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Technology Makes New Cars Too Expensive to Fix
securitas writes "The CSM's Eric Evarts reports on how technology makes new cars too expensive to repair, which may lead to disposable cars. The increased use of expensive electronics, air bags and advanced, lightweight body materials are causing costs to rise. Add to it the cost of specialized training and equipment (for an aluminum-body repair shop: $200,000) or even the cost of new parts alone (xenon high-intensity-discharge headlights: $3,000 each), not to mention the knowledge base required (over 1 million pages, available only electronically vs. 100 pages 20 years ago) and a labor shortage. From the article: 'Specialist technicians need advanced reading, problem-solving, and basic electronics skills.... The best people to find are those who have worked in the IT [information technology] industry.'"
Another bonus: a back-yard mechanic can work on it...
Nothing to do with bikes, but are companies investigating the ability to recycle cars in a fairly efficient fashion? Is it even possible to do so? It seems that this would prevent the Grand Canyon in the US from filling up with old H2s and whatnot but still not cost a ton like repairing complex cars.
Anyone heard anything about this?
True story.
I remember a time when it was easy to get under the hood of your car, do tune-ups, and perform other ordinarily easy maintenance functions ... without having to take the car to a maintenance shop or forbid, a dealer! I've seen these changes occur slowly to the point where it requires special tools (and skills) just to do simple things. I don't even try anymore ... I've seen it in our shop where the technicians are sometimes baffled by problems because they can't get specs from the manufacturer. I've actually had to wait months to get replacement parts for a Ford Explorer because the car is considered too new for generic parts! Go figure. So is this any surprise?
the 1990 Volvo 240 wagon, and sleeps better at night knowing that my insurance company and the police can't download my driving history from a black box, either.
CEE5210S The signal SIGHUP was received.
"We're moving closer and closer to the disposable car," says Dan Bailey, an executive vice president at Carstar, the largest auto-body repair franchise in the United States.
Um...Am I the only one who thinks there are probably numerous reasons why this is a bad idea/statement? Disposable Car? People in other countires must love our frame of mind. If a brand new BMW (as in story) costs more to replace the air bags than the car, than somebody please, sell me a BMW sans airbags. I'll throw in a five point harness, reinforce the subframe, and sign a waiver. I think I have a rain check for a mid-life crisis around here somewhere....
No... really... disposable car = huh? Recycled car / rethink industry as a whole = hah!
besides, does anyone here in the IT industry really want to figure out why the 2010 Ford Festiva is having a hard time finding drivers (pun?) for it's various parts?...
I guess there must be consumer demand... Last year my wife and I were all set to purchase our first new car (we're 35 and consider cars a horrid waste of money), but we simply could not find a "base" model. Everything has power windows, locks, CD player (actually wanted that).
God forbid you want a car that doesn't have all the crap or *GASP* not an automatic transmission (I'll take the lower gas milage and increased service problems for $800 alex!").
Anway, when we could only find ONE manual, base moodel subaru Forester in the entire STATE and we didn't like that color, we bought a used one at an auction threw a friend for $7k less, 2 years old 28K miles (this is why I don't buy new!).
DO NOT DISTURB THE SE
Although I am quite skilled myself in repairing/restoring older cars, I am more than happy to pay the higher costs after taking a look under the hood of a modern car. My Studebaker is fast and fun, but it has none of the electronics of the new cars and one can almost tear the entire thing down and rebuild it without having to consult a technical manual.
The downside of course is that it is an older car and has none of the safety gear that modern cars have. I once lost a wheel racing (and winning) a 930 turbo (when I was younger and more impetuous) as there were no safety devices that would retain it when the axle broke. You can imagine the fear that sets in at 110MPH or so when you suddenly find yourself running along with a presumably four wheel car that now happens to have only three.
As an aside, you might be surprised at how much an "automotive technician" who knows their stuff can make. The folks down at the Mercedes Benz dealer can truly clean up with six figure salaries. And judging from the last routine service bill on my mom's S-class, there may be more than one tech making that kind of salary there.
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Technology has pretty much made ordinary cars disposable nowadays anyway. My dad's friend works for quite a large Irish company that deal with, among other things, scrap. Recently they have purchased a scrapping machine worth tens of millions of pounds. It's almost cartoonesque - the crushed car cube goes in at one end and raw materials emerge from the other. Aside from the power used, it's a cyclic process with minimal wastage. The rubber, plastic, metal can be reused for whatever purpose necessary. It has to be economically viable if these companies are willing to lay out so much green for these 'car eaters'.
The typical 'movie bad guy hideout' junk yards will be a thing of the past in a short period. Cars won't be sitting around piled up ten to the dozen or in landfills, they're going to be snapped up by entities who want the materials.
It's also a sort of part payback to mother nature for some of the other bad shit we've been doing.
What with China et al manufacturing all the washing machines and stuff, and with prices rising (from forty pounds per ton to over a hundred, if i have been informed correctly) the demand will increase dramatically. Hell, a lot of manhole covers are disappearing around the country in what seems to be an attempt to cash in on the metal madness.
As far as the 'disposable car' goes, it all seems a bit of a gimmick, as current normal cars aren't exactly on the same level as toxic waste.
Mother, do you think they'll like this sig?
The trick is to avoid industries that are easily shipped offshore. This morning's paper had an article about drug testing going overseas because it's cheaper. At an Apple's developer's conference years ago, I saw a presentation by a radiologist that involved shipping x-rays over an ISDN line. That technology has made it possible to ship the radiologist's job overseas as well.
It's tough to squeeze a mechanic or a plumber through a data pipe, no matter how fat the pipe.
Wanna Trade?? Im an automotive mechianic with an overwhelming desire to get into the IT/Programming/Security field... Being a car tech ain't all it's cracked up to be.. Sure we're "officially" paid $18 an hour, but we work near to 60 hours a week in a physically demanding career field, you should see my hands and arms. sharp little bolts, very tight spaces you have to fit into, knuckles ripped to shreds , burns from hot exhaust manifolds, and for all of that, if the shop is SLOW, I might take home $200 on a slow week... cause we only get paid the hours of labor we actually SELL.. (work 60 hours, and get in maybe 5 cars to work on 2 hours per car- you get paid 10 hours labor = $180 gross wage for that week...)
now are you SURE you wanna be an auto mechanic???
if so, contact me and I'll trade my job for your job faster than you can download a 1K webpage on OC1 fiber.
If I were on his jury, I'd acquit anyone arrested for stealing those goddamn headlights (what kind of safety feature is it to blind oncoming traffic?).
Your point still stands but it is interesting to point out that Xenon HID lamps are not that irritating to oncoming traffice if they are properly filtered and aimed.
Its these shit ass ricers and idiot suburban wannabees that but the cheap ass aftermarket crap that aren't aimed right and are nearly unfiltered throwing an awful lot of crap in the shorter wavelengths.
One of our customers is a fairly large motor company and I was having lunch with some of their software guys last week when they told me about one of their new cars which will have over 40 special chips distributed throughout the car.
;)
Apparently the diagnostic kit for this car alone costs 7000! Apparently the main reason for this is not to create disposable cars (although that's something I'm sure they'd love!) but to prevent unofficial garages from being able to perform repairs, thereby essentially restricting the the owner of the car to an official garage for the lifetime of the car.
Another off-topic thing of interest they mentioned was that the diagnostics of the car are accessed wirelessly and that these diagnostics can operate pretty much any feature in the car! I give it about a week before an exploit to unlock the car and start the engine is released...
The only area in which cars have not become lower maintenance is oil changes. You still need to change the oil every 3,000 miles. But aside from that, most cars today require very little maintenance compared to their simpler predecessors.
Yes, cars are more complicated, but for the first time in history, machines with moving parts are more reliable than those without. The average PC is less reliable than the average car, and given a choice, I think most people would rather have a reliable vehicle than a simple one requiring more maintenance.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
A recent newspaper article talked about all the bad financial decisions people are making on cars; really long term loans (8-10 years), negative equity transactions, and so on. The car industry keeps this going because they need to keep plants running and cars selling to keep the whole machine turning, and consumers are dumb ass enough to keep paying massive lease or loan payments.
How do we know that the next step in this consumer financial treadmill isn't "subscription cars"? When it breaks beyond a certain level, you go to the dealership, turn in your car and get into a newly refurbished one. No hassle for the dealer to figure out complicated parts or systems, just basic fluid level maintenence.
Auto mechanics become few and far between; the use/broken/damaged cars are shipped by train/ship to $third_world where they're parted out and reassembled to be returned to dealers. The truly bad parts are either scrapped for base metals or, if modular, further disassembled for their own reassembly.
At this point, we don't have mechanics with any more skill than the droolers at Rapid-Oil and the high value technician jobs really have been essentially outsourced to a third world country. For the US, Mexico would make more sense than India due to simple geography and the size/weight of a car; but it's not improbable that labor rates in India/China/Philipines would be low enough that transhipping cars overseas would make sense.
It will take a fundamental change in compensation practice in the auto repair industry to make it feasable to move from IT to automotive. I made the opposite career move in 97 (auto repair to an IT job) and haven't looked back. Don't believe the stories of six-figure technician salaries. With very few exceptions that is a myth - especially with respect to "educated," non-flat-rate work. With the current system, it's the guy that beats the clock on a book job that gets the good paycheck - and that's not the sort of work that requires a brain trust to complete. Likewise, the service dealers will literally give away diagnostic time because customers refuse to pay for it, thanks to the bogus McTuneup shops that claim to do a complete job for $59.95. Unfortunately, the only guy that usually makes good money in auto repair is the shop owner - and that's with a struggle.
WRT to the expensive parts, you didn't actaully think all those safety features would not cost more than the old stuff? That's why an "economy" car costs what it does. It's litigation insulation that's not optional for the buyer.
One upside = job security. If you can read above a 3rd grade level, have some mechanical aptitude and a decent set of tools, you'll never be unemployed in the auto repair industry unless you just don't want to work. Everyone wants to hire a top diagnostic guy but they're never willing to compensate appropriately. If the worse should happen and I get layed off my IT job, it's comforting to know that I can bring 10 years of experience and college education to bear on the goal of earning $15-20/hour flat-rate.
I heard of a report (yes, someone actually studied this scientifically) that explained that the entire "blinding" problem of HID lamps can be entirely explained by that fact that funny colors of the HID lamps catch people's attention, and so they look at them. Don't look into the lights. If you look away from HIDs the same way you look away from halogens, then there is no problem.
People putting obnoxious driving lights on their crappy wannaberacecars was just as bad with halogens and xenons as it now is with HIDs.
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