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Comment by BeetleB | Hacker News Reader

Do computers last 20+ years in cars?

As others have mentioned, sensors and stuff related to safety fail all the time. I recently paid $800 to re-enable the safety systems in my (newer) car after a part failed. I've never had such expensive repairs on my 20 year old car.

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My 2001 BMW with electronic throttle and fuel injection is doing just fine, the weakest point is plastic in the engine bay gets brittle and starts rotting (especially around coolant system).

Ah, but probably a single repair on that BMW will be more expensive than 5 years of repairs on my Corolla.

As a BMW owner, I actually found the repair pricing quite comparable. Maybe not quite to a Corolla, but it was to a Lexus.

If anything the Lexus was a bit more, due to how common BMW specialist shops are, while there's none for Lexus.

The issue for me was the frequency of the repairs, 5 years of Lexus ownership cost me less than any 3-4 month period of BMW ownership over the 2 years I owned it.

I suppose I can only compare 2-3 repairs, cause the other dozen repairs for the BMW simply didn't break on the Lexus, nor did it spring any of oil leaks my BMW was famed for.

Your mistake was taking it to a Lexus dealer. The cars are nearly identical to their Toyota counterparts so most mechanics can work on them

Only if you do your repairs at the dealership

It depends on the country. BMW are well known by any mechanic and parts are widely available, OEM and aftermarket. In my experience BMWs are not more expensive to repair than any Toyota or VW, but due to the increased set of features they have a higher failure surface.

Do computers last 20+ years in cars? Well, my 2005 SAAB 9-3T is still working quite nicely outside of a failing turbo and the injectors needing replacing. Computer still tells me when lights are out, if I'm having A/B throttle sensor voltage issues, etc.

But that's 18 years old. Give me two more and we can have this convo again.

My 1989 Bronco II has a computer ignition system. Even an OBDI diagnostic capability. You can count the pulses and it tells you the error code. It still works fine. Most brands of cars were using solid state computers at least in some capacity like this since the late 1970s

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