The $25k car is going extinct?

I work on my own cars now (as a hobby really) and one of the reasons the new cars are so expensive is they are much more complicated. A lot of this seems to be over-engineering IMO. This is alluded to in the article, but not explicitly stated.

The cars I work on are from the early 90s and everything is very simple to understand.

e.g. Electronics are normally simple circuits that aren't much more complicated than what you would find in a door bell and finding faults is normally just tracing wires and using a multi-meter. I had issues with the brake lights / reverse lights not working, the issue turned out that the spade like connector in the fuse box was pushed through and was making partial contact. Price to fix this was £0.

EDIT: Just remembered this isn't accurate. I had to buy a new reverse light. The entire reverse light assembly was ~£20. So the price to fix was about £20. The light assembly itself was like a big bicycle light.

My newer car needs a OB-II scanner to diagnose anything with a phone app. While this is arguably quicker it can be misleading. Sometimes it will be telling you that something is malfunctioning but it is really the sensor itself. These sensors are £200-£300 a piece. Replacing 4 glow plug sensors cost me £800. I was paying essentially to make the "you must service your engine" light to go away. There was nothing wrong with engine itself.

Yes, if they would make a basic car like in the past I would buy it. Everyone has to sell you too much, I want a simple car, I don't want either the stereo, I will add my own later (I can put it one that is better than the factory one for a cheaper price, but in a modern car replacing the stereo is almost impossible). There are a ton of useless sensors, the sensor that tells you if you have a flat tire (I think I can notice myself), the emergency call button (while everyone has a mobile phone these days), automatic regulating seats (pulling a lever is too much difficult), dual zone clima control (it's the same space in the same car, why I would want to set 2 different temperatures?), etc.

And in all this useless things that they put in a car, they no longer provide you with a spare tire, just an useless repair kit...

Some of those “useless” sensors like tire pressure or backup camera are required by law. Even if you get a bare bones hatchback (manual transmission, manual locks, manual windows etc.) they’ll be forced to include those.

The tyre pressure sensor you can make an argument to be required by law as uneven tyre pressures can negatively effect handling.

However the backup camera being required by law is absolutely ridiculous. You can just either use the mirrors or turn your head.

You must have quite the impressive neck if you can reproduce the same view a backup camera does.

You can also turn your body a bit as well.

I have tried this before but I have never been able to make the bumper transparent.

The reason this law exists is because small children (e.g 3ft tall) were getting run over.

Seriously, go put a large suitcase immediately behind your rear bumper and try to see it without a camera. You can't.

Do you believe, that I believed that I could see through the bumper?

No, I believe your flippant answer was made with disregard for the need to do so.

I had a flippant stupid reply. So they got a stupid flippant response.

Typically when you are reversing and there is likely to be something sat behind your vehicle (like a child or a pet). You are parked. You can you know look before you get in the car.

If you have parking sensors it will alert you to something walking behind you anyway.

The point being made is there are way to deal with this without the need for a rear camera.

Of course, ideally people see the child and do not hit it. When atypical incidents happen, we call them accidents, and when they start happening at rates we find unacceptable we often engineer solutions to make those accidents less likely.

This is why we have seat belts instead of telling people "you idiot you should have used the brakes!"

Don't patronise me. You've done it twice now. I find it extremely irritating.

The point being made is that many of these things can be mitigated by better driver training or driver aids which are much simpler & cheaper (I am likely to fit parking sensors in my older cars, kits are cheap).

> mitigated by better driver training

Oh, well, if it's that easy! Just retrain 1.2 billion people, some of whom still don't know how to tie a shoelace reliably.

> Oh, well, if it's that easy!

They have been mandating that in most UK countries for decades and it is definitely one of the reasons why roads are safer now.

> Some of whom still don't know how to tie a shoelace reliably

Your true colours finally show. All the people are too stupid to learn how to do anything. BTW this is called the "Bigotry of low expectations".

> Your true colours finally show. All the people are too stupid to learn how to do anything.

All? No. Some? Absolutely. Five minutes on the road demonstrates it.

Probably should have had better driver training ;-)

Yes, they should.

If you find out a way to retrain everyone on the road more cost-effectively than a $30 backup camera, do implement it. (Don't forget figuring out how to get people to maintain those skills.)

Until then, I'm glad my car has some safety features that protect me when I get rear-ended in stopped traffic by someone who wasn't paying attention.

> Yes, they should.

So you accept that better driving training would be better.

> If you find out a way to retrain everyone on the road more cost-effectively than a $30 backup camera, do implement it. (Don't forget figuring out how to get people to maintain those skills.)

As time goes on, older people stop driving either they stop driving (they realise they are too old to drive) or they die.

If you implement better driver training. Then newer driver have to do that training. So over the overall minimum standard improves.

A $30 camera is something that doesn't improve the overall minimum driving standard. It is a band-aid over a bigger problem.

> Until then, I'm glad my car has some safety features that protect me when I get rear-ended in stopped traffic by someone who wasn't paying attention.

Crumple zones have been standard in cars for like 30 years now. That rear camera isn't going to help you.