5 ms·

That already is old news, lots of manufacturers do that. For example, the Passat 3B and later platforms introduced proprietary screws for the wheels and brakes

That already is old news, lots of manufacturers do that. For example, the Passat 3B and later platforms introduced proprietary screws for the wheels and brakes, so you weren't able to change them yourself. Same for all kinds of sensors that will go rogue when the car is turned off and you change a sensor on the engine. All firmware gradually was modified each generation to allow less modifications and less self repairs, and less repairs by third party workshops. Also, the Golf 2 platform for example had a very sturdy engine running beyond 1 Mio km easily. What do you think happened with the Golf 3 engine design? They made the camshaft structurally weaker, so the engine will blow up more easily. The rest of the engine is almost identical. Talk about being bad at hiding planned obsolescence. There's many more examples like this, acrosd every manufacturer. The real reason why there is so many people on race tracks driving old cars is because they're easier to modify, easier to maintain, and easier to buy replacement parts for. It's ridiculous if you think about it, and really frustrating that there is no legislative intervention against this.

markus_zhang 10mo ago
Guess eventually people will buy the cheapest cars and treat it as a consumer product that breaks down every few years, like a laptop. Or simply find a remote job and rent a car. Welcome to the Dystopian world.
- deleted 10mo ago
  [deleted]
- georgefrowny 10mo ago
  > Guess eventually people will buy the cheapest car It looks like lots of people choose to lease very expensive cars, and give them back after 3 years for a new one, dropping a obsolescence time-bomb onto the second-hand market and providing a strong signal to manufacturers that there is a substantial maintainability-insensitive market segment. I am still surprised that no manufacturer has a balls-out "buy our cars, they will NEVER DIE, anyone can service them, and your kids will still be driving them" model, as they might have lower returns from not gouging over subscriptions, planned obsolescence and parts and software lock-in shenanigans, but they'd instantly capture a market segment.
  - markus_zhang 10mo ago
    I also advised some Chinese manufacturers to produce cheap, dummy home appliances and then sell to the Western market with a bit of mark-up, as more people are fed up with the smart ones. Not sure anyone is going to try though. Looks like everyone is in the data business.
    - rascul 10mo ago
      China already competes in that market in the USA with Haier.
    - elzbardico 10mo ago
      Electronics are cheaper than high quality electromechanical stuff, and allow you to give any product a veneer of sophistication and modernity that the modern consumer still perceives as being a sign of higher quality. Our love of blinken-lights will be our downfall.
      - georgefrowny 10mo ago
        And you can make very shiny out-of-the-box finishes even in quite shitty materials that will decay quite quickly: soft plastics going gooey, white plastics yellowing, all plastics becoming brittle, poor anti-rust coatings, soft paintwork, etc, etc.
  - haritha-j 10mo ago
    You should see motability
  - phil21 10mo ago
    It’s largely a market signal, it seems. I was listening to a podcast with an ex-GM engineer and he said basically the business end is entirely driven by financing vehicles. Very little profit is derived from selling a car itself, nearly all the profit comes from the finance end of the business either on leases or car loans. Americans overall drive cars for a very short period of time before upgrading. That, coupled with massive consumer preference for “zero maintenance” vehicles like supposedly not having to change transmission fluid for 100k miles. The manufacturers know that such a schedule will guarantee (more) damage, but it’s considered a marketing expense to handle early failures under warranty but sell the idea your car just needs an oil change every 10k miles and nothing else. After that first owner and warranty period the parts are simply considered a consumable. If you plan on keeping your car for more than 3-5 years, toss the maintenance schedule handbook in the trash and figure out what an actual reasonable schedule is. It’s probably at minimum double the recommendations are.
- elzbardico 10mo ago
  70's American cars were not very far from this. The competition from Japanese manufacturers really helped to improve this. And ironically, the reason why Japan invested so heavily in high quality was to overcome their former image of low quality products that severely hampered their ability to sell to international markets. I am not a libertarian that holds a religious belief on the infallibility of the market, but a lot of times, the market gave us better outcomes than any regulation.
2026iknewit 10mo ago
I believe its more about optimization for price and minimum amount of km you need to design something for. And in regards of screws: If you have too many laypeople doing stupid shit for critical components, you might also think 'lets fix that by adding a barrier'.
- DennisP 10mo ago
  Why would that be your problem? Make it a warranty violation, and they can either get it fixed themselves, or pay you money you wouldn't have gotten otherwise.
  - 2026iknewit 10mo ago
    Because people lie and still give you 1 star rating perhaps.
    - DennisP 10mo ago
      The same people, the ones prone to tinkering with their cars, might give you a one star rating for putting the car together with proprietary screws.
      - 2026iknewit 10mo ago
        Don't get me wrong, i do not like it either but I do think often enough they do this for this kind of reasons and not to be dicks on purpose.
rollcat 10mo ago
> [...] so you weren't able to change them yourself. This should be illegal. You're supposed to do what, stay on the roadside for 20h before an authorized repairman can reach you? What if the weather is harsh, and you run out of basic supplies like food or your medicine?
- IAmBroom 10mo ago
  Towing exists.
chii 10mo ago
> The real reason ... driving old cars is because they're easier to modify, easier to maintain, and easier to buy replacement parts for. the real reason is that if a manufacturer makes their car same as those repairable, easily maintainable old cars, they will soon lose customers (as they stop needing to buy new ones!). Planned obsolescence out-competes in a market economy that does not have regulation against it, esp. in a saturated market (like the US). The gov't could legislate, but then businesses cry foul - not mention that these manufacturers hang the sword of damocles over the gov't in the form of job losses (but of course, out-sourcing is OK...)
_yb2s 10mo ago
I think you’re seeing malice where none exists, particularly in those VW examples. VWs have always required a lot of special tools to work on, but usually for good engineering reasons making things smaller, lighter, simpler, and easier to manufacture. They will happily sell the tools to the public, and for most VW models, a few hundred dollars worth of special tools is all you need for any DIY repair- I personally have accumulated pretty much every VW special tool for every model and year, and find the special tools tends to make them easier to work on for a home mechanic- less stripped bolts, etc. than other cars. A 12 point star on a brake caliper is really not a rare tool, and it is so much quicker and easier than trying to fit a huge socket in that awkward space. If VW had been trying to make the mk3 engines bad for planned obsolescence, then why did the mk4 engines like the ALH TDI and the 1.8T earn reputations as some of the best engines made? VW had quality issues in the 90s that they later attacked and fixed, but it was just sloppy leadership and engineering, not a plan. What engine exactly are you seeing broken cams on? My guess would be this is not VWs fault but a mechanic failing to keep track of the ordering and orientation of the cam bearing caps and swapping them around- they’re line bored and any modern engine will break the cam if you do this. I’ve seen it on a mk2 GTI.
- cookiengineer 10mo ago
  I am not sure if you wanna go into discussing Diesel engines now, especially with all the engine software problems when it comes to AdBlue, and when it comes to Dieselgate, which, by decision of all involved courts, was malice. While I agree that some models improved when it comes to performance (especially in the 1.8 - 2.0 Turbo range as that's the sweet spot when it comes to cc) and technical failures, I would still say that all newer models have more problems with software. So much that it's really not even necessary to create these problems even in regards to regulatory requirements or safety compliance. Just thinking about the messy code that I've seen to pass ASIL-D requirements makes my skin boil.
  - _yb2s 10mo ago
    > I am not sure if you wanna go into discussing Diesel engines now, especially with all the engine software problems when it comes to AdBlue, and when it comes to Dieselgate, which, by decision of all involved courts, was malice. I mentioned the ALH TDI from the MKIV Golf/Jetta only, which is a legendary engine, with a ton of them having now reliably reached half a million miles with no major work required. This long predates the dieselgate cars, and adblue was never used on the 4 cylinder VW diesels anyways. As an aside, yes dieselgate was intentionally criminal, but was sort of the opposite of a quality issue. VW couldn't figure out how to get their engines to work reliability and drive well with current technology at the time and still meet emissions requirements, so they cheated. They had to fix them (I own one) and they are still good, but not as good as they were before the fix- worse fuel economy, less reliable, excessive adblue consumption (in 6cyl models). The ethical thing to do would have been to pull all of the diesels from the market instead, which is what many of their competitors did at the time. Passenger car diesels in the USA are effectively dead because the emissions requirements render them less practical than gasoline cars. VW had serious quality issues in the 90s that weren't strategic, but were actually causing their company to lose its reputation and nearly collapse. They turned it completely around when Ferdinand Piëch started running things- they were arguably making the highest quality cars at in the world any price point during his tenure as CEO. The quality of current VWs has now fallen back down again, even lower than the 90s cars unfortunately.
ryeights 10mo ago
>What do you think happened with the Golf 3 engine design? They made the camshaft structurally weaker, so the engine will blow up more easily. Wow, talk about an oversimplification. The Mk3 moved from an 8-valve to a 16-valve engine; yes, this adds more valvetrain failure modes but also brings myriad other benefits, increased power, better fuel economy, reduced emissions… The idea that a carmaker would purposely engineer flaws into core engine components in order to drive future sales doesn’t make much sense.
- hulitu 10mo ago
  > The idea that a carmaker would purposely engineer flaws into core engine components in order to drive future sales doesn’t make much sense. There is a legend that Mercedes 190D was built like a tank and this caused customers to not buy the next iteration. Mercedes solved this, making cars a bit unreliable.
- salawat 10mo ago
  >The idea that a carmaker would purposely engineer flaws into core engine components in order to drive future sales doesn’t make much sense. You need to realize modern business revolves not around one-and-done, but around recurring revenue streams. To the "business minded" the only thing that doesn't make sense is leaving money on the table.
  - ryeights 10mo ago
    Selling people grenading engines is not a great way to build recurring revenue streams. And building performant, efficient, and reliable engines is hard enough without intentional sabotage
    - salawat 10mo ago
      Nevertheless, as long as everyone else optimizes to the same metrics (minimized Bill of Materials, and building for assembly, not service), it may not be great, but it undeniably works. Wanna start a car company?
elzbardico 10mo ago
> really frustrating that there is no legislative intervention against this. Ironically, things are like that in a big part because of legislative and regulatory intervention. > They made the camshaft structurally weaker, so the engine will blow up more easily. The rest of the engine is almost identical. Talk about being bad at hiding planned obsolescence. A lot of such things are just workarounds to reduce weight and meet tightening emission standards. Every thing that can be built with less metal, thinner walls, lighter metals will be built like that when every gram matters. Tighter tolerances, increased pressures, increased temperatures, higher rotational speeds. All of this leads to increased efficiency, but sometimes (not always) the trade-off will be decreased reliability.
orwin 10mo ago
Any workshop can command WV screwdrivers, at least in the EU. I think the new regulation is that if you don't have the piece, or the tools necessary to replace the piece, you have to produce the plans on how to do it. I know someone who had an issue with his old WV Kombi, and thought it would be the last drive (Around 2020-2021). He found an auto shop who could manufacture pieces and replaced every single malfunctioning pieces from plans they got directly from WV.
emchammer 10mo ago
What are the best cars to buy these days for self-service and tinkering?
- Caius-Cosades 10mo ago
  Vehicles no newer than 2010 would be the general rule of thumb.
rsync 10mo ago
Wait, wait - aren’t you the cookie engineer Who did the site about cloud flare and did the auditing of the malware sites hosted by cloudflare? OK, now I remember - it was this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38496499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38496499 ... which I was very intrigued by and I tried to contact you via your web based email submission on cookie.engineer but it broke/failed. Would you please elaborate[1]: - who was the person who ran crimeflare, etc. - Where can I learn about the lawsuit(s) that made them suspend this reporting/indexing ? I am (potentially) interested in resurrecting these efforts but would like to have a better understanding of them first. [1] email info@rsync.net if you don't want to respond publicly.

markus_zhang 10mo ago

Guess eventually people will buy the cheapest cars and treat it as a consumer product that breaks down every few years, like a laptop. Or simply find a remote job and rent a car. Welcome to the Dystopian world.

deleted 10mo ago
[deleted]
georgefrowny 10mo ago
> Guess eventually people will buy the cheapest car It looks like lots of people choose to lease very expensive cars, and give them back after 3 years for a new one, dropping a obsolescence time-bomb onto the second-hand market and providing a strong signal to manufacturers that there is a substantial maintainability-insensitive market segment. I am still surprised that no manufacturer has a balls-out "buy our cars, they will NEVER DIE, anyone can service them, and your kids will still be driving them" model, as they might have lower returns from not gouging over subscriptions, planned obsolescence and parts and software lock-in shenanigans, but they'd instantly capture a market segment.
- markus_zhang 10mo ago
  I also advised some Chinese manufacturers to produce cheap, dummy home appliances and then sell to the Western market with a bit of mark-up, as more people are fed up with the smart ones. Not sure anyone is going to try though. Looks like everyone is in the data business.
  - rascul 10mo ago
    China already competes in that market in the USA with Haier.
  - elzbardico 10mo ago
    Electronics are cheaper than high quality electromechanical stuff, and allow you to give any product a veneer of sophistication and modernity that the modern consumer still perceives as being a sign of higher quality. Our love of blinken-lights will be our downfall.
    - georgefrowny 10mo ago
      And you can make very shiny out-of-the-box finishes even in quite shitty materials that will decay quite quickly: soft plastics going gooey, white plastics yellowing, all plastics becoming brittle, poor anti-rust coatings, soft paintwork, etc, etc.
- haritha-j 10mo ago
  You should see motability
- phil21 10mo ago
  It’s largely a market signal, it seems. I was listening to a podcast with an ex-GM engineer and he said basically the business end is entirely driven by financing vehicles. Very little profit is derived from selling a car itself, nearly all the profit comes from the finance end of the business either on leases or car loans. Americans overall drive cars for a very short period of time before upgrading. That, coupled with massive consumer preference for “zero maintenance” vehicles like supposedly not having to change transmission fluid for 100k miles. The manufacturers know that such a schedule will guarantee (more) damage, but it’s considered a marketing expense to handle early failures under warranty but sell the idea your car just needs an oil change every 10k miles and nothing else. After that first owner and warranty period the parts are simply considered a consumable. If you plan on keeping your car for more than 3-5 years, toss the maintenance schedule handbook in the trash and figure out what an actual reasonable schedule is. It’s probably at minimum double the recommendations are.
elzbardico 10mo ago
70's American cars were not very far from this. The competition from Japanese manufacturers really helped to improve this. And ironically, the reason why Japan invested so heavily in high quality was to overcome their former image of low quality products that severely hampered their ability to sell to international markets. I am not a libertarian that holds a religious belief on the infallibility of the market, but a lot of times, the market gave us better outcomes than any regulation.

2026iknewit 10mo ago

I believe its more about optimization for price and minimum amount of km you need to design something for. And in regards of screws: If you have too many laypeople doing stupid shit for critical components, you might also think 'lets fix that by adding a barrier'.

DennisP 10mo ago
Why would that be your problem? Make it a warranty violation, and they can either get it fixed themselves, or pay you money you wouldn't have gotten otherwise.
- 2026iknewit 10mo ago
  Because people lie and still give you 1 star rating perhaps.
  - DennisP 10mo ago
    The same people, the ones prone to tinkering with their cars, might give you a one star rating for putting the car together with proprietary screws.
    - 2026iknewit 10mo ago
      Don't get me wrong, i do not like it either but I do think often enough they do this for this kind of reasons and not to be dicks on purpose.

rollcat 10mo ago

> [...] so you weren't able to change them yourself. This should be illegal. You're supposed to do what, stay on the roadside for 20h before an authorized repairman can reach you? What if the weather is harsh, and you run out of basic supplies like food or your medicine?

IAmBroom 10mo ago
Towing exists.

chii 10mo ago

> The real reason ... driving old cars is because they're easier to modify, easier to maintain, and easier to buy replacement parts for. the real reason is that if a manufacturer makes their car same as those repairable, easily maintainable old cars, they will soon lose customers (as they stop needing to buy new ones!). Planned obsolescence out-competes in a market economy that does not have regulation against it, esp. in a saturated market (like the US). The gov't could legislate, but then businesses cry foul - not mention that these manufacturers hang the sword of damocles over the gov't in the form of job losses (but of course, out-sourcing is OK...)

_yb2s 10mo ago

I think you’re seeing malice where none exists, particularly in those VW examples. VWs have always required a lot of special tools to work on, but usually for good engineering reasons making things smaller, lighter, simpler, and easier to manufacture. They will happily sell the tools to the public, and for most VW models, a few hundred dollars worth of special tools is all you need for any DIY repair- I personally have accumulated pretty much every VW special tool for every model and year, and find the special tools tends to make them easier to work on for a home mechanic- less stripped bolts, etc. than other cars. A 12 point star on a brake caliper is really not a rare tool, and it is so much quicker and easier than trying to fit a huge socket in that awkward space. If VW had been trying to make the mk3 engines bad for planned obsolescence, then why did the mk4 engines like the ALH TDI and the 1.8T earn reputations as some of the best engines made? VW had quality issues in the 90s that they later attacked and fixed, but it was just sloppy leadership and engineering, not a plan. What engine exactly are you seeing broken cams on? My guess would be this is not VWs fault but a mechanic failing to keep track of the ordering and orientation of the cam bearing caps and swapping them around- they’re line bored and any modern engine will break the cam if you do this. I’ve seen it on a mk2 GTI.

cookiengineer 10mo ago
I am not sure if you wanna go into discussing Diesel engines now, especially with all the engine software problems when it comes to AdBlue, and when it comes to Dieselgate, which, by decision of all involved courts, was malice. While I agree that some models improved when it comes to performance (especially in the 1.8 - 2.0 Turbo range as that's the sweet spot when it comes to cc) and technical failures, I would still say that all newer models have more problems with software. So much that it's really not even necessary to create these problems even in regards to regulatory requirements or safety compliance. Just thinking about the messy code that I've seen to pass ASIL-D requirements makes my skin boil.
- _yb2s 10mo ago
  > I am not sure if you wanna go into discussing Diesel engines now, especially with all the engine software problems when it comes to AdBlue, and when it comes to Dieselgate, which, by decision of all involved courts, was malice. I mentioned the ALH TDI from the MKIV Golf/Jetta only, which is a legendary engine, with a ton of them having now reliably reached half a million miles with no major work required. This long predates the dieselgate cars, and adblue was never used on the 4 cylinder VW diesels anyways. As an aside, yes dieselgate was intentionally criminal, but was sort of the opposite of a quality issue. VW couldn't figure out how to get their engines to work reliability and drive well with current technology at the time and still meet emissions requirements, so they cheated. They had to fix them (I own one) and they are still good, but not as good as they were before the fix- worse fuel economy, less reliable, excessive adblue consumption (in 6cyl models). The ethical thing to do would have been to pull all of the diesels from the market instead, which is what many of their competitors did at the time. Passenger car diesels in the USA are effectively dead because the emissions requirements render them less practical than gasoline cars. VW had serious quality issues in the 90s that weren't strategic, but were actually causing their company to lose its reputation and nearly collapse. They turned it completely around when Ferdinand Piëch started running things- they were arguably making the highest quality cars at in the world any price point during his tenure as CEO. The quality of current VWs has now fallen back down again, even lower than the 90s cars unfortunately.

ryeights 10mo ago

>What do you think happened with the Golf 3 engine design? They made the camshaft structurally weaker, so the engine will blow up more easily. Wow, talk about an oversimplification. The Mk3 moved from an 8-valve to a 16-valve engine; yes, this adds more valvetrain failure modes but also brings myriad other benefits, increased power, better fuel economy, reduced emissions… The idea that a carmaker would purposely engineer flaws into core engine components in order to drive future sales doesn’t make much sense.

hulitu 10mo ago
> The idea that a carmaker would purposely engineer flaws into core engine components in order to drive future sales doesn’t make much sense. There is a legend that Mercedes 190D was built like a tank and this caused customers to not buy the next iteration. Mercedes solved this, making cars a bit unreliable.
salawat 10mo ago
>The idea that a carmaker would purposely engineer flaws into core engine components in order to drive future sales doesn’t make much sense. You need to realize modern business revolves not around one-and-done, but around recurring revenue streams. To the "business minded" the only thing that doesn't make sense is leaving money on the table.
- ryeights 10mo ago
  Selling people grenading engines is not a great way to build recurring revenue streams. And building performant, efficient, and reliable engines is hard enough without intentional sabotage
  - salawat 10mo ago
    Nevertheless, as long as everyone else optimizes to the same metrics (minimized Bill of Materials, and building for assembly, not service), it may not be great, but it undeniably works. Wanna start a car company?

elzbardico 10mo ago

> really frustrating that there is no legislative intervention against this. Ironically, things are like that in a big part because of legislative and regulatory intervention. > They made the camshaft structurally weaker, so the engine will blow up more easily. The rest of the engine is almost identical. Talk about being bad at hiding planned obsolescence. A lot of such things are just workarounds to reduce weight and meet tightening emission standards. Every thing that can be built with less metal, thinner walls, lighter metals will be built like that when every gram matters. Tighter tolerances, increased pressures, increased temperatures, higher rotational speeds. All of this leads to increased efficiency, but sometimes (not always) the trade-off will be decreased reliability.

orwin 10mo ago

Any workshop can command WV screwdrivers, at least in the EU. I think the new regulation is that if you don't have the piece, or the tools necessary to replace the piece, you have to produce the plans on how to do it. I know someone who had an issue with his old WV Kombi, and thought it would be the last drive (Around 2020-2021). He found an auto shop who could manufacture pieces and replaced every single malfunctioning pieces from plans they got directly from WV.

emchammer 10mo ago

What are the best cars to buy these days for self-service and tinkering?

Caius-Cosades 10mo ago
Vehicles no newer than 2010 would be the general rule of thumb.

rsync 10mo ago

Wait, wait - aren’t you the cookie engineer Who did the site about cloud flare and did the auditing of the malware sites hosted by cloudflare? OK, now I remember - it was this comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38496499 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38496499 ... which I was very intrigued by and I tried to contact you via your web based email submission on cookie.engineer but it broke/failed. Would you please elaborate[1]: - who was the person who ran crimeflare, etc. - Where can I learn about the lawsuit(s) that made them suspend this reporting/indexing ? I am (potentially) interested in resurrecting these efforts but would like to have a better understanding of them first. [1] email info@rsync.net if you don't want to respond publicly.