France wants companies to make appliances that last longer
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
Which, by the way, seems like an excellent proposition. As a (potential) customer I can factor in lifespan with features and price for things I buy and make a better-informed decision about which best meets my needs. Anything that gives customers more accurate information should lead to better-functioning markets.
(Many supermarkets were basically rorting people by charging more for the 'bulk' items but labelling them as best value)
You can see the same for the fixed price chickens vs the organic/free-range that are priced by weight.
Although Tesco will no doubt try to game the system, it is in their interest to show you understandable unit prices because they want to flog their stuff cheaper than the brands.
> Although Tesco will no doubt try to game the system, it is in their interest to show you understandable unit prices because they want to flog their stuff cheaper than the brands.
I'm not sure Tesco makes more money on the cheaper stuff. People who care about price and quality go to Lidl and Aldi anyway (if available in the vicinity).
Though I guess it's just a ploy by the retailer. Perhaps they are trying to hit certain magic price points. (Like 0.99 of local currency.)
Note that this most likely not Ubest's pricing decision, but the convenience store or grocer retailer that sells the product to the end consumer.
Not if the information is vague or subjective or manipulable (as I think "expected lifespan" would be), or if that information is very costly for the manufacturer to estimate, or for the government to verify.
Sometimes its better to let the market work on its own, e.g. through product reviews.
And "it broke" just tells me it has a very short lifespan, but won't let me know if some stuff has a 6 months vs 6 years lifespan. "short lifespan" is fundamentally different from "not working".
We're used to the former (unfortunately), but won't consider the latter acceptable, except maybe when buying obviously overly cheap stuff
to be honest, I very much doubt I would post an expected lifespan greater than warranty.
personal note, many of my small appliances are purchased used off ebay for prices similar to new or even less and they all work fine, my toaster is sixty years old, table fan almost a hundred, and I never worry they won't work
The content too…
> (...) what they are doing is forcing manufacturers to disclose to customer they planned lifespan of a product.
This part was removed from the law mid-february by the senate as reported by numerama[1] on feb 17th.
What the law says is that deliberately limiting a product expected life during the design process is punishable by law with a maximum sentence of 2 years if prison and 300k € fine. Everybody understands that this is mostly for show as it is hardly enforceable.
[1]: http://www.numerama.com/magazine/32252-le-delit-d-obsolescen...
In the industry the cheapest thing to make is plastic injection molding. By far. Like 50 to 100 times cheaper than the alternatives at scale.
Melting plastic at 200 Celsius is so much easier than melting metal at over 700 Celsius(over 1000 for steels) with all the contractions and problems this creates.
Any manufacturer could use metal in their products or create a plastic version at half(or 1/3) the price.
Most people just buy the cheaper alternative. Then they rant about planned obsolescence when the thing breaks soon(but over the warranty period).
But the reality is that thanks to plastic molding we get incredible cheap products, like a USD60 vacuum cleaner, when in the past it was more like today USD1000 for one when it was made with metal parts that lasted decades.
We want it all, cheaper and better. But having all is not possible(yet).
You might want to watch "The light bulb conspiracy": http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/light-bulb-conspiracy
If it's something that just mostly sits around unused, it's more resource efficient (economical, ecological) to minimize the manufacturing cost and not care about much else.
If it's a professional tool that is used hours every day, the manufacturing cost can almost be ignored - maximizing usability and minimizing downtime is where it's at.
So we still have professional vacuum cleaners that last maybe five years in professional use, ten hours six days a week, but would last for centuries in home usage, one hour every week.
Decades ago the products were not so differentiated, so also consumers bought long lasting vacuum cleaners. http://images.manufactum.de/manufactum/grossbild/21524_1.jpg
At some point it crosses over to intangible qualities like in design furniture. It's cool if it's not just a throwaway thing, but something well designed and maintainable. It also looks timeless.
Right now there is information asymmetry - we don't know the expected lifetime so we have to choose by other factors. Brand reputation, amazon reviews, relative cost signaling, what the box looks like, etc. If we did know this info, it'd weigh in very heavily.
Then of course there's the problem of how to incentivize companies to not lie about that number ...
In New Zealand we don't have the published information, but consumer law has been applied such that if things don't last a "reasonable" length of time (e.g. 5 years for a TV) the retailer has a responsibility to repair or replace[1]. In the same vein I imagine that, if manufacturers were forced to replace anything that didn't meet the claimed lifespan at the time of sale then manufacturers would quickly become very good at providing numbers that aligned with real-world failure rates and lifespans.
[1] "We don't have those any more" is not an excuse - if you sell a TV that breaks after a year and can't repair it, you'll be replacing it with the closest current equivalent model.
My family lives in a house that was pretty much empty of appliances when we bought it, ~ 12 years ago. I'm extremely lucky to be handy at repairing things (thanks to my parents), but appalled that I've had to repair virtually every appliance...
Clothes dryer, three times (heat sensor, timer switch, motor)
Deep freeze (starter circuit assembly)
Microwave (replaced)
Toaster (replaced)
Fridge (repaired once, then replaced)
Cooking range (repaired one of the stove burners)
Dishwasher (repaired twice, then replaced due to rusted racks)
On the bright side, I've been able to find extensive repair info and spare parts online.
We actually don't buy fridges and dishwashers expecting them to last 3-5 years (or at least we shouldn't). But many of these things have a lifespan far shorter than we expect given today's automated manufacturing and quality control and that everyone involved should be a specialist (design, engineering etc).
These types of household appliances should be better. But I also think that in Europe recycling of appliances is now a political issue big enough to warrant a "what are we going to do with all of these mobile phones?" law.
This mean that if your $1k iPhone or $3k television break outside their warranty period but still inside what a reasonable person expect it to work (say 3, maybe 4 years for an undamaged iPhone, or 5-6 years for a brand name LCD TV), then you are entitled to repairs or replacement, regardless of the stated warranty period of the manufacturer.
For example, let's take a washing machine from 20 years ago and compare the efficiency of a modern washing machine -and subtract the added manufacturing input into the new machine. Or incandescent bulbs and LED lights. Or for that matter older cars and modern cars. I hope they take those things into account. Just because something will last long doesn't mean it's best in the long run.
Still, it's not a bad idea to consider. And then we could at least know how often we might have to buy phones ---but then someone will redefine what a functional mobile phone is "it can make a regular voice call and the battery will last 10 minutes by the 3rd year." The other measure, how long will it keep the same level of utility as it was when it was new? That'd be trickier.
I think this law is probably heavy handed and unnecessary. Especially in an age where most people spend their money on items like phones and laptops, which are reparable and become obsolete very fast anyway.
I get it that it's probably better for any company out there to sell new devices rather than support old ones for free. It just that the "I doubt planned obsolescence is common" strikes me as a bit naive
Supporting old platforms is not just cross compilation, or at least the cross compilation involved is highly non-trivial.
I would say that excessive cynicism is as bad a bias as naivety. Everything you describe is actually consistent with perfectly informed consumers and profit maximizing companies. You are just not looking for explanations along these lines.
I liked the idea of telling consumers the expected life of a product. But they're actually not doing that. Instead, they're going to threaten people with jail time and companies with huge fines. https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...
But when you're making a product, you plan its construction around its life-expectancy. You don't make a doohicky with a sprocket that lasts 30 years when the other parts of the doohicky will only last 3 years. Instead, you get the sprocket made more cheaply with a life expectancy of 3 years, and your savings helps you compete with other doohicky manufacturers for the business of consumers.
It seems to me that France doesn't understand the economics of manufacturing. This seems to be another brain-dead decision by socialists that will cost jobs and raise the risks (and thus the costs) of doing business in the country. They'll have to pay those engineers and managers who make these design decisions even more to take on those risks. Marginal manufacturers will just get out, and jobs will be lost. Like they can afford it. http://www.france24.com/en/20150127-france-unemployment-hits...
It works pretty well. Of course the retailers like to avoid their obligations and people chime up with the "that's why prices are high" argument. If you're located at the bottom of the world everything's expensive anyway!
E.g. take Bosch/Siemens and Miele. Miele stuff really lasts forever but costs 2x that of Bosch/Siemens household stuff.
If I could afford it, I'd buy Miele.
Let's say we have a finite stack of resources and assume that price is representative of the manufacturing costs. This stack of resources allows to build 10 products of the "lasting forever" grade or 20 of the "replace sooner" grade. We decide to build 5 of the first and 10 of the second. The 5 will outlast the 10 and chances are they will last much longer. Making "replace sooner" grade profits the manufacturer and is only valid if we had infinite resources which we don't.
This is a short term vision of maximizing manufacturer profits while artificially increasing the economy in volume. Too bad this is ruining the whole world for living beings in the process.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”
(Terry Pratchett, obviously)
This confluence of factors could potentially open up an interesting and highly profitable business niche for a manufacturer that focuses on modular, repairable, maybe-hackable appliances.
Instead of promoting a consumption model where entire units are tossed out at the "end" of a "lifecycle", I can now concede a manufacturer could thrive on a far leaner capital profile than current industry participants where I wouldn't have thought it possible only 10 years ago, by focusing on the logistical tail of constantly repairing and improving "old" models, as opposed to concentrating on the new product manufacturing end.
This is also beneficial on the embedded energy cost and resource utilization efficiencies levels, which becomes extremely important as we scale up the population that participates in higher socioeconomic levels.
Human form factor-dependent design points can probably stay relatively static to benefit families in lower socioeconomic strata. For example, washing machines have not really changed their basic form factor in about a century. I'd rather sell a patching kit designed for my older tubs (a common failure mode) to those families today, enticing them to grab a used older model of mine than hope to capture them as customers ten years from now when they can maybe afford a new unit from me; it pulls in future sales without destabilizing debt schemes. Or if they can afford a little more, I can sell them a retrofit kit that supplies a newer future cleaning technology (like ultrasonic?) that fits older models. If they care about aesthetics, I sell them paint that exactly matches what they have on the old model.
All this while, I not only keep my units out of the landfill, but in the hands of more customers earlier than I normally could acquire them and out of the hands of my competitors in an inexpensive marketing/sales denial of service attack on that competition (and indeed, my customers are paying for that attack instead of me having to heavily spend on marketing to them). On top of this, my manufacturing costs shift increasingly out of the predations of the unpredictable turns and gyres of the commodities markets, and towards design (especially software) and small parts manufacturing. These can have higher margins than the whole units, and might be a lot cheaper than even JIT inventory to "stock" in the future, with local 3D-printing-style distribution centers for those parts that can be on-demand manufactured practically at point of sale. As the global population level stabilizes as currently expected, I'd already be positioned to sell into an economic environment where brand-new product purchases are made with increasingly razor-thin margins.
For those oldest models that fall below a logistical tail cutoff, I could release CAD/CAM and other design files to let hackers do what they will with those models, with the intent to temporarily boost those models popularity and continue to stymie competitors' entrance with customers of those models. When the cost of labor is low enough, making repairing and reconditioning possible can potentially be very remunerative for manufacturers who do not build around a business model of continuous, growing new unit sales (which in turn is predicated upon a continuous, growing population).
Take the car industry for example. Quality control variance prior to the 90s (ballpark) was a huge issue, this a result from automakers just being cheap and but also the lack of modern statistical-based end of life testing/analysis. The gov't did have to step in: Lemon Laws. But a couple of automakers responded, produced cars that didn't fall apart, people then voted with their do!lars, and made Toyota and Honda the power houses they are today. Nowdays, 100,000 mile warranty are almost standard, and just about every make of car is reliable.
Now, compare to the appliance industry. A couple thoughts: why aren't their "10 year warranties" on appliances? It's clearly something one would think consumers value, there should be a mfg taking advantage. Instead I only see appliances sold by "authorized retailers", who then try to sell you some b.s. 3rd party warranty.
This shows the entire retail/distribution chain is in on the racket. So fixing the problem will come from a market player solving this problem to deliver more of what the customer wants. Imposing additional reporting requirements on the manufacturers will just result in a 'wahhh, wahhh' our costs went up, we have to pass it on to the customer. So now everyone's appliances are more expensive, and manfucturers and retail partners continue with status quo.