ExCivilian
Well-known member
I don't know why some people have this habit of linking to things they either didn't read or think no one else will read, but the link does *not* have the methodology regarding how they calculated the "average" age of vehicles. There are three different ways to calculate an "average:" mean, median, and mode. Almost always, the mean is used to calculate averages or at least that's what most people will think of when they think "average." You all remember this from school being calculated as add all the cars' ages and divide by number of cars.
The problem with using mean averages is they don't control for outliers. For examples, this 10 year averages means for every vehicle that gets into a wreck around four years into its lifespan there's an equal number of vehicles that are least 16 years old to hit that 10 year average. We'd want to see how many vehicles are totaled within their first four years because we know that 25% of the vehicles on the road are 16 years old or older (https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/28/25p...t-least-sixteen-years-old----record-high.html).
To get a sense of outliers, we'd want to see how many of the oldest vehicles are on the road. A few years back Toyota claimed that 80% of vehicles on the road are at least 20 years old. We wouldn't recognize that data in a data set using mean averages if a substantial amount of vehicles are totaled within the first couple years. We also haven't compared the differences between cars and trucks. In this data, we see that trucks have longer lifespans than passengers cars and "other trucks" are nearly double that of passenger cars (https://www.bts.gov/content/average-age-automobiles-and-trucks-operation-united-states).
We haven't even explored what is meant by "age." We don't know if they're discussing how long the original owner keeps the vehicle, how long before it's taken out of service, or what taken out of service would even mean. It doesn't help the argument that ICE is as short-lived as EV battery packs if "out of service" means "removes power train and installs it into other 20 year old vehicle without rust/collision damage" because we aren't comparing power plants at this point but rather build quality of the vehicle containing them.
Not only that, but the article is an argument against the point being made in this thread: the article is explicitly about the rising average lifespan of ICE vehicles. The headline is that the average has risen to twelve years, not ten as being claimed in this thread, and points out in the second paragraph, "[w]hereas 20 years ago a car might have changed hands once or twice and lasted 100,000 miles, it is more common today for a car to have multiple owners and last for 200,000 miles or more."
It's incorrect to claim that EV longevity is the same as ICE longevity and that people should be unconcerned about longevity or resale after a decade of use. I would love to order a SR and simply upgrade the pack with a solid state pack and/or greater capacity pack in ten years. Vehicle manufacturers, however, have been actively moving away from consumers doing their own work on vehicles. This is likely to become more difficult with time, not less, especially given the relationship between devices and code. That is, software limitations can be coded into devices so they can't be replaced, repaired, or altered by end-users. It could be technologically possible but unrealistic to swap packs because of firmware limitations. Laws could be implemented to protect the consumer but the Right to Repair movement is highlighting how unlikely it's going to be to implement such a framework of laws. Meanwhile, fuels, fluids, and filters continue to make enormous strides in extending the longevity of our current vehicle technology.
I'm an EV proponent, and have driven them for years, but I caution against overly optimistic predictions of reduced costs over time in order to encourage adoption. I don't think the majority of drivers are taking their vehicles somewhere for $200 dollar oil changes but even if they are that cost would still pale in comparison to replacing tires on a 7,000lb vehicle every two years for roughly $1,500.
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