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Comment by babypuncher | Hacker News Reader

I always chuckle when people make these arguments about cars being better when they were easier to repair.

Sure, diagnosing and repairing a problems like the throttle control example is more difficult and expensive today than it was in the '70s. But cars are also so much more reliable today that the frequency of these repairs is considerably lower.

I have a 2009 Toyota Matrix that I have owned for 12 years now. It has nearly 140,000 miles on it. Last month, the vehicle finally had to get a repair of a non wear item (failing O2 sensor), which cost me $300. In 1975, how many cars could be expected to last 13 years and 140,000 miles before needing a single repair?

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A car can be both easy to repair and reliable. They aren't mutually exclusive. When people complain about unrepairable vehicles, it's more to do with the arbitrary lock-in, manufacturers intentionally making things difficult. In the past, they'd require strange one-off mechanical tools for certain repair procedures so they could only be done in house. Now, it's electronics that have been designed to "manage your rights" by refusing to install without dealer intervention, etc. The inner workings of things are intentionally closed off and obfuscated. The obfuscation happens completely independent of any inherent increase in complexity that comes with fancy new tech, and sometimes adds complexity and even harms reliability.

Vehicles being hostile to their owners is not unique to electric propulsion, just like goods and services being hostile to consumers is not unique to transportation. It's a society-wide thing and it's about locking people in and reducing uncondoned behavior. It's about subjugating people.

i blame lawyers in general. the more subjugated a customer is, the cleaner their interaction is with contracts, and the less money is spent on lawyers working through the specific situation. Especially relevant in the event of tragedy.

"your car exploded? well you didnt use a triple certified dealership for your last oil change so you cant hold us accountable for that. says so in the contract."

now obviously if a car had that level of danger.. you wouldnt even be able to get the oil change done anywhere but the dealership. and in modern times where we try to hold companies responsible for everything we possibly can, it makes sense that anytime there is a remote possibility of liability, they attempt to gate the customer out of it completely.

i feel like the general population has either grown to be, or always has been, so indifferent towards subtle legal differences that we continue broadening the strokes of liability which is causing us to lose the power to do many basic things ourselves as a trade off for avoiding any personal responsibility tied to the consequences of doing those things improperly.

As a lawyer that sues car companies, and the spouse of a lawyer that does work for car companies, I can assure you that lawyers aren’t the ones who convinced them to make things more proprietary and difficult to repair.

> As a lawyer that sues car companies, and the spouse of a lawyer that does work for car companies

This is interesting to me. Do conflicts of interest with both of your respective employers come up?

Not really. I don’t cases involving her clients.

What kinds of things do you sue car companies for?

I do not think lawyers literally encouraged it, I just think that they are expensive and going proprietary helps avoid issues.

What's your take, though? Genuinely interested. It is widespread across the entire industry, so there appears to be an industry-related driving factor for it

I agree that these things are bad. End-users and third party repair shops should be given access to any tools and parts they need to maintain and repair a vehicle.

Some designs are inherently harder to diagnose and repair though, even with access to OEM tools and parts. I reject the notion that being harder to repair is automatically bad, only when it is an intentional business decision to create vendor lock-in and not an engineering decision made to improve the quality of the product.

Name a single car actually produced that was both highly reliable as in ~150,000 miles before first non ware issue and easy to repair.

Electronics vastly simplify many many systems. Back when say trip odometers where fairly simple mechanical devices they where also yet another system that would eventually break. Building mechanical systems that can handle heavy vibration, large temperature swings, long lifespan, etc while being light, cheap, and easy to repair is difficult.

Unfortunately electronics just makes stuff less intuitive. The sensor can sit anywhere as long as it connects to the CAN bus so you don’t always have an easy to trace mechanical linkage etc etc.

That example is at best an anecdote. I had a car from the same year that required replacing the headlights multiple times a year, replacing the timing belt at around 100000km, electrical issues that were difficult to debug, etc..

It depends where you are, how well the car was designed, budget probably, luck

Sure some luck was involved, but talk to your parents about a car from the 1960’s. Making even 40k miles without any issues was practically unheard of.

Meanwhile breaking 100k miles without issue seems to be a 50/50 shot on several models.

Name a single car actually produced that was both highly reliable as in ~150,000 miles before first non ware issue and easy to repair.

Look at fleet vehicles like taxis and police cars.

Crown victoria used to be a really popular fleet vehicle and it constantly had issues. The advantage was they where cheap to repair not that they needed minimal repairs.

Absolutely. One of my buddies who's 25+ years older than me mused "man, it blows my mind that you kids can buy cars that will go over 100,000 miles without any serious maintenance"

The Ford Model-T was obviously much simpler than modern cars, but it also didn't have airbags that needed to be replaced after a fender bender. That doesn't make the new cars inferior to the Model T. Just different.

The more complex engineering brings benefits; some of the benefits are worth the added complexity, but others are not. (Not to mention it, "worth it" to whom... the customer, manufacturer, or society as a whole...)

I used to read old Popular Mechanics magazines and I remember one article from the late 40's or early 50's where it was discussing motorcycle maintenance and it explicitly stated that every 5,000 - 6,000 miles you should rebuild your engine for best performance.

Of course, the engine was a two-cylinder that had maybe 25 parts to it, the rebuild process only needed a crescent wrench, a screwdriver, and some gasket making chemicals, and was so simple that 2 pictures told you all of the information you needed to succeed.

I think there's a lot of "it depends" going on in these arguments so it's hard to say. I've worked on cars on both ends of the spectrum so this is just my experience.

My main concern is long-term maintainability for imported vehicles by me personally. Even though I'm a software and electronics nerd, I still don't have all the things necessary to maintain a modern vehicle, nor do I want to be re-manufacturing PCBs or replacing surface mount components. So once any one of the dozens to hundreds of boards goes bad, you have to find a replacement, and you also have to hope that the of EEPROM is in the right state for your car in regards to error codes and calibration so that you can actually use it.

One example from a 2012 Toyota Crown, replacing some trim on the steering wheel tweaked one of the sensors out of calibration. During recalibration, part of the radar braking system failed to calibrate. The car is perfectly fine in 99.9% of parameters, but the computer has disabled every computer assist system and put others in limp mode until this one can be calibrated. No traction control, stability control, cruise control, ABS, magnetic suspension, all stopped. The car handles like a truck now. That's a tough problem to solve, and a really annoying one too, since the car would work at 100% capacity if only this sensor would calibrate. Dealer can't fix it, importers can't fix it, I can't fix it.

Contrasted to more rudimentary cars, I can pretty much fabricate or repair any part I need to as time goes on. As fewer shops will work on these cars as well, I pretty much need to be self-sufficient, so simpler is better.

So it's not about reliability, but maintainability, every car will fail eventually. Not everyone lives in the middle of a city with a dealership nearby, and in my experience not even dealers can get some of these parts anymore. I can't even get parts for a 2007 BMW from my dealer anymore.

There will always be a gap between the people who have the skills and knowledge needed to DIY a repair or an upgrade and the people who will never take on the mental effort needed to understand the world they are presented with.

The difficulty level of fixing 90% or more of computer issues would best be categorized as EASY to VERY EASY and yet people are paid mid-5 to 6 figures to do them because of the same phenomenon.

Most people, when their car stopped going forward when they press the go pedal would have a panic attack and call a tow truck. Being the kind of person who has the knowledge to identify the issue, trace it to its origin, and to craft a kludge strong enough to resolve the issue saved you a tow and a repair fee, but you can't assume that because it's easy for you it would also be easy for anyone else.

I guess I'm just saying what we've all heard before, knowledge is power. Fixing your own car, or your own computer, or your own home is at some level knowledge work. Having the knowledge without the ability to use it is frustrating, so most people won't put the effort in to learn the knowledge until they have a use for it, and most of the time they won't have a use for it until it is too late to gain the knowledge.

Diagnostic computers are cheap enougj if your car is old enough. Thise for new models are expensive. Self repairabiliy stopped being a thing in the, IMHO, mid 80s. For a lot of stuff. Adding diff locks and the like, especially those not controlled by the onbord computers is actually pretty trivial, regardless of model year.

What's said about EVs can be as much true about ICE powered cars, the computer controlled nature is the same for both.

I appreciate my 1982 Range Rover more every day so. Besides a treadful fuel consumption. After all it is running on 3 fuses, perfect for an electricity and electeonics idiot like me.

Keep in mind that third-party diagnostic equipment is almost always based on reverse-engineering and may lack some features, and original equipment from the manufacturer is rarely available.

I haf this discussion with mechnic friend a while ago, obviously not not a 40 year old car so. Our true second car is now, I have to guess, 15 years old. Diagnostics are no problem, computers with the correct software are around 400 bucks. Cheap enough for either an enyhisiast or free mechanic. The main car is 4 now, diagnostics equipment is only OEM, and goes for 5 figures. Go figure, but it explains why diagnostic jours can be so expensive.

Only partially. I used to work for a third party diagnosis tool company, and we had direct access to information from all companies, which they had to legally give us. I still reverse engineered a lot of things because when I.didn't understand the spec seeing what their tool did made it make sense.

"Self repairabiliy stopped being a thing in the, IMHO, mid 80s."

This really isn't true. Cars all the way up to the mid 2000's are very easy to work on and repair. I have always done all of my own repairs. Domestic cars even today are still easy to work on. Yes you need a diagnostic tool to do some more advanced diagnosing. A $300 Autel will do most things, an $800 Autel will do nearly everything. Yes it is an expense but it can pay for itself in one repair when you factor in labor costs at a mechanic. And that Autel will continue to work for all of your repairs the next 5+ years.

You need to buy $300+ worth of mechanical tools to work on your 1982 Range Rover.

You need to buy $300+ electronic tool to work on a modern car.

I would say German cars from the ~2010's up are out of reach for the average person to repair, they are using fiber optic networks and complicated engine management systems. But everything else is really isn't that difficult if you have a basic (High School Level) understanding of how electricity and computer networks work.

Fortunately the $300+ worth of mechanical tools also fix other things like appliances, etc.

Around 300 bucks is about right. Good thing is, it's all basic mechanical tools that do a lot of other stuff. And it includes the specialized tool, e.g. for the carbs and the prop shafts. The same tools are needed for the mechanical repairs on modern cars as well, so.

Some power tools help, again those do other things as well.

If you cannot do most of the repairs on an old car yourself, they are unaffordable. Garages, if you one willing to work on them, charge around 100 bucks per hour where I live.

My problem is, despite being an industrial engineer, I seem to have a blind spot for electrics and electronics. Mechanics are much easier. The main reason I will never switch to eletronic fuel injection, I can rebuild the carbs in the desert and can calibrate them. EFi goes over my horizon so.

> Self repairabiliy stopped being a thing in the, IMHO, mid 80s. For a lot of stuff.

Was it emission control stuff? Computer controlled fuel injection?

Definitely was a different era when you could rotate the distributor to advance/retard the timing.

I drove a mid '90s Toyota Camry for close to 250k miles with routine maintenance (and a door handle replacement because their design was pretty bad). At that point, it needed around $1k in fixes and it would likely have been good for many more miles if I'd have been interested. I've seen more than a few 80s models with twice that mileage.

Reliable cars don't necessarily have to be entirely electronic.

My uncle had a 1993 Honda Accord that had 400,000 miles on it before finally died.

4-cylinder American cars in the 80s were junk and did not last long at all.

I remember seeing broken down cars pretty often as a kid. Just driving 30 minutes to the grocery store on weekends and seeing (or being) one wasn’t that uncommon.

I noticed at one point that I stopped seeing broken down cars. Sure, I’ll see accidents sometimes, but I cannot remember the last time I saw someone pulled over with an overheated car, something smoking, or just not running for whatever reason.

The older generation in my region of the world has this notion that a car isn't worth anything after 200 000km, so sellers tamper with the odometer so that it shows the magic 1 in front.

That was indeed the case in the 80s and 90s, when the fleet consisted mostly of eastern block made shitboxes, in which you never knew what would happen first: the engine fail completely or rust eat a hole in the floor.

In 1975, how many cars could be expected to last 13 years and 140,000 miles before needing a single repair?

In 1975, they built things to be serviceable because they expected regular maintenance. Obviously if you neglect the maintenance you are going to have severe problems, but many people just didn't care about maintenance and drove them into the ground.

Now, they design for a certain lifetime without maintanence, after which it becomes prohibitively difficult/expensive or impossible to repair. This increases the perception of reliability especially given a population who won't do periodic maintenance.

If you look at the "survivor" vehicles that are old and ultra-high mileage, one thing that stands out is the owner(s) adhered strictly to the manufacturer's specified maintenance intervals.

I mean, this is just not true for Ford and Mercury. In the 1980s, we routinely got rid of 4-cylinder cars at 80,000 miles with all regularly scheduled maintenance done by a dealership.

None. Hence my well stocked tool chest. The idea back then was to buy a simple car that you could fix because you would have to. I turned wrenches on Datsuns, VWs, Volvos, in line 6 Fords and Chevys. I stayed very clear of British anything, Caddys, diesels and Italian anything

Ironically (in the context of this thread), the most reliable vehicle I have ever owned is turning out to be a Jaguar I-PACE.

Well maintained pickup trucks...but you had to be a real stickler about that maintenance. You may have lost a power steering pump or water pump but the repair was trivial. Part was cheap and labor was your teenage son (or daughter).

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