle, autonomous vehicle is what car companies fear.

I personally think combination of autonomous + electric vehicle will usher in an exciting era, and there is plenty of time for these car companies to adapt.

I doubt this is the case. If anything, the reasons you give boil down to: "the core of the car - the moving vehicle bit - will become commodity" and when this happens, cars will become "cars" like phones are now "phones," as in, they're not so much phones anymore as tiny computers that can also make calls. And this will definitely NOT increase their lifetime. If anything, it will decrease it... just like we replace our phones every 2 years.

You know how you swap the powertrain on a Model S? You pull the motor (~70 lbs) and you drop the battery pack. 10 minutes tops.

Sure, you could argue the interior will wear. Big deal. You'll have interiors you can swap on the power sled (battery + suspension + electric motor). Those sleds should last forever.

Why did you list the lbs for the motor and not the battery pack? =P

Because battery swap stations or other machinery would do the heavy lifting

As opposed to an engine crane?

You going to put the Model S on its top to use an engine crane on the battery pack mounted to the bottom of the chassis?

Bear in mind though the phones are 100x cheaper than cars. If the car prices don't come down drastically, they can certainly not become commoditized like that.

This only happens with phones because of rapidly increasing performance.

The same thing happened with desktop computers, but eventually the performance increases leveled off and people stopped purchasing a new computer ever 2 years.

While that's certainly part of the dynamic, the overall picture is more nuanced. New tech became available - smartphones and tablets as well as much more performant laptops - that replaced desktop purchases. Every two years a new laptop/tablet/smartphone is purchased, if not less.

Also, for phones, size and weight are very important, making modularity more difficult. Similarly, more people build their own desktop PCs than laptops.

It's hard for me to see how the car industry will go. Even today, there are people who keep cars running longer by replacing engines, etc., but most people want to replace the whole care before the drive-train gives out. My wife is ready to replace her 10-year old Honda Accord, not because of any drive-train problems, but because the upholstery is worn out, the AC sometimes blows hot air (I think it's some intermittent problem with the blend door, but it's hard to replicate the problem), it has some little dents and scratches, it makes funny sounds, and she's ready for something new. I can't think how any of those things will change with an electric drive-train.

Most car parts are already commodities anyway though. Example: Toyota and Lexus share almost every single part of the power train, its only the finishings that are different. And most car parts are made by a small number of OEM providers who sell to all the major car companies. Bosch, Denso, and Magna make most of the parts in your car.

The reason Toyota and Lexus share most things is because Lexus is a Toyota-car (just another name/brand).

This is an interesting idea, but I'd be curious to know what kinds of innovations in car functionality are possible. Also, assuming that you're referring to a kind of planned obsolescence, how can a company convince you to replace the entire vehicle if the moving parts are working fine?

If the computer is broken, replace the computer. Update the self-driving software over the internet. Why would you need to replace the whole car?

Unless, of course, a company tries to integrate points of failure all throughout the body, so that "replacing the computer" of the car or what have you becomes impossible due to the delicate electronic parts. Call me an optimist but at the price of cars today I don't think anyone but the super rich are gullible or decadent enough to fall for something like that instead of a cheaper, more reliable modular alternative. Unless the price of a brand new car becomes similar to that of a new phone, I don't think that future is very likely.

If only it were so simple. You're assuming discrete components. And you're assuming consumer sanity.

"Every protocol the car uses is proprietary and protected under DCMA / etc. There are chips in every component that don't allow the car to start if any component isn't a first-party part."

We're already seeing this sort of thing. Look at the Tesla. Or the Lightning connector from Apple.

Cars have been like this for years. This forum post [1] from 2004 discusses VIN specific coding, so that phenomenon is at least ten years old.

[1]http://forum.roadfly.com/archive/index.php/t-8237302.html?s=...

as automation increases, cars will likely become more computers than cars. And at that point I imagine the advances in computation and sensing will drive product refreshes. Even battery tech. Which all sound familiar...

Sure some of it can be over-the-air as Tesla has already shown, but the same happens on our current tech yet we still update the hardware pretty frequently. A new, better autopilot may not be able to run on a 3 year old car processor. Could you swap out the cars brains? Sure. Would that be lucrative for the car manufacturer? maybe not.

I think the biggest argument against what I'm proposing is that computers/phones have huge form-factor constraints that favor tightly integrated components - it's why RAM is no longer user replaceable in new, thinner macs. Cars, given their physical size, will likely never face that constraint making the modular approach you suggest much more feasible.

People replace smart phones mainly because they are slow or have become slow, or they want some new feature that isn't available on their current model. As smart phone mature this becomes less common, the technology will get to good enough level, speed, battery life, camera, and people will not feel compelled to replace their smart phones every year.

Hell I bought my Nexus 5 on release and don't feel the need to replace it yet.

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