Tesla or BYD

@ninalanyon @AceOfSpades Bland statistical results do not really tell us anything useful about why why the average age of cars differs from country to country.

There is really very little variety in cars now; thanks to the massive consolidations of manufacturers. This means a car built in America, say, is likely to be much the same under the styling from one built in the UK, France or Japan. Same engines and transmissions, auxiliary equipment, etc.

Even the Rolls-Royce now has a BMW engine! Are the US cars really built to last only five years? That would be very poor business model, likely to lose many customers to brands likely to last three times that.

Are there even many genuine US car makers left, apart from Ford perhaps? Even that American style-signature the "Jeep" is owned by the Dutch company Stellantis, although the group does have an American HQ as well.

This all means considerable uniformity of designs, components and quality. The differences are shrinking to bodywork and trim styling.

So the cars should have roughly similar life-spans based purely on normal wear. There must be other, external factors that dictate it, and those will differ by country and region.


Corrosion is likely the main killer of cars anywhere.

In the UK, huge numbers of cars are near exposed coasts where Winter conditions can bathe them and the roads in salt spray. Also, the roads are often treated in freezing conditions with a mix of sand and salt, creating a corrosive brine.

Most cars in the USA and Europe are nowhere near salty sea air, many are in warmer, drier conditions generally.

On the other hand, some countries have large mileages of rough gravel roads in rural areas, likely to accelerate steering and suspension wear, and breaks in protective paints and undersealing.


Another factor may be the relative severity of the roadworthiness and emission-control regulations and MoT equivalents between nations.

The UK's are fairly tight. Others may be far more relaxed. Germany is notorious for its trade-demanded "OEM" construction laws, but I don't know the severity of its use regulations.

One might expect the Japanese graph to be far less steep, even declining not climbing; not because their cars are any different but because the country notoriously has perhaps the strictest version of the MoT anywhere, to the point of sheer pettyness. Japan has a fairly benign climate though, and perhaps does not grit and salt its roads.

@ArishMell Anywhere that regularly has temperatures between -10 C and freezing will salt the roads and that is far worse for the underside of the car than the UK coast.

As for the MOT and its European/Scandinavian equivalents, they are generally fairly similar. The principal difference is that most European countries only inspect cars once every two years on the grounds that modern cars are much more reliable.

As for Rolls and their engines, they haven't made their own for at least sixty years. Before BMW they used oversized General Motors engines that they detuned to have flatter power and torque versus rpm curves so as to make them drive very smoothly at the expense of fuel economy. They used BMW engines before BMW took over the name. But in fact the BMW produced Rolls has nothing but the name in common with the former Rolls cars. It is VW that owns the former Rolls Royce/Bentley production facilities.

Japan has a very varied climate and the average daily January temperatures in Hokkaido are below -5 C. I'm pretty sure they must salt the roads there.

@ninalanyon There are some countries that don't use salt on frosty roads, but I don't know which.

The modern, RR-badged Rolls-Royce doesn't even look like a Rolls-Royce. Just as the BMW-owned "Mini" barely hints at Alec Issigonis' creation: it is still fairly short but rounded off and bloated in width - likely with little proportionate increase in passenger room.

I think the British MoT is not concerned with reliability, but with safety and exhaust emissions. In any case, whether annual or bi-annual the result only really applies on the date of test! I have my Renault serviced as well as MoT'd at theh same time.

@DanielsASJ Have you ever seen one?

@SoftIceCream Yes, a few

@DanielsASJ Where?

@JovialMoose Plenty of BYDs in Norway.