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Are the cars of today going to become the disposable cars of tomorrow? I have just read a thread in the Technical about the rain sensing windscreens, check it out. Anyway with all of this technology going into cars, it will be worthless to buy a second hand car which is older than a few years. For example, the new BMW 5 series, comes, I think with drive by wire, how much will this cost to replace if, sorry when the unit goes wrong? The list goes on. Conspiracy to make us all buy new cars? Apologies for anyone who isn't interested in running old cars.
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I think BMW will have to make the drive by wire thing pretty reliable, one case of someone's system freezing or breaking whilst the car is been driven and people will stay away from the technology in droves... Wonder if they use Microsoft to run the software? :O
Blue
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Interesting point BMDUBYA and, judging by many of the horror stories to be found both in 'Technical' and here, quite a few people seem to have found themselves with cars they'd be delighted to dispose of if only they could !
Not only is all the gadgetry increasingly complex and expensive to fix but the local independent down the road is being squeezed out of existence. Worse still, it's clear that many of the problems people are experencing with all this stuff can't be fixed by the dealers either !
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I think cars are slowly becoming more like white goods with few user servicable parts and a short lifespan. I can imagine that in a few years time a 5 year lifespan for a car will be the norm and it will contain sealed engine units and replaceable modules. Now if this meant that you had 5 years of completely trouble free motoring then chucked the car away it could be worth it from a convenience point of view. I am not sure whether it is very environmentally sound or what would happen for those less well off who couldn't afford to buy a car within it's first 5 years.
Or a more positive outlook is that a number of specialists will spring up specialising in repairing this complicated stuff that the manufacturers prefer to replace as I can't imagine the independents will all roll over and give up.
Perhaps there is a gap in the market place for a manufacturer to produce really simple and easy to service cars that don't have any of this electronic nonsense on them?
teabelly
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>>I am not sure whether it is veryenvironmentally sound
Absolutely disastrous I would think. Emissions from manufacturing are a very significant part of the environmental impact. When the Dutch clamped down on "polluting" older vehicles they found that overall emissions went up because more new cars were required--this despite the fact that the new cars were much cleaner at the tailpipe.
>>or what would happen for those less well offwho couldn't afford to buy a car within it's first 5 years.
But look at it another way. Who but the very poor or very desperate would buy a car with only a few months of useful life left and no way of fixing it? The rate of depreciation on such a vehicle would be far more dramatic than now. The only way of getting round this would be to make the car easily and cheaply recyclable so that there was some residual value.
Chris
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I understand your fears and to a certain extent I share them. However, during the 15 years or so that I have been actively interested in motoring, I have heard this discussion many times. Think about the recent innovations which have had us worried! Catalytic convertors and black box ECU's are the two which spring to mind immediately.
We were told that when these failed after 5 years, the cars would effectively be scrap. What has happened? These parts have been far more reliable than the doom-and-gloom merchants expected and nowhere near as expensive to replace either.
The technology of cars is changing and it is not in the manufacturers' interests to make their cars unreliable or short lived.
I'll bet you a quid that in 10 years time a 10-year old 5 series is better than a 10-year old one now!
Andy
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"I'll bet you a quid ....."
But will we still have quids?
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I was closeish to buying an Merc S class coupe N or P reg I think a while back but it was the sheer number of pointless little electric motors it had on it that made me think twice - ones to move the seatbelts across, even one to push the boot handle out and in again in case your fingers suddenly dematerialised. I just didn't fancy an annual bill of a several hundred for replacement fripperies
That and the grey goo under the oil filler cap....
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Well, I don't know about all these things.
From Communications Receivers, past and present :-
"The performance of most solid-state (i.e. no vacuum tubes) radios does not diminish with time ."
This is true also of transceivers, except that it is possible, though not easy, to wreck the high power transmission circuits by maltreatment, akin to performing Top Gear atrocities in the motoring field; and remember we are considering amateur market equipment, built to a price. I see no reason to doubt that automotive electronics are as reliable.
There may be a cause for concern about gadgets, depending on build quality. I never once had a wiper motor fail, but had plenty of trouble with associated gears and linkages.(Those little Hornby motors used to last, too.)
Possibly complexity can improve reliability, by discouraging idle footering?
Though I did enjoy having points and magnetos and valve timing and things to "improve"!
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Nothing new about disposable cars with a life of only five years. BL were making them decades ago.
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The higher the NCAP rating, the smaller the bump needed to write a car off?? what with multiple air bags at 800 quid each and huge crumple zones.
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