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by ClumsyPilot
1159 days ago
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> Sure, old carbie with distributor might've just ran with 3 cylinders , but that also might damage something A car is not an iPhone - if the car can move at all, it must move. The alternative could be freezing to death. What if I am driving in rural Siberia, or Canada, and there is no phone signal to call for help? |
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Sure, that doesn't necessarily invalidate your argument, after all this increase in car complexity (through "electronization" and smartification of more and more components) without the increase in debuggability/repairability is IMHO a bad trade-off for many consumers.
Case in point, our second-hand 2011 Ford Focus has a problem with the electronic steering assist. Apparently it somehow experiences some kind of over-voltage and the internal system shuts down. It's likely due to humidity. (So probably it's simply a design/manufacturing/QA issue.) Okay, but there's no way to get the actual data from the integrated electronics from the steering system, but it's possible to reflash a different firmware on it. Which resets the internal data. Which basically clears this error state, and the car will happily use it.
But there's clearly a mechanical error, there's a new "bad" noise when turning the steering wheel. But it's a 10+ year car, rarely used, and replacing the steering system is about ~1000 EUR, doing the firmware flashing was ~30 EUR. (Finding the guy with the laptop, who can flash the firmware through the good old ODB port was the challenge.)
And it's basically a big (market) information asymmetry problem. The car industry wants to sell more cars. Sure they sell some parts, but the more repairability a car has the less parts it really needs, as consumers can make their own tradeoffs.