I live in Europe: My only “concern” about chinese cars (and I don’t mean chinese as in Volvo) that I am not sure you will get parts and service in 10 or 15 years. More than 500 unique models were released in the first 6 months of 2026 alone [0]. It’s like the wild west of Android phones 10-15 years ago. Brands you never heared about, never updated Android versions etc
0, https://www.carscoops.com/2026/08/chinese-automakers-lauchin...
Jokes on you. In the Northeast cars rust in less than 10 years. We don't need parts
True 40 years ago, not so much any more.
https://totallossgap.co.uk/blog/post/why-do-modern-cars-not-...
I can send you a picture of the undercarriage of my 2014 car
What's wrong with your 2014 car? I live in northern europe, we get shitload of road salt in the winter and my 2014 car is fine. Winter is also the time when I use my car the most for commuting.
Not everyone drives an Sd.Kfz.251.
You get that treated with new car like any other owner in such environment. Or is your whole car rusted through?
Does that matter if there literally aren't any spare parts to buy? That was kinda his point I feel like
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Just because the plastic door panels don't rust doesn't mean the metal frame underneath isn't.
That is from the UK. The UK has no idea what rust is or what salted roads are.
I've rusted through multiple cars (also in the North East) in the last 20 years while a friend still has his 2006 model year car in pristine condition with regards to that and is debating whether to buy a new one coz he finally wants to take advantage of some of the advances since then but he can't justify it coz it's still fine and costs him just a few hundred bucks in normal maintenance.
The linked article is hardly an exposé of advanced materials research...
Same where I live. I love finding high-mileage cars that are way cheaper than everything else. People seem allergic to these vehicles, but I’ve yet to have any major issues with them.
But, like clockwork, that 10 year marks and everything just starts rusting out. While I could be religious about washing, that’s a huge pain.
No they don't rust if during winter you take 5 minutes to wash the undercarriage every other week at a self-service car wash.
Related: VW is turning part of its Zwickau EV plant into a site that takes back used VW Group cars and refurbishes them or strips them for parts to resell [0]. Target is 15,000 cars a year by 2030.
[0] https://www.volkswagen-newsroom.com/de/pressemitteilungen/st...
More companies need to be doing this.
Though they won't, because I imagine recycling/refurbishing is not nearly as profitable as selling new models that lose 25% of their value the moment they're driven off the lot.
And no exec wants to explain to shareholders why their revenue from new model year sales are down 20% because they've cannibalized it with a new but lower-margin revenue stream.
Cars have long had a full industry that scraps them. There are enough valuable parts to make money doing it.
There is a giantic industry that does exactly that. Copart, IAR etc
Hence why capitalism needs pollution regulations or we live in Wall-e world.
Thankfully, EVs don't need as many spare parts as ICEs. It is less complicated machinery, and the batteries are the biggest component that are actually fairly standardized (well, at the cell level, there is a lot that goes on around that that is custom).
While I've occasionally had an engine part fail most of the major repairs I've needed to do to cars over the years has been suspension related, it's consistently abused and closest to the road / debris.
That said... many of the different EVs sit on the same base, so maybe it won't actually be as hard to get parts as it seems.
It's not just repairs, maintenance too
Oil changes, timing belts, spark plugs etc. It really helps if you have no metal touching metal
Sure, but EVs also often have cooling loops that need service, your same cabin air filters, and more frequent tire and brake service due to heavier weights.
> Sure, but EVs also often have cooling loops that need service,
If you're talking about ac, sure. The rest, no? I've been driving an electric car for over a decade and have been replacing tires, and nothing else.
Sure it is anecdata with n of 1 but in over a decade I've probably spent ~4k on maintenance while driving 120k miles electrically? The bulk of that on tires and fixing that ac I mentioned.
Maybe frequent tire service, but they actually need less brake service because you are relying on regen instead of braking most of the time. I still can't believe the anti-EV crowd still doesn't get that one simple thing, it makes them look very non-credible.
Chinese EVs are more eclectic than western EVs. But ya, suspension parts....are those things that automakers innovate on? Though I guess BYD is an exception, since they own their own parts maker.
Innovation is rare among the broad consumer car market but modify to fit new bodies and motor layouts, yes, for sure. For most mainstream cars however you'll often find that a few models per generation for any given manufacturer either share parts or are interchangeable.
Fender benders? Suspension wear? Brakes (yes, EVs still have them)? Rust/corrosion? Dead pixels? Torn/worn/faded interiors?
Heck, I just dumped an 8 year old BMW because the interior stitching was coming apart. Nothing mechanically wrong, just yellow fluff poking out of the seams. Easier to sell it than try to get it fixed.
They might not need them as often but if they produce them even less than it's still an issue. Insurance costs on Teslas is high and the rental company Tesla apocalypse happened because of the difficulties maintaining fleet repairs.
That's absolute nonsense. So what if it's an EV? It still requires replacement door hinges, fenders, panels, suspension parts, wiring harnesses, software updates, etc. Repairing a car is a great deal more complex than simply changing oil or replacing brake pads. All mechanical objects experience wear and tear and require maintenance.
The parts that wear out the fastest and are the hardest/costliest to replace are not all of those though. EVs still have parts wear for sure, BUT it is just in a different league when compared to ICE repairs.
I have a 20 year old civic that I have done nothing to other than oil change/air filter and brakes on (its my kid's car now). Sure the interior is falling apart, but it probably has at least another 100k left mechanically.
Same for a 20 year old Corolla. I'm embarrassed to admit I've never flushed the coolant or brake/steering fluids. Rear drums are OEM with under 50% wear. Did the pads. Rotors may have been replaced once.
Prophylacticly changed the spark plugs... but I think they were fine.
Had to change the wheel bearings which was a pain to diag and even more of a struggle to remove in the rust belt... which an EV won't get around.
EV might have saved me from a couple welder repairs on the exhaust and Macgyvering heat shields. And that $10 intake manifold gasket that always fails (2h shadetree job). Transmission ran dry a few times after a metal line rusted out. Bypassed with rubber hose and runs again like a champ.
I love it but will crumble like a cracker in a collision because rust (but still drive because 1zz-fe).
My similarly aged German car is way ahead on factory corrosion protection. Maybe the Japanese manufacturers have caught up but I won't know if/how far behind the Chinese manufacturers are for a decade or two.
The parts that wear out the fastest are designed to be easily replaceable. Just in a different league sounds like hogwash. I've seen the costs associated with Teslas caught in a collision. What would be a quick panel replacement on a typical ICE suddenly costs 15K plus.
The average ICE will be working with a full range at ten years old. The same will not be true of EVs without a major investment in battery replacement.
No chance an ICE vehicle can go 10 years without an oil change. Spark plugs, coils, fuel injectors, and filters will all degrade in that time, diminishing range.
If you don't do an overhaul and replace your rings, a high milage ICE car will not have the same range as new.
"full range" is a nonsense metric though. Different cars have different tank and battery sizes, and what matters is whether the range fits your needs.
All else equal, a range that degrades from 300 to 230 miles is better than a range that starts at 210 miles and stays there forever.
The statistics aren't backing you up on this.
First major thing to wear out in my EV was the Air Conditioning Evaporator core after less than 3 years.
Never change Ford, never change.
How are people still spouting this nonsense? EVs are more reliable than ICE vehicles. We know this from experience.
The discussion was availability of spare parts, not reliability. And has already been brought up, reliability won't save you from needing parts when someone plows into your rear bumper. Or when suspension parts fail, which they do on every car.
It's the EV folks that are spouting nonsense due to lack of experience. TCO is more than just oil changes.
> TCO is more than just oil changes.
Yeah, duh. EVs still have fewer maintenance items than ICE vehicles. How is this even a talking point anymore?
I live in the United States: My only "concern" about cars made here is that the parts are and will be exorbitantly high due to protectionism by our government and will be a lot more for a lot fewer features, efficiency and innovation and we'll have to win a class action lawsuit to even open the hoods of cars we "own" so we can repair them ourselves.
Once upon a time American-made televisions were a thing, back in the days of tubes. Television repair was a legitimate trade. Then Japanese electronics companies entered the market. Because of supply chain distances, and politics, they knew that servicing TVs in the US would be difficult. So the Japanese manufacturers decided to make TVs that would not need repair. And American TVs basically disappeared.
I'm not saying that will happen with cars, but it is something to think about.
> So the Japanese manufacturers decided to make TVs that would not need repair
Not being able to repair something isn't the same as not needing repair. Had lots of CRT Sony TVs over the yeasr and they definitely had issues.
The analog has its limit though, because I've never reversed a television into a gate post.
I don't quite follow that. Can you give an example? I buy car parts all the time and install them myself as well.
You stated your comment in the future tense. What are you anticipating?
A lot of cars companies restrict who can buy parts and what parts. For example if you want to buy the rear quarter panel for a Rivian you must be an approved repair shop and they will only allow so many in a given area. This is not specific to rivian. Lots of car companies do this with newer models. I have a friend who runs a high end repair shop and another who does restoration and the one who does Mercedes restoration won’t work on cars newer than x because he can’t get parts
Sounds like the smart move is to continue to ignore EV only and Luxury brands and continue buying from OEM's of the past that happen to have EV models and better supply chains for parts.
I'm not gonna buy a car that doesn't have a dealer network. Being able to go in person and complain when shit hits the fan is a requirement.
Diagnostic software is beginning to require more and more authentication.
https://www.repairerdrivennews.com/2026/05/14/autoauth-certi...
You now need to be a "certified AutoAuth technician" using a "certified AutoAuth tool" (sure, like a $3000 SnapOn).
Or - some manufacturers ALSO require you to have NASTF Vehicle Security Professional access, which is another whole can of worms with insurance and business requirements.
https://support.nastf.org/support/solutions/articles/4300076...
Hyundai now requires you to have this stupid security professional certification if you dare try to service a modern Hyundai with a (lower cost) J2534 passthru tool instead of the official Hyundai service tool.
All of this still doesn't stop someone from sending packets direct on the CANbus to make a new key to someone's car, but it just makes it more miserable for the rest of us trying to work on the diagnostics of it all.
We csnlt buy BYD cars because our government tariffed them to hell and back. There's literally no reason to not expect the same would apply to parts.
Yes and I believe both Democrat and Republican administrations. Strange how voters tolerate this but not tariffs in general.
We tariffed them (Europe will too) because China subsidizes them and is building excess industrial capacity to run our companies out of business where we have higher wages and such. China also artificially keeps its currency low to boost exports toward the same goals.
It's more important that we protect domestic industry and good union jobs than it is for us to import EVs at lower prices.
Here's a great article I shared elsewhere: https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/china-cars-domestic-sale-...
(In one noted instance from the article a company built (through local government subsidies and tax breaks and other schemes) capacity to build around 100,000 cars/year and have only built 600 to date.From TFA:
Several companies in China now tout their “dark factories” where they make or assemble many parts of their cars with no human labour at all. It’s likely that the larger Chinese companies are capable of undercutting European makers even without government subsidies or wage parity.I'm not sure what TFA but taking the quote here at face value I think there's a little more to it than that. Not all of these Chinese automakers have these so-called deeper structural advantages. As I mentioned before and the WSJ reported, one of them (and I'm sure there are others) built a factory where (even if there was no human labor) they expected to push out 100,000 cars/annually yet have orders for less than 1,000. So no amount of structural advantage matters for them, nor do those advantages matter when the chief export markets say "no thanks we'll just keep our industry even if it's less efficient".
There are a few other things to note here. First is time - so even if the subsidies which still exist and are rather significant (Imagine at like Google's scale if they're making $100bn/year and the government was paying them or subsidizing $10bn of that - that's a lot of $$$) matter less so now, they still were used to spring up the industry and many of these automakers which has downstream effects on viability of the company and in what has been widely reported as over-building of industrial capacity. Coupled with a declining Chinese market, no access to the American market, and soon to be little to no access to the European market China could build cars for $5 but if there are no buyers and they're not making a profit it doesn't matter. Plus China of course artificially devalues its currency to boost exports.
My point here isn't that China is bad or that Chinese automakers aren't or can't be great, but that there's a good reason we have protected our domestic markets and even if Chinese companies were eventually just the best, fastest, cheapest, most advanced in the world we would just protect our markets until we catch up because having a domestic industry and those jobs and the capability to produce wheeled vehicles is more important than having the cheapest possible EVs. Ergo that's why we have tariffs. Disagreeing with that direction is a failure of understanding. The policy is a must-have.
Other countries may not care or their people may not understand why we do what we do, but those countries aren't relevant players on the global stage and their industrial capacity if it ever existed doesn't matter. American industrial capacity, Chinese industrial capacity, and probably German, Japanese, Korea, and maybe a few other select countries are the only ones that matter in this regard.
The Atlantic ran a story a week or so ago which over-indexes a bit but I think is directionally accurate and is relevant here[1].
There are other interesting tidbits from the article, but you get the picture....[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/international/2026/10/chinese-co...
Using subsidies to spring up an industry is a good thing. Over in the US we had plenty of big car makers that didn't need it, and their being lazy because they know they'll be protected is the worst of all worlds.
Domestic production is good but sometimes big companies need to taste failure. We should lower the level of protection they're getting, at least for a while.
Sure but that means the US should do things like subsidize American companies (leftists are against this of course) while keeping Chinese ones out until we have competitors who are sufficiently advanced, and then…… China just open its market to American companies that we subsidized?
The key piece I think is missing here is reciprocity.
We can’t have “China subsidies its industries until they are super competitive and then they get to sell in our market but we don’t get to sell in theirs”. Europe does a little of the same with regulatory lawfare.
The problem with lowering the level of protectionism is that it doesn’t really serve anyone’s best interest besides Chinese automakers. American companies lose out, American workers lose out, and we wind up in a worse position than before.
We could subsidize smaller companies, perhaps.
The big US car companies don't need subsidies. They can afford plenty of development costs but they don't want to advance into the cheaper electric space, they want to extract as much value as they can by pushing car prices as high as possible.
The problem with keeping this level of protectionism is that it encourages them to keep doing the same thing. The companies don't lose out but everyone in the US that needs to buy a car loses out. We need something to motivate them, and dropping their protection from "infinite" to "medium" or "medium-high" might do the trick.
I'm in favor of solutions which give American automakers advantages and also motivation to build better cars, but it has to be done in a way that keeps China out of our market, and protects union jobs.
I think it's fine that cars are expensive and getting more expensive. More people should be walking or using alternative means anyway because we spend way too much money and are dealing with a number of negative externalities from our car-only infrastructure. Having competition in terms of method of transportation itself can solve many of our problems, no artificially cheap Chinese cars required.
I drive an EV and generally prefer that to ICE vehicles but we have to acknowledge that there are still emissions that go in to EV manufacturing and mining rare earths, which China created a strong monopoly on the processing of so we'll have to do more ICE to compensate, sucks. There seems to be a desire to push cheaper EVs on to the American market, but it's even cheaper to build sidewalks and live closer to your place of employment or where you do the majority of your daily activities. It's better for the environment too.
So if we can't build EVs in a way that is advantageous to us and on our terms, we should avoid it and just walk and build transit and keep the ICE going.
Making cars expensive is probably the worst way to accomplish those goals though. Better zoning, funding transit, taxing emissions get more directly at the problems with less collateral damage.
I think we’ve tried that and people generally just go with the small, externalized cost. Having to pay more of the costs directly and shortening the feedback loop so people can make more informed decisions I think tends to work well. It’s like climate change - gas should probably be $20/gallon if we were accounting for the costs to the environment and such.
Either way artificially cheaper cars from China doesn’t solve our problems in the long term. Obviously once your country loses its ability to build cars they just raise the prices and you’re back to where you started except now you have lost union jobs and manufacturing ability and know how.
> China subsidizes them
Maybe we should subsidize some industries ourselves, probably a better investment than more war.
We do. Oil for your old fashioned car and farmers for votes.
> We tariffed them (Europe will too) because China subsidizes them
EU has been tariffing Chinese cars since 2024. They determined the unfair government subsidy to be between 17%-35% depending on the manufacturer. Starting this year they added an option for a price floor instead.
You don't want BYD cars. Those unreliable POSs have a useful life shorter than a cellphone.
At one point, BYD was the top choice of EV buses in the U.S. They were blacklisted by every transit agency in America even before Trump's order because their vehicles were less reliable than the 40+ year old buses they were replacing.
That’s exactly what I fear may happen in Europe.
I don’t want to give a cent to European manufacturers because of the prices they want to subject us to, but I’m sure Europe will eventually do something about the Chinese allowing poor people to own cars.
European cars are expensive not just because the manufacturers are greedy, but also because we want them to pay their employees a proper living wage, human working hours, sick leave, a few weeks of vacation every year, healthcare... Those don't come for free.
Also you have to add that cars sold in Europe (regardless of manufacturer) require by law much more expensive extras compared to other countries.
But the labor costs of manufacturing are still tiny compared to material costs. If labor was free for European manufacturing that would only drop the price a token amount, not the £10,000+ that Chinese autos have over current cars.
So-called materials are manufactured, too, and usually not in China. Might be Poland or Hungary or Portugal though.
Your link has a concerning quote in it:
> "many households already own one vehicle," so the "automotive market must shift from the traditional era of increasing volume to one that considers growth based on the premise of existing vehicle ownership."
This sounds like companies trying to add subscriptions or other costs to get access to car features.
There already is a subscription. Salt, pot holes and other wear mean the car won't last forever so in 3-10 years I buy a new one.
We're in the boom or bust years for the Chinese manufacturers. There's clearly a few fairly safe brands like BYD or anything Geely owned - they're not going away, but the smaller brands are a little bit of a gamble. I say this as someone with a hankering for an Xpeng X9. I saw a report [0] a couple of days ago that the profit margin across the Chinese car industry is at a record low 1.4% which would suggest to me that we're probably going to lose a few of the smaller brands pretty soon.
[0] https://insidechinaauto.com/2026/10/27/china-car-industry-pr...
They also had a 22% decrease in sales domestically YoY this past year. The only thing keeping a bunch of those brands around is state sponsorship.
Indeed. It's a smart strategy by the CCP, a brand battle royale until only the strongest survive. Given the way things have happened in the past though, I suspect what we'll see is Geely and Chery buying out the ones that fail until there's just those two giants and a few niche players who'll likely be domestic market only.
It makes sense if they let them fail, but note the system is not that the ccp broadly backs them. Each state backs their own set, and if they fail that state loses the jobs/favtories/etc. so there is a lot of friction for letting them fail.
Ah interesting, thanks for the extra context.
Parts?
You just throw them away. They are consumer electronics.
I don't say this happily.
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I'm not sure, for example a lot of people talk about Ford as being a known brand, but see what they did with the powershift fiasco.
A few weeks ago I was in a dealership and they had 5 cars that were basically abandoned by their owner because of problem with the transmission.
Not saying Chinese will behave differently, but big brands aren't as reliable as you think
I am currently considering buying a Leapmotor B05 here in Australia. My main concern is the cars are distributed here by Stellantis (which have a 20% stake in Leapmotor). Huge international conglomerate, but I have no confidence in their warranty support or parts supply.
I wouldn’t have the same concerns over buying a BYD or an MG Chinese electric car.
https://www.accc.gov.au/public-registers/undertakings-regist...
100s of models share a few standard platforms with like 80% parts commonality in the broader ecosystem. A subbrand from one of the giants with staying power is going to be fine, someone in PRC going to keep after market parts flowing forever, like they do for western brands. Of course whether this convenient/ubiquitous in reign like Europe depends on geopolitics, if EU going to make it hard for PRC producers then PRC producers going to have hard time with EU consumers, which arguably is the point. Really have to see what PRC plants in EU starts delivering, ultimately there's no reason for rest of EU to be dependant on German or French cars if they have Chinese cars at home.
Chinese brands are all relatively young and even healthy looking major companies have a habit of spectacular sudden failure due to less good bookkeeping and auditing practices.
SOEs are 50+ years old, legacy titans like BYD ~30+, older than Tesla. Tesla tier tech upstarts nio, xpeng, li ~10. But ultimately who cares, the big / influential players are arguably too big to fail by local gov standards whose going to keep going forever, or consolidate under players that can keep them going. The brands too small to survive aren't seriously exporting to the west anyway (like yes there's brand/marketting plays like hiphi which is basically vinfast tier). Car makers, especially ones with tech stack are not Luckin Coffee, if state/province wants to keep a strategic brand going forever, they will. Just like western auto pork barrel due to "excellent" financiered bookkeeping and auditing.
Local gov can only prop up so long as they have money; and their balance sheets are strained due to ballooning debt funded by a deflated property bubble.
And just like the west, local gov they'll cut teachers wages before strategic industries. Debt crisis = local gov forced to deleverage because central gov chose to kneecap land finance, central gov can via many instruments find arrangement to prop up a player. Nvm these companies from tier1 GZ, SH, JS manufacture hubs with GDP the size of g20 economies, if someone wants nio and xpeng around and give them local robotaxi / fleet contracts to grift in perpetuity, or keep their self driving stack and consolidate manufacture and pawn off after market to someone else, they can. Keep in mind current auto involution = large players bleeding at rates where they still have ~10+ years of operational runway, these are too big to fail but cheap enough to bail size companies. Hence what is unlikely to happen, just like how other sovereigns fighting to keep their surviving legacy auto alive, is to let strategic auto die off in ether like mom and pop coffee shop. Except sovereign balance sheets (>100% debt to GDP) are in general much worse than tier1 PRC (<100% debt to GDP) even with squeezed land finance, aka western countries propping up western auto is a much harder lift than PRC local gov propping up local auto.
Have you tried owning a landrover? No use in parts availability but they make it completely unaffordable to maintain them.. (as a business model imo)
We’ll see how this plays out, but the industry definitely needs a calibration
Land rover’s customer base probably doesn’t care much about maintainability.
most are leased.
that's fair argument and reason why to rely on long established concerns like BYD (BYD, Denza), Geely (Volvo, Lynk & Co, Geely, Polestar, Zeekr) and Chery (Jaecoo, Omoda, Chery), at least the brand shouldn't fold so early, though of course they can still ditch some specific brand, seems like BYD would be safest option judging by their market share in China, in Europe Jaecoo seems to be doing very well, but who knows how long they can last and from what I hear they are quite unreliable, so I would worry more about wait time for car par right now than 10 years down the line, even Korean/Japanese cars still have this issue if you crash the car and need to wait weeks for the spare part
> It’s like the wild west of Android phones 10-15 years ago
lifespan of the phone is much shorter than car (so is price), so not really a fair comparison and Xiaomi is still around and many other less known brands (actually that makes me realize I forgot Xiaomi cars, very nice design as well, nice Porsche copy), they just ditched export, but they are still present in China, even 10-15 years ago you had tier 1, tier 2 and other tiers of brands
Are ByD cars that interesting? Specs look good but I had a few rides in that sedan model most Ubers drive these days and it is conceptually flawed. They put batteries where you are supposed to put your feets as a rear passenger which mean that any regular adult sized person end up with their knees in the face as if they were seating on a kids chair. So uncomfortable.
With such a basic design error, I wonder how many frustrating flaws an actual owner has to put up with. I've driven chinese rental cars in Mexico (an MG SUV and a chevrolet small sized sedan) and both had electronic issues. For instance the rear window heating of the MG would startup on its own once every other time their was a significant bump on the road (which happens frequently in MX) and the actual touch sensitive non mechanical button buttons weren't very sensitive so it was a pain in the ass to turn it off. Both android systems were absolute crap with annoying bugs. Overall not a very pleasant experience.
I dunno, spent previous summer in China riding ride shares (Didi mostly I think) almost daily and it was nice change when the car for once eat not BYD, they are absolutely dominating the market in China, majority of ride share cars were BYD, can't complain about rear seats, everywhere hey generous, same thing can't be said about front seat though as tall passenger.
Given how often parts are unavailable for new and late model "western" brands this is more like a generic worry that comes with car ownership than anything brand-specific. If anything the proliferation of brands demonstrates robust use of off-the-shelf components, which in turn suggests replacement parts should be ubiquitous.
I don't follow the car industry but I've worked on a project circa 2018 for all European manufacturers to help provide parts 15 years after the car was sold (I provided the Hadoop clusters and some of the predictive algorithms to try to predict which car parts will fail and how many will be needed over the car Lifetime.) BOOST4.0 or something. I don't know where it ended up going.
TBH the market demand will ensure a Toyota Camry/Honda Civic 'invincible' style runabout will emerge that basically anyone can run into the ground and still depend on. The real issue to me is the morality of the production of the parts, particularly things involving rare-earth metals.
As opposed to the ethical oil industry?
The best option when it comes to cars is to not own one.
(Not that i judge or anything, i have a 10yo corolla but i drive it maybe once a month, between my ebike and public transit i have very little use for it)
It's definitely an issue but typically not until you pass the ~20 year mark. I recently sold a very low volume car that is now 26 years old and there's definitely a secondary market now in hoarded parts as the originals become less and less available from the manufacturer.
You might want to take a closer look into the current state of play on new and late model vehicle parts availability and general serviceability, because your take here appears to be a couple decades out of date. Parts are frequently difficult or impossible to source for cars that are less than 5 years old.
That would be against the law in the EU, provided the manufacturer is still in business of course. It's I think 15 years after they stop making the model they have to have the parts still available.
Makes sense too as the average age of cars is going up.
I've heard of year+ backorders on parts for ~5 year old models recently. High volume slightly older cars like a 2015 corolla sometimes even have backorders despite how many are still driving
We can’t get parts for my wife’s 7 year old Buick convertible anymore so that’s not really true. We took it to the dealer to get a service done and they broke her fob then messed around for two weeks before declaring that they couldn’t source a replacement. So it depends greatly on the vehicle. If it isn’t an American truck then good luck getting documentation or parts for it. Luckily our regular mechanic actually knows what he’s doing so he’s able to come up with alternatives for things like turbo solenoids. But the OEM parts are always on backorder and are 10x as expensive.
That's mostly a Tesla thing, isn't it? The traditional western car manufacturers figured this out many decades ago.
Ish. Traditional car manufacturers had this figured out but intentionally dropped the plot over the last couple decades because make number go up. Net result: my wife had a mouse die in a vent duct in her 2 year old SUV. We drove a dealership loaner for 8 months waiting for parts. They ended up replacing the entire dash assembly (including gauge clusters, and infotainment unit). Many (most?) modern car transmissions aren't field-serviceable because no parts are available. Any issue with the transmission means the entire unit gets replaced.
This is pretty horrible news that I hadn't really heard about, especially since American cars are so expensive now.
Why was this not a problem in the past? I know covid and tariffs have changed the supply picture a lot but I was vaguely under the impression there was some kind of parts availability requirement for manufacturers.
Lot of European car parts come from Ukraine and that definitely affected the parts availability for euro cars. There definitely has been an adjustment period and I recall in 2021/2022 where European cars would come in to the US without basic features like seat warmers/vents, electronic seat rails, etc etc
Erm. No.
(Which car brand?)
But where did that replacement dash assembly come from? They just intentionally made it less granular because make number go up.
I see your point, but it's a slightly different one.
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I mean the core feature here is a vastly simplified drivetrain and often modular parts borrowed or 'appropriated' from the best of existing marques. There's a lot less to go wrong versus any existing ICE platform, and the Chinese EVs that make the Western market are generally the budget/barebones models outside of the the high-end BYD stuff.
In comparison, the last two generations of ICE cars from Europe/US are the most mechanically complex in history in order to meet strict emissions laws.
The main point of contention is around support for the integrated cloud connectivity and continuous OTA software updates. Ultimately that will be clean-room decompiled or otherwise audited for PII/Security Compliance to the point where reverse-engineering for LTS is trivial.
Other than that, just as displayed with walled-garden Apple products, a robust, decentralized aftermarket will emerge from the legions of SEA hackers.
Slight nitpick - "the Chinese EVs that make the Western market are generally the budget/barebones models outside of the high-end BYD stuff" - what makes you say this? I follow the Chinese car market a fair bit and the high end marques are generally making it to western markets, even Voyah.
High tariffs make shipping certain high-value Chinese EVs economically unviable or politically restricted for one.
Since Q2 the Chinese domestic market has also moved away from European brand prestige toward advanced technology and user experience tailored to that demographic.
Many of the self-assist or park features are simply illegal for use in export markets - e.g. Huawei ADS Level 3 autonomous driving is not legally approved for public consumer use in either the European Union or the United States.
Similarly, the 800v charging architecture is more frequently skipping onboard converters and cannot charge at stations below 800v, ruling out 97% of public chargepoints in the EU.
Subsequently, the top-end stuff like the Maextro S800 is not officially sold by Huawei or JAC through a factory-backed dealer network in Europe.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/05/25/business/chinese-luxury-b...
Somewhat paradoxiacally, the battery might be the highest quality and maintaibable component of the car, but everything else is a concern.
If there is enough demand, someone will build and supply it. So enough buyers have to buy the model and keep it running that long.
Truly. Brand names in Europe for .cn EVs sound like iPhone accessory listings from Amazon
I thought for sure you meant Chinese as in Volvo. Damn, I sure was wrong.
Same concern I have with the Chinese golf carts/LSVs. They look very nice and have so many standard features even car play. I know a few people that bought Chinese brands that only existed for 3 years.
so, in America, these vehicles are like 3x cheaper. So, just buy 3.
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I’m going to guess that parts for these 500 unique models are mostly coming out of the same handful of factories in China. While yes maintenance is definitely a concern I think as long as there is a steady supply of these EVs the market will figure out repair.
Many of them are not constructed for repair and have a lot of integrated components. It's an era of disposable cars so to speak.
Long term ownership risks of EVs
https://youtu.be/Nim61oVLdwk?t=700
> I am not sure you will get parts and service in 10 or 15 years
Giant dumps of discarded electric cars in China would indicate that even if you live in China, you cannot get parts and service, or not in a way that is more financially sound than scrapping the vehicle.
wut, after market parts in PRC is incredibly robust, they hammer out generics for western auto, of course they keep domestic stocked for ever with original tooling. There's no giant dumps for "dicarded" EVs that can't get parts or service, there's lots for retired fleet cars, i.e cars that were serviced for so long that they've been driven to death and retired (600000km / 8 years service life) or in some cases potemkin cars to steal subsidies, but even the latter shows PRC can basically conjure components on a whim if there's any profit. They can literally conjure up EVs as disposable financial instruments.
Most people own a car for 3 years or less... who cares about 15 years from now?
Average is over 12 years [1].
[1] https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/americ...
That doesn't seem true. I'm seeing 6 to 8 years, with the average car age being 12 years old. Resale value is important.
You're not factoring in leases.
Resale value is critical for leases. If nobody wants to buy the car after the lease is over then the lease company needs to scrap the car. Lease companies pay close attention to expected resale value because they are betting a lot of money on it.
Cars are often sold. If everyone knows that nobody will buy it in 15 years, the person buying it in 12 years will pay less, which means the person buying in 9 years pays less, etc, so the person buying new doesn't recoup as much and has less to spend on a replacement.
No reason a car can't still be on the road 100 years after manufacture
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=LAh8HryVaeY&pp=ygUOVHJpZ2dlciB...
At what point is it no longer the same car if you’ve replaced all the parts ;)
> Most people own a car for 3 years or less
This seems absurd on the face of it.
What, you don't burn your car and drive it off a cliff on its three-year anniversary?
Every 3 years since 2015 and my corolla just keeps running ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
we live in different worlds.. I have only bought 10 year old wagons and kept them for at least 10 years
I never bought a car newer than 15 years
More like 5-10
You are living in a bubble