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Over engineered cars are pushing technicians away

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Over engineered cars are pushing technicians away

An interesting video from an auto tech and below text was in the comments that I thought some engineers might appreciate.

It wasn't engine work, but I worked on a friends Hyundai Elantra that had the bights for the head lights stop working. The car had less than 10k miles on it. Come to find out, all new Elantras use a lens on a servo to adjust the focal point of the light to simulate just having an extra bulb in the head lamp assembly. The servo hooks onto a gear that is made out of ABS with no fiberglass reinforcement so the gear melts half the time after prolonged usage if you commute a long way on back roads at night. Oh by the way, this is one of the only parts not covered on their warranties. I replaced the entire assembly twice for her ($400) before just giving up. I ended up drilling a hole in to the assembly, gluing the lens in place and adding a new fuse and wire lead. Then I ended up having to 3d print an attaching assembly to hold a new light that would serve for brights. I had to figure out how the heck to rewire the servo circuit to trigger a relay instead which was an entire other rabbit hole. The lights have never had a problem minus the occasional bulb replacement since and its been 60k+ miles now. But seriously, why do modern engineers try to reinvent the wheel for everything?? I don't even work on cars for a living. I work in software engineering and I see the same thing happening. The same programs need more RAM, more CPU resources just to do the same thing that it did 10 years ago. What does windows 7 do that windows 10 doesn't? Why does the same web page need 60MBs to load when it only need 1-3MB 10 years ago. All this bad engineering is going to catch up to us at some point. It really worries me to be honest.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Op1D7zWwQA8

Discussion 57 comments · 58 points · SQL2219 · 2025-01-26
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