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Tech To Blame For Ever-Growing Car Repair Costs, AAA Says (cnet.com)
A new study from AAA highlights the high repair costs associated with cars that have advanced safety technology. "[S]eemingly small damages to a vehicle's front end can incur costs nearing $3,000," CNET reports. From the report: The study looked at three solid sellers in multiple vehicle segments, including a small SUV, a midsize sedan and a pickup truck. It looked at repair costs using original equipment list prices and an established average for technician labor rates.
Let's use AAA's examples for some relatable horror stories. Mess up your rear bumper? Well, if you have ultrasonic parking sensors or radar back there, it could cost anywhere from $500 to $2,000 to fix. Knock off a side mirror equipped with a camera as part of a surround-view system? $500 to $1,100. Windshields are especially tricky. People who own cars with windshields that have embedded heating elements already have to pony up hundreds of dollars to replace what you might think is just a piece of glass. Factor complex camera systems (like autobrake) into the mix, and not only do folks get hit with the windshield replacement, they possibly have to find a trained professional to recalibrate all that tech behind it.
Let's use AAA's examples for some relatable horror stories. Mess up your rear bumper? Well, if you have ultrasonic parking sensors or radar back there, it could cost anywhere from $500 to $2,000 to fix. Knock off a side mirror equipped with a camera as part of a surround-view system? $500 to $1,100. Windshields are especially tricky. People who own cars with windshields that have embedded heating elements already have to pony up hundreds of dollars to replace what you might think is just a piece of glass. Factor complex camera systems (like autobrake) into the mix, and not only do folks get hit with the windshield replacement, they possibly have to find a trained professional to recalibrate all that tech behind it.
Subaru wants $57 for a replacement fan control knob. This is "tech"?
How dare you narrow minded troglodytes be sceptical of increasing VALUE. You'll be asking for cheaper houses next!
I have auto insurance
I also drive an F250 King Ranch, so my vehicle is typically barely damaged when getting in a collision with most modern POS autos. Running into a smart car is no worse then running into a racoon as far as my bumper is concerned. YMMV
are over. So get over it.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
I choose a simple manual trans commuter.
Not so different then what I bought 20 years ago.
Currently that's a Chevy Cruze.
I fix it myself, bought it in cash w 50k on the od for $6k.
The other side of consumer culture is quite affordable.
I remember reading the electronics section of a car repair textbook a few years ago. It bragged about how as much as 80% of the problems with cars were not from the electronics...
Which means the electronics actually really unreliable.
Also, car manufacturers have structural monopolies. You own it, you want the replacement part you have to go to them unless you're luck enough that a generic will work, and of course they don't design bumpers to be cheap to repair. It's not a mistake that you need to replace your bumper if you bump a one-ton vehicle into a pencil.
I would be interested in knowing the breakdown of an automaker's sources of profit.
Are we now to a point where they sell a $25k car at a loss. However, they know the odds of a fender-bender are high, and it will cost the automaker $800 for the $8,000 repair.
Is the model moving to something closer to inkjet printers, banks and airlines? Get you in the door cheap, then nail you on the parts or fees.
The interactions I've had with people from parts suppliers indicate the mark-ups the automakers put on parts are insane.
Yeah, everything's the techs' fault...
No, it is just one of the excuses, in fact any part, regardless of the "tech" it has will be sold to you for a ridiculous markup, especially if it is an original part. Take my Ford Focus for example, it has a known flaw in that the dashboard compartment lid plastic lock breaks easily. Then, for that plastic lid they charge you £90. That's probably a 10,000% markup. I wish someone would do a sort of "reverse-ifixit", i.e. calculate how much it would cost you to build a car if you bought all the parts separately. Bigger parts have a lower markup than that little piece, so the Focus won't end up costing £2 million as the lid might indicate, but still I expect parts sell several times their cost on average. A great consumer friendly law would be to limit the manufacturer part prices so that the cost of all the parts together are not more than say 2 times the cost of the car. Anyway, some wishful thinking there...
P.S. If you are curious, the grey market lids are still at around £30, because they just have to compete with a £90k part, so that opened a market for a little piece of plastic which you glue to replace the piece of the lock that breaks for everyone, and they charge you £15 for that!!! I.e. I have to go to a scrap yard to find something in my case...
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
$7000 for a small dent on the fender.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
It's a bargain if the safety feature prevented a $30,000 hospital bill.
Let's go back to no crumple zones where you can pound out a front end collision with a hammer and clean out the passengers with a fire hose.
My brother's 2 year old Nissan Sentra with 15k miles on it cost him $11500. It's a strippy. CD Player and a jack 3.5" for your phone, AC and an Automatic. About as basic as it gets (it's 2018, a CD player costs $5 bucks to make, no, it's not a "luxury" when they're that cheap).
Cars are more expensive because fewer and fewer people can afford them. That means fewer used cars. That means higher used car prices, which the car manufacturers see as cue to raise prices. Cars are also a necessity in most places. Even most major cities lack viable public transportation. When the commutes 90 minutes by car it's 3 hours by bus. That's not an inconvenience, that's a life altering event. The car companies decided how our cities were built before any of us were born (assuming there's nobody under 70 reading this). We're living with the consequences.
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I've used the same trusted mechanic for 30 years, and he said that he's been watching the cost of repairs shoot upward, with my $700 repair bill being the lowest of all of his customers' bills that day. I can hear his frustration with the (in my opinion, needless) technology found in today's vehicles. He's getting pushed out of doing repairs little by little because the software and jigs are too expensive to purchase and keep up with. Did you know that one can now rent certain auto-repair software for so many hours? He tries to troubleshoot the problems within those time windows. Even the manufacturers know that it's gotten too ridiculous to own all the digital tools to troubleshoot everything for every model, every year.
I know the ignorant car buyer just wants the toys and doesn't consider the extra pollution or future repair bills, nor the fact that such "features" will make the car too expensive to repair in the future, sending it to the junkyard even sooner. My mother's 15-year old Buick's dash is lit up like a Christmas tree because the box that runs all those bells and whistles hasn't been made in 5 years. Luckily the car still drives.
However, I also blame the ignorant members of Congress, past and present, who ONLY considered that higher MPG might mean less air pollution, not the extra expenses we all quietly pay to get our rolling computers fixed, the complexity that befuddles the average person/mechanic and the extra wasted man-hours dealing with that complexity.
If you are dumb enough to buy thousands of dollars in gadgets you won't need in a car, you get what you asked for.
Rather have $500 to pay an extra car payment than side cameras, a UX drool of the cars startup animation, a touch screen console control, usb charger, auto controls on AC, bluetooth, hands free phone calling, text message spoken aloud, voice activated garbage, headlights that turn when are turning, wipers on headlights, headrests that force your head forward so it's like being in a too small airline seat, tire pressure gagues in the rim, cd player, aux input, lights in the sun visors, overhead light that dims when you start hte car, gps, stay in lane computer, auto braking, ........
45% of features in a complex machine / software are never used
The technology is one bit, but is there any reason why there has to be a single unit which encompasses the front end around to the wheels, and integrates the lights and grill? As a result, you can't easily just replace a broken piece, you have to replace the entire assembly.
[One reason is fuel efficiency. The assembly has fewer gaps to catch the wind. Another reason is reliability, the assembly is constructed as a unit and doesn't rely on as many people being successful. But there are probably alternative approaches which could give similar results.]
This is where the cell phone right to repair shop needs to get busy. The problem arises because the sensors for your Chevy Corvette may be different, for no good reason, than your Chevy Silverado. Different mounting or whatever. Just like in the past your Lincoln Mark V could have front end parts at $800 but the exact same part from a ford truck might be $250. Different part numbers. Same exact part. Well now they do things like create skus based on trim parts that may not even be damaged. But they differentiate the parts you can order. TPMS sensors are particularly overpriced as OEM parts, and they are periodically replaced. Equivalent after market parts? They are significantly cheaper. Car key fob? Or keyed key? The exact same key at the dealer with a FOB, $180 for the pair $200 to program it. After market $25 for the pair, including instructions to program it yourself in the car. Factory parts can be hugely inflated because they stock so many skus for many many years. Standardization is the way to drop the prices. Fewer skus.
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
increased base prices for a thing increase the cost of repairing that thing because the demand for repairs goes up. Who knew?
The damage done by cash for clunkers was 9 years ago. The effects are long gone.
Not gay, but if I was Obama'd be a better choice then our current president.
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i repair my GM constantly. Its not tech related. Its just craply made.
The radar sensor on the front of my car is over $3k just for that one part, let alone the rest of the front.
Who wants all this tech? not me...
All this will be mandatory in a few years for "safety" because fuck anyone that isn't rich.
[S]eemingly small damages to a vehicle's front end can incur costs nearing $3,000
That's been the case for a of couple decades now. If your car is going to need any body panels replaced and any paint applied, it's going to be in the thousands automatically.
This is not new. We don't have giant metal bumpers on the front of our cars like the early 80s anymore.
No need for an in vehicle radio/xm, navigation or environmental controls. Just a Bluetooth connection and a vehicle systems app on the phone.
The phone can also have an Onstar app that would know when airbags deployed.
You can tell, this moron hauls his worthless ass around only because mommy refuses his ass now. She can't be seen with a dork like that, she's trying to get LAID!
> I also drive an F250 Super Duty King Ranch ... YMMV
Your Mileage May Vary indeed.
It may vary between 10 mpg and 16 mpg.
Did you work for my money? No? Then shut the fuck up. My work, my money, my purchase. That's how it operates.
The minute you bankroll my life is when you have say. Otherwise fuck off.
These issue are PRECISELY why I go for older cars.
Everything I own, 6 vehicles in various conditions,
is *before* 2000. You can find good gas mileage there.
My babies are pre-1990 and get 32mpg highway, and
have hardly any computers, and the diesel has none,
it will survive an EMP pulse, lol.
Bog standard cheap as hell parts on all of them.
Yes, if I were to go all out, I'd buy a brand new Tesla.
But for now, the economics, purchase, maintenance,
risk of accident costs, etc simply don't add up.
Oh, and my oil burners have nice weldable chassis
that can easily be converted to electrics later on.
I'm tempted to do that right now with one of the trucks
and a motor from a tesla wreck.
Not even a little bit true. Most repairs cost so much is people don't bother trying to do it themselves. It's amazingly simple to implement most car repairs these days with a modest tool box and a copy of the manufacturer repair manuals for the car. Combine that with the fact that you can order parts online for a fraction of what the dealer will charge you. My last air conditioning repair took a $25 (fried relay). The dealer wanted $750 to do the same fix that took me longer to type up in this comment than to do. (Open the hood, took off a plastic cover over the fuse box, found the relay, pulled it out with a pair of pliers, stuck the new one in.)
What it is, is advanced marketing techniques, improved market cornering, and a better legal understand to prevent lawsuits for shady business practices.
The tech, the tech, the tech. The new USB connector, which is the same as the old one, but with a slightly different shape you pay 20$ for. It costs the store 0.70$, and to make it probably less than a fraction of a penny. The 0.70 cents the store pays covers the shipping and logistics of it.
It's all market price gouging cornering. It's been going on for thousands of years. Greedy people try to corner the market and increase price at the max rate that won't cause rebellion on their products, and lobby to prevent competition, and any competition there is has to play by their rules or else they'll sue them to financial ruin, even if they lose the court case, the money the large company loses suing them is minor, compared to the threat of competition, and the small company loses its market entrance point, it gives time while financially ruining them for the large company to make competing products, and that's what they do.
You literally have people who know they have no legal ground to stand on, but just the effort to prove that will ruin your company, trashing companies, and making your prices higher.
I'm obviously not a 'car person' as all new cars look the same to me - identical bulges, curves and massive footprints that make parking a nightmare.
In modern cars. I could not do it myself in my Citroen. The mechanic had special tools and an endoscope. For a Reno, you need to pull off the bumper amongst other things.
(I like French cars. So cheap second hand.)
not always true, sometimes it gets really hard to find certain parts and then it gets expensive again.
just ask any retro car owner/lover how cheap his car parts are.
On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.
Increasing the amount of safety gear in cars doesnt make for greater safety... it just makes for greater dependence on safety gear. If you give someone a safer car they'll drive more recklessly.
A long time ago this guy invented something called interchangeable parts... Most of the stuff we are complaining about are components of something that was designed, parts created, assembled in a batch series and forgotten. So some gang in China get a bunch of containers full of widget parts, makes them and off they go. The parts are intentionally unique to this batch because the real intent is to make it difficult and expensive to service -- so when there is a problem the easy thing is to throw it away and get a new one. (And don't ask about recycling the old stuff...). Cars are just a bigger instance of the problem. The folks who make them have little incentive to make them serviceable -- and when styling is poured over the concoction it becomes even worse. But as long as we have a world where this months Buick has to look different than last months... the problem will continue. Maybe 3d printing can address this... but I suspect the manufacturers will make that difficult. After all, who will by the output of their factories? And isn't profit and waste the name of the game in the end?
What about the government regulation that now requires that technology to be installed in the bumper (rear view camera in the US)?
You can buy many of these built in safety systems and bolt them on.
Lane departure
Back up cameras
Collision Avoidance
Sure...maybe suspect or poor quality at the moment, but it will only get better,
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
When I was a kid, my Father was always working on the car, Tuning the Engine, replacing parts that had seemed to fall off, welding parts back on, Cutting off rust and putty and painting it back again....
So now it cost $3000 to replace something that you could do yourself. However you had normally had that car for much longer then the life of the cars before that, So other then paying $5000 of maintenance over the life time you are paying $3000 once.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Modern cars are unnecessary complex to meet safety and emission regulations. These are not "free", they add both upfront and lifetime costs.
You legislated 40MPG, 5 star offset crash rating, collision avoidance-equipped car and you go it. Only it costs an arm and a leg to buy and repair.
My wife has an EGR valve that went out on her truck. This part that used to cost 20-40 bucks back in the 80's is now $400. That has nothing to do with "tech". That has to do with the fact that this little device which does NOTHING but help with emissions which is mandated by the government can be forced down our throats.
You don't even need to look for überadvanced tech on today's cars.
On all new cars these last years, the use of LEDs instead of bulbs allowed to install super cool, super fancy lights everywhere -for instance the fashion for turnlights recently was to wrap a luminous line of LEDs all around the stoplights, or even with ultra-zen shape inflections.
Very sillily, I just thought 'Ahh, fashion...' in the beginning.
This, until I understood that, from now on, whenever one of your stoplight or turlight dies, you cannot switch a 20-cent bulb there*.
You now MUST get back to the original automaker, to politely ask for this complex plastic element, ultra-zen-shaped, that, obviously, no one else than them can provide.
(Oh, and the left side isn't the same as the right side, mind you, don't confuse!)
I'd say, you'll pay it not ten times, but one hundred times the bulb cost.
Ahh, but this is for fashion, isn't it?
(*) and even, have a complete light repair set within the volume of a smartphone, slipped somewhere in the car, allowing you to repair in 5mn straight in front of the cop if need be...
Herve S.
About being poor AF?
Like it's a badge of honor or something...
Honda wants $40 for an HR-V front-bumper tow hook cover.
It turns out there's a huge market for these things: people steal them (which takes 2 seconds) and sell them on eBay for half what Honda charges.
Not if it has a stock bumper which haven't been designed to "bump" anything serious for several decades. A reinforced aftermarket bumper can easily transmit shock to the crush zones on the frame and total (write off in insurance terms) the truck. If frame crush zones function as designed by buckling it's a total even if the rest of the vehicle is basically unhurt. Cab floor buckling is also a total. BTW rollovers often yield good rolling chassis and frame hits often yield usable cabs since the front clip (grille, core brace, fenders, etc) is easily replaced. I helped build many used trucks from donors while working at a used car lot. Done right it's no big deal. I've driven one of them for several years.
When you buy a used truck, lift the mats and look at the cab floor, then crawl beneath with a bright flashlight and look for signs of repairs because some outfits don't do the right thing which is REPLACE damaged frames and cabs, not straighten/heat/beat/weld.
CFC was in 2009 and that's ancient history in the salvage business. The crushed vehicles were typically over ten years old. Who drives that ancient shit today? What parts shortage?
I worked in the used car/auction/salvage biz at the time and nothing about CFC rules required crushing the good components. Buyers had a limited time to strip profitable parts then were required to crush the hull, long block (engine sans accessories) and transmission.
Most yards bought CFC cars at auction then parted them out. Wholesale and retail consumers bought those parts. All the engine accessories not oil-wetted were unaffected by the silicate and remained salable. It was economic to crush many as scrap prices (an important part of US foreign exchange) were high, but the vast majority of CFC vehicles no one would miss.
Outliers make the news but any car or SUV over ten years old (specialty vehicles of course excepted) is worth so little most salvage yards crush them when over 100 hulls accumulate. (100 hulls make it profitable to call in portable crusher outfits who flatten the hulks then take them to the shredder.)
Salvage yards usually have limited space and make money by turning over stock. Those CFC vehicles you mourn would have been long gone by now with or without CFC.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
I agree.
And yet i disagree, a lot.
Because as you try to repair, you run into 3 issues:
Can you reach the part without removing items, can you find readable documentation for the part(i.e manual) and can you physically poke all the connectors with a voltmeter?
The general answer is that you can move your hands half a meter from the battery, and nothing is now accessible by hand. Which means if connectors are not exposed at doors or hinges, you can't diagnose them. Nor is cables mentioned anywhere.
Oil filter and fluids is generally easy to access. Clutch oil? Not so much. Might not be mentioned in manual either.
Fuses and tires are easy to change, so long you don't need to calibrate sensors.
Lights? Assuming you can reach them, its possible. Bonus point for socket type not being mentioned in manual, so you need to remove them before entering store to buy replacements. Interior lights are harder, because they often have hinges that are hard to spot or pry.
Relays are a nightmare to replace if they are not exposed, or if you don't know enough about electronics to poke the right ends with a voltmeter to find it.
Springs and suspensions requires special tools and clamp to change safely.
Coating frame underside is cheap. Having a way to elevate and have it elevated safely, so you don't need a gas mask while lying on the back: Not so cheap.
Engine isn't so bad, but you need a tool to lift it. And you need to know how to connect it with everything, and possibly adjust all valves.
Gasoline filter? It might not be exposed at all.
Air filter tends to be exposed, and getting a new coal filter is like a dream for the first few hours driving.
Lessee, about 15 or so years ago, I had a Grand Voyager. One day, a window fell down. Took it to a mechanic, and he replaced the belt that raises and lowers it. $160. 8 or so years later, newer Grand Voyager, same thing: nope, the mechanic said, "we both know it's only the belt, but they've made it a sealeed unit, which includes the motro, but I have no choice now but to replace the whole thing (for twice the price).
Oh, and about needing computers... my ancient, deally beloved Toyota Tercel wagon, an '86, with a carburetor, no computer, was a) still passing emission tests and b) getting 35-36mpg in 2000.
Blame the car companies. They want you to buy a new car every two years, like back in the late fifties.
"Knock off a side mirror equipped with a camera as part of a surround-view system? $500 to $1,100. "
Do a simple shoulder check, no tech required: $0
I wonder if there's some cognitive dissonance going on here though?
Hear me out, it goes something like this:
1). I get into an accident, scares the crap out of me;
2). Vehicle safety systems do an awesome job, I walk away unharmed;
3). Time to fix the car, take it in for repair;
4). Dinged with "high" bill (subjective assessment of course);
5). Log on to internet and complain about "stupid gov't., rapacious manufacturers, clueless mechanics", etc.
My point being, I am mentally equating "I walked away unharmed" with "my vehicle should be fixable for $20." It could be a matter of mentally classifying an accident as "minor" and believing that every part of the incident, including vehicle repair, should be minor too.
When people get into a major accident, life-threatening injuries, hospital time, they don't complain about the fact that their car was totaled. No matter how much money was lost.
Maybe, when escaping injury in an accident, people should be focusing on how well the safety systems worked, allowing them to escape injury? Rather than bitching about how much it cost to fix the car?
Nope. They sell a 50k car at a loss these days, knowing that they will fiance it and make all the profit off that. Dealers are merely lenders at this point, the product is somewhat meaningless.
Nope. Cars are more expensive now because for the last decade interest rates have basically been nothing. Seen by the fact that there were deals for ages for "0 percent financing". So free money. So people can borrow huge amounts. So they can afford more car. Car makers respond with, here have more car, and it will be expensive, but don't worry you can afford it just get an interest free loan for 8 years, etc...
and here we are.
Seriously, what kind of kool aid have you been drinking?
China is more Capitalist than America is now. Even if they feed that communism line to their citizens, everything is owned by the oligarchs, just like here in America, and almost nothing is owned by the workers.
You touch my car, I end your worthless little life, insect.
And here I thought you were going to say: I eat pieces of shit like you for breakfast.