Without reading the article, I’m betting that they just degrade in performance over time and that the warranty is the company’s bet of a certain amount of performance over those initial 30 years, which is pretty normal. A lot of products outlast their warranty by a good chunk of time if the manufacturing isn’t shoddy and they’re cared for properly.

There’s no reason for this not to be the case everywhere, especially since manufacturing these HAS to be cheaper than ranching.