Want to Know the Worst Part About Future Cars?

"Wobbles the Mind" (wobblesthemind) 07/27/2016 at 22:35 • Filed to: Warranty

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Warranty prices, because the reliability record of the brand won’t get you out of buying a warranty. No matter how durable that Land Cruiser is, once you see this:

You’re going to end up wanting a warranty. Because we all know electronics are the least robust products one can buy and go out faster than the McRib. It’s amazing to me the amount of fragility and lack of life spans we have come to accept and happily pay a premium for. But here’s the thing, that warranty is going to become a larger and larger part of what sells cars.

Now brand new vehicles have the advantage of fantastic warranties being standard. Your buddy’s Rolls Royce comes with a 4-year/unlimited mileage basic warranty. Did you buy a Koenigsegg Agera? You got a 3-year/unlimited mileage basic warranty on that. Of course all that cost is baked into the engineering to make sure a powerful majority of the vehicles survive out their warranties. High end vehicles end up with unlimited mileage warranties because most people can’t afford to maintain them or take the depreciation hit of additional mileage. This is partly why you make sure the wear items are expensive! If the vehicle is cheap to run and unreliable, you got yourself a poor business decision.

So new cars aren’t an issue, they have been at this place for quite some time. This means it’s all about pre-owned, baby! Mmm, that sweet, now cheap, luxury we thrive on. Yeah, that’s where you’ll notice some differences in the way we shop. Why do Certified Pre-Owned programs and Carmax get so much love? Reliable extensions to the factory warranties. Both CPO and great third party warranty offerings invest a lot of time and resources into making sure that vehicle isn’t going to cost a fortune by insuring the vehicle is as close to being the equivalent of a new car with a couple of boogers under the seat in order to have no real chance of dealing with a major warranty claim.

Now of course you’re gonna pay a premium for this warranty regardless because who knows if you’ll need to claim replacing the entire fuel system due to an issue with spiders in the gas gap from the factory. Therefore, if your warranty provider thinks it will cost on average of $500 in claims over an additional 2-years/30,000 miles, you’re going to pay $1,500 for that warranty because some glorified blogger with a fetish for breaking British cars will create $9,000 in warranty claims, meaning it takes 9 people to cover that jerk plus their own vehicles for the warranties to break even on the simplest budgeting tactic.

This is the part where I get into the vehicles that will be the biggest issues. I’m talking about the used cars that aren’t thoroughly inspected and certified by the manufacturer to hold the absolute minimum levels of warranty liability. The other 99% of pre-owned cars. Since these are unknowns with endless variables and interlaced, fragile thingama-glowies you are going to see used car prices at all time lows but crazy expensive warranties if you opt for them. I’m saying you’ll still find used car prices staying the same even though the cars become increasingly more sophisticated because they expect to make money on the warranty end instead.

Imagine I have a car and will sell it for $12,000 where everyone else is selling the same thing for $15,000. I’m banking on you buying my $3,000 warranty on the vehicle and financing that amount so that I can take on that interest. With very high end models at higher lists prices (say a $50,000 Aston Martin), I can see warranties having the same premiums and monthly/quarterly/bi-yearly payment plans as insurance.

That’s going to bite...

Under_Score > Wobbles the Mind 07/27/2016 at 22:52

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Yep. The backup camera on my RAV4, installed in the rear view mirror by the dealer a week after purchase in 2012, quit working last fall and cost over $600 to replace. The lens on the backup camera is located right above the ground in third gen RAV4s, which I think can be an issue in the first place. Water got in the lens and the picture was a white square instead of an image of the ground behind.

Edited: Whoops, I drive it now! My mom drove it back in the fall. And also, I still backed into a parked car even looking at the camera, because I’m an idiot.

Phyrxes once again has a wagon! > Wobbles the Mind 07/27/2016 at 22:53

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This is a huge part of the internal debate I am having with my TDI replacement do I go new and pick up a middle trim or CPO and pick up a top trim or even a more upscale model.

Urambo Tauro > Wobbles the Mind 07/27/2016 at 22:56

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What bothers me about future vehicles is that (warranties aside) as cars become increasingly complex, it will become hopelessly unfeasible for a shadetree mechanic to work on them.

Today, anybody (I’m generalizing, but bear with me) can restore a 50-yr old classic car in their garage, even if you have to go through every system and build it from the frame up.

But will we see the same kind of thing 50 years from now? It’s hard to imagine stripping a modern C7 down for a frame-off restoration, and putting it back together again with every original feature fully operational. And there are much more complicated cars than Corvettes that could serve as more drastic examples...

I know this is kind of a tangent, but I think that it reinforces the idea that people outside of warranty are going to be royally screwed.

415s30 W123TSXWaggoIIIIIIo ( •_•))°) > Wobbles the Mind 07/27/2016 at 23:10

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The sanitization of the driving experience? No more gas and exhaust making you slightly high as you drive? I can list a lot.

415s30 W123TSXWaggoIIIIIIo ( •_•))°) > Urambo Tauro 07/27/2016 at 23:11

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More than that there will be no such thing as a classic, because there is little about the new cars that you would want to reminisce about, they will be built to be recycled and the components will not last forever, as we have seen on high end late 90's/early 2000's luxo barges that try to destroy themselves with their 13 onboard computers.

wiffleballtony > Wobbles the Mind 07/27/2016 at 23:51

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I’m looking forward to when car companies take the Apple approach to tech and obsolescence.

Probenja > Urambo Tauro 07/27/2016 at 23:58

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Take for example the Lotus from b is for build, basically the whole car is glued together, that is an extreme case because it’s a low volume sports car but that is the way of the future on the more expensive cars, cheap economy cars will remain the same though as they haven’t changed that much over the years.

Probenja > Under_Score 07/28/2016 at 00:05

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Well that isn’t the manufacturers fault, it’s the dealer’s bad planning and an aftermarket system. And you can get a backup camera from eBay for like $50.

notsomethingstructural > wiffleballtony 07/28/2016 at 00:44

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I feel like that was tried once and it didn't go well for GM.

Rusty Vandura - www.tinyurl.com/keepoppo > Wobbles the Mind 07/28/2016 at 01:07

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The worst part about future cars is that they’re here now.

Tapas > Wobbles the Mind 07/28/2016 at 03:55

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Sort of unrelated:

This Toyota dash photo reminds me that THE RACE IS ON to tech the living shit out of cars. And the non luxury manufacturers like Toyota are loco.

Tesla: Check out the large screen we put in the Model S!

Volvo: Sweet! We’ll do you one more, customers. The new XC 90 has the screen and some buttons and apple car play/android something something car phone.

Toyota: Screens? Who said screens?! We got screens too. Big ass screens for all of you bitchez$!!...and male dogs(?). Yeah, milleniums!

random001 > Wobbles the Mind 07/28/2016 at 06:43

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The worst part is the partitioning of the warranties. Even looking at Hyundai’s famed 10/100 warranty, the 10/100 only covers powertrain. The electronic stuff in the cabin? 5/60. The bulk of things that aren’t the drivetrain? 3/36. That’s how they get you. So when I went to get my CPO R-Spec, they laid out that yes, I was getting the original warranty because it was CPO, but I’d have to shell out $3k to get coverage for the other bits with a Hyundai approved aftermarket warranty with $100 deductible. Normally, this would not be something I would do, but I needed a car that I didn’t need to fix myself at all until I’m out of grad school in a few years at 1 class/semester, so it made sense. In essence, you are completely correct., but this applies to new cars as much as for used. Oi.

bhtooefr > Wobbles the Mind 07/28/2016 at 06:54

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It’s worth noting, however, that we have communities of electronics enthusiasts and computer programmers that have gotten into cars, and have figured out how to make all this stuff accessible, too.

Sure, there’s more complexity, but we can still get this stuff fixed. And, using the diagnostics systems, you can actually do a lot of troubleshooting more easily, because you get told a lot more about the state of the vehicle.

Under_Score > Probenja 07/28/2016 at 08:50

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But that’s how the backup cameras are on RAV4's without the touchscreen of that era.