[Asoon]

Today Cars have become a smart devices with multiple sensors, cameras, 12 speakers, 8 airbags, ADAS, powered parking brakes, hill assists and whatnot. So there are more potential points of failure, however, critical issues like brake failure, clutch plate damage, battery drainage, engine works, and head gasket change have come down massively. The bottom line is Cars have become extremely reliable and the experimental gadgets are the reason for the quality problems

[vamsi.vadrevu]

I think if we let go of our demands for electric assist tech, manufacturers will probably be able to make reliable cars.

Some 30 years back, only the most expensive luxury cars could feature electric assist systems and gadgets. Now even sub 10 lakh cars feature these technologies.

The luxury cars have the luxury of pricing it to whatever amount they want. And they used to get the engineering time and money to make them reliable.

But the tech used in cheaper cars, usually tends to be from OEMs that probably didn't make the components to exacting standards as the luxury car makers. And the manufacturers reduced testing time after integration to save time and costs. This basically makes cars unreliable in the tech systems (especially the head unit).

As for engine, transmission tech and chassis systems, it has indeed reached maturity for Japanese makers. For the Indian manufacturers, they still seem to be figuring out how to make them reliable (loads of complaints from new Nexon customers about DCA failures and new Mahindra cars with suspension components failing mid highway!). As for the Germans, their engine, transmission tech, chassis and safety tech was also cutting edge but it required exacting standards of fuel and environment and maintenance. Any deviation from spec throws a wrench into their smooth operation. Probably they're not tested thoroughly for Indian conditions (VAG cars and their dsg, epc, fuel pump issues and AC cooling issues in VAG 2.0 cars).

Reading these issues in this forum makes me think it's a problem with the attitude of the car makers towards quality and reliability.

The most reliable cars still seem to be the entry level cars with minimal tech.

[Jeroen]

There is other data showing a very different trend. Check with car lease companies and the various AA services around the world and you tend to hear the exact opposite.

For some reason people still believe that only mechanical things are reliable. As soon as you add some electrics let alone electronics, reliability goes south seems to be the mantra. I don’t think that is true at all. In fact I can give endless examples were electronics and software have given us much better reliability and comfort.

We have completely forgotten how unreliable mechanical cars were in the 60-80s.

Starting a carburator car with pushing the throttle just quick and deep enough and pulling the choke just the right amount, turning the ignition key and if you were lucky it would fire up. Had that car been sitting out in the rain for a week or so, good luck getting it to start.

We always need to be careful about drawing our own experience into a global trend. But I can tell you, breaking down with your car on holiday in the 60-70s was par for the course for many families. Everybody had car break down stories to share.

How often do we read on TeamBHP about cars breaking down completely? For such a large membership base, only now and then.

If you check with the lease companies and the AA service you will see that the nature of the problems also has changed over the years. From a complete brake down, won’t start at all to a long list of what I call niggles. You can still, safely and mostly comfortable but something isn’t working or doing what it supposed to do.

Mechanical cars were simpler to fix? Bah, only up to a point. Read my thread about fiddling with cars where me and spanner mate Berndt and Peter battle it out for many hours/days trying to get a carburettor car started and running sort of acceptable. Setting up and fine tuning carburators is a fine art. And just as there are few car mechanics that can deal with electronic problems, there were not that many in the past that could deal well with more than basic carburator knowledge.

Would you like me to remind your of the endless problems the industry experienced in the 80-00 when it came to engine technology and in particular castings? It’s one thing getting the airbags replaced because they might be faulty. But your engine having to be replaced because of incorrect castings and or metallurgic problems is a whole different matter.

By and large just about all ICE technology is pretty well matured. Occasionally new things get introduced and we might see some issues during the first years. (Eg DSC boxes in India). We will have to see how EV will fare in all of this. But I am pretty sure a 10 year old Tesla is likely to be far more reliable than most cars from the 80-90. It will also drive far more comfortable, far safer and a hell of a lot quicker. Obviously, you should not buy a Tesla because it is made by the idiot Musk. But that is all explained in a different thread. Nothing to do with reliability of Tesla, all about the reliability of Musk.

Two other trends also seem to indicate otherwise. By and large, car maintenance cost has come down over the last couple of decades. Service intervals have come up considerable. I am from a generation that grew up in an era where if you would take your car on a holiday, say drive 500-1000 kilometers, you would take it to get serviced first.

I jump into any modern car, without checking anything and happily clock thousands of kilometers.

There is also a trend that shows, cars last longer. That might be due to other factors, but is doesn’t appear to be cause the owners too much extra headache.

Jeroen