Silvaire wrote:
Newer cars locally often look like new underneath when they are 25 years old, no corrosion at all.
Yes that is a major improvement which came along in the 90ties I’d say, not for all makes but for many. My first cars, Citroen, Talbot and Peugeot, all rusted to the point of scrapping. Also older VW’s and others were known for this.
When I bought my first Toyota in around 95, it came with 109k km and approximately 10 years old, which for the afore mentioned would almost certainly meant to have rust issues, it was spotless and stayed so for the 250k km I drove it. Same for the 2nd one which stayed with me for 27 years, however then it was the exhaust system which caused it’s demise as the quote to replace it and some other stuff which needed doing to pass the MFK (Swiss version of MOT or TüV) would have cost more than 10k to fix. In the end I should have gone around some of the independent garages and would probably have gotten a better quote, but well. I was also ready to move on somehow.
My new one has no rust at all. However, it got hail damaged last Friday like several thousands of cars here. At least I still have all the windows, which is more than can be said for most of the others, but my roof and other horizontal surfaces have that Junkers look now. Will see if the quote makes it survivable for the insurance or it will get totalled…
Mooney_Driver wrote:
but my roof and other horizontal surfaces have that Junkers look now
What more could you ask for ? 
Rust was a problem 40-50 years ago. Then it improved a lot until fairly recently, perhaps 5-10 years ago. It’s now worse than ever. The reason being salted roads (of course an EU regulation valid in Norway because transport is part of EEC-ting). Lots of Facebook groups about this, all being against it. As a good Norwegian I am also very much against this
Some urban roads and pathways used to be salted before, but not the main roads. Before it was nice and clean everywhere, nice white snow and ice. The salt makes an almost black slush that looks awful. It completely mess up the car and you have to use a can of wiper fluid to drive even a couple of kilometers. After a couple of days, the whole car must be washed. It’s messy beyond belief. It ruins the car, ruins the environment and the looks, drinks wiper fluid like it was no tomorrow, and for what? If you cannot drive on normal snowy and icy roads, then you should park the car and walk. You have no business driving. Not sure if this is the most stupid thing EU has brought forward, but it’s pretty much up there at the top somewhere. All top transport bureaucrats and politicians are of course all for it, due to – - – “safety”.
LeSving wrote:
What more could you ask for ?
That the insurance won’t total it otherwise it’s gone. And what I’ll get won’t buy another one like it.
LeSving wrote:
The reason being salted roads (of course an EU regulation valid in Norway because transport is part of EEC-ting).
Salt makes no sense on compacted snow, just on ice. And even there are better ways. Yes we’ve had this for decades. Winter is murder on cars. That’s why I am quite ok with the fact that we don’t get snow anymore on a regular basis where I live.
If you cannot drive on normal snowy and icy roads, then you should park the car and walk. You have no business driving.
This mindset perfectly explains the Viking age
LeSving wrote:
Some urban roads and pathways used to be salted before, but not the main roads. Before it was nice and clean everywhere, nice white snow and ice. The salt makes an almost black slush that looks awful. It completely mess up the car and you have to use a can of wiper fluid to drive even a couple of kilometers. After a couple of days, the whole car must be washed. It’s messy beyond belief. It ruins the car, ruins the environment and the looks, drinks wiper fluid like it was no tomorrow, and for what? If you cannot drive on normal snowy and icy roads, then you should park the car and walk. You have no business driving. Not sure if this is the most stupid thing EU has brought forward, but it’s pretty much up there at the top somewhere. All top transport bureaucrats and politicians are of course all for it, due to – – – “safety”.
Sweden is in the EU, too, and I don’t recognise this at all. Sure, salting occurs but never on snow – that’s pointless. Only when freezing is expected – i.e. when temperatures are expected to drop below 0°C on a wet road or when freezing rain/drizzle/fog is expected.
If it actually is as bad as you say, then salting must be done wrong.
Airborne_Again wrote:
Sure, salting occurs but never on snow – that’s pointless.
Unfortunately a lot of winter services have not reached that conclusion, same thing here as well. They don’t differentiate if there is just snow just ice or a mix of both. So they salt away, producing exactly what LeSving said, a muddy, awful mess of slush.
If there is pure snow which gets compacted by driving on it, it is easy to handle and what they usually used to do is to put gravel onto it but that also leaves a mess. The only real reason to salt would be if you have a wet ground which freezes over producing clear ice. That is probably the most dangerous part and that is where you have to salt to keep the wet road surface from freezing over.
LeSving wrote:
If you cannot drive on normal snowy and icy roads, then you should park the car and walk. You have no business driving.
I’d add “in those conditions” to your last sentence otherwise I agree. A lot of people also lack the practice. So if the roads are unsafe for your driving skill, don’t drive. Easy said but not many people have the strenght of character to admit it to themselves or to the folks relying on transport.
I always felt that doing a course for driving on these surfaces should be part of driving lessons and be required to do again after a few years. I’ve done several offered here and they are very impressive.
Airborne_Again wrote:
Sweden is in the EU, too, and I don’t recognise this at all. Sure, salting occurs but never on snow – that’s pointless. Only when freezing is expected – i.e. when temperatures are expected to drop below 0°C on a wet road or when freezing rain/drizzle/fog is expected.If it actually is as bad as you say, then salting must be done wrong.
It’s seriously bad, unbelievably bad. What they do is when the forecast show snow the next day, they run around with their trucks and salt all the main roads. When it snows it creates this black slush immediately, which gets thicker and more slushy as it snows. If it continues to snow, they start plowing with a plow in front and more salt in the back. It’s pretty efficient keeping the road clean of snow, but the downside is this black liquid/slush that’s really awful as explained. A good winter road is a much better alternative than this. Driving in Norway in the winter at the main roads near the cities, you sometimes use more wiper fluid than gasoline/diesel, and I’m not kidding. If you run out of wiper fluid, you are in serious trouble. After a couple of days like this, you won’t even see through the side windows, and the lights are also all covered of course.
LeSving wrote:
After a couple of days like this, you won’t even see through the side windows, and the lights are also all covered of course.
Yes. Basically you need to run through an indoor car wash every day with a good underfloor clean and pressure cleaning the rest.
johnh wrote:
Or just the “avionics” have worn out. I had a 2003 Audi TT VR6 that I absolutely loved in the US. I had to sell it when we moved back to France, but it already had gradually advancing senility – various dashboard functions no longer worked correctly.
Audi’s car electrics I found were extremely disappointing, exacerbated by other fatal faults in the design.
For instance in the A4, they put an expensive unobtanium (after a few years) box called the “convenience unit” under the front passenger side carpet (the carpet is incredibly thick and has a space for this box). This box controls basically everything that’s not the engine, the windows, the door locks, the alarm etc. and is placed somewhere where it’s getting feet on it all the time. This would probably be OK if it wasn’t for the overflow for the windscreen water catch is basically the glove box. What happens is some day in autumn, a leaf gets into the windscreen water catch (which incidentally also contains the battery and brake servo) and gets stuck in the drain hole. The drain is cunningly hidden under the battery where it cannot be inspected. It’s the only drain. So one night you get torrential rain, the leaf has blocked the absurdly small drain hole, and the first you know about it is that there’s 3 inches of water in the passenger side because it overflowed via the glove box (soaking the contents of that). Of course now the convenience unit is submerged, and it never works right again. You’ll be driving along and the sunroof will open uncommanded, or the windows won’t close, or you can’t disable the alarm.
OK, can we now finally put this issue to bed in spite of all this talk about hidden battery capacity? 
https://insideevs.com/news/806798/ev-battery-aging-study-2026/
And the above numbers do not take into consideration that – even more resistant – NCM are being supplied nowadays, and God knows what in the coming years. Solid batteries, Sodium?
Our own data points are in line with the above, actually on the good side. Hard to measure what must be a few percent loss on the 77kWh one, 4.5 year old, 100k kms.
