Quote:
Originally Posted by Camelopardalis
To me, this seems more like a sustainability and parts supply issue. We need to ween ourselves off the disposability of everything. Making a vehicle (regardless of power source) that is economically repairable for extended time periods should be a priority - and that means, the car companies not gouging for parts sometime down the line.
Of course, this goes against their interests...they want us to throw away the old one and buy a shiny new one  |
In that sense Cuba is an (unintentional?) leader in sustainability. The US economic embargo means that they are still driving around the 1950's vintage vehicles that were current at the time of the revolution. There must be a nice little industry in spares. Similarly, I heard fairly recently (last decade or so) that in Sri Lanka you can still buy all the spares for a Morris Minor 1100 - a practical little car that can be repaired in any village workshop.
A friend of mine researched sustainability (in an academic role) and says that there is so much embodied carbon in a car that it is basically always better (in terms of emissions) to keep it running rather than buy a new one, even if it uses significantly more fuel. In that regard I'm pleased to say that my troopie is now 17 years old and I'm hoping for a few more decades yet (basically until I'm too old to use it). My mechanic has a customer with a '98 troopie that has done >900,000km and it hoping for 1,000,000km.