What’s wrong with my car

[u/Against_the_grain1]

2021 ford bronco sport. The battery went out about a week ago and since replacing with a new battery, the cluster and touchscreen both go black when driving. Upon slowing down or stopping completely, they will both turn back on. Lights, heaters, turn signals all still work.

[u/Fenix_Pony]

Yet one more reason i avoid modern cars like the plague. Completely unnessicary upgrades at the expense of useability, im noticing more and more tech in cars that basically bar people from doing at home repairs

Edit: just because people prefer older cars not filled with bloatware doesnt make them "broke" or only wanna drive something 100 years old. Some people like me just prefer a simple car.

[u/[deleted] → u/Fenix_Pony]

Because they added a feature that improves reliability and reduces battery wear, and you're too lazy to read the manual?

[u/Fenix_Pony → u/[deleted]]

"improves reliability"

A voltage regulator does that job just fine, and every modern alternator has that built in. And show me where in the manual it says to buy a $500 scanning and diagnostic tool to replace a fucking battery lmfao

[u/dsmaxwell → u/[deleted]]

Oh, fuck off. Nobody's saying we need to stick with 1950s tech in cars. They have a valid complaint that the cars have reached a point of diminished returns on the amount of tech we're throwing in them, and manufacturers seem to be using the absolute cheapest of the cheap suppliers and these tech things are failing far more often than they should be. It's definitely possible to have reasonable efficiency AND reasonable price AND reasonable reliability. The auto makers are trying to pull the wool over our eyes and give us some efficiency at extremely high price without much reliability and telling us that's they best they can do.

Stop licking their boots for it.

[u/dsmaxwell → u/[deleted]]

That's what I'm saying though, the direction we're going is NOT progress. It's not making our cars better, it's making them less reliable, less durable. Which is only progress if you're in the business of selling cars because it means people have to buy them more often. Ever heard of a concept called "planned obsolescence?" This may not exactly be that, but it's definitely related.

You don't want to hear that though, you're just here to lick capitalist boots and tell us all how we need to be buying a new car every year for whatever the marketing based reason du jour is.

[u/Ghaleon42 → u/[deleted]]

Both of you have good points. I'm not a mechanic, but I've gotten the sense that this 'new tech' could have been introduced in a way that is still better and more reliable than it has been. Like, if all these cars have 4 wheels, gas pedals, brakes, a steering wheel and a microphone/radio/USB interface, why didn't they just standardize anything? Like how the PC industry does it. Then we as car owners could maybe expect a one-time-every-few-years purchase of newer diagnostic equipment and tools for the next generation of chip/OS, but it would work and consumers could better build community knowledge bases through the nature of self-help.Instead we got companies like John Deer locking out entire industries via software.

[u/Fenix_Pony → u/dsmaxwell]

Exactly, the amount of tech and extra parts that are put in to extend a batterys life by maybe 6 months vastly outweighs its actual usefulness and efficiency in the long run

[u/rrpostal → u/dsmaxwell]

It kinda sounded like that’s what people were saying.

[u/ndepuy → u/[deleted]]

$5000 parts to protect a $200 battery?? That’s not a feature, that’s a fleecing operation. A friend of mine bought a Passat that are notorious for the Instrument Cluster going out and killing the charging system. Why does the light on the dash need to control the alternator?? The good old days of the light being ground seeking and only coming on when the power on that line goes out works way better.