We should get back to communist block methods of car manufacturing imho. Build them extremely cheap and sturdy. If your car isn't made of cotton and doesn't last thirty years without maintenance, I am not interested

The same should be true for trains, bicycles, houses, computers and even smartphones, now that I think about it

A rational economy would be built around covering everybody's needs as cheaply and efficiently as possible. The best way to do that is to make things that last long and are easy to repair.

It's compleltey irrational to build an economy around artificial wants and needs. Like forcing people to buy a new smartphone every two years and a new car every five years. This is not normal and we should stop

@schratze the trend to regularly change cars is pushed by the finance/leasing companies (although it means that a decent 5 year old car can be obtained at a good price, although you have to put slightly more effort into maintenance and finding good/trustworthy independent garages..)

@vfrmedia @schratze don't read too much into the alleged durability of Trabant. A 10 to 15 year old Mercedes would find a new long life in any communist country and nobody would even think of owning a locally produced shit. I am old enough to remember this.

@saper @vfrmedia the west was able to build good cars. I still see VWs from the 70s and 80s driving around without any problems. That should be the norm. But over time, these things have become overengineered, super-heavy, impossible to repair and extremely expensive. And they churn out new models every other year. This is messed up and it should stop

@schratze @saper @vfrmedia imagine just upgrading security and motors so these cars don't suck life and gasoline? and then that's it.?

@meena @schratze @saper @vfrmedia but afaik you cannot just "upgrade security" on an old car from 80s; it would require redesigning the entire chassis?
For example, there is no way to add crumple zones to soviet cars, without making the car 2x larger (by basically embedding it into something else)?

Which would be pointless anyway because 90% of these cars went rusty all the way through in their first 5 to 10 years.
(Which reminds me that in Russian cars were colloquially referred to as "rusty buckets with bolts")

@IngaLovinde @schratze @saper @vfrmedia nah, but you could change drum breaks to disc brakes, add something like ABS, or a servo steering to 70s car without adding one tonne or cables and computers.

and just imagine, If you keep the speed on the streets to something safe for humans, you don't have to worry about air resistance

@meena @schratze @saper @vfrmedia but air resistance is not just about speed, it's also about fuel consumption?

(From what I've found, most popular soviet cars had fuel consumption twice the modern cars, starting at 11 liters per 100km)

@IngaLovinde @schratze @saper @vfrmedia yeah, basically, as soon as you go over 90, fuel consumption goes to shit

and anyway, in a city you shouldn't go over 30, because it's fucking dangerous.

@meena @IngaLovinde @schratze @saper

the average UK car of the 1970s would also have consumption of 11l/100km.

Only by mid 1980s did that improve to about 8-9 l/100km and even today only smaller city cars regularly consume less than 5,5 l/100km (my Polo averages between 6-7 l/100km)

@vfrmedia @meena @schratze @saper So basically the modern cars consume 2x less fuel than before, have much better passive safety, some newer active safety features etc, yet somehow 70s and 80s were the golden ages of car manufacturing

@IngaLovinde @meena @schratze @saper

I suspect 70s and 80s (sometimes early 90s) are often viewed (worldwide!) as "golden age of car manufacturing" because it was often easier for a younger person to get a car with less obligations than today (easier driving test, cops and insurance didn't have surveillance tech of today, easier to push boundaries such as speed and DUI limits so people fondly remember their first car, even if it was a complete shed and barely roadworthy...

@IngaLovinde @meena @schratze @saper

I had an interest in cars as a teen in 1980s but struggled to learn to drive due to (undiagnosed) ADHD, but I also lived much nearer London so didn't really /need/ one; it was only in 2019 (well into my 40s) that I got my driving licence having moved to a suburb and got work in a rural area; modern cars are better in some respects but there is more complications and supplier lock in for maintenance/repair and /that/ is definitely getting worse..

@vfrmedia @IngaLovinde @meena @saper as a broader point, okay, I'll be the first one to admit that I don't know a whole lot about cars. Maybe the whole "soviets built machines to last" thing is a myth.
But the point that still stands imo is that cars aren't designed to be good as cars anymore. I have literally ridden in a VW a few years ago in which the motor was falling apart just a few weeks after the warranty had run out. And it's not like you can just replace that with spare parts and a screwdriver anymore. Just look at the stuff that John Deere is doing with agricultural machines these days. It's the same deal with almost all modern cars.

@schratze @vfrmedia @meena @saper
> But the point that still stands imo is that cars aren't designed to be good as cars anymore. I have literally ridden in a VW a few years ago in which the motor was falling apart just a few weeks after the warranty had run out.

Ha! In Soviet Russia the motor was falling apart starting at the first day, right when you got your brand-new car.
And this was a rule, not an exception. (I wonder what percentage of modern VWs have their motors falling apart just a few weeks after the warranty runs out)

@IngaLovinde @vfrmedia @meena @saper How can we know? I don't think there is any reliable data on that to be honest

@schratze @IngaLovinde @vfrmedia it's hard to get reliable data, when the whole industry is geared towards leasing, instead of owning.

what millennial owns anything worth anything these days??

anyway, my argument, which i didn't make directly enough, was to build modular cars and quietly upgrade them over the decades, instead of wasting one tons of steel and one fucking ton of copper for wires, every five years.

not that cars in the 70s were perfect