On Friday I made an appointment for this Tuesday at a Ford dealership. The service manager called and to check my AC Blower was $150 diagnostic and for the separate warning faults it would be $165 diagnostic. That diagnostic fee would not be rolled up into the repair. So I cancelled the appointment.
Where is the ADAS delete option on new autos?
They could solve a lot of this with 5 mph bumpers and moving all the electronic crap away from the very front of the car where it is first to get hit.
But the manufacturers don’t care because there is no competition doing that, 40 percent of vehicle cost is now electronics, the production cost of that stuff is low and the margins are huge so they just keep going the way they are.
In the 1950’s every year it was more chrome and tail fins. Now it is more electronic crap that most drivers just turn off anyway but they paid for it up front so who cares ?
The rocketing cost of repairing crashed cars means 21 percent of wrecks now result in a vehicle being totaled by insurance firms, a five-fold increase versus 1980.
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So in 1980, only 4% of cars were written off as not repairable? Since 1980 already had a bunch of electronics, it would be interesting to go back even further to see what the stats are....
My next car is gonna be from the 70s.
One has to wonder how many times thy were wrong and caused the accident?
Twenty years ago you were ina car crash? Get it repaired and get back on the road.
Now, cars are so complex that it costs too much to repair them. Plus, they are never the same again after an accident.
Does ADAS really help avoid many accidents? I assume this is proximity and lane-detection warnings to the driver, who still has to take evasive action. Or the damned driver could just PAY ATTENTION!
You know where computers belong?
In Computers.
As far as I’m concerned, they are a detriment in anything else.
There is also the time to repair when parts are hard to get, difficult to install and very high tech. Plus the liability of not fixing 100% correctly.
I’m not sure where my adaptive cruise control and auto-dimming headlights fit in but I love both. Lane control, nope. My truck has auto leveling so hopefully will never be sagging.
The same thing happened to my husband, who needed the air conditioning fixed in his truck.
The Ford dealership said $165 service fee, so he went to a local mechanic. The bill was minimum. It needed a fuse.
$165 must be the going rate.
This just happened to me. Frankly it’s nothing more than ’legal’ theft. My car was paid off, I owned it. I just put new tires on it. Older Honda- I planned to drive until until one of us died. Got into an accident. Insurance sent someone out to assess it at tow yard (if they even sent anyone- I am not convinced)-never even had it assessed at collision center. They totaled my car because they said fixing it would cost 1200$ more than blue book value (not sure how can tell without taking it to collision center). SO? Give me the money and I’ll pay difference but that’s not even an option. ( yes, yes-I KNOW it doesn’t work that way but it’s absolute BS). So I’ve paid $$$ over the years for the car itself, maintenance, new tires, and thousands of dollars over years to insurance company yet THEY take my car, sell it and make even more money off me. Basically I’ve paid all this money to auto insurance so they can own my car!! They wouldn’t even let me take the tires so I could sell them. Of course couldn’t buy shit with money they gave me for car and I can’t afford another car used or new. I couldn’t even take the car- then they would give me NOTHING toward the repairs AND not an option (but should be). AND since car was totaled- they only provided a rental for a week!! During which time I hadn’t yet even received the money from them!! Insurance is a total rip off.
The ADAS that ’warns’ you if other vehicles are too close is incredibly stressful and nerve wracking- I already know crazy people are driving too close- I don’t need an alarm to add to stress!! All this automated self driving crap just creating more zombies who can’t think for themselves and don’t know how to pay attention when driving and have decreased reflexes and response time because of it.
These systems are not the cause.
The cause is that vehicles are mostly made out of aluminum (to save weight due to strict CAFE standards) now, and the costs of the bodywork skyrockets due to how hard it is to weld aluminum.
Aluminium is less forgiving to errors (such as too much heat) while welding especially on thin body panels.
Then there are the crumple zones that are designed to absorb the force of a crash. And the increased use of unibody designs as opposed to body on frame.
Thanks for the explanation. When I come across articles that use an acronym with out defining it, I immediately stop reading. Even if I know what it means, I stop reading out of principle.
Proportion of new vehicles written off has increased due to high repair costs.
Many of these totaled vehicles are still drivable. The insurance companies sell them to exporters for more than the cost of the repairs, and then resold in second and third world countries.
Just as long as they pay what the car was valued at before the accident, I have no problem with this...why have them pay $30K for a car that is valued at $25K or less? That just raises all our rates.
Thanks. Journalists and writers are getting lazy. Their use of acronyms is getting ridiculous.
Some of the costs truly are infuriating. The other day I was looking at a fairly late model car and it had a cracked windshield. I wondered what it would cost to fix it so I called up window shop... can’t remember the exact value but it was X amount for the windshield replacement, about another $300 since it had a feature to sense rain.... but that’s not all, it was about another $300 to calibrate the rain sensing device.