The title of the article seems... misleading. It implies the French government is forcing companies to manufacture products in a particular way, when what they are doing is forcing manufacturers to disclose to customer they planned lifespan of a product.
Which, by the way, seems like an excellent proposition. As a (potential) customer I can factor in lifespan with features and price for things I buy and make a better-informed decision about which best meets my needs. Anything that gives customers more accurate information should lead to better-functioning markets.
Would be great if they standardised on 'price per year of use' like they do now in australia where food always has to have the $/100g or $/100ml in addition to the unit price.
(Many supermarkets were basically rorting people by charging more for the 'bulk' items but labelling them as best value)
In Britain they also have some unit-price law. But Tesco blatantly abuses it: eg one kind of apple is priced by piece, the next goes per 100g (or per 1kg, but converting between 100g and 1kg is simpler).
For what it's worth we have a unit-price law in France and Belgium as well. I can't be certain but I am pretty sure we had that before the Euro currency was introduced and it was mandatory after that.
I believe that's because you have situations where you're buying multiple items that have variable weights, but a fixed total price. For instance, a bag of apples will not be exactly 200g, it might be 205g or 195g. However, you know it will have 4 apples in it so you're paying per apple. If you buy apples loosely then you can pick the weight and pay accordingly.
You can see the same for the fixed price chickens vs the organic/free-range that are priced by weight.
Although Tesco will no doubt try to game the system, it is in their interest to show you understandable unit prices because they want to flog their stuff cheaper than the brands.
Oh, I don't mind if they would price all their apples either by unit or by kg. It's just the mix and match that's designed to confuse you.
> Although Tesco will no doubt try to game the system, it is in their interest to show you understandable unit prices because they want to flog their stuff cheaper than the brands.
I'm not sure Tesco makes more money on the cheaper stuff. People who care about price and quality go to Lidl and Aldi anyway (if available in the vicinity).
In Shanghai there's a brand of milk, Ubest, that comes in 500 mL, 950 mL, and 1350 mL containers. The best price per mL is always the 950 mL size. This always bugs me -- what's the point of buying larger sizes if it's not cheaper?
They're definitely not going for special price points; pricing for the two larger sizes is quite odd. I think I generally pay 16.8 yuan for a 950 mL carton.
People may have become accustomed to assume that the larger product is a better deal, so perhaps this is a way to achieve the higher profit margin of the two options through understanding consumer behavior.
Note that this most likely not Ubest's pricing decision, but the convenience store or grocer retailer that sells the product to the end consumer.
I tend to suspect that Ubest's pricing decisions play into it, because it's easy to observe the price of Ubest milk varying between convenience stores, wal-mart, supermarkets in poorer areas, supermarkets in richer areas, etc, but the fact that the largest size is more expensive per unit weight than the second-largest size never changes.
> Anything that gives customers more accurate information should lead to better-functioning markets.
Not if the information is vague or subjective or manipulable (as I think "expected lifespan" would be), or if that information is very costly for the manufacturer to estimate, or for the government to verify.
Sometimes its better to let the market work on its own, e.g. through product reviews.
unfortunately, product reviews don't give any information whatsoever on the lifespan of any product, instead focusing on the instant gratification, ease of use and shiny new things. Maybe that's what the consumer wants, but maybe that's just the only information they have access to in order to decide how to get the most bang for their bucks. Giving different information will at least let everyone decide what they believe is the most bangs (lifespan vs shiny new things) and buy accordingly
You're not considering the cost of obtaining this information. And plenty of reviews that I read contained information on the lifespan (usually in the form of "this broke! zero stars!")
any company a little bit serious will do some statistical analysis on expected lifespan of their product. Without speaking about planned obsolescence, you want to know what warranty to give to your customers, which parts will break first and so on. We are already paying the price to get the information. We just don't have access to it.
And "it broke" just tells me it has a very short lifespan, but won't let me know if some stuff has a 6 months vs 6 years lifespan. "short lifespan" is fundamentally different from "not working".
We're used to the former (unfortunately), but won't consider the latter acceptable, except maybe when buying obviously overly cheap stuff
my concern would be, would this open manufacturers up to litigation if items sold with expected lifespans that fail before then even if outside of warranty?
to be honest, I very much doubt I would post an expected lifespan greater than warranty.
personal note, many of my small appliances are purchased used off ebay for prices similar to new or even less and they all work fine, my toaster is sixty years old, table fan almost a hundred, and I never worry they won't work
> (...) what they are doing is forcing manufacturers to disclose to customer they planned lifespan of a product.
This part was removed from the law mid-february by the senate as reported by numerama[1] on feb 17th.
What the law says is that deliberately limiting a product expected life during the design process is punishable by law with a maximum sentence of 2 years if prison and 300k € fine. Everybody understands that this is mostly for show as it is hardly enforceable.
I think perhaps they should instead mandate something like showing price per year of manufacturer's warranty. Then the manufacturers would have to compete on one front or the other.
That's actually an excellent first step. It makes it clear that such a practice is not just cynical marketing but actually fraud. It will clear things a bit for people who ask designs that break after a set time. It will allow engineers and designers to refuse such tasks as illegal.
Companies build the type of products people want. Right now people want cheap products for the most part. For those that don't certain brands exist that have very long or lifetime warranties.
Well, sort of. I disagree. I think if the planned lifetime of a product was on a specially formatted government mandated sticker, like how the power usage / cost of air conditioners or lightbulbs are displayed, then I think a lot of people would be inclined to make a proper calculation and buy the best cost to lifetime ratio.
Right now there is information asymmetry - we don't know the expected lifetime so we have to choose by other factors. Brand reputation, amazon reviews, relative cost signaling, what the box looks like, etc. If we did know this info, it'd weigh in very heavily.
Then of course there's the problem of how to incentivize companies to not lie about that number ...
> Then of course there's the problem of how to incentivize companies to not lie about that number ...
In New Zealand we don't have the published information, but consumer law has been applied such that if things don't last a "reasonable" length of time (e.g. 5 years for a TV) the retailer has a responsibility to repair or replace[1]. In the same vein I imagine that, if manufacturers were forced to replace anything that didn't meet the claimed lifespan at the time of sale then manufacturers would quickly become very good at providing numbers that aligned with real-world failure rates and lifespans.
[1] "We don't have those any more" is not an excuse - if you sell a TV that breaks after a year and can't repair it, you'll be replacing it with the closest current equivalent model.
Perhaps an issue is that people have expected that products will last beyond their warranties. The French proposal would seem to clarify the difference between a warranty and an expected lifetime, if there is indeed such a difference.
My family lives in a house that was pretty much empty of appliances when we bought it, ~ 12 years ago. I'm extremely lucky to be handy at repairing things (thanks to my parents), but appalled that I've had to repair virtually every appliance...
Clothes dryer, three times (heat sensor, timer switch, motor)
Deep freeze (starter circuit assembly)
Microwave (replaced)
Toaster (replaced)
Fridge (repaired once, then replaced)
Cooking range (repaired one of the stove burners)
Dishwasher (repaired twice, then replaced due to rusted racks)
On the bright side, I've been able to find extensive repair info and spare parts online.
And go back to what has been the norm in the 50s. I have a few books from my grand father, by Eugène Aisberg: "La radio, mais c'est très simple", and the equivalent one for analog televisions. They explain the basic working principles of (analog, tube-based) radios ans TVs and how to repair them. The hardware was simpler and easier to fix back then.
I think too many people here are focusing on consumer electronics and in your example i found what I expect the French law is also about: white appliances.
We actually don't buy fridges and dishwashers expecting them to last 3-5 years (or at least we shouldn't). But many of these things have a lifespan far shorter than we expect given today's automated manufacturing and quality control and that everyone involved should be a specialist (design, engineering etc).
These types of household appliances should be better. But I also think that in Europe recycling of appliances is now a political issue big enough to warrant a "what are we going to do with all of these mobile phones?" law.
While good intentioned, I think the customer actually loses.
Take the car industry for example. Quality control variance prior to the 90s (ballpark) was a huge issue, this a result from automakers just being cheap and but also the lack of modern statistical-based end of life testing/analysis. The gov't did have to step in: Lemon Laws. But a couple of automakers responded, produced cars that didn't fall apart, people then voted with their do!lars, and made Toyota and Honda the power houses they are today. Nowdays, 100,000 mile warranty are almost standard, and just about every make of car is reliable.
Now, compare to the appliance industry. A couple thoughts: why aren't their "10 year warranties" on appliances? It's clearly something one would think consumers value, there should be a mfg taking advantage. Instead I only see appliances sold by "authorized retailers", who then try to sell you some b.s. 3rd party warranty.
This shows the entire retail/distribution chain is in on the racket. So fixing the problem will come from a market player solving this problem to deliver more of what the customer wants. Imposing additional reporting requirements on the manufacturers will just result in a 'wahhh, wahhh' our costs went up, we have to pass it on to the customer. So now everyone's appliances are more expensive, and manfucturers and retail partners continue with status quo.
I would be interested to see a tracking of the change of new car prices during that time. New car prices today are extraordinarily expensive, and from anecdotal experience, most consumers will only buy new cars through a loan. Surely, it wasn't always that way.
This hardly started in the 90s. Both Honda and Toyota were way ahead of American companies long before the 90s began. They were already using statistical process control, the Taguchi method, concurrent engineering and the five whys long.
In Australia, while manufacturers don't have to label their products with the expected lifespan, under consumer law they are obliged to honor warranties for the 'reasonable life span' of a given product.
This mean that if your $1k iPhone or $3k television break outside their warranty period but still inside what a reasonable person expect it to work (say 3, maybe 4 years for an undamaged iPhone, or 5-6 years for a brand name LCD TV), then you are entitled to repairs or replacement, regardless of the stated warranty period of the manufacturer.
Interesting that this is left open ended like this. The term "reasonable" means different things to different people. What is the point of having a defined warranty period?
Here in New Zealand all goods sold to a consumer have to have a 'reasonable' life-span, with repair or replacement at the merchant's expense. Reasonable depends on the appliance and is determined by a magistrate. Things like lengths of extended warranty offered can be used to determine that.
It works pretty well. Of course the retailers like to avoid their obligations and people chime up with the "that's why prices are high" argument. If you're located at the bottom of the world everything's expensive anyway!
There is a law like that in most European countries afaik. In the UK it was called (back when I did business law 20 years ago) "fit for purpose" which was a vague description of 1. if it's a tumble dryer it should dry clothes without ruining them 2. it should last as long as a tumble dryer is expected to last (really up to whatever argument you can make in court should it get that far). Of course the UK law might have changed a lot since I was a young whippersnapper.
While on the surface this might sound good by evoking ideas of more sustainability and less and lower velocity of consumerism, we need to consider the goods in question.
For example, let's take a washing machine from 20 years ago and compare the efficiency of a modern washing machine -and subtract the added manufacturing input into the new machine. Or incandescent bulbs and LED lights. Or for that matter older cars and modern cars. I hope they take those things into account. Just because something will last long doesn't mean it's best in the long run.
Still, it's not a bad idea to consider. And then we could at least know how often we might have to buy phones ---but then someone will redefine what a functional mobile phone is "it can make a regular voice call and the battery will last 10 minutes by the 3rd year." The other measure, how long will it keep the same level of utility as it was when it was new? That'd be trickier.
You don't compare in the same dimension. Newer washing machine might be more water and energy efficient than a 20-year-old one. But why do you think this affects its durability? Are you arguing that Samsung can't build efficient washing machines that are also durable?
I doubt planned obsolescence is common. Think about the reaction of the consumer to something breaking down. Do they go "that was a great product, pity it broke, better buy the new version" or do they say "that was a shit product, I'm getting a different brand". And what about people figuring out which products break early from Amazon reviews?
I think this law is probably heavy handed and unnecessary. Especially in an age where most people spend their money on items like phones and laptops, which are reparable and become obsolete very fast anyway.
I feel like planned obsolescence is much more common that we initially think.
For example, on the phone market, battery lasts on day out of the box. If we consider the battery losing .05% of its total charge after each charge/decharge cycle, after 2 years of constant use, it already lost 30% of its total charge. Yet, despite everyone being annoyed with having to charge their phones at least everyday, apple, samsung and others keep making phones that last a single day on a charge.
They make their phones bigger, bulkier, faster, but nothing on the battery side (I think there was an article linked here where the author claimed he cracked the apple battery equation and his thought was "they make it last a day, not more not less)".
And we can add to that prohibitive repair price and refusal to support older platforms, even though it's often just a cross compilation away.
I get it that it's probably better for any company out there to sell new devices rather than support old ones for free. It just that the "I doubt planned obsolescence is common" strikes me as a bit naive
Everything is a tradeoff with phones. There is a tradeoff between phone size, battery life, and processor power. One day is a natural sweet spot since people charge their phones at night. Sure, this will result in a less-than-one-day battery life over time But people might have been happy to replace their phone anyway for other reasons.
Supporting old platforms is not just cross compilation, or at least the cross compilation involved is highly non-trivial.
I would say that excessive cynicism is as bad a bias as naivety. Everything you describe is actually consistent with perfectly informed consumers and profit maximizing companies. You are just not looking for explanations along these lines.
It's a feedback loop. The price wars made manufacturers cut every corner they could and now we have frail products. It's also a byproduct of fast evolving times. We want to try the new shiny, so every year, drop the older to buy the latest which is convenient for brands to roll production (the only part the mob talks about sadly).
But how many times do you have to replace the Bosch and Siemens appliances? It might be a bigger initial investment, but over a lifetime it will likely work out cheaper.
Economics are bs, don't think in terms of money but in terms of resources. A resource based calculation removes the uncertainty of the money based one, longer lasting products are cheaper.
Let's say we have a finite stack of resources and assume that price is representative of the manufacturing costs. This stack of resources allows to build 10 products of the "lasting forever" grade or 20 of the "replace sooner" grade. We decide to build 5 of the first and 10 of the second. The 5 will outlast the 10 and chances are they will last much longer. Making "replace sooner" grade profits the manufacturer and is only valid if we had infinite resources which we don't.
This is a short term vision of maximizing manufacturer profits while artificially increasing the economy in volume. Too bad this is ruining the whole world for living beings in the process.
“The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”
In the Netherlands we have a warranty system that works a bit like this. Basically you have a warranty on your stuff as long as it's expected lifetime. So for instance you claim your warranty on a dishwasher for at least 5 years and on your MacBook you will probably get it for at least 3 years (of course you can't claim such a long lifespan on your battery).
I disagree with the common belief of planned obsolescence.
In the industry the cheapest thing to make is plastic injection molding. By far. Like 50 to 100 times cheaper than the alternatives at scale.
Melting plastic at 200 Celsius is so much easier than melting metal at over 700 Celsius(over 1000 for steels) with all the contractions and problems this creates.
Any manufacturer could use metal in their products or create a plastic version at half(or 1/3) the price.
Most people just buy the cheaper alternative. Then they rant about planned obsolescence when the thing breaks soon(but over the warranty period).
But the reality is that thanks to plastic molding we get incredible cheap products, like a USD60 vacuum cleaner, when in the past it was more like today USD1000 for one when it was made with metal parts that lasted decades.
We want it all, cheaper and better. But having all is not possible(yet).
The law is mostly about customer information. You'll still be able to buy cheap things if you want, but you'll know for how long it's repairable, hopefully long after the warranty period.
If it's something that just mostly sits around unused, it's more resource efficient (economical, ecological) to minimize the manufacturing cost and not care about much else.
If it's a professional tool that is used hours every day, the manufacturing cost can almost be ignored - maximizing usability and minimizing downtime is where it's at.
So we still have professional vacuum cleaners that last maybe five years in professional use, ten hours six days a week, but would last for centuries in home usage, one hour every week.
At some point it crosses over to intangible qualities like in design furniture. It's cool if it's not just a throwaway thing, but something well designed and maintainable. It also looks timeless.
Overpopulation is not expected to be an ongoing issue in the upcoming century, but there is general consensus that hundreds of millions if not billions of people over that same time period are anticipated to enter current developed-world working- and middle-class living standards. And under our current understanding of household technology, that means a commensurate rise in consumption of white appliances. This new group of entrants into the white appliance markets are likely to have lower income profiles than their developed-world counterparts, due to the deflationary bias of ongoing globalization trends.
This confluence of factors could potentially open up an interesting and highly profitable business niche for a manufacturer that focuses on modular, repairable, maybe-hackable appliances.
Instead of promoting a consumption model where entire units are tossed out at the "end" of a "lifecycle", I can now concede a manufacturer could thrive on a far leaner capital profile than current industry participants where I wouldn't have thought it possible only 10 years ago, by focusing on the logistical tail of constantly repairing and improving "old" models, as opposed to concentrating on the new product manufacturing end.
This is also beneficial on the embedded energy cost and resource utilization efficiencies levels, which becomes extremely important as we scale up the population that participates in higher socioeconomic levels.
Human form factor-dependent design points can probably stay relatively static to benefit families in lower socioeconomic strata. For example, washing machines have not really changed their basic form factor in about a century. I'd rather sell a patching kit designed for my older tubs (a common failure mode) to those families today, enticing them to grab a used older model of mine than hope to capture them as customers ten years from now when they can maybe afford a new unit from me; it pulls in future sales without destabilizing debt schemes. Or if they can afford a little more, I can sell them a retrofit kit that supplies a newer future cleaning technology (like ultrasonic?) that fits older models. If they care about aesthetics, I sell them paint that exactly matches what they have on the old model.
All this while, I not only keep my units out of the landfill, but in the hands of more customers earlier than I normally could acquire them and out of the hands of my competitors in an inexpensive marketing/sales denial of service attack on that competition (and indeed, my customers are paying for that attack instead of me having to heavily spend on marketing to them). On top of this, my manufacturing costs shift increasingly out of the predations of the unpredictable turns and gyres of the commodities markets, and towards design (especially software) and small parts manufacturing. These can have higher margins than the whole units, and might be a lot cheaper than even JIT inventory to "stock" in the future, with local 3D-printing-style distribution centers for those parts that can be on-demand manufactured practically at point of sale. As the global population level stabilizes as currently expected, I'd already be positioned to sell into an economic environment where brand-new product purchases are made with increasingly razor-thin margins.
For those oldest models that fall below a logistical tail cutoff, I could release CAD/CAM and other design files to let hackers do what they will with those models, with the intent to temporarily boost those models popularity and continue to stymie competitors' entrance with customers of those models. When the cost of labor is low enough, making repairing and reconditioning possible can potentially be very remunerative for manufacturers who do not build around a business model of continuous, growing new unit sales (which in turn is predicated upon a continuous, growing population).
Personally, I like to buy assembled goods on sale from a manufacturer with a decent reputation, and then I DIY replace parts from the cheapest supplier I can find, since I'm typically out of warranty already anyways. I'll replace my laptop fan as soon as my cheap thermal grease comes in. After that, if I feel good about it, I'll upgrade the memory and hope to get another few years out of it.
I liked the idea of telling consumers the expected life of a product. But they're actually not doing that. Instead, they're going to threaten people with jail time and companies with huge fines. https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...
But when you're making a product, you plan its construction around its life-expectancy. You don't make a doohicky with a sprocket that lasts 30 years when the other parts of the doohicky will only last 3 years. Instead, you get the sprocket made more cheaply with a life expectancy of 3 years, and your savings helps you compete with other doohicky manufacturers for the business of consumers.
It seems to me that France doesn't understand the economics of manufacturing. This seems to be another brain-dead decision by socialists that will cost jobs and raise the risks (and thus the costs) of doing business in the country. They'll have to pay those engineers and managers who make these design decisions even more to take on those risks. Marginal manufacturers will just get out, and jobs will be lost. Like they can afford it. http://www.france24.com/en/20150127-france-unemployment-hits...
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[ 21.3 ms ] story [ 1818 ms ] threadWhich, by the way, seems like an excellent proposition. As a (potential) customer I can factor in lifespan with features and price for things I buy and make a better-informed decision about which best meets my needs. Anything that gives customers more accurate information should lead to better-functioning markets.
(Many supermarkets were basically rorting people by charging more for the 'bulk' items but labelling them as best value)
You can see the same for the fixed price chickens vs the organic/free-range that are priced by weight.
Although Tesco will no doubt try to game the system, it is in their interest to show you understandable unit prices because they want to flog their stuff cheaper than the brands.
> Although Tesco will no doubt try to game the system, it is in their interest to show you understandable unit prices because they want to flog their stuff cheaper than the brands.
I'm not sure Tesco makes more money on the cheaper stuff. People who care about price and quality go to Lidl and Aldi anyway (if available in the vicinity).
Though I guess it's just a ploy by the retailer. Perhaps they are trying to hit certain magic price points. (Like 0.99 of local currency.)
Note that this most likely not Ubest's pricing decision, but the convenience store or grocer retailer that sells the product to the end consumer.
Not if the information is vague or subjective or manipulable (as I think "expected lifespan" would be), or if that information is very costly for the manufacturer to estimate, or for the government to verify.
Sometimes its better to let the market work on its own, e.g. through product reviews.
And "it broke" just tells me it has a very short lifespan, but won't let me know if some stuff has a 6 months vs 6 years lifespan. "short lifespan" is fundamentally different from "not working".
We're used to the former (unfortunately), but won't consider the latter acceptable, except maybe when buying obviously overly cheap stuff
to be honest, I very much doubt I would post an expected lifespan greater than warranty.
personal note, many of my small appliances are purchased used off ebay for prices similar to new or even less and they all work fine, my toaster is sixty years old, table fan almost a hundred, and I never worry they won't work
The content too…
> (...) what they are doing is forcing manufacturers to disclose to customer they planned lifespan of a product.
This part was removed from the law mid-february by the senate as reported by numerama[1] on feb 17th.
What the law says is that deliberately limiting a product expected life during the design process is punishable by law with a maximum sentence of 2 years if prison and 300k € fine. Everybody understands that this is mostly for show as it is hardly enforceable.
[1]: http://www.numerama.com/magazine/32252-le-delit-d-obsolescen...
Right now there is information asymmetry - we don't know the expected lifetime so we have to choose by other factors. Brand reputation, amazon reviews, relative cost signaling, what the box looks like, etc. If we did know this info, it'd weigh in very heavily.
Then of course there's the problem of how to incentivize companies to not lie about that number ...
In New Zealand we don't have the published information, but consumer law has been applied such that if things don't last a "reasonable" length of time (e.g. 5 years for a TV) the retailer has a responsibility to repair or replace[1]. In the same vein I imagine that, if manufacturers were forced to replace anything that didn't meet the claimed lifespan at the time of sale then manufacturers would quickly become very good at providing numbers that aligned with real-world failure rates and lifespans.
[1] "We don't have those any more" is not an excuse - if you sell a TV that breaks after a year and can't repair it, you'll be replacing it with the closest current equivalent model.
My family lives in a house that was pretty much empty of appliances when we bought it, ~ 12 years ago. I'm extremely lucky to be handy at repairing things (thanks to my parents), but appalled that I've had to repair virtually every appliance...
Clothes dryer, three times (heat sensor, timer switch, motor)
Deep freeze (starter circuit assembly)
Microwave (replaced)
Toaster (replaced)
Fridge (repaired once, then replaced)
Cooking range (repaired one of the stove burners)
Dishwasher (repaired twice, then replaced due to rusted racks)
On the bright side, I've been able to find extensive repair info and spare parts online.
We actually don't buy fridges and dishwashers expecting them to last 3-5 years (or at least we shouldn't). But many of these things have a lifespan far shorter than we expect given today's automated manufacturing and quality control and that everyone involved should be a specialist (design, engineering etc).
These types of household appliances should be better. But I also think that in Europe recycling of appliances is now a political issue big enough to warrant a "what are we going to do with all of these mobile phones?" law.
Take the car industry for example. Quality control variance prior to the 90s (ballpark) was a huge issue, this a result from automakers just being cheap and but also the lack of modern statistical-based end of life testing/analysis. The gov't did have to step in: Lemon Laws. But a couple of automakers responded, produced cars that didn't fall apart, people then voted with their do!lars, and made Toyota and Honda the power houses they are today. Nowdays, 100,000 mile warranty are almost standard, and just about every make of car is reliable.
Now, compare to the appliance industry. A couple thoughts: why aren't their "10 year warranties" on appliances? It's clearly something one would think consumers value, there should be a mfg taking advantage. Instead I only see appliances sold by "authorized retailers", who then try to sell you some b.s. 3rd party warranty.
This shows the entire retail/distribution chain is in on the racket. So fixing the problem will come from a market player solving this problem to deliver more of what the customer wants. Imposing additional reporting requirements on the manufacturers will just result in a 'wahhh, wahhh' our costs went up, we have to pass it on to the customer. So now everyone's appliances are more expensive, and manfucturers and retail partners continue with status quo.
This mean that if your $1k iPhone or $3k television break outside their warranty period but still inside what a reasonable person expect it to work (say 3, maybe 4 years for an undamaged iPhone, or 5-6 years for a brand name LCD TV), then you are entitled to repairs or replacement, regardless of the stated warranty period of the manufacturer.
It works pretty well. Of course the retailers like to avoid their obligations and people chime up with the "that's why prices are high" argument. If you're located at the bottom of the world everything's expensive anyway!
For example, let's take a washing machine from 20 years ago and compare the efficiency of a modern washing machine -and subtract the added manufacturing input into the new machine. Or incandescent bulbs and LED lights. Or for that matter older cars and modern cars. I hope they take those things into account. Just because something will last long doesn't mean it's best in the long run.
Still, it's not a bad idea to consider. And then we could at least know how often we might have to buy phones ---but then someone will redefine what a functional mobile phone is "it can make a regular voice call and the battery will last 10 minutes by the 3rd year." The other measure, how long will it keep the same level of utility as it was when it was new? That'd be trickier.
I think this law is probably heavy handed and unnecessary. Especially in an age where most people spend their money on items like phones and laptops, which are reparable and become obsolete very fast anyway.
I get it that it's probably better for any company out there to sell new devices rather than support old ones for free. It just that the "I doubt planned obsolescence is common" strikes me as a bit naive
Supporting old platforms is not just cross compilation, or at least the cross compilation involved is highly non-trivial.
I would say that excessive cynicism is as bad a bias as naivety. Everything you describe is actually consistent with perfectly informed consumers and profit maximizing companies. You are just not looking for explanations along these lines.
E.g. take Bosch/Siemens and Miele. Miele stuff really lasts forever but costs 2x that of Bosch/Siemens household stuff.
If I could afford it, I'd buy Miele.
Let's say we have a finite stack of resources and assume that price is representative of the manufacturing costs. This stack of resources allows to build 10 products of the "lasting forever" grade or 20 of the "replace sooner" grade. We decide to build 5 of the first and 10 of the second. The 5 will outlast the 10 and chances are they will last much longer. Making "replace sooner" grade profits the manufacturer and is only valid if we had infinite resources which we don't.
This is a short term vision of maximizing manufacturer profits while artificially increasing the economy in volume. Too bad this is ruining the whole world for living beings in the process.
Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.”
(Terry Pratchett, obviously)
In the industry the cheapest thing to make is plastic injection molding. By far. Like 50 to 100 times cheaper than the alternatives at scale.
Melting plastic at 200 Celsius is so much easier than melting metal at over 700 Celsius(over 1000 for steels) with all the contractions and problems this creates.
Any manufacturer could use metal in their products or create a plastic version at half(or 1/3) the price.
Most people just buy the cheaper alternative. Then they rant about planned obsolescence when the thing breaks soon(but over the warranty period).
But the reality is that thanks to plastic molding we get incredible cheap products, like a USD60 vacuum cleaner, when in the past it was more like today USD1000 for one when it was made with metal parts that lasted decades.
We want it all, cheaper and better. But having all is not possible(yet).
You might want to watch "The light bulb conspiracy": http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/light-bulb-conspiracy
If it's something that just mostly sits around unused, it's more resource efficient (economical, ecological) to minimize the manufacturing cost and not care about much else.
If it's a professional tool that is used hours every day, the manufacturing cost can almost be ignored - maximizing usability and minimizing downtime is where it's at.
So we still have professional vacuum cleaners that last maybe five years in professional use, ten hours six days a week, but would last for centuries in home usage, one hour every week.
Decades ago the products were not so differentiated, so also consumers bought long lasting vacuum cleaners. http://images.manufactum.de/manufactum/grossbild/21524_1.jpg
At some point it crosses over to intangible qualities like in design furniture. It's cool if it's not just a throwaway thing, but something well designed and maintainable. It also looks timeless.
This confluence of factors could potentially open up an interesting and highly profitable business niche for a manufacturer that focuses on modular, repairable, maybe-hackable appliances.
Instead of promoting a consumption model where entire units are tossed out at the "end" of a "lifecycle", I can now concede a manufacturer could thrive on a far leaner capital profile than current industry participants where I wouldn't have thought it possible only 10 years ago, by focusing on the logistical tail of constantly repairing and improving "old" models, as opposed to concentrating on the new product manufacturing end.
This is also beneficial on the embedded energy cost and resource utilization efficiencies levels, which becomes extremely important as we scale up the population that participates in higher socioeconomic levels.
Human form factor-dependent design points can probably stay relatively static to benefit families in lower socioeconomic strata. For example, washing machines have not really changed their basic form factor in about a century. I'd rather sell a patching kit designed for my older tubs (a common failure mode) to those families today, enticing them to grab a used older model of mine than hope to capture them as customers ten years from now when they can maybe afford a new unit from me; it pulls in future sales without destabilizing debt schemes. Or if they can afford a little more, I can sell them a retrofit kit that supplies a newer future cleaning technology (like ultrasonic?) that fits older models. If they care about aesthetics, I sell them paint that exactly matches what they have on the old model.
All this while, I not only keep my units out of the landfill, but in the hands of more customers earlier than I normally could acquire them and out of the hands of my competitors in an inexpensive marketing/sales denial of service attack on that competition (and indeed, my customers are paying for that attack instead of me having to heavily spend on marketing to them). On top of this, my manufacturing costs shift increasingly out of the predations of the unpredictable turns and gyres of the commodities markets, and towards design (especially software) and small parts manufacturing. These can have higher margins than the whole units, and might be a lot cheaper than even JIT inventory to "stock" in the future, with local 3D-printing-style distribution centers for those parts that can be on-demand manufactured practically at point of sale. As the global population level stabilizes as currently expected, I'd already be positioned to sell into an economic environment where brand-new product purchases are made with increasingly razor-thin margins.
For those oldest models that fall below a logistical tail cutoff, I could release CAD/CAM and other design files to let hackers do what they will with those models, with the intent to temporarily boost those models popularity and continue to stymie competitors' entrance with customers of those models. When the cost of labor is low enough, making repairing and reconditioning possible can potentially be very remunerative for manufacturers who do not build around a business model of continuous, growing new unit sales (which in turn is predicated upon a continuous, growing population).
I liked the idea of telling consumers the expected life of a product. But they're actually not doing that. Instead, they're going to threaten people with jail time and companies with huge fines. https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=y&pr...
But when you're making a product, you plan its construction around its life-expectancy. You don't make a doohicky with a sprocket that lasts 30 years when the other parts of the doohicky will only last 3 years. Instead, you get the sprocket made more cheaply with a life expectancy of 3 years, and your savings helps you compete with other doohicky manufacturers for the business of consumers.
It seems to me that France doesn't understand the economics of manufacturing. This seems to be another brain-dead decision by socialists that will cost jobs and raise the risks (and thus the costs) of doing business in the country. They'll have to pay those engineers and managers who make these design decisions even more to take on those risks. Marginal manufacturers will just get out, and jobs will be lost. Like they can afford it. http://www.france24.com/en/20150127-france-unemployment-hits...