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Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

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Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#461

Post by Gibbon1 »

DuskStar wrote: post #266
Gibbon1 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Capitalism is the reason that regulations exist. Apartments cost less than single family homes. Makes total sense for developers to get regulations passed that prevent that sort of competition.

I mean, I suppose you could call regulatory capture 'capitalism'... But seeing as most people's response to 'capitalism failing' is to call for more regulation, I don't think that that's really fair.

I think you're under a delusion that 'government' and 'capitalism' are separate things.

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#462

Post by philwelch »

Betelgeuse90 wrote: post #447
oflannabhra wrote: post #316

I'm an American and I will probably never buy another American made car again until we switch to EV. Time for anecdotes! I'm in the process of changing our families vehicles: I've sold our Toyota Tundra and purchased a Toyota Sequoia, and I'm currently selling our Honda CR-V and will be downsizing to a Toyota Matrix or Honda Fit. The Tundra has been one of the most amazing vehicles I've ever owned. I bought it used w…

I think a considerable amount of Toyotas are actually made in the US, ironically, so you might still call it American made :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Toyota_factories#Unite...

According to The Toyota Way, Toyota's first manufacturing plants in the US were built to work around the "chicken tax". The US imposed a tariff on imported light trucks to retaliate against French and West German tariffs on imported chickens. As a loophole, imported pickup trucks could be imported as "passenger vehicles" with the truck bed/box bolted on in an American finishing plant. Eventually the loophole was closed but Toyota, having built American manufacturing plants and trained a skilled workforce in the Toyota Production System, decided to keep using it anyway.

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#463

Post by toomuchtodo »

dragontamer wrote: post #460
toomuchtodo wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gas pumps stop working too when utility power is out. Can charge your electric car at home from solar if you have it (and in California, solar is mandatory on new residential roofs of new construction starting in January of next year).

> Gas pumps stop working too when utility power is out. And gas pumps can be powered by diesel generators. Especially because they happen to be built on top of giant-tanks of diesel. I mean, the Tesla Supercharger at Nuburgring was a diesel generator for this very reason. Diesel (and gasoline) takes up very little space or weight, while giving a significant amount of energy storage. So its ideal for storage, transpor…

I haven't done the math, but natural gas might be able to serve the same purpose, is usually ran in parallel with electrical infrastructure, and can have its own distribution infrastructure powered by the same gas the system is pumping.

Diesel is of course a fine solution for isolated locations that require energy for whatever reason when utility or renewables are down, if you have to transport it a great distance, or you absolutely need a store of energy on site because you're concerned that natural gas would be down at the same time utility mains were.

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#464

Post by gamblor956 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #454
gamblor956 wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until a fire results in the power grid going down...

Gas pumps stop working too when utility power is out. Can charge your electric car at home from solar if you have it (and in California, solar is mandatory on new residential roofs of new construction starting in January of next year).

This is false. Gas pumps utilize utility electric as their primary source of power, but are required by law (in CA at least) to have backup sources of power, like diesel, in the event that a natural disaster (like an earthquake) knocks out power lines.

And solar charging only works if you live in suburbia or rural neighborhoods. If you live in a city, you're SOL.

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#465

Post by metanoia »

hnov wrote: post #405
metanoia wrote: post #389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The 2JZ engine was one of the best (as in, most durable) engines that Toyota ever produced. The sheer number of Supras, Lexus IS300s (1st generation), and GS300s that are still running today, most with over 200k miles, is a testament to the amount of over-engineering that went into that engine. And then there are the crazies who took the NA version and added turbos...

A lot of E46 M3s are still running around with 200k on the clock despite having motors and chassis that chew themselves up. Same with the MK3 Supra and its headgaskets. IMO whether you still see cars around is as much a function of their value retention as it is of their robustness.

Very true, attribution error on my part :)

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#466

Post by linksnapzz »

davidgould wrote: post #431
linksnapzz wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why not both? The J-cars (cavalier/sunfire/sunbird) existed b/c of the second oil crisis in '78. GM needed something FWD, smaller than the X-cars, that could get better fuel economy than the RWD V-6 and V-8 cars it had been selling in the '70s. The thought was that people in the US would buy these because they had to, not because small cars would suddenly become appealing to Americans in their own right. The Js were…

My then girlfriend had a Sunbird. She was a very nervous driver. I thought it was part of some other psychological issues she had. Then I had to drive her Sunbird somewhere. Terrifying! Somehow in a noisy gutless cramped smallish car GM had managed to reproduce the floaty uncontrolled body motions and vague imprecise steering of the full size cars of a decade earlier.

It might sound crazy, but according to one of Bob Lutz's books, there is/was a huge corpus of GM Engineering Standards, some of which dated back to the 1930s, that had a big influence on design. This might explain why a compact Pontiac Sunbird might feel like a fullsize 1979 Pontiac Parisienne-both cars might have to meet the same set of criteria regardless of market fit!

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#467

Post by souterrain »

Marsymars wrote: post #278
post_break wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's surprising considering that car has the worst transmission in car history. Unless the SFE is the one with a stick.

AFAIK every trim level of the Fiesta has been available with either automatic or manual except the ST (i.e. the hot hatch version) which is manual-only.

I believe the SFE (using the 1.0L, in-line 3 “EcoBoost” engine) was only available with a 5 speed stick. I suspect the performance with an auto transmission would be unbearable.

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#468

Post by [deleted] »

gamblor956 wrote: post #464
toomuchtodo wrote: post #454

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Gas pumps stop working too when utility power is out. Can charge your electric car at home from solar if you have it (and in California, solar is mandatory on new residential roofs of new construction starting in January of next year).

This is false. Gas pumps utilize utility electric as their primary source of power, but are required by law (in CA at least) to have backup sources of power, like diesel, in the event that a natural disaster (like an earthquake) knocks out power lines. And solar charging only works if you live in suburbia or rural neighborhoods. If you live in a city, you're SOL.

[deleted]

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#469

Post by DuskStar »

Gibbon1 wrote: post #461
DuskStar wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, I suppose you could call regulatory capture 'capitalism'... But seeing as most people's response to 'capitalism failing' is to call for more regulation, I don't think that that's really fair.

I think you're under a delusion that 'government' and 'capitalism' are separate things.

Well, there exist countries that have government without capitalism, so yes I do believe they are.

Re: Every American Car Brand Is on the Bottom Half of CR's Reliability Rankings

#470

Post by woodandsteel »

pflats wrote: post #451
woodandsteel wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Tesla chose the supplier. Tesla built and inspected and sold and shipped the car with those parts. This is a Tesla-related issue. They are new at mass manufacturing and no doubt learned a lesson from this incident. And that is the whole point of their response, unlike the other American manufacturers they are successfully working away at rapidly improving quality and reliability. And you are angry at them for that.

But Tesla didn't say "we're new at this and we learned from it". They said it was a "supplier-related issue" that has been "addressed for cars in the field" and "resolved [...] with fundamental design improvements". Nothing in the statement tells me that there won't be another "supplier-related issue" down the line. There should be controls in place for this.

Tesla is new at producing cars in large quantities, and it has greatly improved their quality and reliability. There is no way this could have happened unless they were learning from their mistakes, and that includes controls on suppliers. Do you really disagree?
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