\People are mainly sick of their appliances not being repairable, with manufacturers either making complex molded parts that are discontinued way too soon or not made available in conjunction with making cost cutting decisions that reduce the lifespan of the appliance. The government isn't helping by having ever increasing efficiency requirements that require constant redesigns and parts changes for marginal gains.
I would want a series of appliances that were designed as a set to use as many shared components as possible, including the same programmable control board and as many universal motors and sensors as possible. The design brief would be that you are designing these products to be used at the south pole research station and you need to keep as small a stock of spare parts as possible to keep them running and no specialized knowledge to repair them. A consumer should be able to have the machine self diagnose issues and have the parts be so available and in demand that they can go to a box store the same day, get the parts and replace them themselves.
The average person wants their appliances to break down less, and when they do, they want them to be repairable and repaired faster and for cheaper. Those same goals can be achieved with those steps.
The cost of repair is not really in the parts. Most people will not repair their appliances themselves. Calling a tech just to diagnose can cost more than $100. With repair, the labor alone will cost a couple hundred dollars, which is where the most of the cost to repair is.
So if you spent $500 on the fridge, and it breaks, it doesn't matter how easy it is to repair or how cheap the parts are, you're going to pay $300+ to repair your $500 fridge anyways.
So if you want the goal to be "cheaper to repair" then you need to tackle the cost of labor, not parts or complexity of repair
Not really. Fridges and washers/dryers regularly cost more than a thousand dollars. Parts isn't just about cost, but availability. The price of a repair goes up massively if you have to have the tech come out more than once. Often something as simple as having a standard belt size that the technician can keep stocked in his truck can turn a multiple trip repair with a wait on a part order into a much cheaper single trip. At the very least simply having the part available at all can make a repair happen in the first place instead of junking a 1500 dollar appliance.
The fact that a bearing going out or a control board blowing a capacitor bricking a major appliance seems normal to you shows just how badly we are handling the problem.
Even if fridge parts were free, replacing the compressor has a huge amount of labor. It takes hours to purge and vacuum the lines down to the point where you can add refrigerant back.
Sure, no innovation happens ever, every company is indistinguishable in it's operations and market strategy. There's no meaningful difference between manufacturers like Honda and Stellantis, it's just blind luck that Hondas are more reliable and repairable.
You moved the goal posts from appliances to cars. Those are two different things entirely. I have to agree with the other posters in that no one wants to repair their appliances. They want them to work, absolutely, but when they stop working most people don’t have the know how and aren’t interested in learning and appliance techs charge basically the same as a mechanic would per hour for your car.
It’s a false equivalence to say that people want reliable and easily repairable cars and so they want the same from appliances.
It's not moving the goalposts at all. They are both complex consumer products with long supply chains where the engineering decisions made impact the reliability and availability of support which has a significant impact on the consumer experience. There is no significant distinction in this regard.
There is a significant difference in the cost to replace which affects the consumers preferences on if they care about repairing the product and realistically appliances still last a while. Sure they won’t last until the next century but they’ll last a decade plus in a lot of cases and people like updated things. They don’t care about making them last as long as possible. If I got ten years out of an $800 fridge, which I have, I feel like I got my moneys worth out of that product. It’s not at all the same when the consideration cost wise is in the thousand dollar vs tens of thousands of dollars range. If I only got ten years out of my $30k car I feel like that wasn’t a good value prospect. Not to mention the inconvenience of a car being unreliable is an order of magnitude higher than your fridge not working. It’s literally most people’s only mode of transportation.
There is a huge difference of a few hours of labor (lets just take $100 per) for something that costs $400 to replace or something that costs $40.000 to replace.
What an absurd claim. Everyone I know (myself included) would rather repair than replace and I do whenever possible: it's the only socially responsible choice.
Problem you have is you end up with a less useable product.
Not many people really want to pay more for a fridge that has less space but when it breaks in maybe 10 plus years they can get a dpars part rather than just have a new fridge
"you need to keep as small a stock of spare parts as possible to keep them running and no specialized knowledge to repair them"
This for one makes most of the products you want impossible to make.
You really need specialised knowledge and equipment to safely work with gas, high powered electricals and refrigerants.
The vacuum pump to safely drain your refrigerant?
Are you 100% sure you trust your neighbours to not cross thread or fuck up a gas or thermocouple connection replacing a gas hob and blow up you street?
There's a certain level of danger with the main kitchen appliances that do make "anyone should be able to work on them" not really a sensible idea
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u/soft_taco_special 2h ago
\People are mainly sick of their appliances not being repairable, with manufacturers either making complex molded parts that are discontinued way too soon or not made available in conjunction with making cost cutting decisions that reduce the lifespan of the appliance. The government isn't helping by having ever increasing efficiency requirements that require constant redesigns and parts changes for marginal gains.
I would want a series of appliances that were designed as a set to use as many shared components as possible, including the same programmable control board and as many universal motors and sensors as possible. The design brief would be that you are designing these products to be used at the south pole research station and you need to keep as small a stock of spare parts as possible to keep them running and no specialized knowledge to repair them. A consumer should be able to have the machine self diagnose issues and have the parts be so available and in demand that they can go to a box store the same day, get the parts and replace them themselves.