Jimmylee1000

I personally consider that lifetime on a Toyota product is around 500k miles. As for your theory would probably be great if the car ran 30mph constantly, but the stop and go creates gear lash etc. It also depends on the specs on the equipment, as some is specked to fail earlier (cheaper) and other products can run for a very long time do to the specs on the metals, tolerances, etc. Cars do not live in an ideal environment, and consequently will have failure do to outside environments. Pot holes, rough roads, dirty conditions, slow and stop and go situations (commutes) all contribute to wear and tear. I can guarantee cars are generally not made to last forever, yes they are better than yesteryear, but still have issues with these conditions. I know of some old Mercedes engines that have gone 500k to 1 million miles with very few failures, but those generally were diesels.

Even at 500,000 miles (insanely high, even for a Toyota), it's still only about 2 years equivalent operating time. Trust me when I tell you that we had very severe services in the oil refinery where bearings, seals, belts, sheaves, and other things went much longer than that with no problem. My point is this: You said there is no such thing as lifetime on anything. But it is absolutely possible, and credible, to have some components last the lifetime of the car with zero maintenance. So when they tell me that a bearing or fluid doesn't need changed, I believe them. The operating time is low, and the severity of service is nothing compared to that in an oil refinery.

Lenore, lifetime parts and lubrication certainly do exist. If you consider the life a car to be 300,000 miles, and you assume an average speed of 30 MPH over the life of the car, that's only 10,000 operating hours. That's 416 operating days. That's only 1.15 years. I worked an an engineer in a refinery where we ran everything 24/7. I can assure you we had belts, chains, bearings, that EASILY ran 1.15 years with zero attention. We had things run five times that with zero maintenance.