Why do car makers persist in making life more diffcult and expensive?

Question

A friend of mine recently had to replace his car battery on his Renault Scenic, guess how much it cost?
£57 for the battery + £120 to have it installed due to the need to recode all the electrics.
So we car owners have a choice, have our cars broken in to by thieves or get robbed by the garages.
What do you think?

Answer 1

Here here. I have a Volvo S80 I bought 6 months ago. Gearbox went funny so it set itself into safety mode. The fault was something an old gearbox would have laughed at. These systems are built to impress as they sound great when working, but the people building these systems are so thick they have no answers to what happens when it goes wrong. They just rob you.

It's the same story with fools that have TV's and camera systems instead of mirrors in their car. Less reliable and no more effective, just looks good.

I hate to say it though but most memory systems DO NOT require a power source to hold memory, so he may have simply been conned completly and utterly. If your MP3 battery gets removed and replaced you don't have to re-program it. With cars it's the same story, so I suspect he has really been taken for a ride.

Answer 2

Typical, I changed the battery on my 1993 Buick last month and it took me an hour and a half. Why GM had to hide it, defies logic. Now, I've been a mechanic all my life, and if you paid me the going fee, it would have cost you $45 for the battery and $30 per hour or any part thereof. Figure $200 out the door.
Nice huh?
Why? Because the manufacturers put a higher premium on simplicity in factory assembly. Some computer geek uses a computer program to design the part and another program is used to figure out how to jam it into an ever smaller engine compartment.
Its why we have front wheel drive cars, not because they are better, (they aren't) but because they are easier to build.
So you have a choice: You can pay a lower price for the car when you buy it or pay less when you take it in to be fixed.
After many years in the biz, I was standing under a new 2001 Chevy Malibu with my buddy. We were checking out the new details compared to the older model.
He asked me what did I think of it all, and I replied: My next car was going to be a 1978 Chevy.
The '78 was a good solid car, easy and cheap to maintain. I could replace the battery in 20 minutes with one hand behind my back. But it got horrible gas milage and was a bear to drive in city traffic, and almost impossible to park.
So, take your pick: old and simple, or new and efficient.
BTW-Most cars store part of the computer memory permanently, so after the battery is replaced, the computer reboots and starts up with factory defaults. After running or driving for 20 minutes or so, the computer has re-encoded itself. Radios and CD-players might be different, but that's not the car builder's fault.

Answer 3

That's what you get for buying French!
Seriously though, I'm sure that the Battery, could have been purchased from Halfords!

I don't understand why this car had to be recoded, don't you mean that the radio/cassette/ CD player needed the security code re entered?
This is relevant for all modern cars!
As for £120 to replace the battery, who ever charged that is taking the P--s!
Your friend should have gone to Halfords in the first place and got a quote!

Answer 4

I am a mechanic by trade and its not ...always....the garage that rips you off yes there are some bad mechanics out there but many of us are decent hardworking folks just like anyone else.
It is the manufacturers and the engineers (that lack the common sense that even a dog has) that are to blame, they design the cars so poorly that often times we have to remove 3 or 4 things just to even get to what we are trying to fix.
And a common misconception is the "magic" scanner or computer, it does not cut the repair time down by much because it only tells you where the problem is not What the specific problem is.
For example if i have a car with the check engine light on and i use the computer to pull a code the code may be P0430 Small/Medium Evap Leak, ok fine thats all it tells me it wont tell me what to fix i have to diagnos and fix that on my own, the computer wont tell me its a bad gas cap or to replace the section of tubing over the rear axle, i have to figure that out on my own.and sadly that takes time.

Answer 5

the following is a few that I hear to... Disturbed - Fade To Black (cover) The Scene Aesthetic - So Peter, you've develop right into a Pirate HIM - connect Me In lack of life (a large number of HIM songs do) Stone bitter - Zzyzx Rd. Stone bitter- hardship Bush - Glycerine Counting Crows - a lengthy December severe - better than words Lifehouse - fantastic by technique of A second Oasis - Wonderwall continuously The Sickest childrens - disaster Oasis - unhappy song deliver Me The Horizon - The unhappiness will by no skill end 0.33 Eye Blind - Jumper Bonnie "Prince" Billy - 3 Questions Bonnie "Prince" Billy - you do not love Me Modest Mouse - third Planet Radiohead - pretend Plastic timber Smashing Pumpkins - Disarm Bob Marley - Redemption Songs Flogging Molly - If I Ever go away This Worl Alive HIM - Please do not enable It go upward thrust adverse to - Paper Wings Oasis - Champagne Supernova also seem for any acoustic HIM, that is the suitable.

Answer 6

Don't blame the Car makers . Get some education on Car maintainance and learn to change it your self ....a 20minute (max ) job even for an idiot DIY guy like me. Then go to a Car Electrics specialist he will recode it much cheaper .

Answer 7

A lot of the advances in car technology are forced on the manufacturer by government legislation which is allegedly designed to protect the environment, hence the need for better technology to reduce emissions and make the vehicle easier to recycle at the end of its working life, this is one of the reasons we have more technology so we can control the burning of the fuel and also the efficency of the engine better. another reason quiet rightly said is so that people will have to go to the main dealers to have their vehicles looked after due to the specialist tools needed, however having worked in the industry for over 20 years as a mechanic, a college lecturer in three F.E. Colleges in england and presently working for mercedes benz as a trainer and assessor i am actually in favour of having to use main dealers for a few reason.

1. Main dealers will fit original parts, which are specifically designed for that vehicle and are a better quality than pattern parts.

2. The Technicians emplyed by a main dealer are all fully qualified not only to national standards (i.e. NVQ, City and Guilds and BTEC) but they also have to attend on a regular bassis Manufacturers product training courses to keep their skills up to date, im afraid the " fred in the shed mechanic" as i call them simply cannot compete in terms of skills and equipment on this point
3. all main dealers of all franchises will soon have registered technicians in place who are checked out and given a licence by an awarding body similar to a gas engineer who in the uk has to be Corgi registrerd.

Im constantly amazed that people moan at the expense of having their cars fixed and blame the dealers for the cost, a vehicle of any discription if not maintained properly is a lethal weapon, not only to the people that are travelling in it but to innocent members of the public as well. I am a driver myself and cover approximatley 50,000 miles a year travelling around the country to various Mercedes Benz dealerships and am amazed how people seem to think that owning and operating a vehicle is a right, its not its a privalige and as a privalige we owe to keep the vehicles in spot on condition, imagine how you would feel if one of your loved ones was injured or god forbid killed by someone who hadnt maintained their vehicle properly or had fixed it on a sunday afternoon before going to the pub

Answer 8

Your right Barrie , garages are robbing us ,i`m sure if they put a jump start pack on the leads before they disconnectted the battery there would have been a continuos supply and no need for re-coding,John Boy.

Answer 9

Car manufacturers make cars hard for the man in the street to repair so that you are forced to go to the main dealer as they have all the specialist equipment needed. The French are notorious for this. There are independant garages out there that have main dealer trained mechanics that charge half the labour costs than main dealers. We're still being ripped off though.

Answer 10

a lot of it is to do with the fact that the diagnosis of a fault in the past would take a chunk of the mechanics time and so would bill the customer.now the diagnosis is done ine seconds by computer so the mechanics charge more for less as too not to loose money.unfortunateley the more technology the bigger price we pay when thing go wrong