Comment by wredcoll
6 hours ago
I mean, a generation or two ago, people frequently learned to do things like replace spark plugs and alternators and mess with oil changes.
My generation learned how to plug computer components together and install operating systems and drivers.
The reason people did that is because they (more or less) had to.
The generation being born today will need neither of those skill sets.
Cars, by and large, stay working for as long as people care to keep them and the things that do go wrong are, mostly, uneconomical to fix at home.
It's likewise rare for, dunno, uninstalling a video game to accidentally delete some crucial OS dependency that causes the thing to need to be reformatted.
It's hard to say what skills the next generation will learn, but I can guarantee there will be something that they need that their children will not. And that they'll complain about their children being useless for not knowing whatever that is.
No, we just outsourced car maintenance to professional shop services. Both because mechanical aspects have become reliable enough to last a year without maintenance and because electronic/computer aspects are mind-bogglingly complicated.
> because electronic/computer aspects are mind-bogglingly complicated
And because it's software, it happens to be a perfect way for the manufacturer to extract rent (er, "recurring revenue") from car repair business. It's not complexity that's shaping how end-user repair experience looks like, but the fact that you often need proprietary connector, proprietary software, and a valid license key to interface with the car's computer.
And because plenty of engineering goes into designing subsystems with the explicit but unstated purpose of making them close to impossible to repair without ultimately resorting to help from the manufacturer.
Software is just the latest layer on the cake. Non-repairable designs, special tools, unavailable parts, unavailable instructions, fragile and error prone procedures, encryption, and more. They're all occasionally used to with the main purpose of blocking any attempt to easily repair without generating revenue for the manufacturer and their network.
Source: I have family working for two large car manufacturers both in engineering and management, who have personally experienced explicit demands to make things hard to repair by the owner but make them in a way where a reasonable explanation can be used for plausible deniability.