Part of the problem here is that some of the "farkles" are legally mandated.
There is no maybe about backup cameras - they are required by federal law since 2018. Automatic braking will be required starting 2029.
We are in the process of having driver monitoring systems becoming mandated, too. That's an internally facing camera that would read your face to determine if you are good to drive. Sucks for Jim Breuer, I guess...
The touchscreen epidemic is only partially driven by the designers who watched too much Star Trek. The real cause is cost. You are required by law to have a screen already, and it's cheaper to add menus to it than make knobs and buttons.
I am not sure if this is exactly how we got here, but it sure seems like we built a ton of distractions into the driving experience, and now are trying to compensate for it with things like lane assist, auto cruise, and self-driving.
That said, there is something of a pushback to it. Slate is aiming to be exactly that - as basic a car as you could possibly want, a small work truck with nothing included except what the law requires. r/slateauto
I want one. I don't know how many other people do, though.
The unreliability, by the way, is also an unintended consequence of regulation. The fuel economy requirements keep tightening, but the IC engine is really pretty close to the limit of how efficient it can be. So, the manufacturers have to use tricks like displacement on demand (shutting off cylinders), auto stop/start (the thing that shuts off your engine when you stop at a light), thinner oils. And those are the things that make engines not last. This is the same thing that makes transmissions unreliable. Fuel economy requirements are driving increases in the number of gear ratios. Transmissions used to be 4-5 speed, now 8-9 is common. A transmission can only be so big, and more gears in the same space makes for mechanically weaker designs. CVT transmissions spread for the same reason. CVTs that are not belt-type are too heavy and expensive, and the common belt CVT doesn't last. They work great on scooters, but scaled to car size not so much.
Keep in mind too older cars were not actually more reliable. They broke down more than modern cars and were more likely to have catastrophic damage. They also had more mandatory maintenance to avoid breaking down.
But newer cars when they do break tend to be much more expensive to fix and take longer to much less ability for backyard mechanics to fix stuff (part of that is things getting more complex and requiring equipment, part of it is just fewer backyard mechanics because there are less things for them to fix). One simple example is switching from timing belts to timing chains greatly reducing destroyed engines due to the timing belt breaking. But the chain is definitely more expensive to replace if you do have to.
I remember as a 90s kid my extended family (10ish drivers who needed a car to get to work) basically needed an extra 1-2 cars due to one or another being broken or otherwise in the shop. Generally this was handled by whatever person who currently had a car, but didn't absolutely need it (often a kid that was in high school) lent it to the person who absolutely needed it.
I remember how automatic transmissions used to be so reliable that they’d always last only just longer than the warranty. O2 sensors would go at about 80k, the radiator would start leaking at 90k, the oil pan at 100k, and the head gasket would go a week after any other major repair. Cars have never been more reliable than now.
That wholly depends on what an "older car" is in this context.
80s model years and earlier, you have a point. Maybe even early 90s. Late 90s to mid-2010s - absolutely not. As a 90s kid, your family likely had 80s or early 90s cars.
1995 to 2012, cars were pretty damn reliable, on average, unless you bought a particularly crappy model. I have a 2001 Toyota I have owned for 8 years. My repair expenditures have been pretty minimal and breakdowns pretty rare. I have some repairs coming up now, but that's only because in 25 years some stuff just wears out.
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u/LostInTheSeaweeds 9h ago
Part of the problem here is that some of the "farkles" are legally mandated.
There is no maybe about backup cameras - they are required by federal law since 2018. Automatic braking will be required starting 2029.
We are in the process of having driver monitoring systems becoming mandated, too. That's an internally facing camera that would read your face to determine if you are good to drive. Sucks for Jim Breuer, I guess...
The touchscreen epidemic is only partially driven by the designers who watched too much Star Trek. The real cause is cost. You are required by law to have a screen already, and it's cheaper to add menus to it than make knobs and buttons.
I am not sure if this is exactly how we got here, but it sure seems like we built a ton of distractions into the driving experience, and now are trying to compensate for it with things like lane assist, auto cruise, and self-driving.
That said, there is something of a pushback to it. Slate is aiming to be exactly that - as basic a car as you could possibly want, a small work truck with nothing included except what the law requires. r/slateauto
I want one. I don't know how many other people do, though.
The unreliability, by the way, is also an unintended consequence of regulation. The fuel economy requirements keep tightening, but the IC engine is really pretty close to the limit of how efficient it can be. So, the manufacturers have to use tricks like displacement on demand (shutting off cylinders), auto stop/start (the thing that shuts off your engine when you stop at a light), thinner oils. And those are the things that make engines not last. This is the same thing that makes transmissions unreliable. Fuel economy requirements are driving increases in the number of gear ratios. Transmissions used to be 4-5 speed, now 8-9 is common. A transmission can only be so big, and more gears in the same space makes for mechanically weaker designs. CVT transmissions spread for the same reason. CVTs that are not belt-type are too heavy and expensive, and the common belt CVT doesn't last. They work great on scooters, but scaled to car size not so much.