Gas Charged Lift Supports

Why do they use gas charged lift supports on vehicles instead of springs? The gas charged supports wear out, so a spring seams a more reliable choice.

Reliability is less of a concern in these applications than ease of design and manufacture and safety. For hood, trunk, and liftgate applications springs a spring hinge that would provide a slow opening and closing and take up minimal space would require a lot of engineering and might not be usable across multiple models. Also, the springs and linkages have pinch points that can cause injury.

-Rod