One of the things we would love to see in a paradigm shift is in terms of your question of how long do appliances last. It varies, depending on the typical appliances. You gave the refrigerator as an example but you can expect your refrigerator to last somewhere between 10 and 15 years before it is likely to reach the end of its life.
In doing that changeover of waiting for 10 to 15 years, in some cases that's just the average range, but you can get a refrigerator that can last 20 years. The question then becomes why do you want to have a 20-year-old refrigerator? It's a gas guzzler. It's the same sort of issue you would have with a vehicle. A 20-year-old vehicle is not going to be as energy efficient as a new one. We still see that now; households wait until their appliances fail before they do a replacement. You will see replacements when people are moving into a new home, and then, yes, they will tend to gravitate toward new appliances, but if they stay in the same home for the long term, people wait until their appliance dies and then they replace it as opposed to thinking that now maybe is the time to replace a 12-year-old refrigerator with a more efficient refrigerator.
