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Comment by opencl | Hacker News Reader

I see lots of 15+ year old cars around, my car is over 20 years old and still works fine. About 25% of vehicles used in the US today are at least 15 years old. The drivetrains already very often outlast the body/frame falling apart from rust, at least in places that salt the roads during winter.

https://nhts.ornl.gov/vehicles

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Isn’t it before electronics heavily started to get into the cars ?

Of course, we can view the car as a single purpose ‘move from A to B’ device, but there’s other viewpoints where the car has a performance (speed, efficiency, handling assist, smoother engine management) profile, quality of life and security features (auto cruising, speed limit detection, tire pressure detection, auto braking etc)

All of these should have evolved enough in 10 years that you get significant benefits from an upgrade.

Cars have made pretty heavy use of electronics for around 30 years at this point. My mid-90s car has electronic fuel injection, computer controlled transmission, a dozen sensors in the engine bay, anti-lock brakes, keyless entry, power windows, motorized seats, heated seats, digital cabin thermostat, cruise control, etc. There's even a stereo.

Obviously new cars are in general an upgrade. Most people driving old cars do not do so because they want to, they do it because new cars are too expensive.

As someone experinced here, most pre OBD2 electronics are very often much easier to hack for performance applications. Obd2 started in 1996 in the usa. The extra sensors and data are not the issue, quite welcome actually. The issue is the opaqueness of the newer hardware.

Not to mention that they're easier to diagnose and fix. Having diagnostic data available to you was fantastic for me as a young car nerd with no experience.

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