MAINTAINED TO LAST

While booting up this old 90s PC that I use for my morning internet 
browsing (and most of my Gopher hole editing), I heard the 
distinctive whirring of a failing fan bearing for about a minute. 
So it seems one of the fans is due for another drop of light oil 
under its sticker (on the other hand, my thermometer says it's only 
9degC in here, so maybe it's just that. Nice sunrise though, I'm 
off to watch that for a bit....).

Hmm, colder out there. Anyway, this oiling business reminded me of 
my Jag, which I recently discovered missed an oil change because I 
was so pre-occupied with getting the blower motors working (hmm, 
more fans). If these PC fans were really designed to last then I 
guess they'd be specified with a particular re-oiling interval, or 
ideally designed so that they can be opened up and all the grit 
collected in the old oil cleaned out. For that matter they ought to 
have used ball bearing fans in the first place, or even those fancy 
mag-lev ones.

The difference is that cars are traditionally built around the idea 
of lasting in conjunction with maintenance. Electronics were like 
that once too - valve radios, and especially TVs, were expected to 
need a visit by the repairman at least once every few years. But 
electronics improved and they became more reliable as well as 
cheaper. So overall the cost to consumers of buying a replacement 
item became less compared to getting it repaired, while at the same 
time they were trained through advertising to always desire the 
"new" model. So the sweet-spot between lifespan and cost was found 
and only by chance has electronics hardware exceeded its commercial 
goals by lasting in PCs like this for over 25 years. But still only 
if someone like me finds ways to repair the other weak points like 
the fans, and also the BIOS battery which was originally 
encapsulated in hard epoxy within the RTC module without any 
external electrical connection.

Cars on the other hand don't last very long without maintenance, 
and cost the average person a lot to buy new. So they're made to 
repair. That's actually become a pretty rare thing with consumer 
goods - from TVs to appliences like microwaves, and even things 
with small petrol motors like lawn mowers and chainsaws, the 
assumption has fallen strongly on replacement rather than repair.

But cars aren't immune to this either, because over the years they 
have become much more reliable, benefiting from advances ranging 
from improved lubricating oils to more efficient engine designs. At 
the same time manufacturers have increasingly tended more towards 
designing them to be serviced and repaired using only the custom 
equipment and techniques available to their own servicing 
departments, whereby they can control the cost and convenient 
availability of repairs to fit within a framework for the product's 
intended lifespan.

Unfortunately I think electric cars are likely to be the final step 
to removing this differentiation between the repairability of cars 
and that of other consumer goods. The cost of buying a car will 
still remain very high for the average consumer, but without an 
internal combustion engine the number of routine maintenance items 
should be significantly reduced, with the one important exception 
being that of the battery (assuming, as it seems to be, that 
Lithium-Ion or similar batteries continue to be the dominant means 
of powering electric cars). With batteries intended to last only 
5-10 years, and replacements costing a significant portion of an 
electric car's original price, the incentive to replace rather than 
repair at that point will be quite significant for most owners. One 
can imagine that mechanical components such as wheel bearings that 
remain in electric cars but commonly need to be replaced within a 
similar time-frame might then be designed such that they are less 
easily repaired, since in the first place many owners would be 
unwilling to undertake such jobs on an old model with a failing 
battery. Then those few who would be willing to replace the battery 
are confronted with other limitations to their options for repair, 
just like people trying to maintain other old consumer goods.

Oh and on the topic of electronics, the motor controllers and 
associated advanced electronics in these electric cars rely very 
much on custom-made components such that replacing them after the 
manufacturer stops supplying spares would be a job equivalent to 
"repairing" a vintage computer by substituting a Raspberry Pi for 
the main board. Being pushed to the limits of power control 
technology, I doubt those parts will keep working for as long as 
the average CPU chip either.

 - The Free Thinker