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Maybe this is a dumb question, but does anyone still produce cars without chips? It's possible, and in the current environment it seems like it would be a major
by brobdingnagians 5y ago
Maybe this is a dumb question, but does anyone still produce cars without chips? It's possible, and in the current environment it seems like it would be a major competitive advantage-- and might be more reliable in general.
- gameswithgo 5y agoIt is probably possible but would require complex mechanical solutions to meet modern efficiency and emissions requirements that would likely be far less reliable.
- ghaff 5y ago>and might be more reliable in general Cars in, say, the 1960s were not "more reliable in general." It's not all semiconductor-related of course--they also rusted out quickly in areas that got snow--but 5 years/50K miles is about what you were looking at for vehicle lifetime. Also much lower fuel efficiency, to say nothing of lack of what we'd consider routine safety features today.
- ohples 5y agoI seem to recall most cars built before the mid-80s just had 5 digit odometers.
- didgeoridoo 5y agoThe many Cubans driving cars from pre-1959 would be surprised to hear this.
- ghaff 5y agoThe fact that clunkers can be kept running at some level for an extended period of time (especially if they're not somewhere that the frame will simply rust out from road salt) doesn't change the fact that what people in developed countries would consider reliable day-to-day transportation has a significantly longer life cycle than it used to.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Nasrudith 5y agoTheir automotive necromancers would call them the opposite for reliable because they have had to bring them back from the dead laboriously for generations.
- hef19898 5y agoEver since working on Integrated-Logistcs-Support I take issue when terms like reliability are thrown around. Because in the end it's a result of looking at Reliability (stuff not breaking down often), Availability (stuff being functional when planned to be), Maintainability (how easily stuff can be kept functioning and repaired when broken), Supportability (how easy spares can be get) and Testability (how easy it is to find defects). On that, Availability is the result of all the rest. With the important part of planned Availability, because that excludes stuff like planned maintenance. Arguably modern cars beat old ones in that category.
- ghaff 5y agoI think that's true. What most of us care about in cars is that they work when we want to drive them someplace right now, won't leave us stuck on the side of the road, and don't have prohibitive (time or money) planned maintenance. What's probably true is that older cars that aren't rusted out can probably be kept running by people with the appropriate mechanical skills even in the absence of proper factory/3rd party parts for longer than modern vehicles can. Given intact supply chains, modern vehicles are more available overall. But, to the point of the article, modern vehicles are more susceptible to lack of parts.
- hef19898 5y agoTrue, as an owner of a car from 1982 I agree. Requires a lot more preventive maintenance, e.g. oil changes every six months or 5-6k km, but runs perfectly fine when properly maintained. Also, I cam probably fix most issues with tools carried on board on the side of road. Enough to get to a proper workshop at least, I converted it to 2WD after killing a diff and drove for 200 km that way. If you cannot do that yourself, you're screwed so. That being said, if I'd go on a 2k + mile trip I would put in some work to get the car fit for this. Looking at my dads VW camper, I'll just fill up drinking water, maybe gas and fuel. Without a serious amount of preventive maintenance those cars do have a tendency to break down so. I guess we are just not used to this kind cars or machinery anymore.
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- kwhitefoot 5y agoMy 1965 Volvo Amazon did 300 k miles before I scrapped it, in 1984, in favour of a 1976 Volvo 245. I only scrapped it because it wasn't worth anything, it was in perfect working order. The floor of 245 finally succumbed to Norwegian road salt in 1996 after 250 k miles but was otherwise in perfect order. I don't remember how far my 1965 Austin Mini van had done by the time I scrapped it in 1978 but I'm quite sure it was much more than 50 k miles.
- eldaisfish 5y agothis is survivorship bias, nothing more.
- hef19898 5y agoThe bias is more that we go through cars faster, generally, then they die. And once a car isn't used anymore, it just rots away. Or it gets exported to some developing country to happily life for another couple of decades. How that would work with modern electronics, I don't know. Probably as long as electronics don't brick the car it should fine I guess.
- WillPostForFood 5y agoThe bias is more that we go through cars faster Is that true though? Average length of car ownership is at an all-time high of over 8 years. It was under 5 years just 20 years ago. Maybe length of ownership doesn't correlate to length of car life, but seems like a strong signal that car quality and lifespan is going up.
- kwhitefoot 5y agoNo it isn't. Survivorship bias would have been me claiming that because my cars lasted more than 50 k miles that therefore all cars did. I merely added a small counter argument to the idea that cars of the period were necessarily short lived.
- eldaisfish 5y ago
- CryptoPunk 5y agoCapitalism really promotes planned durability.
- ghaff 5y agoCars are 1.) expensive enough and 2.) required by many people to work in order to get through the day that, while plenty of people also want the latest and greatest, most value reliability and long lifetime a lot. (To the point where these are tracked pretty carefully by organizations like CR.)
- CryptoPunk 5y agoYou can add smartphones to that list: vastly more durable than the first generation, with shatter-proof glass, water-resistance, etc. And you can also add laser eye and cosmetic surgery: have advanced by leaps and bounds in terms of safety and quality, while actually becoming less costly for the consumer.
- UseStrict 5y agoVehicles made a massive leap forward with the introduction of electronic components - fuel injection, oxygen sensors, throttle control. Not to mention essential safety components like traction control computers and anti-lock braking. There's no way a vehicle without these features would pass any sort of environmental or safety regulation today.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y agohave you see the rust belt in the US? lot of junk that doesnt pass emissions test. my truck included.
- everdrive 5y agoIn addition, breakdowns were a much more regular occurrence. It wasn’t unheard of for brakes to fail without warning. I hate computer-laden cars quite a bit, but as you say, cars have become much more reliable than they ever were in the past. (Written while parked in a 17 year old Toyota.)
- w-m 5y agoAll new cars in the EU need to have an automatic emergency call system since 2018: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECall https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ECall That would be hard to pull off without chips. Although I guess you could keep it completely isolated from the rest of the car.
- detaro 5y ago"Without chips" is not really possible if you want to sell in first-world markets, way to many requirements (engine efficiency, safety features, ...) you would be hard-pressed to meet otherwise.
- raisedbyninjas 5y agoBackup cameras are required now.
- kube-system 5y agoStability control has been mandatory in the US since 2012. I doubt there’s any remotely reasonable mechanical way to accomplish that.
- fulafel 5y agoEVs in lighter classes that don't have ESC requirements would probably work. A bit of battery design work for the analog BMC would be needed to use lithium chemistry but shouldn't be that hard.
- josephd79 5y agoprobably not, regulation and crack down on pollution from vehicles. Have you ever rode in an older car that uses a carburetor instead of fuel injection? Nothing like the crisp smell of gasoline in the morning... or anytime you drive it.
- cuu508 5y agoOf course, you need some electronics. Let's rephrase: which cars from western mainstream manufacturers are currently the "lowest tech"? No infotainment, no digital dash, no touch-sensitive anything, as few sensors as is viable to still be road legal? And a related question: modern cars are full of tech because that's what market demands. Can we expect the trend to reverse at some point?
- throwaway0a5e 5y ago>No infotainment, no digital dash, no touch-sensitive anything, as few sensors as is viable to still be road legal? For compact/subcompact sedans/hatches and midsize sedans the OEMs typically make a super stripped down variant so they can advertise an insanely low "starting at" MSRP. Dealers don't typically buy a lot of them so they're very hard to find and you'll likely have little room to haggle on price. Nowadays there's a pretty long list of mandatory electronics and everything has at least one bus network in it but if you want to minimize the number of extraneous modules on that network then a stripped down economy car is your best bet.
- akiselev 5y ago> no digital dash Rear view cameras are mandatory since ~2014 so I don't think this is possible.
- jaywalk 5y agoHe probably means no digital instrument cluster, which isn't necessary for a rear view camera. Most lower-end vehicles put a dedicated screen in the mirror for the rear view camera.
- 5y ago
- Cloudef 5y agoIt is possible, but the cars will be taxed into oblivion, because of push to electric cars. This is nothing new in finland because nobody there buys new car anyways, and continues to recycle existing old cars. Though that will also soon become impossible due to rising taxes to get rid of the old cars. I'm not sure which here is supposed to be more eco-friendly in the long run, but I suppose if you make people impossible to own anything that'll eventually win?
- throwaway9870 5y agoYou cannot build a modern car engine without chips, let alone a car. Also, no way to hit safety requirements without chips (air bag deployment for example).
- gameswithgo 5y agoI mean yes, if you take that tautologically, since a modern car engine has a chip. But probably you could build an engine that meets modern requirements without. People forget how clever analog solutions can be. It would be a huge pain in the ass though, and take years.
- hef19898 5y agoNo, not since the late 80s when electronic fuel injection became necessary to meet emission standards. The alternative, carbs, just isn't good enough anymore.
- teorema 5y agoUgh... in one of the these threads on HN someone said a manufacturer was doing that, or at least openly speculating about it, offering a low tech model. I think it was in France but my memory is fuzzy.
- NickNameNick 5y agoProbably thinking of 'voitures sans permis', really small cars that can be driven in France by people without drivers licenses. (Including by people who've been disqualified...)
- pyb 5y agoDacia Logan ?
- atonse 5y agoI can’t think of any system in a car today that doesn’t use some chip somewhere. Wouldn’t even power steering use it? Headlights? Engines would have engine control units running some kind of real-time OS, anti lock brakes, anti traction systems, airbags, power locks with wireless keys. Climate control vs just “AC fan on” Even some ignition systems have chips that do some kind of key exchange to start the car. (Yes you can bypass it but now you’re making a car that’s easier to steal)
- andruby 5y agoI don't think it's possible. At least not road-legal in Europe. There must be hundreds of chips in a modern car: Engine, ABS, wireless key, cruise control, radio, audio, electric windows, gps, battery management, airbags, seat-belt check, sensors, climate control, ...
- silon42 5y agoyou could drop: wireless key, cruise control, gps easily possibly climate control (not needed for short rides, a fan will do), maybe even radio (can always add later) and electric windows I'd buy that car if it was cheaper... I'd need AWD though, trailer hitch...
- jhgb 5y agoI'm not even sure you need to drop all of these. Lots of functionality could be centralized. The Apollo Lunar Module did everything with just one embedded computer. We've probably just traded more chips for shorter wires in many such cases.
- calvinmorrison 5y agoWell cars talk over an internal network called canbus. Every endpoint (power seats example) can communicate. Upside is a lot from design to diagnoses. Downside is you don't go find a rotted wire and splice it anymore
- bzzzt 5y agoIsn’t GPS neccessary for the automatic emergency call when the car is in an accident?
- jrwoodruff 5y agoI don't even know if you can buy new off-road toys that don't have chips - four wheelers, side-by-sides, snowmobiles and the like. Pretty sure they all use electronic fuel injection these days, and that requires at least one chip.
- bri3d 5y agoEven before EFI, almost all dirt bikes and snowmobiles built since probably the 1980s have had electronic ignition. You have to go pretty far back in time to find a vehicle of any sort with a points ignition that has no silicon/transistorized electronics in it.
- refurb 5y agoNo. US cars got chips starting in the mid-80’s, so almost 40 years ago. And they were actually much more reliable and efficient. Fuel injection was light years ahead of carburetors. And I’d argue it would be impossible to meet emissions without computer control of the engine.
- jccooper 5y agoNo; it would be illegal in every major market, which if nothing else all require some sort of on-board diagnostics system. OBD has been required in California since 1988. India just recently required OBD on everything.
- gilbetron 5y agoWhen I started driving in the 80s, there was always a real chance that the car wouldn't start, or have a problem starting. Even new cars. Now? Except for a dead battery, I haven't had that problem in years, and we don't buy/lease new vehicles very often (our two current vehicles are 4 and 17 years old). ICs are far more reliable than old school electronics/mechanics!