Are Easy-to-Recycle Cars Less Durable?
In tune with the times, automakers are making their vehicles easier to recycle. But is this effort making the vehicles less durable? Look at the designs Toyota put into the Prius to make it easy to dismantle for recycling (to comply with the Japanese recyclability laws). Wiring connections that come loose when you pull on them? Soundproofing held in place with a few “ultrasonic spot welds” instead of glue? Reading lights secured with bent metal clips instead of screws? Instrument panels made so they can be pulled out easily? With design features like this you have to wonder about the vehicles’ durability and wonder what other manufactures are doing—-especially when you combine “easy to disassemble” with the beancounters’ mantra of “cheap to build.”
More by Robert Farago
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Toyota have spent hugely on material research and assembly methods, most of which have been making appearances in models for at least 20+ years. Prius pulls them all together to some extent I guess, but durability is the least of your worries with a Toyota. Maybe that's why they're the leader everyone likes to hate.
My Nissan minivan had reading lights that were held on with bent clips most of the time. The rest of the time they were held on by their own wires and/or the forehead of the person sitting under them. But I digress. Making cars more recyclable sounds great, but in reality it is just a way of appeasing guilty minds in a wasteful society. A true tree hugger would demand a car that lasts 40 years, even if it consumed a little extra fuel and required a second mortgage. It's a helluva lot more earth-friendly than making a new car over and over again just for the sake of fresh styling and incremental improvements in efficiency.
Nonsense? http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/cars/tires-auto-parts/car-maintenance/engine-sludge/overview/index.htm http://townhall-talk.edmunds.com/direct/view/.f1200e2
What's new about this? I put a stereo in my '98 F-150 with a Crutchfield kit and it's all clips clips clips holding on the various dash/door/corner panels.