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The car you bought new five years ago already feels outdated. The infotainment system lags when you try to connect your phone. The warranty expired at 60,000 miles, and suddenly the repair estimates make you wonder if buying a new car might cost less than fixing the old one. None of this happened by accident. According to automotive experts and industry whistleblowers, modern vehicles are being designed with planned obsolescence in mind, transforming cars from long-term investments into disposable products that manufacturers expect you to replace every few years.
A former General Motors powertrain engineer who goes by the pseudonym Chello revealed in an interview with The Car Guy Online that by 2010, the industry was ready to implement technologies that actively prevented user maintenance and vehicle designs that made major components like transmissions and engines effectively disposable items. The strategy emerged because companies noticed a meaningful portion of the market was willing to simply lease a new car every three to five years, while the number of adults willing to service an older vehicle themselves was presumed to be declining. Automakers leaned into that trend by gradually making cars harder to service and incentivizing leases wherever possible.
The numbers tell a different story than what manufacturers intended. Americans now keep their cars longer than ever, with the average vehicle age reaching 12.6 years in 2024 according to S&P Global Mobility, up from just 6.2 years in 1976.
The New Disposability Strategy
Alfred P. Sloan pioneered planned obsolescence in the automotive industry when he became GM's president in 1923. His strategy involved annual model changes with updated designs and features that created a sense of novelty and encouraged consumers to upgrade. GM invested heavily in styling and design, recognizing the emotional and aspirational aspects of car ownership. While GM introduced genuine technological advancements like automatic transmissions and air conditioning, the company also controlled the pace of innovation to align with its planned obsolescence strategy.
The modern version takes a more aggressive approach. New vehicles are so problematic, unreliable, and incredibly complex that owners will likely be in trouble if they get stuck with one past the warranty period. Some vehicles are borderline unrepairable and designed to fail early. The shift from aesthetic obsolescence to functional obsolescence marks a fundamental change in how the industry operates.
Where Sloan's GM wanted you to feel embarrassed driving last year's model, today's automakers design vehicles that actually become difficult or impossible to maintain economically. According to The Wall Street Journal, tech-laden vehicles like EVs are more likely to be declared total losses and sent to the scrapyard than fixed, creating unnecessary waste even though 95 percent of a car's materials can be refurbished or recycled.
The Technology That Makes Repair Impossible
Electric vehicles represent the next generation of planned obsolescence. The median range on electric vehicles was 270 miles for 2023 model year cars, up 27 percent from five years earlier according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The highest battery range hit 516 miles in 2023, compared to 335 miles in 2018. Like iPhone and iPad makers, EV manufacturers can do updates over the air, yet these have limits when physical components cannot keep up with the newest updates. Expensive repairs provide another reason EVs might get cycled out faster than traditional vehicles.
An EV bought brand new at the beginning of 2022 went for about half the manufacturer's suggested retail price after about two years and one month of ownership. Internal combustion engine cars and hybrids retained about 66 percent and 73 percent of their MSRP respectively after that period. High maintenance costs contribute to steep depreciation. The same math applies to EVs that get into collisions, which are more likely to be declared total losses and sent to the scrapyard than fixed.
The computerization of vehicles allows automakers to restrict access to diagnostic tools and repair information. Cars have become less like mechanical devices you can fix and more like computers on wheels that only authorized dealers can service. CarBuzz noted that planned obsolescence is the largest and more obvious play the auto industry has ripped from Big Tech's playbook, exploiting the increasing computerization of cars to effectively brick cars for even basic repairs. This approach creates what amounts to vendor lock-in, where independent repair shops cannot access the proprietary systems needed to diagnose and fix modern vehicles.
What Consumers Lose When Cars Become Disposable
The United States had 286 million vehicles in operation as of January 2024, up 2 million over 2023 according to S&P Global Mobility. Since 2020, more than 27 million passenger cars exited the U.S. vehicle population while just over 13 million new passenger cars were registered. Two passenger cars are being scrapped for every new passenger car registration. Meanwhile, over 26 million light trucks including utilities were scrapped and nearly 45 million were registered. Consumers have continued to demonstrate a preference for utility vehicles, and manufacturers have adjusted their portfolio accordingly, reshaping the composition of the fleet of vehicles in operation.
The average vehicle age reaching 12.6 years represents consumers pushing back against planned obsolescence through economic necessity rather than choice. New vehicle prices remain prohibitively high for many consumers, with average transaction price reported at $47,218 in March 2024 according to S&P Global Mobility. Additionally, inflation is proving more persistent than expected, and there is trepidation around the shift to electric vehicles. A combination of these factors has resulted in consumers keeping their vehicles on the road longer.
The question facing the industry is whether consumers will continue accepting planned obsolescence or demand vehicles built to last. The average age statistics suggest we are already voting with our wallets by keeping cars longer despite manufacturers' best efforts to make them disposable. Whether that resistance translates into manufacturers changing their design philosophy remains unclear. The economic incentives favor planned obsolescence. Annual model changes and shortened replacement cycles generate more revenue than building cars that last decades. Until those incentives change, we can expect manufacturers to continue treating vehicles as products with built-in expiration dates rather than durable goods designed to serve us for the long haul. The cars in our driveways might run, yet they were never meant to last. We are living in the age of the disposable automobile, whether we like it or not.
