Hacker News Reader

Comment by Merrill | Hacker News Reader

Which auto maker's electronics are likely to be reliable for the 25-year nominal life of the vehicle (US fleet average age is 11.8 years and rising)?

And which will have spare parts available for that long?

I'm thinking about buying a new car, but I'm worried.

View on HN

My family’s ownership outcomes strongly suggest getting a Toyota. I’m driving my Dad’s old 2001 Tundra pickup with 350k miles on the same engine. I was amazed when I bought it from him how every switch still worked, the original AC still blew cold. This is not my normal experience buying used cars from other manufacturers. Usually at about 150k miles they turn into a clown car of various systems failing. Someone put thought into each component on the truck and how it would age.

Toyota has been known for their reliability for a long time now. I can attest that with my Lexus, it's 13 years old now and in the 7 years that I have owned it, it has had zero defects. Last year it even got recalled (12 years after production) because the fuel filter might not have been installed correctly in the factory, so they replaced it for free.

That said: I still do every scheduled maintenance, which helps tremendously. The main problem with older vehicles is that people stop following the recommended services as the car gets older. Which is of course the opposite of what you should do with an old car.

> That said: I still do every scheduled maintenance, which helps tremendously. The main problem with older vehicles is that people stop following the recommended services as the car gets older. Which is of course the opposite of what you should do with an old car.

exactly this. I've been driving my Toyota for 15 years, never had a problem with it. But I still, to this day, have it maintained. The cost of that maintenance is pennies compared to purchasing a new car. If you can afford it, it's foolish not to.

> Last year it even got recalled (12 years after production)

Toyota is great about that. There was something in the steering column that needed replaced on my '95 T100 and and 15 years later they sent a notice offering to fix it for free. I never did get it replaced, it was a 'we gotta keep the vehicle for a couple of days' and we'd been driving it since it was brand new without issue so I decided to keep on since the risk seemed incredibly minimal.

>> Last year it even got recalled (12 years after production)

>Toyota is great about that.

after you sue them https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-01/toyota-faces-class-ac... https://www.caradvice.com.au/780759/class-action-filed-over-... https://autoweek.com/article/recalls/toyota-will-settle-truc...

Find me a vehicle manufacturer currently in business that hasn't been sued and sells more than 100,000 cars a year.

I see the .au domains and while I don't know how stuff is in Australia, the United States it looks like more than 10,000 class action lawsuits are filed a year [1]. Hell I just got an email about one this weekend where apparently Audible was sued for not making it more clear that credits expired if you didn't use them... I mean, as long as I can remember (and I've been a member over a decade) Audible has explicitly stated that you can only accumulate so many unused credits and that if you cancel any outstanding ones are nullified. Lawyers make BANK if they win a class action.

So did they get sued and then issue a recall, yes it looks that way but in the case of my recall it was voluntary and involved no lawsuit that I know of. They found some defect that happened under extremely specific (and unrealistic for 99.99% of drivers) conditions and issued a voluntary recall. When I got the notice the Truck was 15 or even 16 years old and we hadn't had it at a dealership in 2 address (I'd never had it at a dealership under my name) yet they found me to tell me and then sent the notice every few months for a couple of years until I notified them I no longer owned the vehicle per the instructions in the mailings.

[1] https://gettingthedealthrough.com/area/82/jurisdiction/23/cl...

Generally speaking Toyota is conservative in terms of rolling out new technologies and sticks with what's proven. For example the base Camry has a 2.5L engine and 8 speed auto transmission and the base Accord a 1.5 turbo and 10 speed auto. Toyota also goes more in depth terms of QA and testing on individual parts than others.

From an article on the Toyota - BMW Supra/M4 collaboration,

"...BMW couldn’t believe how extensive some of our quality and efficiency studies were as parts came into shape one by one. We would take every bit down to a fastener or rivet, and put it through our stringent quality control and a dozen other testing, we’d ship thousands of parts back to Japan for analysis. That is normal to us."

http://club4ag.com/chief-engineer-tetsuya-tada-reveals-the-a...

You know how rigorous it is when even the Germans are surprised.

For performance/handling yes, for reliability not so much.

This has been my experience with German cars (Mercedes, BMW) precisely : They are great to drive, but terrible to own.

> From an article on the Toyota - BMW Supra/M4 collaboration

I think you mean Z4

That article seems to be more balanced shall we say, in terms of what was normal for which team. Toyota's engineering seems to be closer to production while BMW's seems to be closer to design.

* I almost started to think if they had an infinite budget funding to the task of design. *

And it seemed like the opinion from Toyota was that Toyota has a body style in mind at first but BMW lets the body style be influenced its contents.

BMW's fundamental difference in approach was that they wanted to design a package, and from there they would naturally evolve a shape and size of the body from that packaging, a functionally oriented goal. ... Our company (Toyota) with my tenure and experience, the focus was always design elements being the priority. We would first spend a lot of time on the shape and appeal of the car from visual perspective ...

But let the article speak for itself. I kept my quotes short.

It might of changed directions recently. 2020 BMW 2 Series is a series of cut&paste design cues from 2019 Toyota Supra.

When I was in HS I had a friend whose family had this old beat up orange smallbed truck from the 70's (this was mid 90's). That thing was beat all to hell, ugly as sin. It was used as a truck.

But you know what? That damned thing ran like a beauty. It literally ran until their son started driving it and wrecked it.

I was impressed enough with it, that when it was time for me to purchase a vehicle, I went with Toyota. 15 years later and that thing has never left me on the side of the road, not even once (I do keep up maintenance on it). I'm considering purchasing another vehicle because it's time to get something larger, and when I do it will most likely be Toyota.

I've seen so many people say that at 200k miles Toyota is just getting warmed up, and there's some truth to it. You obviously have to keep up with maintenance on the vehicle, but if you do I can guarantee it will treat you right. And I'm not saying other manufacturers are any worse, but I am saying Toyota is a great vehicle to buy.

I was driving a '67 C10 in 2003-2004 and it still ran perfect. It needed a frame off restoration as the bed was severely damaged from decades of use as a farm truck and removing the bed alone was more work than I wanted to do (at least a 4 man job) so I ended up selling it for about 2 grand more than I had bought it for.

Then I took my father's '95 Toyota t100 from my mother when she got a new vehicle, drove it until 2013 and gave it to my half brother. It has 130k or so when I gave it to him and aside from having a really squeaky bed was in great shape, the only remotely major work I'd had to do was replace the fuel pump bracket due to rust which involved dropping the gas tank (2 man job). The ball joints and pitmans needed replaced in the next 10k miles probably but that's just a special tool rental and an afternoon sitting on the ground.

Then take my 2013 impala... I've got 68k miles on it now. I've had a wire harness malfunction which would randomly trigger ABS and traction control while you were driving, I've had to replace the evap sensor THREE TIMES and it is now throwing codes again, the factory rotors have already had to be replaced due to severe rust, any time humidity gets above 70% or so it throws another engine code because of more fuel/emissions sensors.... pinches bridge of nose

> Then take my 2013 impala... [...] I've had a wire harness malfunction which would randomly trigger ABS and traction control while you were driving

I had that exact same problem in a 2002 Buick. I can't believe GM hadn't fixed that yet.

Sounds about right, the evap sensor issue I keep having seems to span about 15 years of cars and a LOT of models. What really chapped my ass was that 'wiring isn't covered under warranty' um hi, your stupid wiring keeps triggering ABS and traction control, that's dangerous.

15 years does indeed sound like typical GM timeframe for a fix, as evidenced by Northstar disaster.

The other day I was visiting my sister and she asked me to scan the codes on her 2014 Silverado.

When I put the key in the ignition position for on (without starting it) so I could read the codes, it complained that the battery was low, and to start the truck soon.

Oddly enough, my dad's 2001 Silverado always had the same problem (just a red battery light back then), 2 years of ownership so far and it's battery is still fine, same warning right before you start it that goes away once it's on.

When I told this to her she told me her old Jimmy did the same thing.

The code her truck was throwing was coincidentally the same code as my dad's 2001 truck, about the evap canister.

I was flabbergasted, 13 years age difference and this truck was no different.

UK Top Gear tried to destroy a hilux a few years back. They left it in the sea, set it on top of a tower block as it was blown up, and a few other things I cant remember. It still ran (to a degree) when they gave up and put it on display in their studio.

A friend of mine used to tell a story of a Mercedes Benz car he knew from the German embassy in Cairo. When they first went there, it was their car. It had a crack on the engine head that leaked a little bit of oil, just enough to make the crack obvious.

When they went back, the car was still there. Still being used day in, day out, for 10 years. It still had the crack on the engine.

It highly depends on which Toyota you pick.

RAV4 for instance is plagued with faults while my 2013 Avensis ran quite ok the first 90000 kilometres I drove it before getting a tesla.

It did have to change brakes, a spring in one of the keys failed and the open/close window button on the passenger side broke. It also rusted under the chrome strips..

But compared to other cars I think it did quite well :)

Certain Tundra, Tacoma, and Sequoia frames have rust issues so bad, Toyota settled for billions of dollars.

https://autoweek.com/article/recalls/toyota-will-settle-truc...

Happened to my uncle and toyota put a brand new frame on a 10 year old truck for free.

Our '91 Tacoma (simply called SR5 back then) made it well past 200k miles and only stopped then because it got caught in a garage fire a couple years ago and melted. Loved that rig

There are plenty of 90s era car electronics that are going fine. The sensors are going to be maintenance items after 20 years, but there's no reason to think the solid state components won't normally last 25+ years.

Spare (electronic) parts shouldn't be an issue with major brands. I've seen the same sensor used on a dozen models from several manufactures produced over 10+ years. As Takata exposed, there aren't that many parts suppliers around the globe, so a lot of commodity components are shared across the industry.

For long-term part replacement, I'd be far more concerned with construction techniques like plasma-transferred wire arc sprays used for creating cylinder linings. This technique cannot be replicated outside of the factory, thus, they kind of make engine blocks disposable (they can be sleeved, but they won't perform the same and will require different piston heads).

> but there's no reason to think the solid state components won't normally last 25+ years.

Except this article is specifically about solid state components failing in a much shorter timeframe.

Except most cars don't rewrite their flash every few seconds.

Most modules with flash in 'em are programmed once at the manufacturer, reflashed once or twice during assembly, maybe reflashed once more at the dealer before delivery, and that's it. Maybe again post-sale if there's a recall or TSB or something that can be fixed in software.

Flash quite happily lasts 25+ years if you don't abuse it far beyond any flash manufacturer's wearout specs. Go figure!

Airbag control modules do constantly write data. The last 5 seconds or so of sensor and input data is recorded for crash investigations.

is this actually written to flash?

concievably a big capacitor or watch battery could keep a 4 or 8k RAM going for quite a long time.

It's got to survive a wreck, so I suspect power reliant memory is out.

If you look at airbag module teardowns there is a giant capacitor, but this is used to fire airbags in the event the vehicle's power system is rendered inoperable prior to deployment.

Flash isn't the only game in town. I wouldn't be surprised if airbags use FRAM - capable of more than 1 trillion write cycles

thanks - learning things :)

Most manufacturers’ datasheets specify 20 or less years of data retention (even when powered on). This might seem like random sufficiently large number, but there really are devices made in mid-90’s (notably early FastEthernet cards) that do not work because they lost contents of their configuration EEPROMs.

Telsa having trouble building reliable cars is not evidence of an industry-wide issue. There are tens of millions of cars on the road with decades old solid state components that are in perfect operation.

"tens of millions" and "in perfect operation" doesn't quite jive with me but the numbers are mostly there.

For Toyota ~57 million vehicles from '02-'09 https://www.toyota-global.com/company/history_of_toyota/75ye...

For Honda ~23 million from '02-09 https://www.statista.com/statistics/267276/worldwide-automob...

Volkswagen group looked to be in between the two.

Didn't look for Ford or GM.

There were 16 million new vehicles are sold last year in the US and there's 260 million registered vehicles on the road with a median age of nearly 12 years old.

To say that there's "tens of millions" of perfectly operational cars on the road in the US is really an understatement.

If you have a used audi and the mechanic comes back and tells you its the wiring harness, thats probably it for the car. Unless you like spending 3k to fix a 4k car.

Why is a wiring harness so expensive?

EEC-IV and EEC-V (Ford) ECUs haven't yet found the "late" stage of the bathtub curve and they're 15-35yo give or take. I'm not familiar with other brands of ECU but I suspect that they tend to be similar. If you look at all brands there's probably some that don't last because they were subject to the capacitor plague but they're clearly so few and far between that no brand has developed a reputation for ECUs crapping out. I wouldn't personally be worried about electronics failures. Physical failures of the electronic systems are far more likely.

Because this is a decently upscale crowd on HN everyone is going to tell you Toyota/Honda. I'm not going to write the mini-novel it takes to explain why but it suffices to say that is one filter bubble's opinion and other bubbles will have other opinions. As someone who has fairly extensive experience with vehicles that most here would consider far beyond end of life I assure you the badge on the grill matters far far less than what you use the vehicle for and how you treat it. Anything will "last" 25yr if you're willing to baby it there, put a bunch of money into it or just deal with it having all sorts of NVH issues in years 20-25. Trying to predict what vehicle and configuration will last 25yr with the least work (the unstated assumption in these discussions) is a complete and total fools errand because the equation is dominated by variables outside, or mostly outside your control.

Depends. Electronics manufactures won't promise any CPU will be available for that long (Odds are someone reading this should be thinking I'm partially responsible for that policy in my company). When spare parts are not going to be made the companies will try to predict how many will be needed in the future and order that many. This will be your biggest limit: you need a part there is a good chance the part is failing more often than expected and so the manufacture is out of stock and they cannot get more. (or sometimes they can, at a cost of $1000 each, minimum order 10,000 - the manufactures want to sell the new shiny replacement even though it isn't compatible)

Even if the above isn't an issue, storing electronics not on a circuit board is not easy, but I'm probably not supposed to talk about those issues. (You can research them)

Prius's routinely get to 300-400,000 miles. The used market is full of 10+ year old Priuses with 200k+. You may have to replace a transaxle and hybrid battery, but they are $1k each. Part of it is Toyota, part of it is the Atkinson cycle engine.

>hybrid battery

This isn't a trivial cost

No, it's not, but all cars require maintenance and you should know what they are an amortize them over the time you expect to have a car. For the added car life usage you should get on either Prius component, it is a bargain.

its ~$1K, or less if its just one faulty module https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3RCdrh666w

I don't know how much it actually costs, but taking the numbers here at face value, $1000 over 200,000 miles is half a penny a mile - that is clearly trivial compared to running costs of any car. One way to look at it, is if you assume $3/gallon gas and 50 mpg, then the cost of the battery is equivalent to reducing the gas mileage to 46 mpg, all else being equal.

Sure it makes sense amortized, but it's the equivalent of buying a gas engine that needs a rebuild.

It's a significant up front cost to consider against a purchase price.

Well, again, if the figures are roughly accurate, no it isn't. There is no way you're getting a new engine for $1000. Even if the price is understated, it should be simpler to install than a new engine.

That's why I said rebuild, not new.

When the alternator in my 1983 Mercedes 300D quit, I started the car off a jump and drove it dead-electric to the store for a replacement part.

I believe the only semiconductors in the car are in the timing circuits for indicators and wipers, the tach and fuel gauge amps, and the radio.

Past results do not guarantee future performance: no new cars are this simple.

1983 Mercedes Diesel has electronic fuel injection and ABS.

ABS yes, but it’s a Bosch mechanical pump. There’s a reason for the manual stop lever on it! There is an “electronic diesel system” that feeds into the ALDA system, but the car will run without ALDA. I don’t think the 300D had EDS though.

If there is ever a nuclear apocalypse, the giant mutant cockroaches that survive will be driving around in style in 80’s diesel Mercs.

Up until around 89 (I think) you could have even tow started it! The instructions are even in the manual. They are incredible machines.

I once drove my '76 300D for more than a week with no electricity whatsoever. No generator, no battery. Hill started it or borrowed a fresh battery when I needed to start it and let it run until I was done with it.

Electricity was strictly optional on those cars.

My Volvo S60 is getting 20 years in 3 month. Many premium cars from the 1990s are getting to the 30 year mark, which will mean they are getting a historic car badge. Most of them still work. Only some with failed sealings need replacements.

I have a 2005 Accord which has been quite reliable, but it is an LX and doesn't have much of an infotainment system. I'm worried about repair of things like the video cameras, LCD screens, and infotainment systems that are in the new cars once a decade or more has passed. Cars are a pretty hostile environment for those systems.

Don't forget speakers!

Old cars with four or six speakers can have all their speakers replaced with off-the-shelf models pretty easily, but I expect replacing all 15 speakers in a Model 3 in a dozen years to be fairly nightmarish.

Comparison of some old car speakers: https://www.crutchfield.com/S-FPB2k6hbguH/learn/mad-science-...

If you like niche cars, the Mini Cooper line has dealerships with replacement parts going back to at least the 2001 models (and probably can custom-order stuff for earlier models), and an endearingly nutty online fanbase that sells both custom aftermarket parts/upgrades and original OEM parts for both the 'modern' BMW-made line and for the classic cars.

The word online is that these cars take a lot of maintenance, but I haven't had any trouble with mine (2012 model, 90K miles, original electronics) aside from needing a new fan belt and a new battery. And of course the Countryman line is basically just a BMW SUV with the Mini branding and dealership network.

If you want a vehicle that's less 'will the parts be available' and more 'will it just last forever', though, you can't go wrong with a Toyota Hilux.

I bought a 2000 Toyota 4Runner a few years ago at around 160k miles, put a few thousand dollars into required routine maintenance, and it runs great.

Sale price plus maintenance divided by time owning it currently has me at $275/month and dropping.

What's "a few years"?

$275/month is $3300pa, so you're already at a minimum of $6600 for a near 20 year old car, which doesn't sound particularly cheap.

I'm on a lower monthly cost of ownership for 3 years ownership of a 6 year old car.

I've owned it for 45 months. I'd like to get another 5 years out of it as a daily driver with minimal upkeep.

Also, it's not a car - it's an SUV - so it's going to cost more than a car. I bought it because I really wanted an old 4Runner, not because I wanted the cheapest car.

Car is a general word for 4 wheeled motorised personal transport? SUV is hardly more specific. A 2 wheel drive with slightly increased ride height is classed as an SUV these days.

Your mention of costs seemed to imply that it was cheap which didn't seem to me to be the case.

Wow, OK, you win - you got a cheaper car than me. Congrats.

However, anecdote vs data:

"Used car payments hit record $400 per month as prices top $20,000" [0]

So I still think I've done pretty good with my purchase.

[0] https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/cars/2018/11/08/used-ca...

You said you wanted an old 4Runner, that's fair enough. I was interpreting it with more emphasis on the monthly price, rather than specific car, than perhaps you intended :)

I feel like airbag-era cars are time bombs, so I have to reluctantly pass on a lot of cars I otherwise would enjoy.

You can argue the risk comparison between an old airbag and no airbag, but the thing that sways me is, beyond a certain point, the manufacturer just doesn't care if it works or not. When 95% of the cars have been scrapped, nobody cares if it doesn't work right anymore.

I also consider that on an old car without an airbag, I still have a seatbelt that I will wear, and on an old car with an airbag, I still don't have modern crumple zones and reinforcements.

So I'm sticking with either relatively new vehicles or pre-airbag ones.

We have two 03 vehicles that are going strong. The electronics are simple enough that I expect them to keep going unless there's ever water intrusion :) It's a Honda and a BMW for what it's worth.

Good process ensures good results: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Toyota_Way

Toyota commit to 20 years of parts.

(I can probably still get new mechanical parts for my 23 year old Ipsum, but I doubt the in-car electronics are replaceable except from the second-hand market)

That's a problem.

The design life for the Ford EEC IV, used in 1980s Ford vehicles, was 30 years. My 35 year old Ford Bronco is still using the original electronics.

I thought there were laws and regulations requiring automakers to reserve a certain number of spare parts for everything they make and support it for a period of time.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com