If you watch Sandy Munro's videos, he mentions often how his visits with Chinese car manufacturers go, when they discuss architecture options. Customers hold up a cell phone and ask "How can we make it more like this?". The cell phone got rid of separate components a long time ago. Everything's on one PCB, plus the display. And many things that used to be on the PCB but consisted of many chips, are now integrated to a single chip. The car consisting of a lot of OEM boxes connected with wires seems so outdated.

And each box having a separate computer makes it in essence stranded. Instead, if the control is centralized, then it's possible to take the complexity to software and keep managing it much better, features are easier to develop and can be sent to existing cars over the air etc.

The reason cars have lots of computers is for price - its cheaper to use a power and CAN data bus rather than have individual wires going from a central computer to each device.

For example, a door module can control the locks, windows and mirrors with just a 2 power wires and 2 thin wires for CAN bus.

Contrast this to old cars which had thick bundles of wires to power the mirror, doorlock and window motors from outside the door.

This might not be a huge concern for the HN demographic, but it is for developing countries operating whatever vehicles the EU deems too dangerous or polluting for their roads. There are no PCBs making their way to Central Asia.

The problem with black boxes is that they work until they don't. In some cases like fuel injection, they're a significant reliability improvement. In others they're a ticking time bomb that can make the entire vehicle unusable.

This a problem in the motorcycle world. You now have bikes that are dead because of computer issues. Small pebbles if you're near a dealership, possibly deadly if you use adventure bikes for their intended purpose.

The main board on an iphone is taking a really small part of the whole nowadays. https://guide-images.cdn.ifixit.com/igi/JtBACGbyZcYSdBfL.hug... Besides maybe some machine vision things, the computing in a car seems to have very low performance requirements.

Sensors, actuators and controllers etc are another thing then, but they're different.

Yeah, but “skilled maintenance “ was an easy skill. There could only be a handful of things wrong if it didn’t start: e.g. no spark, no fuel. In the case of no spark, you check the plug, see if it’s dirty, change it if so; check the distributor, maybe the points are bad; check the coil or condenser… yeah there were things to check, but you could actually fix it once you learned about it. And yes, you could do this on the side of the road—there were “tool rolls” you could have for such purposes.

Now, you get a check engine light and the code reader says, in so many words: “bring to dealer and pay up”

Modern cars need an inspection every 30k km and hardly ever break down. When they do, they are usually toast so (at least financially). Older cars are financially toast as well, if you cannot do the work yourself so.

That's funny, because my OBDII reader tells me exactly which sensor logged a fault and what the fault is such as reading too high/low. Sure you can have oddball errors where a bus wire has its insulation melted and is sending noise over the CAN bus or something, but you also had bizarre issues on old engines with weird vacuum leaks in pipes and dashpots and all the other analogue junk that electronics have replaced.

People look at old cars through rose coloured glasses and forget having to clean distributors and adjust timing and fix tuning drift with carburettors.

"If it's got compression, and it's got fuel, and it's got a spark, then it's got to go".

He was right.

> cars used to break down much more often and require much more skilled maintenance.

My '78 John Deere 4640 (not a car I give you that) if it breaks down, I can fix it. If I cannot I can order the part. If I cannot, I can have the part made within a week.

None of that is possible with a 2021 6145M. If it breaks, I have to sit and wait for JD to bless me with their part.

I have less problems with non-electronic equipment than with the electronics enhanced ones.

I venture it is very much the same with personal cars.

Also, comparing tractors with cars is an extremely dubious proposition; these are different vehicles with different engineering constraints, uses, and consumer expectations. How many OEMs for cars still make parts for the 1978 vehicles? Hell, what percentage of Americans have the space, knowledge, and interest to build up a garage to service their own vehicles?

This situation is exactly the same as the tractor example above. You’re taking a similar but different object built for different use cases and different financial and engineering constraints, and declaring that the outcome of one is predictive of another.

Like putting touch screens on the steering wheel!

That's great, but I don't own a garage, and if my car breaks, it goes to the mechanic. The mechanic needs to eat, and pay the mortgage on her garage, so she will charge $XYZW for repairs.

For all the maintenance and repair work I and my father have had done on our cars, 'Some microchip somewhere crapped out' has never made the list. All the failures have been purely mechanical. Your 70s car proposal solves a problem that few people have, and introduces a lot of new ones.

The problem with fancy electronics is that only a few people chosen, trained and supplied by the manufacturer can work on them. This effectively gives them a monopoly on maintenance. Your mechanic will be cut out of that deal.

This also creates a risk for the second hand market, not just in first world countries, but wherever they inherit cars that don't pass inspection. Some garage in Georgia (the country) won't be kitted out to fix computer issues and keep the car running. They can't expect help from OEM, nor third party replacement parts. It's a great planned obsolescence strategy.

i've heard the same complaint about basically every part of an audi except the tires.

I don't know if most of these things actually require digital features.

Apples to oranges comparison.

However the computer won't crap out on you, and this is now happening with new bikes. Adventure bikes mind you. I wouldn't want my adventure cut short by a computer problem I can't fix in the field.

They still sell bikes without that crap, and they are absurdly reliable.

Regardless I do appreciate the simplicity of long past inventions.

The engine controle unit plays a major role in emission control and fuel economy.

You don't know that. I'm pretty sure there is a market for simple cars that don't tell you what to do, don't report you to the authorities, don't shut down unexpectedly because you didn't follow the manufacturer's maintenance schedule, etc.

> How about even getting into the car without a radio key fob. I very much doubt the majority of people will even know how to lock or unlock their rear doors without a central lock/unlock key. They will probably just leave their car unlocked.

I can't tell if this is satire or not, but people who can't open a door with a key and a handle maybe shouldn't be allowed to drive.

I also much prefer my phone navigation over the in car system (Android Auto/Apple Carplay would solve this). That said, I wouldn't buy the car GP is suggesting, but I could imagine that if you were price sensitive then you might.

No comment around the older systems, I don't really have the knowledge to agree or disagree there.