Car Quality Is Slipping • Hacker News Board

Re: Car Quality Is Slipping

#41

Post by alexpotato » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 4:25 PM UTC

lotsofpulp wrote: post #22

ramesh31 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reality is that no one owns a car for 200k miles anymore. There are of course outliers, but the vast majority of people are either buying/leasing/trading every 3-4 years, or are at the opposite end of the spectrum buying whatever cheap rust heap they can keep running.

Almost everyone derives value from existing cars either by using or selling it. I also would need concrete data to believe most people are swapping cars willy nilly. Based on income/wealth statistics, most Americans most certainly cannot afford to.

They can afford it if lenders are giving car loans to just about anyone: https://twitter.com/GrahamStephan/status/1542860348742836225

Re: Car Quality Is Slipping

#42

Post by kube-system » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 4:25 PM UTC

abfan1127 wrote: post #7

Initial quality always seemed like a silly measure to me. I'm more interested in total cost of ownership through 150k-200k miles. Own a GM for 90 days vs own a GM for 15 years and you'll have vastly different results, IMO.

JD Power doesn't create awards categories because they are in the interest of the consumer, they create award categories so that they can sell them to their customers to use in their marketing. They're a marketing data company, not a consumer advocacy group.

Re: Car Quality Is Slipping

#43

Post by HWR_14 » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 4:25 PM UTC

ramesh31 wrote: post #18

abfan1127 wrote: post #7

Initial quality always seemed like a silly measure to me. I'm more interested in total cost of ownership through 150k-200k miles. Own a GM for 90 days vs own a GM for 15 years and you'll have vastly different results, IMO.

Reality is that no one owns a car for 200k miles anymore. There are of course outliers, but the vast majority of people are either buying/leasing/trading every 3-4 years, or are at the opposite end of the spectrum buying whatever cheap rust heap they can keep running.

My anecdata says your anecdata is wrong. Everyone buys a car new and keeps it going for 10+ years until the cost to maintain it gets too high. Then they sell it for scrap or donate it for scrap and get a new car. The one person who trades in their car while getting a new one is the outlier in any group of people.

Also, it's not just cost. Sometimes newer models are just worse. There is one car that I thought about getting a little while ago, but the model changed dramatically 5 years earlier (the older version was what I used on a vacation that got me interested), so I had to look at getting a 5 year old car or a different model.

Re: Car Quality Is Slipping

#44

Post by dispatchapp » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 4:26 PM UTC

oldstrangers wrote: post #32

dispatchapp wrote: post #28

My 2014 WRX has had a myriad of reliability issues. Bone stock, always maintained, and just constantly going into the dealer for issues. Thankfully I have an extended warranty. Issue #1: 19k miles - OEM turbo blows. Subaru FSE determines a bearing seized prematurely. Turbo replaced. Issue #2: 23k miles - Replacement turbo starts making more sounds mimicking the same noises the OEM turbo made before it blew. Subaru re…

Subaru and the WRX is just notoriously unreliable, and that's always sort of been the case unfortunately.

Yep, my alternative which I don't even know if its a good idea or not is to get a used E350 off BringATrailer or if I really want reliability I should probably get a 1980s Mercedes 300D. The W123s are insanely reliable.

Re: Car Quality Is Slipping

#45

Post by BaculumMeumEst » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 4:27 PM UTC

ramesh31 wrote: post #18

abfan1127 wrote: post #7

Initial quality always seemed like a silly measure to me. I'm more interested in total cost of ownership through 150k-200k miles. Own a GM for 90 days vs own a GM for 15 years and you'll have vastly different results, IMO.

Reality is that no one owns a car for 200k miles anymore. There are of course outliers, but the vast majority of people are either buying/leasing/trading every 3-4 years, or are at the opposite end of the spectrum buying whatever cheap rust heap they can keep running.

Of all my friends and extended family, including my wife's family, I know a single person who does this.

The only source I could find said: "The percentage of consumers that are leasing their vehicles has dropped due to the inventory shortage. In December 2021, only 20% of new-car shoppers leased a vehicle, compared to December 2019, when 30% chose to lease, according to Jominy."

https://www.cars.com/articles/how-does-the-inventory-shortag...

Re: Car Quality Is Slipping

#46

Post by brandmeyer » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 4:27 PM UTC

abfan1127 wrote: post #7

Initial quality always seemed like a silly measure to me. I'm more interested in total cost of ownership through 150k-200k miles. Own a GM for 90 days vs own a GM for 15 years and you'll have vastly different results, IMO.

Unfortunately, product quality after 150k miles of life doesn't tell you anything about what's coming off the line right now. Most of the company will have churned over in the intervening decade. The car which was built 10 years ago won't even be on the market right now. Even if the brand name is still the same (eg, long-lived pickup truck names like the F150), the vehicle itself will be completely different.

So you might be interested in mid-life or end-of-life quality, but you can't measure it early in the vehicle's life without an accelerated life test of some kind, and you can't measure it statistically without doing so on many vehicles. JD Power's initial quality survey is just that: A simple consumer survey of defects reported early in the vehicle's life. Hence the name: initial quality.

Re: Car Quality Is Slipping

#47

Post by calvinmorrison » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 4:27 PM UTC

mywittyname wrote: post #21

causi wrote: post #5

Electric vehicles (EVs) performed worse than gas-powered models in the study. EVs had 240 complaints per 100 vehicles on average, plug-in hybrid vehicles had 239, and gas-powered cars averaged 175. This never fails to baffle me. An ICE vehicle has a hundred times as many moving parts as a BeV. Just how much lower is the BeV production quality to give them more problems?

ICE vehicles have 100 years of improvement and refinement behind them. A significant number of ICE power trains in current vehicles have direct lineages going back to the 90s and total production numbers in the 100s of millions. The limiting factor in the durability of an ICE is maintenance. Friction will eventually wear an engine beyond operating tolerances. But proper maintenance can keep an ICE going for a very lo…

GM's ecotech is built on iterative improvements of Triumph Slant-4 engine which showed up in 1968.

Re: Car Quality Is Slipping

#48

Post by dieselgate » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 4:29 PM UTC

quartz wrote: post #35

> EVs Reported More Problems I think it's important to keep in mind that 1) ICEs are many generations beyond EVs so it's natural to expect more issues but also 2) ICE vehicles came into being in an age where maintenance was assumed to be inherited with the vehicle (and a lot of it if not all of it could be done by the owner or a neighborhood mechanic) while PHEVs were born into the "weld the hood shut" generation of…

I agree with you but didn’t Toyota have a recent recall due to wheels having the potential of falling off? This is probably quite an exception but still very unacceptable.

Think it’s on an ICE model but may have impacts on an EV line

https://www.motortrend.com/news/toyota-issues-voluntary-safe...

Re: Car Quality Is Slipping

#49

Post by HWR_14 » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 4:29 PM UTC

danboarder wrote: post #19

causi wrote: post #5

Electric vehicles (EVs) performed worse than gas-powered models in the study. EVs had 240 complaints per 100 vehicles on average, plug-in hybrid vehicles had 239, and gas-powered cars averaged 175. This never fails to baffle me. An ICE vehicle has a hundred times as many moving parts as a BeV. Just how much lower is the BeV production quality to give them more problems?

The caveat pointed out in the next paragraph might help explain the numbers: "Those numbers are complicated by the fact that Tesla vehicles weren’t counted in the study. Fully 75% of the EVs sold in the U.S. last quarter were Tesla products." The anecdotal experience I've observed among friends is that Tesla owners are happy with the Supercharger network and better software, while other electric makers still are figu…

Tesla owners tend to be happier with the supercharger network and the software, but less happy about the build quality and the car physically falling apart at 8,000 miles. They're also less happy about paying five figures for a software product it's looking like most won't get to use before they sell their car. And the software doesn't transfer.

Re: Car Quality Is Slipping

#50

Post by groovybits » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 4:29 PM UTC

MisterTea wrote: post #14

Mo' tech mo' problems. Just give me a car that goes forward, backwards, left and right with a roof, windows, seats with few luxuries: air conditioning, power locks/windows, remote start (winter savior). For safety I will take ABS, maybe ESP. Leave me an industry standard DIN or double DIN opening for a radio and speaker locations; factory options always suck. Transmission can be manual or automatic. The rest is fluff…

Not the most imperative metrics, but CarMax says that the majority of car buyers have different priorities in their purchase: https://www.carmax.com/articles/stick-shift-index

Anecdotally, I don't know anyone - outside of car enthusiasts - who drive a manual. Not only would they not consider it, a manual would be a non-starter.

Note: I used to drive a manual, and I am in the first half of my lifespan.