Yes, and I think that's got a lot to do with the perceived poor maintainability of current cars. I bought about £50 of software and a cable to connect my wife's car to a laptop and found that if anything, fault diagnosis was easier on hers than mine. People just need to evolve different techniques and acquire different skills for modern cars. DIY maintenance is now as much about sitting in the passenger seat watching a laptop as it is about socket sets and axle stands. At least at 10 years old, I'm not having to go under there with a welder!
Technology taking over?
- Thread starter Burnerman
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Yes, and I think that's got a lot to do with the perceived poor maintainability of current cars. I bought about £50 of software and a cable to connect my wife's car to a laptop and found that if anything, fault diagnosis was easier on hers than mine. People just need to evolve different techniques and acquire different skills for modern cars. DIY maintenance is now as much about sitting in the passenger seat watching a laptop as it is about socket sets and axle stands. At least at 10 years old, I'm not having to go under there with a welder!
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But is that as much an indication of how much better value cars have become as anything else? In other words, as a percentage of average income, a car is cheaper than it was 20 or 30 years ago, and labour is more expensive. This makes it more economical to throw a car away and get a newer one whereas 20 years ago, the economics would have been such that we'd have had to fix it.
It's interesting to note that although it is a commonly held belief that cars are being scrapped earlier and for less significant reasons, the average age of a car at scappage has actually gone UP a little! My recollection of the Sierra is that by the time most of them needed a clutch they were as rotten as a peach anyway!
Yes and no! Depends what you replace it with! A new car is likely (model for model) to be a slightly greener proposition than the one it replaces. The recent government scrappage scheme was based on that premise and (had it been administered properly) might have achieved a bit towards an overall improvement. Unfortunately, it wasn't, so it just ended up lining the pockets of (largely foreign) manufacturers and not necessarily delivering any green benefit - unless the buyer specifically chose to get a greener model! The idea that I could scrap a 10 year old Nissan Micra to get a couple of grand off a Bentley Arnage made something of a mockery of it!
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Very hard to get decent figures. The most recent I've seen from the car industry itself suggest that on average, replacing a car at about 6 years old brings about an overall environmental benefit (if I recall correctly). Of course, those are their figures and they exist in order to try and sell people new cars! On the other hand, I think various environmental groups put it at about 10-12 years. The problem is the enormous number of small "peripheral" environmental costs that need to be taken into account. For example, in considering it to be greener to keep an old car on the road for any years, do we factor-in the extra environmental impact of making and transporting the extra spare parts that will be needed? Very often people with older cars don't buy genuine parts but use pattern parts - which generally don't last as long, and are probably made in less efficient factories with higher CO2 footprints. Then there's the psychological effect that if someone has bought a new car, they're likely to use it more. Newer cars tend to do higher annual mileages than older ones - which is hardly surprising! There are so many factores, I don't think there are any studies that look at all of them!
L
Lincsbodger
There is no conceivable argument whereby you can demonstrate thats it makes economic and environmental sense to throw a moderately mendable vehicle away and replace it with a new one.
Something like 80% of the carbon footprint of a a vehicle in its entire life is the production process.
The scrappage scheme is a farce. All it has done is to make the £500 car vanish. This means those people who used to buy such cars now cannot - the £500 car has become the £1500 car, thus driving many low paid peopel off the road. At the same time, there hasnt been an increase in the production of new cars, so all thats is happening is the rich are using the cars and the poor who could just afford a £500 car but not a £1500 oneare being forced to walk, uses taxis or buses. That is economic discrimination, because its a situation created entirely by this looney governement.
The same lala land argument is used on central heating boilers. My boiler is 30 years old, works fine, parts are cheap and available, and the retired plumber next door says itll go on for another 30 years easily. The government woudl like me to replace it with a new one, despite the fact the new one will create a massive carbon footprint just in its production ,and the life expectancy of the new one might be 10 years tops, because they are now made of thin alloy and dont last. SO i can run my old one for the next 30 years at small cost or waste the worlds resources on three new ones. Theres no way you can view the latter as a sensible option.
All this carbon footprint rubbish is an excuse to tax us and keep us spending to keep this bankrupt government in money, and ever since the debacle of the University of East Anglia fiddling the climate data, the predictions of global warming by the Met Office, who use this dodgy fiddled data, are just as unreliable. And its the same faulty data in the same faulty computer models that the Met Office used to predict the Barbeque Summer and then the Mild Winter, both totally wrong.
Something like 80% of the carbon footprint of a a vehicle in its entire life is the production process.
The scrappage scheme is a farce. All it has done is to make the £500 car vanish. This means those people who used to buy such cars now cannot - the £500 car has become the £1500 car, thus driving many low paid peopel off the road. At the same time, there hasnt been an increase in the production of new cars, so all thats is happening is the rich are using the cars and the poor who could just afford a £500 car but not a £1500 oneare being forced to walk, uses taxis or buses. That is economic discrimination, because its a situation created entirely by this looney governement.
The same lala land argument is used on central heating boilers. My boiler is 30 years old, works fine, parts are cheap and available, and the retired plumber next door says itll go on for another 30 years easily. The government woudl like me to replace it with a new one, despite the fact the new one will create a massive carbon footprint just in its production ,and the life expectancy of the new one might be 10 years tops, because they are now made of thin alloy and dont last. SO i can run my old one for the next 30 years at small cost or waste the worlds resources on three new ones. Theres no way you can view the latter as a sensible option.
All this carbon footprint rubbish is an excuse to tax us and keep us spending to keep this bankrupt government in money, and ever since the debacle of the University of East Anglia fiddling the climate data, the predictions of global warming by the Met Office, who use this dodgy fiddled data, are just as unreliable. And its the same faulty data in the same faulty computer models that the Met Office used to predict the Barbeque Summer and then the Mild Winter, both totally wrong.
Can you cite any sources for that please? I'd be interested to see them. Nothing I've come across so far comes even close to that figure! Intuitively, it seems high too, If a car has (say) a 200,000 mile life and does on average 40MPG (or about 150 grammes per km of CO2), that would be getting on for twice it's own weight in CO2. Are you really telling me that 1.75 times it's own weight in CO2 went into making it?
If all cars had a 200,000 mile life I would agree, but many are being scrapped at much lower mileages because of the cost of repairs wich I think defeats the object of buying a more economical car.
I run Citroen XM diesels, one of them has done in excess of 250,000 miles and the last one I sold had done 292,000 and still had the original clutch, the 2.1 manuals which I run can exceed 50 mpg driven sensibly and they are very reliable. Wht is the point in replacing a car like that?
I think its easy to fall into the trap of replacing your car every couple of years or so...even though it has thousands of miles left in it, its value is absurdly low. Easy term finance encourages people to sign on the dotted line, courtesy of a smooth talking salesman.....if they took the trouble to do some maths then they would see what the final cost would be.
Some young couples that I know are into leasing their vehicles, and the fact that after using it for about 3 years and never owning it seems to have no consequence, although by then they have almost paid for it! Doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
John
Some young couples that I know are into leasing their vehicles, and the fact that after using it for about 3 years and never owning it seems to have no consequence, although by then they have almost paid for it! Doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
John
It makes no sense at all John, many people today seem to have more money than sense, much of this waste is consumer driven, must have the latest, this attitude is doing far more to destroy the eco systems than are vehicle derived CO2 emmissions
Our five year old fridge failed terminally recently, the temporary replacement was 40 years old and still functioning perfectly. The system needs a complete overhaul.
Peter
Our five year old fridge failed terminally recently, the temporary replacement was 40 years old and still functioning perfectly. The system needs a complete overhaul.
Peter
L
Lincsbodger
Avocet";p="1560222 said:
I drove a new VW Tiguan 4x4 automatic at the weekend, and discovered that it had a 'Park Assist' button. Having had fun with its front and back seeking radar parking sensors, I had to give it a try.
There was a gap between 2 parked cars, about 1 1/2 times the length of the Tiguan. I drove just past the parking space, put it into 'R' - and it reversed into the parking space for me...hands off the wheel....it even put the brakes on when it was in place. I then engaged 'D' and the wheel spun again, and pulled forward until there was an equal gap between the cars behind and forward of me.
Well scary - but equally impressive! What ever next?
John
wait..... so it paralel parked itself? all you had to do was press a button and change into reverse then back into drive? no pedals or steering wheel interaction from you at all?
Yep - if the car can 'see' a space between 2 parked vehicles, you pull alongside the forward one.....press Parking Assist.....put into 'R' and the car steered itself in. Once in, put into 'D', car pulls forward.
The most eerie thing was watching the steering wheel spin (hands off) one way then the other
The car won't play if you want to park behind another car without a gap - if you follow -- it reckons you can do that yourself.
Believe me - well spooky! Its my brother in laws car, and I'll have another play with it in due course. I've no idea what its limitations are....but it seems to need a gap of 11/2 to 2 times its own length.
John
The most eerie thing was watching the steering wheel spin (hands off) one way then the other
The car won't play if you want to park behind another car without a gap - if you follow -- it reckons you can do that yourself.
Believe me - well spooky! Its my brother in laws car, and I'll have another play with it in due course. I've no idea what its limitations are....but it seems to need a gap of 11/2 to 2 times its own length.
John
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