The future of our current overly-complex automobiles?

In reply to andrave:

I remember as a mechanic installing AC on a hyundai accent at the dealer because it was an option...

To a certain extent this conversation has been going on for 40 years. First it was ‘This emissions crap is going to make cars too difficult to repair’ Then it was ‘This new-fangled fuel injection is going to make cars too difficult to repair’, then it was ‘This newfangled ABS is going to make cars too difficult to repair’. But each time they don’t prove to be as difficult as people thought and we’re still repairing them. Top end cars have crashed in value for decades because of the complexity. You have been able to pick up a 10 year old S class, Jag, 7 series etc. for peanuts for 30 years because of it.

The big jump has come with every module being on a CAN bus and needing to be read, diagnosed, purchased, installed, programed to make it work. That’s made it exponentially more expensive to fix. I do see this generation of cars pretty much vanishing, but as features get up integrated more reducing the # of modules and the technologies maturing, I think the long term reliability and fixability going up again.

I must admit my current C30 scares me long term. I bought it intending it to be a forever car, but if electrical gremlins do start hitting, it might find itself traded in, but don’t tell it that OK?

Get in to aviation.

General aviation is mostly still stuck in the 50's, planes are fantasticly simple.

Interesting perspectives thus far -- a lot of what you're seeing is accurate. 2nd, 3rd owners really up a tree when the expensive 'module' fails. But the market will work -- less expensive work arounds will be developed. Or a financial solution will occur (mechanical insurance -- you 'pay' for the repair through your insurance). Or there'll be a dearth of nice, refined drivetrains available to swap into something else.

Which is why my new cars will be as basic as I can find -- and I'll build everything else.

I'll add - I'm recently retired. And it's more than ironic that as I've finally gotten to a place where I can pretty much afford to buy whatever I want, I'm just not interested in these overly complex 'automobiles' any more.

Complex? Come check out my 1966 Cadillac. It's got an auto-temp HVAC system just like many modern cars - but it's all done with pneumatic tubes and actuators. I've never seen so many hoses in so many weird places - the door locks are pneumatic as well, I think. Heck, you had to maintain the clock on those cars.

Mechanics will adjust. My E39 BMW has a bad airbag module. A small specialist shop was able to diagnose it fairly easily and quickly. I can change it out, but they'll have to code it to the car. If I want, all the information is out there for me to do that myself using nothing more than a relatively inexpensive interface box and a laptop. I (happily) don't know how to adjust points or vacuum curves on a dizzy, but I can plug a laptop into my car. Add in the amount of support provided by the internet and we're in a good place.

I just don't think its all that hard. Is it expensive? Right now it is, but look at what a smart phone can read off a car right now. We're a very small step from that same phone being able to talk to, every system on the car. The fact that you can ask a car what's wrong and it will tell you (mostly) is mind boggling to me. Do home mechanics have some catching up to do? Sure, but I see it getting easier, not harder.

I agree with what you all are saying, but again what percentage of the car buying public, especially the luxury car buying public, would you consider to be home mechanics? Think of your family, friends, co-workers, neighbors, etc. Maybe one out of every twenty people in your life would be able to diagnose and repair a modern car, I'll bet. Certainly not enough people to sustain the secondary car buying market.

I ain't that old... 32...

But even I remember guys talking about how these fancy fuel injection systems will destroy cars and make them impossible to work on.... While tinkering on a carburetor.. .

I can't wait till these cars get old enough to be bought cheap... Somebody will hack them.. or have a work around.. and if nothing else there will be lots of them to pick up for nothing to play around with if they are really "unfixable"

There are to many "economy cars" running around these days which will outrun a stone stock 426 hemi for me to think about complaining...

I hope you're right and that 2006 Maserati Coupe I'm lusting after will cost a few thousand with an expensive broke CPU and active suspension. Swap in a MegaSquirt and some nice adjustable coilovers and have a better time with it...

Aeromoto wrote: I agree with what you all are saying, but again what percentage of the car buying public, especially the luxury car buying public, would you consider to be home mechanics? Think of your family, friends, co-workers, neighbors, etc. Maybe one out of every twenty people in your life would be able to diagnose and repair a modern car, I'll bet. Certainly not enough people to sustain the secondary car buying market.

This is where I see the middle class finally getting their hands on BMW's newest 785gLi car 6 years old with a broken kinuter module for that 10% of initial purchase price. They are only picking it up because they want the status of owning a Bimmer.

I also see this is where you will see even MORE brand specific repair shops that aren't the dealer. Joe and Tony's AutoFixIt on the corner isn't going to do more then change the oil or brake pads, maybe. Instead you will have to it up Klaus's German Haus to fix it in the next town over, as it is all they work on and it is cheaper then the dealer. Specifically, I know of a drag racer that owns or maybe just wrenches on German cars during the week, they don't advertise at ALL, turns AWAY work because they can't work on them all, and pulls in bank. All they do different then the dealer is to be cheaper and fix what the dealer won't.

ronholm wrote: I ain't that old... 32... But even I remember guys talking about how these fancy fuel injection systems will destroy cars and make them impossible to work on.... While tinkering on a carburetor.. . I can't wait till these cars get old enough to be bought cheap... Somebody will hack them.. or have a work around.. and if nothing else there will be lots of them to pick up for nothing to play around with if they are really "unfixable" There are to many "economy cars" running around these days which will outrun a stone stock 426 hemi for me to think about complaining...

You had a pretty awesome memory at 3-4 years old.

I said this was coming a few years back and used hybrid car batteries as an example. People told me I was overreacting and full of BS.

No-one is going to pay to replace a battery in a 10-year (or older) old car.

Cars that get this complex (I'm not only talking hybrids) are going to create more waste and pollution, not less, thanks to them being even more disposable than before.

I see the solution to the problem being some form of modular construction.

Here's your car, have a faulty powertrain? No problem, pull the retainer pins, undo a cannon plug and slide that faulty unit out. Here's your 10-year newer, less polluting, more efficient unit that slides into the same mounts as the old unit.

You could swap out driver compartments, etc, just make everything modular and able to be repaired on it's own as separate components that will interchange with any other vehicle.

It's time to homogenize transportation. The average idiot doesn't care how boring or ugly their transportation appliance is, might as well make them all the same.

Aeromoto wrote: I agree with what you all are saying, but again what percentage of the car buying public, especially the luxury car buying public, would you consider to be home mechanics? Think of your family, friends, co-workers, neighbors, etc. Maybe one out of every twenty people in your life would be able to diagnose and repair a modern car, I'll bet. Certainly not enough people to sustain the secondary car buying market.

Press rewind and go back 20 years. Do you really think that more than 5% of the population could really diagnose and repair a 1990's car? How about a 1950's? Probably not, although I suspect there were more people who knew how to set points because they HAD to. But most people still took them to garages.

I think you're overstating the mechanical aptitude and interest of the general public. Of course, it was better in the good old days...

In reply to Trans_Maro:

People are already paying to replace the batteries on old hybrids for less than 1/2 the $7k scare price everyone screamed when hybrids came out. If ponying up the full bill isn't up you alley you can buy a battery out of a newer wreck for even less. If that is too much of a price hit you can even prolong the life of your battery by individually charging cells to balance the voltages and restore performance. Heck, you can even lego build a new pack from good cells from other peoples "bad" battery packs if you are even a slightly competent DIY'er. New is scary, but humans are badass so we adapt.

4cylndrfury wrote:

MrJoshua wrote: The future will definitely be interesting. Consumers are already deep into decoding the electronics of most vehicles so that shouldn't be that much of an issue. The big factors are labor and parts prices. The interesting thing is electronics "modules" are really expensive but the parts inside that die are dirt cheap. People are already re-soldering boards, re-lighting dead led instrument panels, and refurbing highly expensive components with a little labor and very little cash. When a component is $800 there is more of a market for the indie DIY type shop that is willing to wield a soldering iron.

This... Similar scenario...My cars oem stereo has only a cd player, and radio option for inputs. An aftermarket stereo of similar quality (bose) with an aux-in port would be at least a couple of C-notes, if not more. An aux-in port w/pigtail is $5 from Radio shack. Scratch away the copper on the printed board, solder 3 wires, and you now have a fully functional, oem looking stereo with functionality that should cost hundreds if you went to the aftermarket. Now, apply this to electronically controlled direct injection modules, or transmission control units, and you could achieve similar results for pennies. Once a warranty is void, its void - it doesnt matter how much you fiddle with the zeros and ones that control your car.

a bit off-topic because it wasn't really your point...

but I have a $79 Kenwood stereo in my rallycross beater that has CD/MP3/aux ports/iPod connector, and it sounds easily as good as any OEM stero (and probably better than the OEM audio on either my 2009 Subaru or 2008 4Runner - both of which have been replaced)

again, not your point. Just wanted to point out that you can pick up a decent-sounding stereo with features you want for under $100 in most cases.

Ranger50 wrote: This is where I see the middle class finally getting their hands on BMW's newest 785gLi car

please....you don't think bmw will actually start shortening its car names to something so simple as "785gLi" a decade from now.

More like "ZenoX-drive4 785gCSLi BlueTec9"

Long as people keep buying mobile super-computers they'll keep making them. It's stupid. I don't know why we don't, as a society, demand simple, reliable, safe, inexpensive cars. But we don't. We do a lot of stupid things and there are plenty of people more than happy to relieve us of our money.

MrJoshua wrote: Heck, you can even lego build a new pack from good cells from other peoples "bad" battery packs if you are even a slightly competent DIY'er.

There's a guy here in Colorado who does this as a business. I was talking to a Prius fan about it. I can't remember the details, but it was really reasonably priced.

I think I fear more about what happens to the automotive aftermarket that makes up our hobby. Most of the technology is driven by regulations, and of course it adds to the expense and complexity of the cars.

The emissions requirements mean that the price of R&D for any aftermarket parts goes up (CARB approval for cars in Cal, where I believe most of the modding still occurs - population, culture, etc...), never mind making the latest doo-dad compatible with the software that runs your car.

The younger crowd is more tech savy, but the younger crowd generally has less money than the older crowd, so I would think on average there are fewer people modding their cars.

I think Hot Rodding and "GRMing" cars will become an ever smaller niche market, a lot like Street Rodding.

On this board, it's probably as much or more about the driving than the modding ($20XX notwithstanding), so the effect might be less noticeable here, but I would have to think that per capita far fewer young people are entering the "car hobby".

I think there are a lot less "affordable" sporty cars around these days too. Back in the day you had Camaros Mustangs, Celicas, Z-cars, MR2s, Conquest/Starions, RX7s, GTIs, Fiat Spyders, MX6s, Probes, and probably a few more I can't remember.

Now a hot rod Mustang or Camaro is $40K. Small and sporty? The Miata is still around, FRS came out, so that's good. A new GTI is $30K. Soltice/Sky came and went, but not a lot else that I can think of. Maybe it's just late for me. Or I'm getting old. Or both.

I bought my first new car in 1989 for $12,000- Mustang LX 5.0 hatch. The payments to Ford Motor Credit were $160 per month, and when the warranty was up, you could damn near fix anything with a pair of vice grips and a hammer.

fast_eddie_72 wrote: Long as people keep buying mobile super-computers they'll keep making them. It's stupid. I don't know why we don't, as a society, demand simple, reliable, safe, inexpensive cars. But we don't. We do a lot of stupid things and there are plenty of people more than happy to relieve us of our money.

are you kidding.. your average car has MORE computing power and is more complex than your average house. I know mine is.

My car may be more luxurious too.. the car has leather seating.. my place doesn't

i'm not a fan of the way they are just throwing technology at new cars. the low end cars from the late 90's still weren't too bad, but they really started ramping up the amount of tech they started finding ways to wedge into even low end cars in the early '00's. everything's got a damn module these days- lights, windows, door locks, dome light, etc, which is all stuff that made it a half a century with simple switches and a few feet of wire..

high end cars have always kind of sucked- someone earlier pointed out that they had a mid 60's Caddy with all sorts of failure prone gizmos in it, and i can confirm from my experience with one that a 66 Lincoln also had a lot of high tech stuff loaded into it that didn't work too well when the car was 25 years old. and that is a trend that they've always kept up with the high end models- i had a 78 Cadillac with multiport fuel injection that i hoped i never had to try to find parts for in the mid 90's and another 78 Caddy El Dorado that liked to randomly kill alternators and drain batteries dead for seemingly no reason that was likely linked to one of the things that they put into it to make it so damn "Caddylicious". i won't even get into the demons that i had to chase out of a 97 Olds Aurora that a friend had a couple of years ago or the way the cruise control and climate control systems would decide to act up in weird ways in an otherwise perfect 94 Chrysler LHS that i had a few years back. or how about the power sliding rear doors on my mom's '08 Chevy Uplander van that decide that they want to stay open from time to time unless you press the proper sequence of buttons on the remote, and no, you can't just pull the door shut- you have to let the motors do the work. i just know that one door is going to stay open on her when she is 30 miles from home when it's 20 below zero and she's got my nieces with her.

Aeromoto wrote: I agree with what you all are saying, but again what percentage of the car buying public, especially the luxury car buying public, would you consider to be home mechanics? Think of your family, friends, co-workers, neighbors, etc. Maybe one out of every twenty people in your life would be able to diagnose and repair a modern car, I'll bet. Certainly not enough people to sustain the secondary car buying market.

One in twenty? Honestly I'd be surprised if it's one in two hundred if you think about it.

Aeromoto wrote: I bought my first new car in 1989 for $12,000- Mustang LX 5.0 hatch. The payments to Ford Motor Credit were $160 per month, and when the warranty was up, you could damn near fix anything with a pair of vice grips and a hammer.

Yes but in the 80's people were complaining that this new efi crap was going to be too complicated to fix, yet it turned out to be easy in the long run.