Comment by MrGilbert
6 days ago
> We keep hearing that the next generation is "true computer" illiterate.
We had that development with cars. 40 years ago, it was common to fix your own car. Nowadays, we have a subscription for seat warmers. The manual tells you to visit the dealer to get your brakes checked. Makes me sad, somehow. But people have choosen this path as a collective.
People choose what to outsource and, as cars have become more complicated and require more diagnostic equipment, they go to a dealer/mechanic. Personally, I've never done a lot of personal car mechanic work.
On the other hand, I've done my own cooking more than not.
You make choices about what you do yourself and what you have others do for you.
> cars have become more complicated and require more diagnostic equipment
For the consumable stuff every car owner has to deal with, nothing has really changed in 40 years, honestly! A brake service is still done the exact same way, same with virtually all the fluid services.
I just find far more people parrot "modern cars are so complicated" today and don't even consider that in fact, it is relatively simple to change a brake pad and disc, or your own oil, perhaps an air filter, even on most brand new cars. Fluids filters and brakes are like 90% of most people's maintenance needs nowadays.
YouTube has also massively lowered the barrier to working on cars, given there are multiple easy to follow guides for just about any car service for any car model you can think of.
These are all relatively simple TO YOU. You are not everyone though. Some people lack the mobility, strength or even time to do these things. Some people just don't want to get dirty working on their car. Some people don't have the space to do these kinds of maintenance.
Not everyone needs to know how to compile their own kernel, build their own furniture or clean their laundry perfectly. Everyone has their own interests and areas of expertise they want to delve in to. Now I can screw up a brake job working on it all day and rewatching YouTube videos wondering what I missed, or I can take it to a shop and get it done in an hour for cheap. That's just me though. I spent a lot of time working on cars in my youth and I'm just tired of spending my time on it. I don't like it and I am more than willing to pay someone who does like it to do it.
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You're overstating how easy these tasks are for many people. Doing brake pads/rotors or changing oil requires a driveway, some tools, and (for oil) a way to collect and dispose of the old fluids. Not everyone has access to those things - for instance, people who live in an apartment complex may not have the space to work on their car.
(Air filters are, admittedly, pretty easy.)
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Changing a pad/disc/caliper isn’t “hard” but it’s time consuming and very messy. Most people probably don’t find spending 2 hours getting the car jacked, tires off, etc to be a good or enjoyable use of time!
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> it is very simple to change a brake pad and disc
I can attest that changing a brake pad is mission impossible level without the proper tools. The tools and experience are what make it look easy, for someone that has both.
I can also bake my own bread, make my own clothes and build my own furniture. But I choose to spend my time elsewhere.
What is so noble about changing your oil?
Except many new cars are locked down in software, for example not allowing to release rear parking brakes without authorized service subscription, keeping the electronic keys for each VIN unique and stored in the cloud. Yes, there are workarounds on releasing the brakes manually but it is a burden.
Also similarly as with iPhones, many cars require connecting to the authorized service to change headlights and other parts since they are paired with the MCU.
I know how to work on my car but I am not able to because someone decided to lock it down.
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Cars are both more complicated and way more reliable. You used to spend a Sunday changing your plugs and points. Now your car lacks points and if the plugs last less than 100000km it's a disappointment. You used to need new clutch plates on the regular, now nobody ever needs them or if they do need them the car is a total loss because good luck getting to the clutches. On my current car the closest I ever came to working on it was replacing the wiper blades.
They were already this reliable by the 80s and 90s.
Where new cars get shitty is the electronics that get shoehorned in to control systems that were previously controlled by a button or dial.
Not sure that tracks. Cars became infinitely more complex due to compliance with federal regs and the chicken tax.
I mean... cars have definitely gotten more complex since 1964 when the Chicken Tax became a thing...
More complicated and more reliable!
Modern cars are also way harder to work on than in the past. You used to be able to buy a Haynes manual for every major car and could do most of the repair work if you wanted! Nowadays, not so much. Specialized tools galore, tearing apart the whole car for minor hidden things... This one is far more on the car manufacturers than consumers IMHO. I am also sad about the death of the manual transmission. Glad to have gotten one of the final years that Mini will be producing them!
They are harder to work on in the past, but people have developed the belief that they're actually impossible to work on. A huge amount of car repair is still doable by the average person.
Cars are a lot safer now. People routinely walk away from collisions that would have killed everyone in the vehicle back in 70s. So there is some gain to the trade off.
Not if you're a pedestrian.
According to this, pedestrians were dropping until around 2007, which I believe was the year of the iPhone. One could posit that distracted walking has increased pedestrian fatalities since 2007 and not car size.
https://www.iihs.org/research-areas/fatality-statistics/deta...
"Cars are a lot safer now" does not seem related to "40 years ago, it was common to fix your own car" to me.
> Makes me sad
On one hand, yes. But also, cars are now an appliance. They rarely break, can be bought quite cheaply (if that’s what you want) and consume little time. I like this.
Except they are 2020s appliances with bells and whistles and reinventing the wheel for no reason with electronic wizzbangs and dohickeys and layers and layers of complexity. Your car in the 90s was the appliance. Simple electronic system. Reliable simple ICE engine. Simple gearbox. Easy to work on which means even if you don't work on your own car it helps you, because labor takes less time and therefore repair shop bills are lower. Parts back then were widely shared across a manufacturers lineup so readily available and relatively cheap. 4 cylinder economy car was practically a commodity back then.
I drive a second generation Leaf.
We will see if it lives up to the promise, but the dealer said ‘don’t bother’ when I asked about serving.
So far that has held true, but it’s early years.