We used a one-piece body side, and so that means if you damage like the rear fender, the repair operation, depending on the level of the damage, you can either do body work or you have to cut out a portion of the panel, re-weld the new panel on,
So, a problem of design that didn’t really think about repairability
I’m not even a mechanic and I can tell you that no car company thinks about repairability.
Hell, just replacing a consumable like the battery can be a major chore that requires far more disassembly than anyone with a functional braincell would consider appropriate on some cars.
You’d think cars, at least, will be built under the assumption they’ll typically have to be repaired rather than replaced.
They used to be. Go back far enough in time and you could climb up under the hood into the engine bay to work on it. All that went by the wayside to get smaller packaging, lighter weight, and better fuel efficiency.
Now you need special tools or special code readers to solve/diagnose all vehicle problems. The large scale farmers are dealing with this now with the large combines and harvesters needing a tech with special equipment to read all the codes where the older tractors from the 70s and 80s can be repaired.
I’m getting annoyed at hearing this “they made them better in the old days” trope.
Modern cars are pushing 200-300,000 miles of life. They don’t rust like they used to, and complex, efficient engines can be diagnosed with a read from a computer screen, as can the entire car electric system. Sure, older vehicles had more room to do repairs, but they always needed repairs. Lots of rose colored glasses being worn here.
Vehicles like giga cast Teslas are almost like hot wheels cars, one large casting of aluminum, which is often too expensive to fix so the car gets written off. Rivian and Tesla didn’t give a shit about collision repair…until sales are being choked when people get insurance quotes. Tesla setup their own insurance and it’s losing money. Poor design means Teslas crash more than any other brands, and get written off more than any other brand, which sets actuarial tables on fire.
Now Rivian CEO cares because bad design is affecting sales.
Lots of rose colored glasses being worn here.
I will take modern rust prevention tech every day all day. The control modules and circuit boards are a hole in repairablity, and there’ll be a wall where nobody makes them anymore and the specs are not published (considered proprietary/trade secret/whatever), and that whole vehicle will just have to be scrapped. The world won’t ever see the end of old body-on-frame vehicles with crate engines. Speaking for myself the “rose colored glasses” is a wish for the best of both worlds. I wouldn’t doubt it’s out there being done somewhere, but I’m sure it’s cost prohibitive to do it, or people are doing it for themselves.
Maybe I’m just complaining because I don’t personally have the time/knowledge/workspace to do what I want in that area. C’est la vie.
The market is ripe for the equivalent of a wileys jeep ev. Cheap to buy, repair and capable with no frills.
Make the software foss too and i’m in
I would die for a FOSS car. The main barrier for that is airbags, people could just disable them, which wouldn’t be good or fair to their passengers or future owners. I also worry about other dumb stuff people would do with a foss car. Of course, I still want one.
You can already do that though. Basically any truck just has a control on the dash to disable the passenger side airbag in case you neet to put a car seat there. You can also just remove the airbags in any existing vehicle as is. It really isn’t hard to do. People are just hesitant to do so because if you screw up then you can set the airbag off.
More importantly though why would the software being foss effect the airbags? The airbags shouldn’t be interacting with the vehicle software at all.
People have been doing dumb things with their cars since the invention of cars. Making them harder to repair via locked down software isn’t the fix for that.
Airbags are definitely a part of the can bus these days, they trigger based off of a number of inputs like the gyro, speed, acceleration, etc. I suppose they could just put in a seperate, secure system for the airbags that cannot be tampered with.
You are close to describing the Slate truck
Which doesn’t actually exist yet and price jumps $5000 every quarter.
This is why it is such a shame that all the major auto manufacturers could not be bothered to produce a decent cheap EV. They have repairability figured out from the start. They already have dealers, parts, crash safety, etc all worked out.
The first two generations of the Nissan Leaf and the Chevy Bolt are the closest to what you’re describing.
The current Leaf and Bolt are under $30K. The first generations of leaf were garbage due to lack of battery temp control, the Bolt had major battery safety issues.
I agree the lack of liquid cooling on Leaves is problematic - I see their batteries die much sooner, often under 10 years. But it’s fine if you don’t live in a hot climate.
They also replaced the batteries on every 2017-2020 Bolt between roughly 2022-24 with warranties until 2032. So by buying a used one now, you get a car with a battery that’s only 2-4 years old, not 6-9 years old. That alone makes them worth it.
A GMC Hummer EV taillight costs an eye-watering $6,100 to replace, plus labor. The idea of having to replace one of Audi’s new adaptive Matrix LED headlight setups is something most people probably don’t want to stomach.
Audi made these adaptive light strips to fix the artificial problem of newer headlights being too bright compared to older ones.
Meanwhile, only 30 years ago when we had sealed-beams in standardized shapes, you could replace a headlight for like $10. And the lens was actually glass instead of plastic prone to yellowing and abrasion.
Yeah and if you hit someone that glass shatters and stabs them. The plastic is shatter resistant.
Did you know shatter resistant glass exists? Like your windshield for example. The issue is plastic is cheap and easy to manufacture and nothing else.
Tempered glass is very hard to mold into a complex shape. Those plastic headlights shrouds are much cheaper to replace, it’s the internals that are expensive.
Also that plastic you can just polish and they’re like new.
Those lights were absolute garbage though and the vehicles that used them got half the gas mileage compared to new ones due to their blocky shape and lack of aerodynamics.
Just hammer it out bro
Hit the front with a hair dryer for a minute, then use a mallet from the inside
Just drive it as is. When other road warriors see your battle scars, they’ll know not to mess with you.
