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.
The vehicles will be much cheaper to make. A shame costs savings will leave out the consumer and also cause all vehicle insurance rates to go way up.
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.
No. These cast parts take up a lot more area. They will get damaged much more frequently than a frame being damaged.
Not on unibody cars. There isn’t a big increase in frame area in this car versus any other unibody out there. The difference here is the unibody isn’t actually a unibody, it’s a multipart unibody that is bolted together. A standard unibody, which is just about everything on the road today that isn’t a pickup truck, is all three of those frame pieces you see in that picuture, but as one giant piece. That big piece of metal you are normally used to seeing in car assembly photos. There are no frame rails under it. The unibody being split into segments is the first real change to the unibody design since GM started using it in the 80’s.
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
Reject modernity, revert to Swedish brick car.
Ironically cars are far more reliable now than they were at any point in the past.
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
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?
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
link pls?
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/DKPfy5djvLc?feature=shared
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
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.
It’s all about those short term profits baby! 😎
Late stage capitalism for the win
Yeah, I mean the main advantages for Toyota are clear and massive. Huge cuts in assembly time and factory floor space. Any effect on the second hand market is likely not intended, but also almost certainly worth the savings made, as far as they’re concerned.
the value of a car depreciates by 50% when you drive it off the lot
Have you shopped for used cars recently?
I wish that was actually true as an exclusively used car buyer.
Not Toyotas
Toyota has fallen, billions must ride horses
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.
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.
The problem is that you’d have to pretty much disassemble half the vehicle to replace a cast part, and that will be thousands extra in labor.
bruh
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.
Guess I won’t be sticking with Toyota when my Prius finally craps out. Too bad. It’s a great car.
All according to kaikaku
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.
What will EU do?
Coz they gptta do something at some point.
Help the consumer, cause somebody got to.
