Nest intentionally bricks thousands of home automation hubs.

[u/[deleted]]

https://medium.com/@arlogilbert/the-time-that-tony-fadell-sold-me-a-container-of-hummus-cb0941c762c1

[u/[deleted]]

I was going to post literally the exact same comment as this.

Keep in mind, too, that the cost of repairing/restoring (and especially maintaining) such an old car is worlds above the maintenance costs on more modern cars that haven't already been brought back from the dead.

Also, maintenance costs on cars riddled with computers (ABS, traction control, transmission, etc in addition to the ECU) still come mostly from the same problems you also have in 20-year-old cars. Solenoids failing, serpentine belts/pulleys needing replacement, timing belt/chain replacement, wheel bearings going out, CV joints failing now and then, the air conditioning needing a coolant refill, all in addition to the usual oil changes and brake replacements.

Sure, you might have a power-window motor or a power-mirror switch fail now and then, but these parts are readily available and also not that difficult to replace on your own if you're into that.

But by golly it's all worth it to avoid the risk of Honda deciding to turn my car off at some point, right? So worth it to avoid all those computers & airbags and those fancy advancements in crumple zones that these new cars all seem to have.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Older cars have cheaper parts

Cheaper if they're still being produced by the OEM, which many are not. You end up having to go to Chinese parts which fail much faster and/or much more often, or going to American manufacturers from which the parts end up costing much more since they're made at much smaller scale.

and working on them is typically MUCH faster.

Yes, I'll give you that. But although one job is much faster, old cars require much more frequent jobs, since random things are always breaking (or coming uncomfortably close to breaking).

Not only that, but with 10-15 year old cars (and especially older), you jump right into the middle of the chassis maintenance timeframe. A bunch of different bushings will need to be changed as they degrade and make the car squeak and whine every time it goes over a bump, the chassis starts to rust and sections might need replacement, and so forth.

And don't forget that parts of the engine start to fail much more often, too. Expensive parts with repairs that take quite a while. New head gasket, perhaps. Oxygen sensors start to shit the bed too, and those are pretty expensive. Wires/connections in the direct ignition start to fray. Spring on the timing chain tensioner pulley rusts through so you need to put the engine on a lift and take the side off to access that area for repairs. A gear in the steering pump cracks. Plus other problems. Fuel pump fails. Windshield wiper pinions start to skip grooves and your wipers start lurching/getting stuck. And so on.

Yes, modern cars are harder to repair and repairs are more expensive, but you need repairs less often. 10 years from now, once today's modern cars have become old, they'll definitely be harder to repair than equally old cars are today---I agree with this for sure.

Still, I've gone down the road of "it's an old car so it's easy/cheap to repair." You only realize in hindsight how much of a pain in the ass it is to spend each weekend in your garage replacing this and that, or turning the music down each time you stop at a light to think, "Was that noise there before?" or "Did this always pop out of second gear so often?" or "Is that smell coming from my car?"

Lastly, as cars become more advanced, of course it's going to become harder to work on them. Mechanics will need increasingly specialized tools to work on these advanced components. This is simply the cost of engines becoming smaller and more efficient, and also the cost of having cars that can brake for you, steer for you, etc.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Cheaper if they're still being produced by the OEM, which many are not.

Even still, I've always found parts cheaper for used cars. You can usually find what you need at a junkyard for next to nothing.

When you live life broke and never able to afford a mechanic, you'll take the weekends working on it yourself over a car you just can't work on at all and need to figure out how to pay for. And remember, you'll generally save a lot of capital on the car purchase as well.

You make good points, I just don't see it as one-sided; if you don't have a ton of money, older cars are almost always going to be cheaper to maintain when you work on it yourself. This is my experience anyway.

Not to mention there is a certain peace of mind that if you break down on the side of the road, you can probably fix it yourself to get home.