RegGuheert
Well-known member
It's so rare for ANY car to be driven 1,000,000 miles that a few years ago Honda gave a brand-new car to a customer who drove one of their products that far. I seriously doubt that BEV manufacturers will start making cars that last that long anytime soon. There are a bunch of reasons why this is so:cwerdna said:
1) Drastically increasing the life of their products while not expanding their customer base by a similar amount would be financial suicide. (Although I admit that a single manufacturer doing this could be very successful if they were able to meet the demand.)
2) A vehicle with a 1,000,000-mile lifetime would have a significantly-higher price tag than competing products on the market. This would make it harder to sell.
3) Even a vehicle with a 1,000,000-mile lifetime can be destroyed in an accident one mile after being driven off the lot. While I cannot put my hands on the statistics, I suspect that a large percentage of TODAY'S vehicles are lost to accidents rather than repair costs.
4) Just like the LEAF batteries, many materials in modern automobiles are limited by CALENDAR life as well as cycle life. The average distance a vehicle is driven in a year in the US is 13,500 miles. That means that if the average vehicle lasted 1,000,000 miles, the average vehicle would be on the roads for 74 years. Vehicles driven fewer than 10,000 miles per year would be on the road for over 100 years, most outliving their original owner! In the UK, the situation is even more extreme, with the average annual mileage there dropping below 8,000. That means replacing the AVERAGE car in 125 years! I can imagine that companies and standards will advance so much in that amount of time that most parts will be expensive (and wasteful) to produce. (I will say here that this is one issue that will be largely addressed through car-sharing services.)
5) I'm not sure a 1,000,000-mile lifetime is a selling point for most consumers since many are more interested in purchasing status symbols than in making their vehicles last a long time.
BTW, I currently own a 2003 Honda Civic Hybrid which has been on the road for over 15 years. This car is extremely well-engineered and has required extremely minimal maintenance. It also has a achieved a lifetime fuel mileage of around 50 miles/gallon. Today, that car has about 110,000 miles on it. I'll let you know in 120 years if it makes it to 1,000,000 miles.
