Over engineered cars are pushing technicians away

I guess I kind of agree with the thesis, although in turn auto technician is gradually becoming an increasingly skilled job and pay is (probably not quickly enough) generally increasing as well. Of course, this is frustrating to consumers as dealer repair costs become astronomical. In some ways the market is working as intended as especially used cars from manufacturers with perceived easier repair and maintenance (Honda, Toyota) now command an enormous premium, at least in the US.

The specific comment is terrible, though:

> Come to find out, all new Elantras use a lens on a servo to adjust the focal point of the light to simulate just having an extra bulb in the head lamp assembly.

It's unlikely this adjusts the focal point, it's more likely it's just a shutter, although this is neither here nor there.

Regardless, this is a normal way to construct high beams with HID bulbs and there's a real engineering reason for this: HID lights shouldn't be short-cycled as they need to warm up before they reach brightness, plus cycling rapidly wears the bulb and ignitors out. So, having a separate bulb is not plausible for HID high beams which need to flip on and off quickly.

Some cars with LED headlights _are_ often switching back to simpler housings without shutters and adjustable lenses, since they're cheaper and easier to build.

This is a case of engineers engineering solutions, not engineers making things "hard" for no reason.

Optimizing for cost, weight & performance often comes at the cost of repairability. Buyers compare cars on measurable statistics so they'll buy the one that is cheaper, faster etc.

Watch a Sandy Munro video and see the design details that get a lot of praise. The gigacasting is a nice example: great for performance and manufacturing, but bad for repair. Or, the car not having a separate floorpan and mounting the seats etc directly to the battery casing. Or the octovalve. These are great for everything except repairability.

I think cars will become either disposable or large assemblies will need to be replaced in full.

I'm reminded of how the tv repairman disappeared.

TVs too integrated to fix easily, too complicated to fix economically.

I have some faint hope that scout will go the other way:

https://www.thedrive.com/news/scout-wants-to-build-evs-you-c...

The reason a lot of things appear to be re-invented is that its Resume Driven Development but applied to auto head lights. Or blame product people for needing to come up with something even though the product is probably “done” from a consumer standpoint of fulfilling the needs. Smart refrigerators come to mind.

I keep watching stuff on youtube where people find really old cars, like 50-60 years old, and they walk thru what needs fixing to get it running. Sometimes they add some gas to a 50yo engine in a barn find and replace spark plugs and it fires up, its really amazing.

Man I sound like my grandfather lamenting about “they don’t build them like they used to”.

I love my bicycle for this reason - I can do 100% of the maintenance and repairs myself (short of welding a cracked frame, but I could take everything off and swap it to a new frame). Almost all parts are standardized and available from third parties, even in case the original manufacturer goes under. And of course the whole thing cost less than that headlight assembly.

Anyways, I think the reason software follows this path is cost - rather than pay an engineer for optimization you have them work on new fancy features, and just expect the user to buy a faster machine. As computers get faster/cheaper this applies more and more.

Engineering is just means to an end. In most cases the end is: make money.

That typically involves minimizing labor (engineering / R&D) costs. That’s why you see solutions implemented in a quick / scrappy way even though it’s often obvious a better solution exists from the end user perspective… the chosen solution was the best solution for the actual objective: maximize profits.

People need to justify their role. As such they change things around or add complexity, even if user benefit is questionable. And why wouldn't you add some planned obsolescence for good measure?

The “enshitification” applies to everything, as basic functionality is harder or almost impossible to improve features are added as a sales driver together with lower price points, as you can imagine corners needs to be cut as the metrics take in account sales AND profit. General public doesn’t take in account (they’ve driven to think that way) durability or repairability, they just pay a lease so cars have become disposable.

Transportation has a higher demand for reliability and maintainability than our entertainment devices.

Not every "innovation" is positive. A 2% efficiency gain with 300% maintenance cost and 25% lifespan is a major loss.

Let's act like responsible engineers here and remember what our job is. We are supposed to be creating tools with longevity & utility that improve welfare. We are not here to create toys and infotainment for people.

The tools are in our hands people. Quit placing blame on marketing, customers. Take responsibility for the control that you wield.

I was seriously considering buying an Ineos Grenadier because I wanted a nice, modern, safe solid axle 4x4 with decent towing capacity that'll last 50 years or so, but the complexity of that B57/58 and the ZF 8spd, let alone all the other electronic trash like parking sensors, lane sensors, etc scared me off. Theoretically I might be able to keep it running on that timescale with standalone controllers for the transmission and engine but the complexity is just too much. Also, plastic intake manifold? Lmao.

So I bought an 80 Series Toyota. It only gets 1mpg less than the Grenadier. 30 years, all that complexity, and we gained 1mpg.

I'm working on a 1HZ-T swap. So I'll have a 1 wire engine with a nice simple aftermarket transmission controller, and an exhaust brake. I should be getting around 20mpg hwy when that's done and 100k+mi from a set of brake pads. I'm confident I'll be able to keep this running for 50yr.

But seriously, why do modern engineers try to reinvent the wheel for everything??

this x1000.

80%￶ of everything done since '01 has been the result of crap makework bullshit jobs.

>What does windows 7 do that windows 10 doesn't? Why does the same web page need 60MBs to load when it only need 1-3MB 10 years ago.

Ads. And tracking code to serve you ads. And AI - that collects your prompts to serve you more ads.

\s

This is also why all of the auto union are against electric cars. Some person working in their garage will no longer be able to work on cars and get a job as a mechanic/technician and instead will need to have the experience of an engineer.

It's very similar to the horse/buggy and car arguments of years past.