In 2050 current Teslas would be 30+ years old. What world is 30 years the standard for a car lifespan? Most cars would have 250k miles by the time they’re 20, which is nearly the end of life of most vehicles. Sure you can find examples of 500k++ mile cars, but that is not the norm.
Gas powered cars in recent decades generally don't die because the engine died. It's structural rust, the interior falls apart, the electronics are obsolete and probably broken, gadgets fail, the safety features are outdated and may no longer work, people refuse to spend more than the car is worth on repairs...statistically, cars get scrapped around 15 years old at something over 200Kmi.
Teslas even if they are designed with the best intentions will have these problems. And there's always the possibility they won't last near as long, because they're basically expensive iPhones and sold to people are simply not the sort who drive Corollas.
The median age of cars on the road is 10 years or so. While it's true that there is a long tail of very old cars, it's unlikely that many of them will be around by 2050, especially if fuel infrastructure becomes sparser due to lack of demand.
The average age of cars on the road in the US is 12 years. There aren't many 100 year old cars skewing the average, so that implies that most cars last over 24 years.
Yes. Until a week ago I used to drive a car built in 2000 and the average age of cars in my country is 14 years, so cars of 20 or more years are not exceptions.
The sad thing is I can barely find some parts for that 21 year old car that is mostly in perfect running order, but several small buttons don't work anymore, most of the display (showing basic info like outside temperature, fuel consumption etc), rear windshield blade, so at some point good running cars are abandoned because of lack of parts, not because they really need to. Replacing with newer cars is not just the financial cost, but the associated energy and pollution costs that manufacturing processes have.
For electric cars I have huge life expectations, 30 years or more with just batteries and tires as consumables, but the car body and electrical engine should last a very, very long time. There is no reason to accept less than that.
For some very limited use cases five years may be realistic. For a car that can do everything and go everywhere a human driver can it's more like 50 years.
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