Modern Cars - Can they be too complex?

avoidtheupsidedownbottles

All-electric cars have the potential to be relatively simple, but manfs are still cramming in as much functionality as possible because the buying public does love its gadgets.  Hopefully someone like Dacia will come along and produce a minimalist all-electric sometime.  (Maybe someone already has for all I know -- Caterham?  Morgan?)

AdrianC

avoidtheupsidedownbottles said:

Hopefully someone like Dacia will come along and produce a minimalist all-electric sometime.  (Maybe someone already has for all I know -- Caterham?  Morgan?)

Renault Twizy
Mitsu i-MIEV/Cit C-Zero/Pug Ion triplets.

EssexExile

askeym said:

I see VW Beetles and Morris Minors still around. I worked in a garage in the 60s and cars were reliable and simple. Nowadays if anything goes wrong it's more than likely to be computer related. I used to be called a fitter or mechanic. Now they're called technicians.

But most died within 10 years of birth. My memory of cars in the 60s was that they were simple but unreliable.

molerat

EssexExile said:

askeym said:

I see VW Beetles and Morris Minors still around. I worked in a garage in the 60s and cars were reliable and simple. Nowadays if anything goes wrong it's more than likely to be computer related. I used to be called a fitter or mechanic. Now they're called technicians.

But most died within 10 years of birth. My memory of cars in the 60s was that they were simple but unreliable.

Many dissolved into a pile of brown stuff on the drive before they got to 10 years.

Car_54

EssexExile said:

askeym said:

I see VW Beetles and Morris Minors still around. I worked in a garage in the 60s and cars were reliable and simple. Nowadays if anything goes wrong it's more than likely to be computer related. I used to be called a fitter or mechanic. Now they're called technicians.

But most died within 10 years of birth. My memory of cars in the 60s was that they were simple but unreliable.

Mine too.. Morris Minors with collapsed front suspension; Minis that ground to a halt when it rained; Fords that wouldn't start on cold mornings, which was a bit of a handicap in the Scottish climate. Even my 1980 Cortina hated winter mornings.

MinuteNoodles

Deleted_User said:

Having looked around the used car market for vehicles 3-5 years old and test driven a couple, the technology in these cars (and obviously those being produced now) is great but surely there must be a higher risk of failure over the long term (touch screen infotainment systems, electrical gadges/connections here there and everywhere, new driver assist modes, myriad of sensors etc).   

Interested to know what others think.

Thanks

Nope. I drive lorries and we've been getting them in lorries for several years. My company runs its 150 lorry fleet double shifted so they'll be out 10/11hrs or more during the day then a night driver will take them out on a night. To give you an idea of mileage they're doing over 100,000 miles a year. The 64 plates we've just got rid of had over 600,000 miles on, much more than you'll ever do in a car. The LCD displays, the collision detection cameras, the radar systems, ABS, EBS everything worked. The main problem we did have which happened on pretty much every single vehicle was the windscreen wiper controls were on the indicator stalk, you twist it to turn them on, and when they got to around 450,000 miles they'd stop working on 1st and 2nd speed and would only work on intermittent.
Also these lorries were fitted with LED rear light clusters too. They never failed, even on the units that were replaced at over a million km/600,000 miles and remember these lorries are running doing 6-9hrs driving a night five or six nights a week much more than you'll ever do in your car.

eamon

Youtube is stuffed with people making a living repairing and selling older cars (i.e. cars from the 90's to the present day and not just Copart/Insurance stuff). Lots of use of OBD readers and some people with the skills to fault find & repair ECU's.

MinuteNoodles

askeym said:

I see VW Beetles and Morris Minors still around. I worked in a garage in the 60s and cars were reliable and simple.

Every single one of those will have been restored and had thousands spent on them. By 10 years the bodywork was shot, by 70/80,000 miles the mechanics were on their way out. My first car I ever bought was a Triumph Dolomite, a 1978 model I bought in 1987. At 9 years old it was in a scrap yard with holes in the chassis and front wings. Fortunately I could weld and do bodywork so I rescued it but it was 9 years old in a scrapyard because of rot. Throughout the late 80s and early 90s I had loads of cars, all 8-10 years old, all with corrosion issues or mechanical problems when I bought them even though they'd gone nowhere near 100k. You'd buy a car less than a decade old with 60/70k on and the entire braking system would be shot. I had a rear diff on a MK2 Escort fail at less than 80k.

Move on to the early 2000s and you had plenty of 10+ year old cars on the road which had no rot at all or if they did it was minor things like bubbling on the wheel arches, and they'd do well over 100,000 miles without any problem. I owned a 1996 Passat with 250k on, my wife had a 2005 BMW 525 with 200k on, I owned a 1997 Vauxhall Cavalier I bought with 150k on and sold to a friend with over 200k on, mileages you had absolutely no chance of doing in the days of the Morris Minor no matter how well you looked after them.

In the mid 2000s I bought a MK3 Ford Capri which didn't look too bad. Digging though it ended up having £2000 on bodywork because of rot and the only thing that didn't end up getting reconditioned was the gearbox. It hadn't even got 80k on the clock. The dashboards on Ford Capris were real fun. Anyone who has had one will remember the rev counter, temperature and fuel gauges stopping working because the voltage regulator packed up. It's very rare for any Ford Capri to have the original dash.

So no, older vehicles were not better.

molerat

Car_54 said:

Mine too.. Morris Minors with collapsed front suspension; Minis that ground to a halt when it rained; Fords that wouldn't start on cold mornings, which was a bit of a handicap in the Scottish climate. Even my 1980 Cortina hated winter mornings.

Minor front suspension collapsing was usually down to failing to lubricate the lower trunnion - modern upgrade kits come with 3 grease nipples fitted - same design on the Marina which suffered similar.  I had a big plastic cover over my mini distributor - didn't do that much good - did mean you could go out in a light shower though.

Ectophile

avoidtheupsidedownbottles said:

All-electric cars have the potential to be relatively simple, but manfs are still cramming in as much functionality as possible because the buying public does love its gadgets.  Hopefully someone like Dacia will come along and produce a minimalist all-electric sometime.  (Maybe someone already has for all I know -- Caterham?  Morgan?)

You may not have long to wait.  Dacia are already working on updating a far-eastern electric vehicle for the European market. https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/motor-shows-geneva-motor-show/new-dacia-suv-will-be-europes-most-affordable-ev