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Comment by WaitWaitWha | Hacker News Reader

That maybe true, but my anecdotal evidence is the opposite.

> cars used to break down much more often and require much more skilled maintenance.

My '78 John Deere 4640 (not a car I give you that) if it breaks down, I can fix it. If I cannot I can order the part. If I cannot, I can have the part made within a week.

None of that is possible with a 2021 6145M. If it breaks, I have to sit and wait for JD to bless me with their part.

I have less problems with non-electronic equipment than with the electronics enhanced ones.

I venture it is very much the same with personal cars.

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Anecdotes are always a mistake in these situations. You might have better luck with your tractor, which isn’t a car, but the average age of cars on America’s roads has been rising for decades. Your experience is, frankly, an outlier.

Also, comparing tractors with cars is an extremely dubious proposition; these are different vehicles with different engineering constraints, uses, and consumer expectations. How many OEMs for cars still make parts for the 1978 vehicles? Hell, what percentage of Americans have the space, knowledge, and interest to build up a garage to service their own vehicles?

Just wait until the new generation of cars with touchscreens everywhere instead of buttons and knobs for control are old.

Do you have any actual data to back up the idea that touch screen interfaces are inherently short lived?

So many smartphones with digitizers having dead zones after just four years....

Car screens are built to different tolerances than cell phones. In particular they must survive a much more harsh environment than most other consumer electronics. This is precisely why the first Tesla screens were so shocking in their size and so unreliable; when Elon Musk found out that he couldn’t get auto screens that large he demanded they use consumer screens, which yellowed and failed due to the heat cars are exposed to. Car screens and normal screens are not the same, at all.

This situation is exactly the same as the tractor example above. You’re taking a similar but different object built for different use cases and different financial and engineering constraints, and declaring that the outcome of one is predictive of another.

I’m not referring to the big screens but the replacement of buttons and knobs with multiple small ones.

Like putting touch screens on the steering wheel!

How many vehicles do that though? I can only think of Tesla, and they’re already pretty notoriously unreliable straight from the factory. All of the vehicles I’ve been in, including at trade shows, had physical buttons for most of the vehicle functions, and touch screens for secondary and tertiary operations.

Ferrari is the only one I can remember but it’s a trend car reviewers have negatively remarked upon

Why do you attribute this improvement to computers? There were many parallel improvements in manufacturing that are fairly well documented and taught about.

> My '78 John Deere 4640 (not a car I give you that) if it breaks down, I can fix it.

That's great, but I don't own a garage, and if my car breaks, it goes to the mechanic. The mechanic needs to eat, and pay the mortgage on her garage, so she will charge $XYZW for repairs.

For all the maintenance and repair work I and my father have had done on our cars, 'Some microchip somewhere crapped out' has never made the list. All the failures have been purely mechanical. Your 70s car proposal solves a problem that few people have, and introduces a lot of new ones.

You don't own a garage, so nobody should get to own repairable vehicles?

The problem with fancy electronics is that only a few people chosen, trained and supplied by the manufacturer can work on them. This effectively gives them a monopoly on maintenance. Your mechanic will be cut out of that deal.

This also creates a risk for the second hand market, not just in first world countries, but wherever they inherit cars that don't pass inspection. Some garage in Georgia (the country) won't be kitted out to fix computer issues and keep the car running. They can't expect help from OEM, nor third party replacement parts. It's a great planned obsolescence strategy.

Indeed. We have an aging Audi that has adaptive cruise control. Recently the radar unit failed. To get it replaced at a dealer will cost about half of what the car is worth.

what, on an aging audi, _doesn't_ cost half the value of the vehicle to fix?

i've heard the same complaint about basically every part of an audi except the tires.

Audi seems to be the brand for people who want a VW, but want to pay extra for it. It’s like the mirror image of Skoda or SEAT (VAG’s more ‘budget’ brands).

This is why it's foolish to purchase a German luxury car, either new or used. The electronics aren't designed to last any longer than the warranty. If you really want to drive one then lease, don't buy.

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