Car quality is suffering as automakers shift focus to technology

[UdyrL]

I understand you needed a known source for the article, but JD Power's "statistics" are a joke.

 

[mbrowne5061]

Well, it smells like paid statistics or I understood the graphics upside-down:

- an example is one of the weakest most problematic brands like Fiat / Alfa Romeo being on top, these brands at least in Europe best most as the worse;

- typical American brands give less issues than the Japanese?! Geee so the taxi drivers in Europe are all wrong as they choose Japanese / south Korean brands (Toyota, Kia) and Mercedes as their cars to run over 500.000 km in a short time... so these graphics show they should choose American brands (typically worse than European or Asian brands)? Lololol

- a car with very few knobs or buttons are less prone to give problems in the long run, not that like tesla or VW that went TOO simplistic. For the AC or Radio I still prefer physical buttons.

But the option on some cases has to do with:

- decrease physical pieces to increase car production and decrease prices where they can

- less maintenence.

I have a Tesla work just a few buttons and though I would like more, I have zero issues; most Audi e-tron have enough buttons and AFAIK they are also very solid.

Initial quality treats a blown engine or transmission with the same weight as a button not working.

What you could very well be seeing is a bunch of Dodge and Nissans spontaneously having their transmissions drop out from underneath them, and a bunch of Toyota's and Volvo's having a intermittent volume control button. Without any weighting to the actual problems faced, its just a terribly designed metric.

 

[TechZel]

Ethanol has an extremely high octane rating and is far cheaper than race gas, thats why can handle more power. Yes, I over simplified the horsepower equation.

In my 30 years of being a car guy, this is tuenfirst I ever heard that diesel is more lubricating than gasoline. They're technically both solvents, we frequently use diesel to clean tools when working with tar and asphalt. I don't know if you remember "oil dilution" as being a problem when fuel blows by piston rings and lowers the viscosity of oil.

Ethanol makes more power for a few reasons, yes the higher octane rating makes it much more resistant to knock meaning you can add more compression (I.e. boost) and timing before risking detonation. But also because you need so much more volume of it the fuel itself absorbs a lot more heat, keeping the combustion chamber cooler which again allows you to add more boost with less risk.

And yes, diesel is a lubricant. Being a solvent and being a lubricant are not mutually exclusive properties. It's too thin to replace your engine oil of course, hence why oil dilution is a thing, but how do you think diesel injector pumps are able to work without seizing without their own oiling system? That's right, the fuel is what lubricates (and cools) it. Not to mention that someone who says they've been a car guy for 30 years should have heard about the old trick of filling an engine with diesel instead of oil and idling it for a while as a de-sludge procedure. It worked because diesel is able to lubricate the engine well enough for a short period at idle, though I personally wouldn't be trying it on a modern engine with higher stresses and tighter clearances.

All this is a little beside the point though. It's really not the mechanicals of new cars you should be worried about, it's touch screens and software. Tech has and probably always will have a shorter lifespan than a car's machinery. What's going to happen over the next few years when all these touch devices that have inexplicably become critical to basic functions start to fail, all while there's zero hardware or software support? That's what I want to know.

 

[Mr Majestyk]

Been saying this for a decade. It is a case of technology for technology's sake. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Why do you think the German car makers quality ratings have plummeted over the last 10 or so years. Cars are chock full of useless techno crap and don't get me started on those disgusting digital dash boards and touch control crap. This techno crap is also why the prices have skyrocketed. No one asked for this crap either.

 

[hwertz]

Dodge and Alfa Romeo are most reliable? Damn man how times have changed.

I will say, I went from one end of the technology spectrum to the other and I'm pleased so far. I had a 2000 Buick Regal, 3.8L engine -- they updated the engine sometime in the 1980s and in the 1990s, but it's like it came out in 1962, pushrod engine and (other than having sequential fuel injection) nothing at all fancy on it. The one sign it was probably a pretty old engine design, the oil recommendation in the manual basically said "please put oil in it", it recommended 0W20 through 50 weight, and recommended detergent oil but said you could go ahead and run non-detergent oil if you wanted!

My 2013 Chevy Cruze, the 1.4L has turbocharging, electronic throttle control, and variable valve timing. The level of technology was quite concerning, but they really have it all locked down now. There's plenty of engine management, so if you try to do something stupid with the "go" pedal like start it in 0 degree weather and immediately floor it, it simply won't give you much boost until it's had 30 seconds or a minute to make sure the oil is circulating, and they've worked out any hardware issues with this stuff like 20 years ago so it's highly reliable now. I get about the same acceleration I did with the 3.8L, with about 1.5x the gas mileage... the main trick it uses to get high gas mileage is to take advantage of the almost unnatural levels of low-end torque the turbo gives it (it makes 90% of it's peak torque from 1400-6000RPM), so it cruises around in town at like 1200-1500RPM, with plenty of power to go up hills or anything else without having to downshift. I DID make sure to get one WITHOUT the entertainment system since apparently GM's touch screen system then was godawful.