Jokes on you. In the Northeast cars rust in less than 10 years. We don't need parts

Related: VW is turning part of its Zwickau EV plant into a site that takes back used VW Group cars and refurbishes them or strips them for parts to resell [0]. Target is 15,000 cars a year by 2030.

[0] https://www.volkswagen-newsroom.com/de/pressemitteilungen/st...

Thankfully, EVs don't need as many spare parts as ICEs. It is less complicated machinery, and the batteries are the biggest component that are actually fairly standardized (well, at the cell level, there is a lot that goes on around that that is custom).

I live in the United States: My only "concern" about cars made here is that the parts are and will be exorbitantly high due to protectionism by our government and will be a lot more for a lot fewer features, efficiency and innovation and we'll have to win a class action lawsuit to even open the hoods of cars we "own" so we can repair them ourselves.

Your link has a concerning quote in it:

> "many households already own one vehicle," so the "automotive market must shift from the traditional era of increasing volume to one that considers growth based on the premise of existing vehicle ownership."

This sounds like companies trying to add subscriptions or other costs to get access to car features.

Parts?

You just throw them away. They are consumer electronics.

I don't say this happily.

I'm not sure, for example a lot of people talk about Ford as being a known brand, but see what they did with the powershift fiasco.

A few weeks ago I was in a dealership and they had 5 cars that were basically abandoned by their owner because of problem with the transmission.

Not saying Chinese will behave differently, but big brands aren't as reliable as you think

100s of models share a few standard platforms with like 80% parts commonality in the broader ecosystem. A subbrand from one of the giants with staying power is going to be fine, someone in PRC going to keep after market parts flowing forever, like they do for western brands. Of course whether this convenient/ubiquitous in reign like Europe depends on geopolitics, if EU going to make it hard for PRC producers then PRC producers going to have hard time with EU consumers, which arguably is the point. Really have to see what PRC plants in EU starts delivering, ultimately there's no reason for rest of EU to be dependant on German or French cars if they have Chinese cars at home.

Have you tried owning a landrover? No use in parts availability but they make it completely unaffordable to maintain them.. (as a business model imo)

We’ll see how this plays out, but the industry definitely needs a calibration

If there is enough demand, someone will build and supply it. So enough buyers have to buy the model and keep it running that long.

Long term ownership risks of EVs

https://youtu.be/Nim61oVLdwk?t=700

Somewhat paradoxiacally, the battery might be the highest quality and maintaibable component of the car, but everything else is a concern.

Truly. Brand names in Europe for .cn EVs sound like iPhone accessory listings from Amazon

I thought for sure you meant Chinese as in Volvo. Damn, I sure was wrong.

Same concern I have with the Chinese golf carts/LSVs. They look very nice and have so many standard features even car play. I know a few people that bought Chinese brands that only existed for 3 years.

I mean the core feature here is a vastly simplified drivetrain and often modular parts borrowed or 'appropriated' from the best of existing marques. There's a lot less to go wrong versus any existing ICE platform, and the Chinese EVs that make the Western market are generally the budget/barebones models outside of the the high-end BYD stuff.

In comparison, the last two generations of ICE cars from Europe/US are the most mechanically complex in history in order to meet strict emissions laws.

The main point of contention is around support for the integrated cloud connectivity and continuous OTA software updates. Ultimately that will be clean-room decompiled or otherwise audited for PII/Security Compliance to the point where reverse-engineering for LTS is trivial.

Other than that, just as displayed with walled-garden Apple products, a robust, decentralized aftermarket will emerge from the legions of SEA hackers.

We're in the boom or bust years for the Chinese manufacturers. There's clearly a few fairly safe brands like BYD or anything Geely owned - they're not going away, but the smaller brands are a little bit of a gamble. I say this as someone with a hankering for an Xpeng X9. I saw a report [0] a couple of days ago that the profit margin across the Chinese car industry is at a record low 1.4% which would suggest to me that we're probably going to lose a few of the smaller brands pretty soon.

[0] https://insidechinaauto.com/2026/10/27/china-car-industry-pr...

Given how often parts are unavailable for new and late model "western" brands this is more like a generic worry that comes with car ownership than anything brand-specific. If anything the proliferation of brands demonstrates robust use of off-the-shelf components, which in turn suggests replacement parts should be ubiquitous.

so, in America, these vehicles are like 3x cheaper. So, just buy 3.

that's fair argument and reason why to rely on long established concerns like BYD (BYD, Denza), Geely (Volvo, Lynk & Co, Geely, Polestar, Zeekr) and Chery (Jaecoo, Omoda, Chery), at least the brand shouldn't fold so early, though of course they can still ditch some specific brand, seems like BYD would be safest option judging by their market share in China, in Europe Jaecoo seems to be doing very well, but who knows how long they can last and from what I hear they are quite unreliable, so I would worry more about wait time for car par right now than 10 years down the line, even Korean/Japanese cars still have this issue if you crash the car and need to wait weeks for the spare part

> It’s like the wild west of Android phones 10-15 years ago

lifespan of the phone is much shorter than car (so is price), so not really a fair comparison and Xiaomi is still around and many other less known brands (actually that makes me realize I forgot Xiaomi cars, very nice design as well, nice Porsche copy), they just ditched export, but they are still present in China, even 10-15 years ago you had tier 1, tier 2 and other tiers of brands

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I’m going to guess that parts for these 500 unique models are mostly coming out of the same handful of factories in China. While yes maintenance is definitely a concern I think as long as there is a steady supply of these EVs the market will figure out repair.

Most people own a car for 3 years or less... who cares about 15 years from now?

> I am not sure you will get parts and service in 10 or 15 years

Giant dumps of discarded electric cars in China would indicate that even if you live in China, you cannot get parts and service, or not in a way that is more financially sound than scrapping the vehicle.