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Really not sure about this dude’s, like… thing, but I absolutely agree that cars have reached a point of almost complete unmaintainability. It wouldn’t be such

Really not sure about this dude’s, like… thing, but I absolutely agree that cars have reached a point of almost complete unmaintainability. It wouldn’t be such a bad thing if they were engineered in a fault tolerant way, but they aren’t. Their electrical systems are brittle as dry spaghetti, completely finicky and relying on very small margins to prevent basically frying everything. I have a 1987 Toyota pickup, a 1983 Toyota Land Cruiser, a 1989 BMW 325i and a 1974 BMW 2002, a 2022 Toyota Tacoma and I used to have a 2021 Ford Transit. Of all of those cars, the only one that had electrical issues was my Transit. Twice in fact. Once right after I bought it. The cluster went belly up. Then again with the driving lights on the left side of the van which would intermittently not work. Dealer couldn’t figure it out. I couldn’t figure it out. They wanted to start playing the game of just start replacing everything until the lights work again. Knowing the quality of modern Ford mechanics, I opted out knowing they’d probably break something else in the process of playing whackamole with my car. It wasn’t a serious issue, just obnoxious. Modern cars that have electrical issues cannot be fixed. Whoever is responsible for this change of things should be dragged out and shot. It’s criminally wasteful.

kube-system 3y ago
> It wouldn’t be such a bad thing if they were engineered in a fault tolerant way, but they aren’t. There are multiple CAN specs, but fault tolerance is a built-in part of some of them... enough that you can cut a wire entirely and it'll still work. That beats any analog vehicle electrical systems. Although, if it costs a penny more, I'd bet Ford cuts that corner.
tyingq 3y ago
> Modern cars that have electrical issues cannot be fixed. Some of it is just "volume" too. When you scale up the amount of wires and connections so much that formerly easy problems become impossible. Things like a somewhat buried wire getting some exhaust heat because a plastic retainer failed, or a squirrel getting into the engine compartment and chewing. You can sort that out in a car with dozens of circuits, but it's harder when there's hundreds.

kube-system 3y ago

> It wouldn’t be such a bad thing if they were engineered in a fault tolerant way, but they aren’t. There are multiple CAN specs, but fault tolerance is a built-in part of some of them... enough that you can cut a wire entirely and it'll still work. That beats any analog vehicle electrical systems. Although, if it costs a penny more, I'd bet Ford cuts that corner.

tyingq 3y ago

> Modern cars that have electrical issues cannot be fixed. Some of it is just "volume" too. When you scale up the amount of wires and connections so much that formerly easy problems become impossible. Things like a somewhat buried wire getting some exhaust heat because a plastic retainer failed, or a squirrel getting into the engine compartment and chewing. You can sort that out in a car with dozens of circuits, but it's harder when there's hundreds.