> Over the years, nearly everything on the vehicle has been replaced or repaired, and Campbell says the only original part is likely the body, and even that has had work done on it.
To me this makes it less interesting. I would be amazed if the original parts (outside of what gets replaced for maintenance) lasted that long. But it’s hard to judge how durable the car is when everything has been replaced
This kind of mileage is unusual with cars but it's pretty normal for semis. But even with those, engines get overhauled and there's lots of cumulative maintenance over the years. There are still trucks build in the sixties in service in some places.
With EVs, we might get some battery packs and drive trains actually lasting this long. Maybe not with nmc batteries. But some lfp batteries seem to have enough charge cycles on paper that they really could last that long. 5000 charge cycles at 300 miles per charge adds up to about 1.5M miles. Of course lots of other things might fail. But at least electrical motors are known to be pretty durable. That's not a common failure point on EVs as far as I know. But there's plenty of other stuff in EVs (electronics, cooling systems, suspension, etc.) that can break.
Of course, it will be a while before we'll see EVs that have driven that far as those type of batteries have only been on the market for a few years and even with 100K miles driven per year (which is a lot), it would take 12 years to get to 1.2M. This Toyota took quite a few decades to get there.
According to the article, this car actually wasn't particularly durable (the words 'rust buckets' were used). But if you just keep patching it up, of course it will run fine. And greasing up all the bits that would normally rust seems smart as well.
> With EVs, we might get some battery packs and drive trains actually lasting this long.
I doubt it. The components in modern cars are not made to last as long. Neither is the software. Ever tried a 15 year old Iphone? A Tesla won't feel much different.
Everything is meant to be consumed nowadays, and eventually, sooner rather than later, replaced.
There was recently an article about someone with a 3 year old Ford Mustang Mach E with 250k miles (400k KM).
https://www.thedrive.com/news/meet-the-man-with-the-250000-m...
Battery is still over 90%. And given that he’s having to do a full charge every day for the amount he drives, that’s pretty impressive. Still on the original brake pads too.
Sounds like all he’s really had to do is put on new tires a couple of times.
I have a 7 year old EV with 160k miles (250km).
Battery has just now dipped below 90% it's new range. Age is surprisingly a pretty big factor in how long the batteries will last. More so than a lot of other factors (including mileage).
And you get the luxury of paying 50% more, for that privilege (vs a ICE engine). I said it before, give me that BYD (reverse) hybrid engine, that does 1080km on a single tank.
Unfortunately, battery tech despite all the lab "super improvements" are not seeing any major gains in the field. And a lot of money has been going into that.
The issue is not EV vs ICE. It's that things are not built to last or to be easily maintainable / serviceable. A modern car is not just like a smartphone you are sitting inside of, it's a server rack full of stuff. Of course that's outdated 1-2 decades from now and nobody is going to provide updated software anymore.
All things equal I'd even expect this to be worse with an ICE because of higher complexity, though the tech is more mature and stable at this point and the ICE manufacturing more traditionalist than the EV space.
Are they affordable 4wd ICE with like 500hp and 500nm of torque, a flat torque curve, no lag, while still being smooth and reliable?
One of the big questions is going to be, can you still find the battery packs 15 year, 20, 30 years later. The problem is that rebuilding battery packs is not a joke (and expensive). Assuming the same cells can be found / are not some crap 3th party manufactured in the future.
Lets also not forget that battery packs are full of electronics, BMS, and other items that may be less forgiving on a rebuild where batteries may be off in voltage or have a different charge cycle.
The future is going to be "interesting", especially for car collectors.
Getting a old antique car running is often not that hard (as long as it has not been standing where water can enter the engine. New hoses, oil changes, clean filters, and you can often get engines that have stood outside for 15, 20 years going again. Sure, its going to smoke, may need new piston rings, ... and Water being the prime killer.
But a battery pack in those conditions?
> 5000 charge cycles at 300 miles per charge adds up to about 1.5M miles.
Under ideal driving / charge situations...
* Hot areas like Spain. For instance, its know that batteries from EVs in hot area's tend to be much more degraded, then from cooler areas (make sense).
* Did they fast charge those batteries = your going to cycle down a LOT more. Remember, those 6000 cycle for stuff like LiPo batteries are based upon slow charging. General tip for people with solar: Overspec your battery sizes, your going to thank me.
* Did they always charge to 100%? What is the actual hidden reserve on a battery pack? Is it 5%, 10%?
* How many times did they drive below the 20% range.
There is a lot of elements that interact with your battery life. I mean, how many of use have thrown out perfectly good smartphone because the battery life became a disaster after only a few years. And the cost to replace the battery was not in proportion.
Recently people driving to holiday here in Europe had fun times... 15 a 25min wait times at charge stations, and when they hit 80% they got kicked off the fast chargers (because after 80% it becomes very slow to charge up those last 20%). Slow charging was not allowed. So people needed to stop around every 60 a 70% of their battery range on their holiday trip. Wait 15 a 25 min for a charger, then wait another 45 min for their charge. While the guy with his ICE engine, stops, tanks in 5 minutes, goes for another 50% more distance.
I believe you are overthinking things. These aren't hard to overcome problems. Batteries are fundamentally very simple and they are designed to handle wide variations. Simple enough that there are already a bunch of shops that will rebuild and restore batteries using volt meters to yank (and sometimes replace) bad cells.
As for the factors affecting battery life, it's looking like age above everything else is the primary killer of batteries. Temp is a solved problem, all modern EVs have a cooling/heating system.
Cell phone batteries are also different from EV batteries. You won't find a cell phone with an LFP. that's because cell phones target energy density above all else.
As for travel charging, 15 to 25 waits are typical and charging past 80% is slow. A battery at 10% can accept 350kW of power. Batteries are 80% typically can't accept more than 80kW or less. The 80% to 100% time can take twice as long as the 0 to 80 time.
Waiting for a charger to be available is an infrastructure problem. I've had to wait on gas pumps to be available during busy times. Conversely, the most I've waited to charge has been 10 minutes (and I've traveled every thanksgiving for 7 years of EV ownership).
The 20 minute break is welcome after driving 2->3 hours.
Battery degradation generally isn’t nearly as much of an issue with modern EVs. The active management systems they use are much more sophisticated and capable of keeping the battery in good condition than those of a smartphone. There are plenty of examples on the road with 200-300k miles still retaining 80-90% capacity.
Charging station wait times comes down to growing pains. Not enough stations combined with battery tech not yet having reached maturity. It’ll fix itself as more stations are installed and the technology continues to advance. The only bad thing to do would be to stop.
As far as antique cars go, I’m not too worried because both energy density in batteries and efficiency in motors has been increasing substantially over time. By the time these cars are old enough to be antiques, people will want to do full retrofits with modern batteries and motors anyway because what they came with will look primitive and clunky in comparison. The ceiling for potential on EV tech is much higher than it is for ICE based systems.
> Recently people driving to holiday here in Europe had fun times... 15 a 25min wait times at charge stations
My last two holidays in Europe I drove an EV about 1000 km to a holiday destination, and back again. So far I have never had to queue to charge.
I did notice that it is not unusual for a rest stop with only 2 to 4 fast chargers to be fully occupied. But if you use an app like ABRP to plan ahead, then it will tend to guide you to larger charging sites (e.g. 20 to 30 fast chargers of a few different brands). These charge planning apps also have live data about how many chargers are currently in use, so they will not send you to a fully occupied site if there are alternatives.
YMMV and the situation will change every year of course, as more EVs are added. Norway is the most advanced in Europe when it comes to car electrification, so if there are issues I guess they will show up over there first.
Whether or not suitable battery replacements exist in 10 years is probably a function of demand. If there's a large demand for replacements, the market will provide. It's probably worth buying a popular model if you plan on keeping your EV for 20 years. For example, you should probably stay away from the Fisker Ocean [1], but I bet Tesla Model 3s will be well supported 20 years from now.
My metaquestion is: is it even rational to keep a car for 20 or 30 years? To me, the subject of the article seems penny wise but pound foolish. Certainly at some point since 1985, an upgrade would have been positive expected value for better safety, mileage, and comfort.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisker_Ocean
Up until the point that parts are no longer available, or so rare that their cost is prohibitive, it's almost certainly cheaper for him to keep the car than buy a new one. This also includes the fact that he does almost all the repairs himself, so it's also a hobby for him. He's also cannibalizing spare parts from several other salvage cars he has acquired.
A new car has so much depreciation in the first couple of years that it's a terrible idea for most people. Buying used cars and either maintaining them or just driving them into the ground and then buying another used car is almost always cheaper.
I think history will show people have vastly overestimated the durability of EV and not just because of batteries.
Inverters have IGBTs and capacitors, both of which are wear items. I don't have an EV, but just got solar, and my installer told me that I can expect the inverter will need replacing in 15 years.
And solar inverters push far less wattage at far more benign circumstances than cars' do, which push 100s of kWs peak in hot and cold, mud and rain.
Don't forget these parts have been around in hybrids for multiple decades, and taxis often use hybrids (so higher milage, longer running times). In my country the most popular car for taxis and food delivery is the Prius gen 2, which was made from 2003 - 2009.
I suspect in 30 years we'll be seeing million-mile EVs… but they'll probably be on their second or third infotainment system
They still have control arms, ball joints, shocks, tie rods, bearings, and rubber and plastic seals and other bits that will wear out, dry out, or degrade. Not to mention a lot of electronics with limited-life components such as capacitors. The oldest modern EVs are just now getting to the age where those sorts of repairs will start to become necessary.
1M km (Tm?) is less than 750k miles, for those more familiar with customary units.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irv_Gordon had a Volvo with over 3.25 million miles (5.2Tm), although it's also had 3 engine rebuilds.
"Customary units"? I hate to break it to you, but most of the world uses the metric system.
And the conversion is actually fairly simple. 1M km is 600k miles, so you were in the ballpark.
Metrication will happen after Americans give up ICE vehicles like the Ford Expedition, ICE gestapo, ultraprocessed hamburgers, and climate change denial.
Metric is really far simpler, while Freedom Units are like going back to counting change in Roman-inspired £sd.
> Metric is really far simpler...
For the common, everyday use case it isn't meaningfully simpler, which is why the US hasn't switched. The conversions are certainly harder to memorize, but by the time you're an adult you have memorized all the common ones (12 inches to a foot, and so on) so that downside only applies to people who have to learn this stuff (largely children, who don't get a vote). The math is also harder than just moving decimal points, but when you carry a computer in your pocket that isn't actually making life harder for anyone.
So, the two big downsides of the imperial system (conversions are harder to learn and the math is harder) aren't actually a problem for the vast majority of adults in the US. But switching to metric would cause a ton of friction as you have to relearn how to estimate measurements for everything all over again. And those two factors combined are why the US doesn't switch. Most people will not gain any upside, while they have to pay significant downsides. It's perfectly rational to not switch when that is the case! You could argue that it's selfish (because future generations of kids have to learn the conversions, so they would benefit from metric and they don't incur the downside either), but it's not stupid. As much as people like to go "haha people in the US are so stupid for not switching to metric", that simply is not the case.
When I think about problems with Customary Units, I think not about decimality, but that the units are too disconnected. For example, there are BTUs and HPs that mean the same thing (power), but are wildly non-connected both to each other and to other units. While in SI, a Watt is Joule per second, a Joule is Newton times meter, a Newton is kilogram times meters per second squared, and voila, you have arrived at basic units. Your AC, your PC and your electric car have power consumption in the same units, and the same units are on your bill. This is what valuable, and not Greek prefixes.
And yet, many other countries have managed to transition to metric measurements without too much issue.
My parents were in their 30’s when Australia switched. They instinctively think in feet/inches, pounds for body weight (especially babies), but oddly miles hasn’t lasted.
I was educated in metric, but learned imperial lengths doing woodwork with my dad. I don’t have any intuition in pounds or miles, but feet (up to maybe 10) and inches are ok.
My son is purely metric. He can do the arithmetic, but has no intuitive sense in any imperial units.
So .. my anecdata is that it takes two generations to really switch.
I hate you break it to you, but "customary units" is what they are called, regardless of the (lack of) prevalence of that custom.
Interesting use of the term _customary_! To add to the complexity of this, weren’t the customary units of length and mass were defined in the U.S in the late 1800’s by reference to international metric standards - the Mendenhall order?
Typically they're called "US customary units" outside of the grand old U. S. of A, who refused to adopt any sort of metric system way back in the 19th century because they were "ungodly".
Perhaps "ungodly" explains current refusal, but original reason U.S. does not use metric is pirates stole the metric standards as they were being shipped over from France.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/12/28/574044232...
Gm, not Tm. A kilo is a thousand, and a million kilos is a billion. So giga, not tera.
I don't think anything with mechanical moving parts is going to last that long, with regular usage, and have original parts.
The fact that the owner can keep it going is a testament to the maintainability of combustion engines that don't have high tech computers in them.
> The fact that the owner can keep it going is a testament to the maintainability of combustion engines that don't have high tech computers in them.
New engines with modern ECUs are every bit as maintainable.
The ECU doesn’t make an engine less maintainable. Modern engines would have more moving pieces such as variable valve timing but otherwise they’re very similar in concept and maintenance.
One part of maintainability is cost. And a simpler mechanical engine without proprietary ECUs is going to be cheaper to maintain, provided parts are available.
If someone encounters issues with an ECU and it needs replacement at $1k-2k they might just consider the costs and that being a down payment on a new vehicle vs. repairing. Labor costs more than parts for complicated electrical/computer/engine problems. Electrical issues in modern vehicles don't appear to be easy to troubleshoot, sometimes require proprietary tools. A simpler mechanical engine could be DIY repaired and running, check out the "low-buck garage" youtube channel and the $2 Jeep series as an example.
I'm not advocating something like going back to computer-less, inefficient, stinky, loud cars, just pointing out that when we add computers to things, it makes them less maintainable to the average person.
> I don't think anything with mechanical moving parts is going to last that long, with regular usage, and have original parts.
I know of at least two cars with 800k km with original engines. Both GM small blocks (Gen 2, multiport fuel injection so computer-controlled). Neither engine has been opened since they rolled off the floor in the 90s. They’re not particularly efficient (only about 270HP out of 5.7L) but if taken care of, they probably will go forever.
Definitely an exception, though. Very little else on those cars is still original. But it can be done.
There are definitely a few engine designs out there that won the design lottery in terms of longevity. I know a guy that has close to half a million miles on a Jeep Cherokee with the old AMC 4-liter straight six, and the only engine work done other than plugs and wires is replacing the water pump at 250k. I've got ~186k on my Jeep with the same engine, and it doesn't even burn any oil yet.
I don't think anything with mechanical moving parts is going to last that long, with regular usage, and have original parts.
You should visit any third world country: plenty of old cars still running around.
A literal ship of Theseus, arguably it's not even the same car.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LAh8HryVaeY
No man ever slides behind the wheel of the same Tercel twice.
> No man ever slides behind the wheel of the same Tercel twice.
Pantercel Rhei
But when exactly did it stop being the same car?
An easy way to say would be when it's still 50% original, but I think an interesting way to look at it is that it becomes a whole new thing after every major change.
First it's his new car, then it becomes his new car with new tires, and then his car with new windshield wipers, and finally his old car with all new parts and some old ones. None of them are the same car.
I think in cases where it' a major rebuild, like turning a WW2 Minesweeper first into a ferry, and finally into Cousteau's research ship Calypso this outlook is more obvious. Are these ships all the same despite getting almost a full refit at each stage? I would say none of them are the same ship, but completely separate "things" with some old and some new parts.
When you changed the VIN :)
And what if you took the other parts and built a separate car from them?
You've just answered your own question, haven't you? If it's a separate car then it can't be the original by definition.
If you completely disassemble a car then reassemble it, is it the same car?
What if you disassemble all of the car except the wheels and reassemble it but with new wheels?
How about if you also exclude the seats too.
At what point does the answer change? That’s the whole point of the ship of theseus.
Fun fact, on average most (not all though) of the cells in your body are brand new after 7 years. When do you stop being you and take a new name?
This kind of thing is repeated often, but I don't think it's true. For one thing, how would tattoos last so long then?
More relevantly, I don't think neurons are replaced. There must be some material churn in the atoms and molecules that make them up, but even then different for different molecules - e.g. I don't know how much of our DNA molecules get replaced over a lifespan from the repair or other mechanisms.
The "on average" is doing an awful lot of work. Some cells are never replaced, some organs are replaced every few years or even partially over decades, some organs are replaced every few months (one of which is the skin).
Tattoos however, IIUC, sort of "float" between cells, and as those cells are replaced one-by-one the ink is kept in place by the surrounding cells that are still there.
> how would tattoos last so long
Answered by Kurzgesagt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGggU-Cxhv0
I suppose tattoo ink isn’t all in the cells. I’d guess the ink within intracellular spaces is never removed by the body (or very, very slowly).
At least we're not going around saying "diggan says the only original part of his person is likely the body/chassi"
It hasn’t, the law decided a car is it’s shell and that’s it.
Not literal.
I get that, but I think the impressive part here isn't that the original parts are still there: it's that the car has been kept on the road for 40 years and 1.2M km through sheer persistence and maintenance
Tbf they said “nearly” everything. Probably it’s the same engine block, transmission housing, etc. And of course the shell, which is the most important. And I bet loads of interior too so where you sit feels very familiar.
> Probably it’s the same engine block, transmission housing, etc.
If someone says "the only original part is likely the body", then that makes it sound like they've replaced pretty much everything except the body itself, including everything about the engine and transmission.
The odometer most likely have not been replaced too
Legend says he even replaced the odometer
It's all about getting creative with junk yards and third-party NLA substitute part sellers.
I mean, it depends on the kind of work to be honest. Has he ever had to replace the whole engine or something?
Because if you get chain timing issues on a 2010 BMW diesel, you ain't repairing that, it's more expensive than a new car.
> Because if you get chain timing issues on a 2010 BMW diesel, you ain't repairing that, it's more expensive than a new car.
In the article the guy has 3 whole spare cars for donor parts and he does all the work himself. He’s not paying mechanic rates or even buying new parts (which are no longer available).
The amount of time and effort he’s put into this car is undoubtedly more expensive than buying a new car at this point, unless you count his time and free.
> unless you count his time and free.
Which you generally should, because unless he was going to otherwise be paid for that time there is no actual opportunity cost. The "cost" of one's time is only a meaningful metric inasmuch as one is giving up something which would be more profitable.
> you ain't repairing that, it's more expensive than a new car.
Sometimes we're more connected/sentimental about specific physical items, than the prices themselves. I kind of feel like you have to be a special sort of person to own a BMW, so wouldn't surprise me that same "special" person would pay more to repair their specific car than replacing it with an identical one but without that issue.
Doubt there’s a BMW enthusiast that will go out of their way to repair a 2010s diesel.
You're blowing it out of proportion. A repair like that costs between 1-2k euros. Even non-enthusiasts are repairing that, at least those outside of wealthy western Europe.
No, you need to change the whole engine if you get chain timing issues. And a new engine is more than the car itself.
Not when the car itself costs about as much.
For a manual 335d people would yeah.
Agree, it is not that impressive knowing that. Many 80s 90s Mercedes achieved that, and some with original engine