Great, now we have disposable automobiles.
They already are disposable I got news for you.
I'm pretty sure cars are some of the most reused, repaired, and recycled products we have.
This article is misleading. If a car crash is bad enough that it damages the frame of a car, it's going to get totalled anyway. So either way it's going to go to a junk yard and get slowly parted out.
Lots of 'totaled' cars that still function fine get shipped to other countries with less picky used car markets too.
I once took a taxi in Addis Ababa that had slicks and a view of the road under the car. Very fancy.
Not necessarily. On some vehicles the exterior panels are part of the frame and you may only have cosmetic damage but fixing it would costs tens of thousands.
Manufacturers are joining the era of disposable cars.
Consumers are joining the era of disposing of cars.
Many consumers treat their cars as disposable already
I'll be honest, they are?
There is no affordable car today that you can make any money today that you need to use. They require money in order to maintain it well enough to use.
Tires are expensive. Gas is expensive. You've got filters and oils and fluids to replace, and headlamps. Without the required disposables, a car is basically useless.
A house without running water, or power, or natural gas, or a furnace filter, or water softener, or lightbulbs, or toilet paper, etc. still provides shelter without all of those things.
A car gets you from point a to point b until it doesn't. At that point it's disposed of.
Reject modernity, revert to Swedish brick car.
Won't be a problem because more and more people don't want a car.
Car manufacturers know this and that's why they are focusing on self-driving cars. Taxis will be replaced by robo-taxis owned by manufacturers and private firms.
Within 20 years, will be like a luxury like owning a horse
Ironically cars are far more reliable now than they were at any point in the past.
It will reduce costs for toyota.
I doubt the consumers will see any savings.
C level executives will have big fat bonuses tho
As mentioned in another thread, there is a paintless dent repair video on YT of a fix done to the corner of a Rivian rear bumper
The owner claimed that he was quoted $41K. To do the work, they would need to cut the body all the way up to the front of the roof
The PDR fix was close to perfect in this case
Enshitification has infected Toyota. What a shame.
Just another brand I can start avoiding.
Corporate execs: How can we force people into even more debt so we can have even more money than we'll ever need or spend?
Impossible seems a bit dramatic. Cost prohibitive is more better
If it is cost prohibitive for a majority, then it’s pretty damn near impossible.
This bit does not ring true:
Such a scenario would be to Toyota's benefit however, as an unrepairable car will still need replacement—potentially with a new car. Repairability is something the automotive industry has directly combated in recent years, with a Toyota-backed industry group sponsoring a scare campaign to (unsuccessfully) undermine a right-to-repair bill. Car companies make their money from selling new cars, not keeping old ones on the road. If cast bodies serve that end better than those stitched together, it'd be no surprise to see them become the industry standard.
Car companies need their cars to hold their value secondhand so that the people who buy their new cars can afford to replace them more often. The right to repair stuff is about forcing people to use their dealerships for repairs.
No idea what Toyota's plan is for body repairs but destroying their second-hand market is probably not a part of it.
Also, don't car manufacturers have ridiculous margins on original spare parts? I thought they made a lot of money on those over the pretty long lifetime of the vehicles.
If you have a large cast part you could do the same thing as you do with a frame or body panel now. As long as there’s a replacement cast part ready, it is lots of work in some cases, so it’s less “impossible to repair” and more accurately “cost prohibitive to repair”
I wouldn't even say cost prohibitive. Imagine if you could just swap on a whole new front end after a car crash. Currently, it takes bodywork at hundreds of dollars per hour to repair damaged body panels while this could severely reduce that time and cost.
Has anyone come up with a guess on the cost of swapping out an entire cast body section vs replacing or refurbishing the parts that would be there without the cast?
I think point is without the cast body section you could just replace broken parts which may be significantly less. In practice though I don't think it matters that much. Small accidents hopefully don't damage the frame and if they do it's often a bit dubious repairing it.
Yeah, I think once you get to the point where the car needs the frame worked on, it's probably going to get scrapped whether it has a cast frame or not.
.. on a 1st world country.
we definetly do those kinds of repairs over here
I can replace every part of my self built ebike with hand tools and how to videos. fuck cars
Cars are essential where I'm from, an e bike will get you killed. But good for you
We need protected bike lanes everywhere
Difficult to realize. I'm from the Netherlands... one of the most bike friendly countries in the world. Even here that won't happen.
If you live anywhere in the US that isn't a big coastal city, this isn't an option.
Article does not have the numbers, and I filled in DDGing the Numbers. How many cars have their frames repaired each year?
My anecdotal experience indicates very few car frames are repaired each year, though not zero.
The expense of repairing frame damage is already really high and, in my personal experience with a couple cars that had frame damage from being hit, the insurance counts it as a total loss every time. I don't suspect the average car owner is going to repair that kind of damage when it would be cheaper to just replace the entire vehicle. An enthusiast or someone with a sentimental bond with it, and has the money for it, might choose to repair it tho.
Toyota has fallen, billions must ride horses
Gigacasting saves car companies money, it doesn't save car owners money. For the manufacturer it reduces their bill of materials and time take to assemble a vehicle. They might save a couple of hundred bucks. Possibly.
For the owner, it increases the risk that a small collision runs a fracture along the body of their car which is then basically impossible to repair and the entire vehicle is a writeoff. Castings could potentially have sacrificial points where some kinds of damage could be ground off and replaced with stamped metal but even if that were so, it's still less repairable than if the entire frame of the car were assembled of stamped metal.
Guess I won't be sticking with Toyota when my Prius finally craps out. Too bad. It's a great car.
this is just more outsourcing the costs onto the public and privatizing the profits for short term gain, they're hoping the entire industry folds in on this but I am absolutely not buying a car where some asshole bumping into my parked car will result in me having to replace the whole front third.
bruh
All according to kaikaku
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
