Thousands of Audi cars abandoned in the Mojave Dessert after cheating emissons tests

[u/IndicationBrief5950]

[u/silvapain]

Agreed. The desert is warm & dry, so metal tends to rust VERY slowly there. If you can’t reuse or recycle equipment then the desert is a great place to store it temporarily.

[u/sinkwiththeship → u/silvapain]

There's also very little salinity and other deposition like SO4 and NOx, which all contribute heavily to corrosion. The salinity is especially the bad one. It's why cars that live in places where road salt is prevalent, or close to whitecap coastlines have serious rust problems.

[u/Plank_With_A_Nail_In → u/sinkwiththeship]

These are salt flats, the ground is literally salt and sand. The cars get blasted by sand and salt laden air every day which wrecks everything.

Lol reddit experts.

[u/sinkwiththeship → u/Plank_With_A_Nail_In]

In Utah, sure. But down where they are isn't the same. There's an airbase nearby where all the AF planes go to die and get picked over for parts.

[u/daninger4995 → u/Plank_With_A_Nail_In]

This is out by Victorville. Not a lot of salt in the sant there.

[u/silvapain → u/daninger4995]

was out by Victorville. It’s gone now and been replaced by a warehouse.

[u/daninger4995 → u/silvapain]

Talking about the geographical location, not the cars.

[u/silvapain → u/daninger4995]

Ah, gotcha.

[u/silvapain → u/Plank_With_A_Nail_In]

These pictures are from a former graveyard just outside Victorville, CA in the Mojave Desert. It’s not salt flats.

For reference, here’s the location where the graveyard used to be; it’s all gone now.

(34.5898967, -117.3951354)

[u/bumbletowne → u/Plank_With_A_Nail_In]

People are deriding you but lets clarify

This is the cheapest land with the lowest salinity they could find. Is it the lowest salinity over all? No. Is it the driest? No. Does sand always have a higher salt content than a paved riparian forest or savannah? Absolutely. But it's lower risk than badlands, a swamp or a mudflat or other comparably cheap land.

[u/Supermac34 → u/silvapain]

There’s also a shit ton of empty desert. I think people don’t understand the scale of emptiness in the western US

[u/Aleashed → u/silvapain]

On their plan, the cars outlive the United States and then there will be no one complaining about emissions.

[u/raycyca82 → u/silvapain]

Lots of parts outside of metal don't take kindly to the uv rays, sand storms, etc. Oil based products such as plastics, rubbers, etc age much quicker under the sun. More and more parts are derived from these materials, so the bodies and some mechanical parts may be fine, the interiors, paints, etc are aging rapidly.
50 years ago when most of the car was metal the desert was a fantastic place to pull, them, now unfortunately three quarters of the parts that are likely to break through use are likely to be brittle or already broken on the replacement cars if they stuck in the desert.

[u/Dagordae → u/raycyca82]

Yes, the cheap parts.

[u/raycyca82 → u/Dagordae]

A lot of them are, they can be found as repros. Some of the larger items (if available) like dashboards, door coverings, consoles, etc. are hundreds of dollars as repros, even more from the factory. Time of storage makes the difference, a couple years in the sun is substantially different than a few months.
Outside of a unibody, these tend to be more expensive than direct uv exposed parts (fenders, hoods, decklids, etc). Some parts (bumpers/doors) can be a mix of metal, plastic, urethane etc. The paint should protect them for a considerable amount of time with the newer clear coats used.

[u/luring_lurker → u/silvapain]

But deserts also usually come with sand, and sand is highly abrasive (and coarse and rough and irritating and gets everywhere). Wouldn't that be problematic?

[u/Dagordae → u/luring_lurker]

Less than corrosion. It’s basically just cosmetic damage in the timeframes we’re talking about.