The life expectancy of a component of a vehicle that is being observed is predicted. A processing unit is fed with status data of components of selected vehicles. Moreover, the processing unit is fed with an operating parameter for each of the components of the selected vehicles. The operating parameter influences the status data of the respective component. The processing unit determines a function between the operating parameter and the status data for each of the selected components. One function, which fits best for the component of the observed vehicle, is selected by an algorithm. The processing unit is fed with an operating parameter of the component of the observed vehicle. The processing unit predicts the life expectancy of the component of the observed vehicle using the selected function and the operating parameter of the component of the observed vehicle.