Featured Next-Gen Toyotas Will Now Last for Almost a Decade

I hope they can "keep the car fresh" for about a decade. But personally, I'm still quite skeptical of software defined vehicles as software defined anything seems to have the opposite effect.

• Say a lot of cool features rely on a 4G or 5G connection. At some point those technologies will be replaced and sunset. Then the only option would be a hardware upgrade to 6G or 7G or whatever. What are the chances of that being made available?
• There's also the question of losing direct support from Toyota itself. What will happen exactly in 9 years? Will Toyota cut the connection from its servers to make room for new cars? Will all your music apps and map data and all that just suddenly stop working?
• And even if 1 and two aren't an issue, there's always the problem of security updates. If a security flaw is found, either by the good guys or the bad guys, will Toyota continue to offer security patches or just cut of internet access for the car?

I'm looking at this as an owner of a 12-year-old Toyota that is my daily driver. I see software defined vehicles as perhaps feeling fresh for those that buy a 3 to 5-year-old car and plan on keeping it about 5 years. But I don't see this as a good thing for those of us that drive our cars until the wheels fall off.

 

Experience from real life. Original Nissan Leaf equipped with 2G. In 2yrs - it's being phased out for 3G minimum. The only way your car could still talk was to spend 100s for an updated piece of hardware. Had people known how quick the batteries would degrade they could have saved by not upgrading as the system was quickly going to end up not being able to travel even 40 miles reliably - after being advertised it would go 100.
Nearly as egregious, our 1st Tesla (2016) was so prematurely offering full self-driving - even though the hardware was multiple generations away from even being close to being ready to handle all the necessary data at any kind of reliable speed. It too suffered from the 5G takeover as 4G began to wane.
.

 

Seems like an unfortunately poor choice of wording...

I can't be the first to have read that headline and thought "Oh, down from 15-20 years?"

Ah! they're talking about the product cycle, not the endurance of the individual units.

The only downside I can see is that auto theft is a somewhat more profitable (and therefore more popular) when the thief knows the bits stripped out of one car can fit a larger group of other cars.

 

...this does open the question- how long will they continue to develop and support that software ecosystem for a given model?

Because if they're moving a bunch of eggs into a software-defined basket, I'm going to want to see a very long term commitment to software maintenance before I buy in.

 

I had bought a Leaf with 2G connectivity a month before it was sunset.

I believe AT&T has sunset their 3G as well, haven't they? So any of those early Leafs, 3G upgrade or not, new battery or not, do not have the app feature.

Incidentally, my Leaf was a 2013, the same year model as my Avalon that still runs. I also have a friend who still drives around a 2013 Leaf with the original battery as her daily driver. But no app access, period.

I thought the same.

 

I believe everyone has, like three years ago. Yes, the Safety Connect feature in my 2010 is now a boat anchor with blinkenlights. But the rest of the car still works. I'd be bummed if more stuff in it depended on 3G.

 

Like any other industry; defining the life-cycle of the car (appliance) will determine support life cycle - therefore durability. While you'll still be able to get 'hard parts' through 3nd party channels, cutting-off software supports forces large and medium industries to buy new. Then there's also the question of how much software participation is required to change out a 'hard part'? If software defined intervention is required to replace an engine, transmission, traction pack and it's no longer supported - they've effective 'bricked' the car - or tuned it into an expensive lawn ornament in your driveway.
We are already seeing that happening in industries, like cell phones. They want to turn the car into a cell phone with more predictable support, replacement, and possibly no major repair intervals (ie. traction pack, engine, or transmission).

Just my 2-cents.....

 

The way I read it, the two biggest factors in ordinary car endurance today are corrosion resistance and financing access.

A car is still useful as a car until it either rusts out or nobody will underwrite a loan on it. Sure, there are still some old cars out there beyond both of those limits, but that's sort of where the line gets drawn these days.

Today, both of those factors are somewhat synchronized at 15 years, though corrosion is much less of a factor in some geographic areas. A car can be useful without financing available of course, but that's become a very different market.

Putting so much of the car's functionality and value into the software-defined realm introduces another big make-or-break factor.

If Toyota can guarantee 15 years of software support for cars produced all the way to the end of each 10 year cycle, they'll enjoy some harmony with those other limits.

...yes, that means betting on software for a 25 year overall life cycle. Writing software patches for a 2035 car that uses 2025 conventions until 2050, for example.

Not a small challenge.

I hope they realize how big of a gamble they're making.

 

I'm sure they do. The first batch of switch-over, they'll probably stick their necks out a bit and push out support for additional 5 years, while still reminding everyone how they're bending-over backwards for their customers. When the economy worsens as it does with all manufacturing cycles - they'll use that excuse to 'pull the plug' on 5 year extensions. It's all in the timing and optics, but it helps that peoples attention span has been shorting to a humming birds heart beat.....

 

Well I recognize that it doesn't have to work the way I illustrated above- it could be that they want to shorten the overall product endurance. That's not impossible, and may even be desirable if they do it right.

If they choose a shorter window of software support, they could couple that with less corrosion resistance- cheaper steel and paint. Then powertrains engineered to wear out at 150k instead of 250-300k, for more savings. Cheaper and lighter interiors that don't last as long.

Let's imagine they did such a thing- created a Corolla that was fully worn out in 10 years instead of 15-20. If they were able to maintain their own profitability while cutting the MSRP by 30-40%, they'd have a monster sales hit on their hands.

Easier to buy, every bit as good to drive, and maybe not everyone notices that on an annual basis it costs just as much as today's expensive cars.

It could work...

 

That's the cell phone model in a nut shell. The environmental issue is someone else's problem and a hoax; like global warming.
Welcome to Capitalism........

 

Subaru dealt with the 3G issue by offering a free HW upgrade to 4G if you had an active subscription to the added features. We never paid for the subscription so out 2016 Outback has the obsolete 3G communication HW.

JeffD

 

Several have done similar. Certain 2G models got free 3G upgrades. 6G is around the corner and 4G is soon to be the same as 2G and 3G.

But thing about this. What would happen if all your music listening were dependant on that access? What would you think of the car then?

 

Is this the same article: Next-Gen Toyotas Will Now Last for Almost a Decade ?

(@Tideland Prius 's link is requiring me to disable adblock, don't want to.)

 

I leased a 2015 Leaf for 3 years. A year (or two?) into the leased they sent me a notice to bring it in for a free upgrade to 3G.

2G, 3G and 4G and up are not compatible with each other. However 4G and above, by design are compatible with each other. As I understand it, 4G device hardware in a phone of car, for example, will work with 5G and above cell towers so no upgrade is needed unless you want the higher speeds of those services

Mike

 

it can only mean more profit for toyota at the consumers expense

 

Are you sure?

TBH, there are a lot of unknowns.

• How much of the car's features and repairability will depend on software support from Toyota?
• How soon before things stop working as originally intended?
• If they do change, will there be third-party support?

Only time will tell. Just don't try to sell me your used Toyota with software defined stuff as if it were important.

 

Was there a time when capitalism and environmentalism weren't existential threats to each other?