The world's first non-repairable car. Minor fault, major accident, or inevitably-degraded battery? No problem!, just throw it away and buy the latest model, like you would with a phone or tablet! You wanted an upgrade anyway, didn't you?
(Meanwhile, Apple will keep boasting about their green credentials...)
What about consumables?... You'll still be able to change the tyres, brake bads, and wiper blades. But Apple will take 30% from every sale/service of these items, and the vehicle won't start if you install non-genuine-Apple replacements. (And then there's the chargers... don't expect to be able to put electricity into that battery without Apple getting their god-given 30% cut)
Starting at $99,999 for the base model (50 miles range). A maxxed-out model will do 750 miles, but they're really going to make you pay for those battery up-sells, and the well-glued-in battery pack is non-upgradeable after purchase.
Aren't they cheaper than the Ford F150 'Lightning' (electric version, so comparable)? Or is that also 'hyper-luxury'? (Genuine question, I suppose I'm not really familiar enough to know what the top end would be, maybe that's it, I know Lamborgini makes a tractor, but I'm not aware of a 'supertruck'.)
A Rivian R1T with dual motor and the large battery pack (352 mile range) is $79,000. An F-150 Lightning with the extended range battery (>300 mile range) is between $69k and $77k.
Both have cheaper trims available, but the cheapest Lightning is significantly less expensive than the cheapest R1T.
Both are really nice trucks too, especially at the higher trim. I don't see a big difference in luxury between an F-150 Platinum and the R1T.
Ah ok, I had them the wrong way around then (I didn't mean much cheaper), but pretty comparable - if you were in the market you might probably be looking at both.
But it's all subjective I suppose, maybe they meant that either would be 'hyper-luxury', I'm not that familiar, I just thought F150s were quite commonplace. (Not here in the UK, no such trucks are, but from what I've seen in North America.)
Yeah, I definitely think people cross shop them. I've seen former R1T owners that would consider a Lightning.
The F-150 in general is a little complicated on this scale. They are absolutely commonplace (the #1 selling vehicle in the US!) and the base model for the gas version is "only" ~$34k. But the price range is immense, and it isn't particularly uncommon to see >$60k King Ranch versions either. Higher price trims are available too, but tbh, I don't see them as often. Maybe occasionally a Raptor (~76k).
As it says, while there are horror stories, there are also non-horror stories.
I've seen a similar fender-bender (i own a rivian, so do some neighbors) get quoted at 3-4k.
Honestly, 40k seems more like "we don't want to do this job" than "it really costs this much".
Given the PDR took 3 days to do it, I can understand the perspective of a body shop that doesn't want to do the job - they can probably get done 150k worth of jobs in the same time period.
So if you're going to have minor bumps result in a repair bill more expensive than many cars, it's not that much of a stretch to say that'd make it virtually unrepairable.
Interesting! But may have actually not have been sealed.
The Wikipedia page says:
“ The bonnet was widely rumoured to be sealed – Car and Driver wrote: "...feature of the A2 that may foretell the future: the sealed hood". Actually, the bonnet is easily removed, being held in place by two twist-lock catches. The bonnet, weighing 8 kg, then comes away from the car altogether, unlike the usual hinged flip-up arrangement on most other cars. Due to the service hatch, the bonnet does not need to be removed frequently for access to the engine.”
The world's first non-repairable car. Minor fault, major accident, or inevitably-degraded battery? No problem!, just throw it away and buy the latest model, like you would with a phone or tablet! You wanted an upgrade anyway, didn't you?
No big deal. Just buy the AppleCar AppleCare plan.
In my limited experience the TCO for Apple computer products seems lower than equivalent PC products. A MacBook I can reasonably expect to stay in the same condition until like 7-10 years later. With a regular windows laptop the screen would be flickering, the keyboard would be worn down, and it would overheat intermittently.
I can open my 2012 MacBook Air right now and expect it to work just fine.
Apple's phones have about 7 years of first-party support / guaranteed useful life, compared with the rest of the industry's standard of maybe 2. Yeah I'd never buy a car that will only be good for 7 years, but let's see what they ship.
I'm pretty sure there is no such "guarantee". You can definitely Apple has a track record of supporting 7 years and I have absolutely no problem with that. Samsung and Google actually say they are committed to 7 years of support for the latest phones in their official document.
Also the rest of the industry is not 2. 3 years is very common these days for phones, 5 getting more common. And for computers... Many business computers are supported for a long time, and Windows is famous for its backwards compatibility and support (Windows 10 is supported till 2025, 10 years from its release).
Yes, I speculate and draw my conclusions based on my most recent experience (2017-2019) with Android. I'm glad it's improving, but I'm not in a hurry to "experience" Android again.
The batteries don't have 7 years of useful life, though. And replacing them is made intentionally difficult to encourage people to just upgrade instead.
A lot of people don't live near an Apple store, and few people are prepared to be without their phone while mailing it off for a battery swap.
They have a program for independent repair companies. It doesn't pass Louis Rossmann's bar since it doesn't let him do board-level repair, but none of the "fix your screen/replace your battery" shops I've ever seen do that anyway, so it would be fine for them.
Well, I'm yet to buy a car in my life (viva la public transport), so there's a realistic chance I don't know what I'm talking about, but I can imagine the 4-5 years cycle largely depends on the resale value.
Apple products can have a hit&miss resale value; I think the 2015-2019 line of MacBooks were bad value at any time and any price point, and will be avoided well into the future. Hence my speculation: let's see what they ship this time.
Well I guess that's one reason why I seem to be incompatible with car ownership. When COVID hit, I continued to pay for my public transport ticket even while I couldn't even use it, because I wanted to throw in my share towards keeping the system alive and as good as it is.
> compared with the rest of the industry's standard of maybe 2.
You're just making up facts to protect your beloved brand/cult. C'mon. All my non-Mac computers I'm using here have been around way longer than two years.
You're talking about different things. Apple officially supports / provides software updates for its iPhones for 7 years. Other phone manufacturers' durations of support vary, but they're usually much less. Until fairly recently, Google provided 3 years of software updates for Pixels, for example. [1]
Samsung accounts for the vast majority of Android phones in actual use. Their current policy is also 7 years, as is Google's. You're right that historically this was different, but things change.
Here's objective facts and my experiences that I used to draw my conclusions.
My final Android phones were: [1] a Samsung A7 (2017), which included a non-replaceable battery, shipped with Android 6 (2015), officially supported Android 8 (2017; theoretical first-party security patches which it never received were offered until 2021), no longer receives updates even from LineageOS, and never ran postmarketOS; and [2] a Nokia 3 (2017), which had pretty much the same story (support ended on Android 9).
In 2019, someone gave me an old, smashed [3] iPhone 7 (2016), and the phone literally worked better than any Android phone I've owned before, including either of the two above. Since it was already physically falling apart, I took the liberty of getting [4] an iPhone SE (2020), which is still with me; the 7 continued to serve in the family for a couple more years.
> All my non-Mac computers I'm using here have been around way longer than two years.
I have a 2002 TiBook, which, believe me or not, continues to outlive my T61 and X200. My MBP (2017) had a spicy pillow though (which Apple repaired for free, outside of warranty).
> [...] to protect your beloved brand/cult.
I'm not a cultist, I'm a pragmatist. I used to believe in things - I had a [5] Jolla (2013) for the longest time, because I believed in Free Software and Open Source and all that stuff, until I realized suffering for your values is not necessarily the healthiest thing to do, and that freedom is not strictly a function of a software license, but of things the hardware+software enables you to do with it.
You refer to your smart phone as a non-mac computer? Because nobody is talking about Mac's besides you. Or PC's. Or "computers" outside of smart phones in general.
The world's first non-repairable car. Minor fault, major accident, or inevitably-degraded battery? No problem!, just throw it away and buy the latest model, like you would with a phone or tablet! You wanted an upgrade anyway, didn't you?
(Meanwhile, Apple will keep boasting about their green credentials...)
What about consumables?... You'll still be able to change the tyres, brake bads, and wiper blades. But Apple will take 30% from every sale/service of these items, and the vehicle won't start if you install non-genuine-Apple replacements. (And then there's the chargers... don't expect to be able to put electricity into that battery without Apple getting their god-given 30% cut)
Starting at $99,999 for the base model (50 miles range). A maxxed-out model will do 750 miles, but they're really going to make you pay for those battery up-sells, and the well-glued-in battery pack is non-upgradeable after purchase.