[RussEfarmer]

No im not talking about electric vehicles... but what do you guys think about straight up computers being built into the dash of cars now, and everything being controlled electronically? It seems like the more electronics get added to these cars the more unreliable they are going to get, more stuff to break that's impossible to fix without paying a ton of money, what do you guys think?

[chibill]

Well computers have been a key part of cars since before the 2000s.

And depending on the issue they make it alot easier to find and fix issues. For example my car was stumbling and lossing engine power and even dying while driving. Had a check engine light with codes saying two systems had voltage high on the sensors/control wires.

Helped me narrow down and find a broken ground wire that got my car going again.


Also I can get all sorts of information from my car's CAN bus. So far from what I can tell the more electronics an engine as gotten they become easier to fix since you can ask the computer what's the issue. (Like I can tell what sensor is bad, or what cylinder is miss firing (Big issue on my 4 cylinder car to have 1 miss firing.).)


Plus its fun to just show off being able to control each light on the outside of the car from my phone.

[Wrong]

It depends on what kind of electronics. On one hand, some electronics have made cars more burdensome and painful to repair & upkeep on your own (in some cases, even illegal. See "right to repair"). In other ways, they've made cars far more efficient, especially ICE cars, as electronics have gotten more advanced throughout the years and are able to better regulate the ratio of ignition/combustion of fuel in an engine. It's also made the environment cleaner. I'm old enough to remember driving a really old piece of shit 90s car with little to no electronics in it, and I remember when the engine would backfire as I would start. That shit doesn't happen anymore.

[chelllman]

I don't like how in some cars everything is controlled with a screen because you really can't operate it by touch. My car is relatively new, but I can operate literally everything by touch because it still has buttons and knobs.

[chibill]

My newest car is a 2007 :P So I don't have any screens, until I add my own for radio stuff.

[RussEfarmer]

It depends on what kind of electronics. On one hand, some electronics have made cars more burdensome and painful to repair & upkeep on your own (in some cases, even illegal. See "right to repair"). In other ways, they've made cars far more efficient, especially ICE cars, as electronics have gotten more advanced throughout the years and are able to better regulate the ratio of ignition/combustion of fuel in an engine. It's also made the environment cleaner. I'm old enough to remember driving a really old piece of shit 90s car with little to no electronics in it, and I remember when the engine would backfire as I would start. That shit doesn't happen anymore.

Definitely a big advantage of electronic engine control is efficiency... especially with stuff like flex fuel vehicles, where you can put whatever percentage of ethanol gas you want and have it just work

---

And depending on the issue they make it alot easier to find and fix issues. For example my car was stumbling and lossing engine power and even dying while driving. Had a check engine light with codes saying two systems had voltage high on the sensors/control wires.

Helped me narrow down and find a broken ground wire that got my car going again.

Also I can get all sorts of information from my car's CAN bus.  So far from what I can tell the more electronics an engine as gotten they become easier to fix since you can ask the computer what's the issue. (Like I can tell what sensor is bad, or what cylinder is miss firing (Big issue on my 4 cylinder car to have 1 miss firing.).)

Being able to just have the computer tell you whats wrong is definitely really nice, and it's what the manufacturer intends mechanics to do, but what trips me up about that whole model is more often than not is the computer says something is wrong, you take it to a guy to get it fixed, and it turns out the car was working perfectly and just had a corroded wire or bad sensor, so you wasted a bunch of time and money for no reason. An example I had was about a minute after starting my truck in the winter, it would randomly die. I took it to a guy, and nothing was wrong mechanically, but it had a bad intake air sensor.. if that sensor wasn't there to throw things off for no reason, I wouldn't have had to spend money to get it fixed or deal with the hassle of my truck not working.

[chibill]

It depends on what kind of electronics. On one hand, some electronics have made cars more burdensome and painful to repair & upkeep on your own (in some cases, even illegal. See "right to repair"). In other ways, they've made cars far more efficient, especially ICE cars, as electronics have gotten more advanced throughout the years and are able to better regulate the ratio of ignition/combustion of fuel in an engine. It's also made the environment cleaner. I'm old enough to remember driving a really old piece of shit 90s car with little to no electronics in it, and I remember when the engine would backfire as I would start. That shit doesn't happen anymore.

Definitely a big advantage of electronic engine control is efficiency... especially with stuff like flex fuel vehicles, where you can put whatever percentage of ethanol gas you want and have it just work

---

And depending on the issue they make it alot easier to find and fix issues. For example my car was stumbling and lossing engine power and even dying while driving. Had a check engine light with codes saying two systems had voltage high on the sensors/control wires.

Helped me narrow down and find a broken ground wire that got my car going again.

Also I can get all sorts of information from my car's CAN bus.  So far from what I can tell the more electronics an engine as gotten they become easier to fix since you can ask the computer what's the issue. (Like I can tell what sensor is bad, or what cylinder is miss firing (Big issue on my 4 cylinder car to have 1 miss firing.).)

Being able to just have the computer tell you whats wrong is definitely really nice, and it's what the manufacturer intends mechanics to do, but what trips me up about that whole model is more often than not is the computer says something is wrong, you take it to a guy to get it fixed, and it turns out the car was working perfectly and just had a corroded wire or bad sensor, so you wasted a bunch of time and money for no reason. An example I had was about a minute after starting my truck in the winter, it would randomly die. I took it to a guy, and nothing was wrong mechanically, but it had a bad intake air sensor.. if that sensor wasn't there to throw things off for no reason, I wouldn't have had to spend money to get it fixed or deal with the hassle of my truck not working.

That's why I don't take my car to places to have it fixed and fix it myself, its pretty easy to do, just had to spend $30 on a ODB2 Bluetooth adapter and a free app on my phone  (I paid $24 to unlock some extra features tho).  Only time my car was took somewhere to get it fixed was to have the front sub frame replaced.

Also that intake air sensor is what lets it know how much air is actually getting into a cylinders, also there are temperature sensors in the intake to help adjust the fuel ratio for when its hotter or colder then optimal running temperature outside. (Colder air needs more fuel to burn efficiently, since the air is denser.)

Honestly alot of the sensors make alot of sense when you think about what you would need to know if you yourself was running the ignition, fuel injectors, and throttle.  (And then you have some that are for fuel economy / EPA.)