Yes and no.Biospace wrote: ↑13 Mar 2023, 2:49pm Manufacturers understand how damaging it is to their business to not only have products which last reliably for decades and prematurely ending the life of a well-evolved product (ie not one for which the development curve is nearly horizontal) because of built-in obsolescence or failure to be able to source a replacement part is extraordinarily damaging to the environment, but essential to their continued existance as things are.
In a society which valued longevity and sustainability, factories would be making replacement parts and upgrades rather than scratching their heads as to how to redesign yet again some product in order to boost sales.
To go back to the original point of bicycles - remember the start of this thread was actually related to bikes...?! - you've got a whole host of companies coming together to make "a bike".
Let's take a road bike as with the original article.
Frame, wheels, groupset, finishing parts.
New materials and tech comes along - 20 years ago carbon was in its infancy, now it's a well established material, manufacturers understand its properties and how to use them effectively and (contrary to popular belief) it can be repaired and recycled.
Wheels have got stronger, lighter, stiffer, more aero as well and the current trend is to wider, tubeless tyres so there's a change there and tyre manufacturers are on a similar progression. As an aside, disc brakes are vastly superior in terms of sustainability because you're not wearing out an expensive carbon or aluminium rim, you're wearing out a small bit of easily recyclable steel.
Groupsets have wider gear ranges, more gears, better shifting, stronger chains, and so on, all of which are generally better for the consumer. Given a choice of whether to ride a downtube / friction shifting 2x5 groupset or an STI indexed 2 x 11 groupset, no-one in their right mind would choose the former.
So there's a host of complementary improvements, all of which depend on the other. Wheel manufacturers need to factor in the extra dishing, disc rotor mounting and wider tyres, frame manufacturers need to adapt the frame to take discs and more gears, groupsets need to work with all of that together.
Having a groupset manufacturer going "ah well we're just going to concentrate on spare parts and minor upgrades to our 2 x 5" means they'll go out of business in no time.
If your workplace had said "oh we don't need these newfangled computers, we'll just upgrade our typewrites every once in a while", they'd be out of business almost instantly. The sustainability argument goes both ways - the company itself has to be sustainable for the sake of its employees.