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Who makes the most reliable new cars?

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Re: Who makes the most reliable new cars?

#821

Post by collyw »

throwaway914 wrote: post #777
vondur wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People drive horrible now. Running lights, crazy lane changes, excessive speeding etc. Here in the US is started during the pandemic and hasn’t improved.

My counterpoint to this is there have always been a ton of bad drivers. The most important skill to have is to be a predictable driver. Bad drivers will always exist. You cannot change them, and the great number of them is not likely to drop to 0 overnight. The best thing you can do is drive in a way that even bad drivers expect. Be a speed-limited, blinker-indicating, cautious log in the river. They will parkour aro…

I always thought it was a good idea to assume all the other drivers around me were likely to be incompetent idiots. Obviously not the case, but it means when you do encounter one you will be ready.

Re: Who makes the most reliable new cars?

#822

Post by numlock86 »

piperswe wrote: post #745
winrid wrote: post #658

The fact that BMW and Mini are at the top of this list should make you ignore this data. First off, the Mini is just a smaller BMW, second the BMWs are complicated and designed to be maintained a certain way because that is how german cars are designed. You don't accidentally go 10k over an oil change on a higher mileage BMW and expect nothing bad to happen, but that would probably be okay on a Honda/Toyota/some Amer…

But if you do maintain them in that certain way, they can be brilliantly reliable. Problem is, many people (especially in America) don't. And getting the proper fluids for them can be a pain in the ass in America, since BMW LL oil is basically impossible to get anywhere except dealerships and specialty websites. I'm surprised Mercedes is so low in the list. They've traditionally been one of the more reliable German b…

> I'm surprised Mercedes is so low in the list. They've traditionally been one of the more reliable German brands, that's why they're used as taxis in many countries.

Oh, my sweet summer child. I can tell you still have fond memories of the pre-2010 Mercedes era ...

Who's gonna tell him?

Re: Who makes the most reliable new cars?

#823

Post by GuB-42 »

hintymad wrote: post #181

Toyota is amazing for making reliable cars but writing truly shitty code. IIRC, a lawsuit a few years ago about Toyota's faulty brake system revealed that Toyota engineers cramped tens of thousands of lines in a single file and the lines freely update hundreds of global variables. It's also interesting that Japanese companies follow ISO this and CMM that yet they develop slowly and produce shitty software services ev…

> Toyota engineers cramped tens of thousands of lines in a single file and the lines freely update hundreds of global variables.

While the "single file" part is not great, using all global variables in an embedded system can be a good thing. I've worked on a critical piece of software for aircraft that did this deliberately, for safety reasons.

One of the most important criteria for that software is determinism, which means no dynamic allocation since it is hard to predict how the allocator would behave. The stack can also be very limited in size, so what remains are global variables.

It also makes debugging easier. You know exactly which variable corresponds to which address in memory. And with a probe, you can know the full state of the program at any time. That's also how we tested "impossible" conditions (for coverage): by overwriting specific memory addresses.

Many of the reasons why globals are bad didn't apply there. We had no concurrency, no resources to share with other processes, in fact, we didn't even have an OS at first, Nothing was dynamic, all arrays were of fixed size, including strings, which were array of characters padded with spaces to the appropriate length.

Of course, we documented usage of these variables, proper up-to-date documentation was not an option as it was certified software. It was one of the most boring job I ever had, and it is probably for the best.

Re: Who makes the most reliable new cars?

#824

Post by pkorzeniewski »

julianlam wrote: post #505
simonsarris wrote: post #444

Earlier quoted context omitted.

huh, my 2014 Mazda 3 (manual 6 speed) I find quite fun to drive. It feels light, it's not some powerhouse but its immensely spritely. It feels like, given the constraints, the engineers were still trying to make something that feels good. Very different from Corollas or Civics that I've owned. I actually bought the 2014 model rather than 2015 because I wanted the last year made in Japan, though I don't know how much…

Having driven a CX-3, a 3, a 6, a CX-5, and a CX-90 (test drive), if you want "spritely", you want the CX-3 (or perhaps the CX-30?) Mazdas are fantastic to drive, but that CX-3 rental had the real zoom zoom out of all of them.

I bought CX-3 5 years ago and it's a really fun (and reliable) car to drive and I say that as someone who previously was daily driving a sporty roadster for many years :-) Unfortunately they stopped producing the CX-3 line and replaced it with CX-30 which is very similar, but I prefer the look of CX-3..

Re: Who makes the most reliable new cars?

#825

Post by collyw »

pockybum522 wrote: post #584
vondur wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People drive horrible now. Running lights, crazy lane changes, excessive speeding etc. Here in the US is started during the pandemic and hasn’t improved.

Started during the pandemic? My friend, I think you just might not remember how terribly people drove pre-pandemic as well.

[flagged]

Re: Who makes the most reliable new cars?

#826

Post by esperent »

jeremyjh wrote: post #574
esperent wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mother is still driving a 1999 Corolla hatchback. She bought it around 2005, has driven it every day since. When her friend passed away, she inherited his 1998 version of the same and has been using it for spares. Now she's considering selling both, they are classics now so they are actually increasing in value. I'm a bit sad, as I live on the other side of the world and I feel like in my trips home that car is on…

So buy it from her.

So far in my life I've never felt the desire to own a car. Also, I live on the other side of the world from her.

Re: Who makes the most reliable new cars?

#827

Post by dsego »

rectang wrote: post #659
Mountain_Skies wrote: post #490

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replacing old style headlight bulbs with LEDs in housings not designed for them is an increasing problem too, making driving at night often something that is best done with a pair of sunglasses.

I flash my headlights at cars whose lights are too blinding, under the assumption that the driver accidentally left their brights on. If I’m wrong and their lights are always like that, my assumption is that they would appreciate someone letting them know anyway. If it happens a lot, maybe they’ll figure it out and correct their embarrassing problem. And if they’ve jerks who know they’re blinding others but just don’…

The way I do it is not flashing, which can be misinterpreted as police ahead or something else. I just turn on my high beams until they lower theirs and it works most of the time.

Re: Who makes the most reliable new cars?

#828

Post by koliber »

jimbob45 wrote: post #702
koliber wrote: post #695

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I noticed that too, but I am questioning myself. I’m wondering how much other people’s driving has gotten worse, vs me getting older, more defensive and risk averse, and noticing such driving. If I look back to my 20s, I was not an exemplary driver.

Cell phones were a huge mistake. I was walking my dog and saw someone eyes fully down doing 20 in the street. It was late and empty but if anyone had been in the street, they’d have been dead. That distraction didn’t exist 25 years ago on the scale it does today. I wish cell phone use penalties would be promoted closer to those of alcohol use while driving.

That's indisputable.

Maybe faraday cages should be mandated in cars, in addition to rear-facing cameras. :)

Re: Who makes the most reliable new cars?

#829

Post by dunco »

metabagel wrote: post #519
dunco wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tell that to the all the ~80s w118's etc. around the world still working as taxis and running off vegetable oil

This comment doesn’t say anything about the maintenance/repair cost to keep those cars running.

They're (were?) a popular choice in very poor countries due to their reliability. They did used to be built to a higher standard. The story I heard which I have no idea about the truth of, is that competition from lexus coming along in the 2000s made merc more price conscious, and reliability suffered as a result.

Re: Who makes the most reliable new cars?

#830

Post by SethMurphy »

_yb2s wrote: post #394
SkyPuncher wrote: post #346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FWIW, the computers don’t tend to break. The things that do break are essentially the same as they were 20 years ago. The bells and whistles are mostly for creatures comfort. The mechanical components haven’t changed much. The only thing that I couldn’t fix on my own in my 2020 vs my 2006 was re-alignment of lane keep system after replacing the windshield.

As a car nerd, a popular opinion is to avoid cars with computers because they could fail anytime, and can't be macgyvered into a repair roadside.... but after ~50 years of computerized cars, it seems that simple solid state computers, ruggedized and often potted in epoxy essentially never fail. And moreover, they can both give early warnings before you're stranded, and diagnostic data that can be used to pinpoint and…

When I bought a new 2012 VW GTI there wasn't even a schematic for the fuses. Apparently the wiring is not even consistent on a model year, so they just didn't provide it. Easy to understand why with even computer codes mechanics are stuck with a plug and pray methodology.
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