Having people do things for you has become very expensive. I bought tires for my truck last year and had some other service done at the same time. Cost a bloody nickle and dime fortune. The tech forgot to secure a strut mount and they failed to sell me new tpms monitors that you must replace to get new valve stems. Never again.
It's plain to me why people are buying tire mounting equipment from harbor freight now.
I can justify a $600 wall mount strut compressor now.
Been watching engine teardowns to catch up on automotive tech (haven't been paying attention for about ten years). OMG...you would not believe how complex this shit is now. Ford is shipping engines in the F-150 that have a wet oil pump drive belt. It starts coming apart before 100k. It takes at least $2000 in labor just to get to it. Auto shops charge about the same rates per hour as my senior developer contracting firm.
Their priorities are MPG, power, with the least amount of weight possible and they are really pushing the engineering to get there. No one is going to replace that oil pump belt before it fails and takes the engine with it.
Saw a teardown of the Nissan Titan engine. Jaw dropping reliability where engineers were clearly in charge of the design. They are dropping the truck line after this year. It can't compete with Ford's MPG+power. Chevy is following Ford fast and Stellantis is dropping ICE (expect to see this reversed with Ford leading everyone to hybrid). The electric trucks are not going to make the cut (too heavy and the charging infra is a joke). Tesla Cybertruck is dead on delivery as are the F-150 Lightnings. At best they are personal vehicles for commuting.
Today's auto mechanics are no longer the high-school drop-outs turning a wrench. They're mechanical engineering graduates. They typically know software and hardware.
This is also how you know we're at the end days for ICE vehicles. They're too complex and yet are only 25% as efficient as an EV vehicle. When people start getting the bill for today's vehicles they're going to consider an EV.
People all worried about a $10K battery replacement. Pffft! It doesn't take too many trips to the shop these days to hit that kind of money! Heck, I was recently watching on Engineering Explained where a brake job on a Porsche, now granted that's a higher-end car, but still, it was $2,500. For a brake job! I bought a 2003 Lexus LS430 a few years back (steal deal!) but one of the drawbacks is it's the V8 and changing the starter is $1,500 because they have to drop the engine.
I figure getting a new battery is akin to getting a new engine and $10,000 starts looking like it's really not a bad deal...
Reminds me of my own SAAB story. My first car was a used SAAB 900S, which I bought from a dealer. Luckily, I had also purchased a warranty.
SAABs had a quirky design where the ignition was set in the space between the front seats, on the floor. The ring gear in the starter motor got stripped, and they had to drop the transmission to get to it. That was a $9000 repair in the late 80s. I only had to pay the deductible, which was $100.
I did a $5000 brake job on a range Rover in 2000. The way people let things go I can easily see $2000 going up in smoke with one visit to the shop. EVs are not going to work out unless we double battery capacity and half the weight and charge times.
They will definitely work out when even a minor engine failure on the average new ICE car being sold in 2033 costs over $10k to repair and even the cheapest garages are billing $300 per hour to work on such complicated machinery.
Which seems to be the trajectory every automaker is going down to meet fuel mileage requirements.
It's plain to me why people are buying tire mounting equipment from harbor freight now.
I can justify a $600 wall mount strut compressor now.
Been watching engine teardowns to catch up on automotive tech (haven't been paying attention for about ten years). OMG...you would not believe how complex this shit is now. Ford is shipping engines in the F-150 that have a wet oil pump drive belt. It starts coming apart before 100k. It takes at least $2000 in labor just to get to it. Auto shops charge about the same rates per hour as my senior developer contracting firm.
Their priorities are MPG, power, with the least amount of weight possible and they are really pushing the engineering to get there. No one is going to replace that oil pump belt before it fails and takes the engine with it.
Saw a teardown of the Nissan Titan engine. Jaw dropping reliability where engineers were clearly in charge of the design. They are dropping the truck line after this year. It can't compete with Ford's MPG+power. Chevy is following Ford fast and Stellantis is dropping ICE (expect to see this reversed with Ford leading everyone to hybrid). The electric trucks are not going to make the cut (too heavy and the charging infra is a joke). Tesla Cybertruck is dead on delivery as are the F-150 Lightnings. At best they are personal vehicles for commuting.