Designing the asset

Part 2 defined the lifecycle as a product and left an engineering brief: if the industrial system stays exposed to the vehicle across several lives, the vehicle can no longer be designed only for manufacture, first sale and an initial warranty. Continuity is not secured by a longer contract. It requires lifecycle architecture: a physical and digital system designed so that maintenance, repair, software evolution, component replacement and organisational change do not prematurely end the vehicle’s useful economic life.

Software is part of that infrastructure, but it does not guarantee continuity. Updates, diagnostics and configurable functions can extend the relevance of a vehicle; unsupported computing hardware, cloud dependencies, authentication services and incompatible interfaces can also make a technically sound asset obsolete. The lifecycle question is therefore not merely whether a vehicle contains software, but whether its physical and digital dependencies can be maintained, replaced or gracefully retired.

MML cannot simply be placed on top of today’s vehicle and financing architecture. Doing so would create a very long rental contract attached to an automobile designed around a different economic model; the vehicle itself has to change.

That change does not have to arrive in one step. A transition can begin with existing vehicles, but only if the limits of those vehicles are made explicit.

3.1 Three stages of transition

The first stage is MML-compatible. Existing models with a large installed base, stable parts supply and well-understood maintenance history can be placed inside lifecycle contracts. The vehicle has not become modular or regenerative; the system is learning how condition, repair cost, reassignment and material value behave when one organisation remains economically exposed for longer.

The second stage is MML-adapted. Selected systems are redesigned for certified replacement, retrofit or remanufacturing. The adaptation may begin with components whose technical cycles are already shorter than the body or basic structure, but it must include the testing, documentation and liability needed to preserve the safety and conformity of the complete vehicle.

The third stage is MML-native. The vehicle is designed from the beginning for successive productive lives, with access, interfaces, configuration records and recovery paths treated as properties of the architecture rather than aftermarket corrections.

These stages should not be confused. A long-running conventional model may be a useful MML-compatible pilot without being an MML-native automobile. Telling them apart requires looking inside the vehicle, because its parts do not age at the same rate.

3.2 One vehicle, several technical clocks

A vehicle does not become obsolete as one object. Its structure, closures, seats, suspension, propulsion, sensors, computing hardware, software and human-machine interfaces can have different useful and regulatory lives.

MML should therefore distinguish at least three clocks:

Technical clock	Typical concern	Lifecycle response
Long-cycle architecture	Body structure, crash load paths, hard points and mature mechanical interfaces	Protect, inspect and repair where safe; replace only when structural or economic limits are reached
Medium-cycle systems	Propulsion units, thermal systems, suspension, lighting and interior assemblies	Remanufacture, exchange or upgrade through validated configurations
Short-cycle systems	Computing, communications, infotainment, sensors and software	Update or replace without forcing retirement of the long-cycle asset

This is not a claim that every short-cycle system should become a plug-in module. A technical clock identifies a mismatch in expected life; it does not, by itself, justify the interface, inventory and approval cost required to separate the system.

3.3 The Vitara as a case to test

The fourth-generation Suzuki Vitara is a useful bounded case of several clocks moving inside one model line. Suzuki unveiled it in 2014 and began European production in Hungary in early 2015. Its own product history records a 2018 facelift with revised preventive-safety systems, while the company’s 2020 annual report records the start of Hungarian production of 48-volt mild-hybrid Vitara variants in December 2019.¹ The model remains marketed in Europe with a mild-hybrid powertrain, connected services and contemporary driver-assistance features.²

This continuity is interesting for a specific reason. A conventional product cycle has three layers: annual model-year updates, a mid-life facelift around the third or fourth year, and a new generation after roughly four to eight years depending on the manufacturer.³ The fourth-generation Vitara has followed the first two and stretched the third: substantial changes in propulsion, sensing, software and presentation were absorbed within one generation that has now been marketed for more than a decade. It suggests a research question for MML: which parts of a proven architecture can remain stable while faster-moving systems evolve?

It does not prove that a 2015 vehicle can economically or legally receive the equipment of a later one. A production update can change wiring, mounting points, control units, calibration, crash behaviour and supplier responsibility even when the exterior and market identity appear continuous. The Vitara should therefore be studied through parts compatibility, type-approval history, repair information, failure data and retrofit cost, not treated as evidence that the transition has already been solved.

3.4 Evolutionary approval

The regulatory problem is not simply whether a new component works. It is whether the changed vehicle remains safe, environmentally compliant, cybersecure and attributable to organisations capable of carrying the resulting liability.

The current EU framework already recognises that an approved type can change. Regulation (EU) 2018/858 distinguishes revisions, extensions that require further inspection or testing, and changes that require a new type-approval; it also governs approvals for systems, components and separate technical units.⁴ UN Regulation No. 156 similarly provides an approval framework for vehicle software updates and the manufacturer’s software-update management system.⁵

MML would need to develop these mechanisms into an evolutionary approval model for vehicles already in service. This is a proposal, not an existing legal category. It would require a durable configuration record, defined families of permitted change, proportionate revalidation and a clear allocation of responsibility among the original manufacturer, retrofit supplier, installer, approval authority and lifecycle operator.

The objective is not deregulation or permanent grandfathering. A safety-critical retrofit should remain subject to evidence appropriate to the risk it introduces. The objective is to make validated evolution a normal state of the asset, rather than forcing every useful technical change into a choice between an unchanged vehicle and a new one.

3.5 Quality cannot be optional

One consequence of designing for validated evolution is uncomfortable for conventional product segmentation: structural quality cannot be premium, and neither can fundamental durability, repairability or regulatory longevity.

A lower-cost vehicle may reasonably have less power, simpler upholstery, less sound insulation, fewer displays or less sophisticated suspension, but it should not have a body designed to survive fewer lifecycle transitions. Premium can continue to exist; it simply moves. Materials, acoustic comfort, performance, design, personalisation and technology remain legitimate differentiators, while the underlying ability of the asset to remain safe, repairable and economically productive becomes infrastructure.

3.6 Repair before replacement

Infrastructure is judged over its service life, not at the point of sale. Consider a modern headlamp. A minor collision can require replacement of an expensive assembly even when only a fraction of it is damaged, but a lifecycle vehicle creates a different engineering incentive.

The transparent cover, housing, light source, control electronics and mounting structures do not necessarily need identical lifespans. Designing them as replaceable or recoverable modules may increase initial complexity, but MML does not optimise only the manufacturing invoice; it optimises the cost of providing lighting for fifteen years.

The same principle applies to body panels, interior components, electronic modules and, where structurally feasible, sections exposed to predictable damage. A roof designed to be replaced and industrially regenerated after severe hail may be more valuable than a theoretically cheaper structure requiring extensive bespoke bodywork.

The cheapest component at the factory gate is not necessarily the cheapest component in the lifecycle. When the lifecycle system remains exposed to every future repair, access time also becomes an engineering cost. A component that is inexpensive to manufacture but requires extensive dismantling each time it fails may be expensive over fifteen years. Modularity is no longer merely convenient for the customer; it becomes a financial property of the asset.

3.7 Modularity is not the objective

Modularity is not a free property. Every boundary requires interfaces, physical access, tolerances, protection, software compatibility, validation, supplier coordination and a stock of parts that may never be used. It can add mass, volume, cost and new points of failure. A product may also remain theoretically upgradeable long after the organisations capable of producing compatible modules have disappeared.

Project Ara provides a useful warning. Developed first within Motorola Mobility’s Advanced Technology and Projects group, then continued by Google in collaboration with the Phonebloks community, it proposed a smartphone assembled around a frame with interchangeable functional modules. The ambition extended beyond repair: users would be able to configure and upgrade much of the product through an open hardware ecosystem. The project generated prototypes and a developer programme but did not reach the commercial market.⁶

Its history does not demonstrate that modularity fails. It demonstrates that maximum modularity can require a new product architecture, interface standard, supplier ecosystem and customer behaviour to become viable at the same time. The interface overhead is paid immediately, while the future modules and transactions expected to justify it may never appear.

Fairphone represents a narrower approach. Its modular architecture concentrates on accessible repair and the replacement of selected parts, including batteries, displays and cameras, rather than treating every function as a permanently open market for consumer reconfiguration.⁷ This distinction matters to MML.

MML does not require a car whose owner can rearrange arbitrary components. It requires selective lifecycle modularity under controlled engineering conditions. A lamp, body section, battery subsystem or electronic unit should be separated only when its expected repair, reuse, remanufacturing or recovery benefit exceeds the additional cost of interfaces, mass, validation, inventory and technological obsolescence.

A modular boundary is justified only when its expected lifecycle benefit exceeds its complete lifecycle cost.

The test is stricter for a road vehicle than for consumer electronics. Systems, components and separate technical units may be subject to type approval, while parts capable of impairing safety or environmental performance can require specific authorisation.⁸ Functional interchangeability therefore cannot mean unrestricted interchangeability.

Nor should MML assume that every recovered module will find a buyer. A component can retain value by avoiding a future purchase within the fleet, by supplying parts for remanufacturing or, finally, through its recoverable material. These forms of technical and material value must be measured rather than invoked to justify modularity after the fact.

The objective is not to divide the vehicle into the greatest possible number of replaceable parts. It is to place each boundary where it preserves more safe productive value than it consumes.

3.8 Designed to be used

Boundaries determine what can be replaced; use determines what will need to be. Everyday use leaves evidence. Stone chips, a scratched door, a marked luggage compartment or a worn seat bolster do not have the same meaning as structural corrosion, neglected maintenance or a defective safety system. Treating them as one category confuses appearance, stewardship and technical condition.

A lifecycle standard should distinguish three states:

• A safety defect requires intervention.
• A maintenance shortfall requires correction and may indicate neglect.
• Cosmetic evidence of normal use may be cleaned, mitigated, locally repaired or accepted.

Patina is not the same as neglect. Mileage is not itself a defect. A well-maintained high-mileage vehicle can remain more valuable as mobility than a younger vehicle with a poor technical history.

This distinction changes design. Paint systems, exposed body sections, interior contact surfaces and frequently damaged trim can be selected for durability, local repair or economical replacement. Refurbishment does not need to restore every vehicle to showroom condition. It needs to return the asset to a defined, safe and dignified condition appropriate to its next mobility cycle.

Normal use should therefore be priced into the Mobility Rate, the fixed charge defined in Part 2, from the beginning. It should not reappear at contract end as an arbitrary penalty for having used the product for its intended purpose.

3.9 Repairability has a boundary

Repairability is desirable until it conflicts with safety or destroys more value than it preserves. A vehicle structure should be designed so that statistically common accidents preferentially damage sacrificial or economically replaceable regions before loads reach structures that are unsafe or irrational to restore. The lifecycle objective is therefore not maximum repairability, but maximum preservation of safe productive value.

A severe collision may end the life of the vehicle without ending the life of its motors, electronics, battery modules, seats, doors or materials.

The system therefore needs two distinct failure boundaries. Vehicle retirement is reached when the asset can no longer provide mobility safely or economically. Material retirement is reached when a component can no longer be reused or remanufactured and only its material remains recoverable. Between them sits a large territory of reuse and remanufacturing, and most of the value MML is trying to preserve lives there. Part 4 gives that territory its accounting.

3.10 The Ship of Theseus problem

Repairability eventually creates another question: how much of the original vehicle needs to remain?

Suppose a twelve-year-old electric vehicle receives a newer battery chemistry, updated computing hardware, replacement suspension components, refurbished interior and updated lighting.

Is it still the same automobile? Legally, perhaps it is; economically, the question is less important than whether the transformation consumed fewer resources and less capital than producing an equivalent new vehicle.

This creates an important boundary for MML: longevity cannot become an ideology. Sometimes replacement will be better, and the system must be capable of saying so.

Deciding when that moment has arrived requires a way to describe what the asset is still worth in each of the states it can occupy. That is the subject of the next chapter.

Footnotes

1. Suzuki Motor Corporation, Suzuki unveils VITARA at the 2014 Paris Mondial de l’Automobile, 3 October 2014; Suzuki Motor Corporation, Suzuki VITARA rolls off the line in Hungary, 5 March 2015; Suzuki Motor Corporation, Fourth-generation Vitara history, Vitara 30th Anniversary site, archived 21 July 2024 (the original page has since been removed), documenting the 2018 facelift and its preventive-safety changes; Suzuki Motor Corporation, Annual Report 2020, p. 17, recording the start of 48-volt mild-hybrid Vitara production in Hungary in December 2019. ↩

2. Suzuki Cars UK, Vitara, accessed 30 August 2026. Current specifications are evidence of the later marketed configuration, not of retrofit compatibility with earlier vehicles. ↩

3. Dušan Sabadka, Vieroslav Molnár and Gabriel Fedorko, “Shortening of Life Cycle and Complexity Impact on the Automotive Industry”, TEM Journal 8, no. 4 (November 2019): 1295–1301, documenting generation intervals of four to five years at Toyota and Honda, six years for the third to fifth Volkswagen Golf, and longer intervals at Ford, and noting that facelifts prolong the cycle; Smart Eye, The Lifecycle of a Vehicle Model: From Production to Phase-Out, accessed 15 September 2026, describing a typical seven-year production run with a facelift around the third or fourth year. ↩

4. Regulation (EU) 2018/858, approval and market surveillance of motor vehicles, systems, components and separate technical units, particularly Articles 33–35 on amendments, revisions and extensions, and termination of validity of type-approvals. ↩

5. United Nations Economic Commission for Europe, UN Regulation No. 156: Software update and software update management system, establishing requirements for software-update management systems and vehicle types capable of receiving software updates; published in the EU as UN Regulation No 156 [2021/388], OJ L 82, 9 March 2021. ↩

6. Stephan Hankammer, Ruth Jiang, Robin Kleer and Martin Schymanietz, “Are modular and customizable smartphones the future, or doomed to fail? A case study on the introduction of sustainable consumer electronics”, CIRP Journal of Manufacturing Science and Technology, vol. 23, 2018, pp. 146–155; Phonebloks, project chronology. ↩

7. Fairphone, Long-Lasting Design. Fairphone describes modularity as a means of making selected repairs and upgrades accessible and extending product life. ↩

8. Regulation (EU) 2018/858, approval and market surveillance of motor vehicles, systems, components and separate technical units, particularly Article 29 on approvals of systems, components and separate technical units and Article 55 on parts or equipment that may pose a serious risk to essential systems. ↩