- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmy.world
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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.
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.
Not true. Some idiot t boned me and they had to replace the frame of my car. It cost her $7k and my car is worth about twice that today.
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.
Get an EV. The only expense is tires. I’m hoping my ev can last the life of the battery, which is supposed to be around 22 years.
My next vehicle will be. no reason to have a gas anything. Unfortunately I’m in the middle of a divorce, so I have no idea how long it will be before I can make any positive changes. Fuck I don’t even know where I’ll be living in 8 months.
Reject modernity, revert to Swedish brick car.
Ironically cars are far more reliable now than they were at any point in the past.
I agree, I think the real problem is the cost to maintain one and the economics around it. For too long the expectation was to put as little money as possible into maintaining it and getting a new one some years later. We need to stop making them the massive status symbols they’ve become.
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
robo taxis can’t respond to accidents and emergencies so its likely they won’t be affordable to operate for some time.
Robo taxis or not, kids don’t care to get their license.
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
link pls?
Enshitification has infected Toyota. What a shame.
Just another brand I can start avoiding.
These cast bodies will be used in the 2026 EV’s, so not really a massive issue yet. Wait and see…
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?
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.
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.
It’s all about those short term profits baby! 😎
Late stage capitalism for the win
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.
And?
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.
So spaceflight is impossible?
Space flight companies aren’t trying to sell their rockets to the average consumer.
Because they can’t afford it? You think they wouldn’t try if it wasn’t cost prohibitive?
I mean Blue origin is already trying
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?
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.
Considering that the cast part is practically half the vehicle, I wonder if it is easier to change out the cast vs several frame parts.
The frame is a much smaller portion of the vehicle than these cast parts.
Once a frame is damaged the vehicle often gets totalled out because it would be so much to replace, basically disassemble the vehicle or try to repair the frame and have poor safety risks from then on.
These casts are a lot more than where a frame is. Damage to the casts will happen from accidents that never would have damaged a normal frame.
Not on a unibody.
My guess is increase part cost but reduce repair labor. Similar to replacing transmission or engine today. Not worth it for a shop to usually do the repairs them selves but replace the whole unit and send off to a remanufacturing plant
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.
It’s more than a couple hundred dollars. Production time will drop from 10 to 5 hours per car. The tooling and multiple parts eliminated from large casts will save thousands.
I doubt it is thousands since most plants are automated, but even assuming it were, it’s the consumer who suffers when their car is basically disposable after a crash.
If they were only saving 1% on costs I doubt they’d risk the bad reputation 10% makes it more appetizing.
They’ll risk their reputation for much less than you might think. Tesla are getting rid of physical controls to save a few bucks even though it has a serious impact on usability and safety. E.g. The new model 3 will remove indicator stalks and put buttons on the wheel making it all but impossible to safely and legally traverse roundabouts. I reckon there will be huge backlash on this especially in the UK and Europe.
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.
Guess I won’t be sticking with Toyota when my Prius finally craps out. Too bad. It’s a great car.
