008 Engineers vs Mechanics: The Real Problem With New Cars

Jaz: Ever wonder if the person who designed your car actually ever worked on it? As you're rolling in to that fourth hour on the 20 minute job, have you ever wanted to go find that engineer during dinner and bring him out here and have him take a look at it and tell you how the hell he would fix it? Today I'm going to discuss the age old battle between the mechanics in the trenches and the engineers up in the ivory towers. It turns out that, that this battle is not quite that simple. Just like in war, is your enemy really the guy in that other trench? Or is it someone who has nothing to do with the battlefield and is just directing things from up above? Welcome to Rebel Engineering. My name is Jaz, and on this channel I break down everything to do with product design and development. Recently I made a 30 second video called Do Engineers Hate Mechanics? And it looked at some of the more controversial designs when it comes to automotive repair. And I didn't think much of this. It was just 30 seconds out of a longer video and I was using it to try to promote the longer video. And after half a million views, it occurred to me that this is something that needs to be looked at a little deeper at this point. Mechanics have had a century to be cursing engineers.

Guest: Oh, that was so easy. All I had to do was pull the catalytic converter, the drive belt, the water pump, the ecu, the AC compressor, and the turbo. Who designs these things?

Jaz: As an engineer myself for General Motors, I have a little bit of insight into, um, how this process works. I had an interesting story from one of my co workers when I worked at General Motors. And he told me about a job he had prior to working with me where he was tasked along with his team to design a wind turbine. And the project was given way too little money to succeed and the timeline was ridiculous. And it turned out that the management didn't want it to succeed. They just received a grant and they had to push something out. Well, it turned out that they chose the wrong engineer for that goal. And he found some off the shelf parts, both in controllers and some off the shelf motors. And he came in under budget and under the timeline. The project manager was actually disappointed that the program succeeded. Now I'm not saying that's how automotive design works, but just understand it's not always as straightforward as you think. Now it's completely true. There's some engineers that wouldn't recognize a wrench if it hit them in the face, but there's also some mechanics that are just really terrible at their job. Adding corporate greed and government regulations and things get complicated. Engineers get pushed on to their next program before they even get a chance to double check their work. If this is the type of information you find interesting, please hit that subscribe button. Because I have hundreds of videos that are in the works, I think I have a little bit of input on this topic. I'm a full time engineer, part time mechanic and a master of fixing anything that can be repaired with a hammer. Mechanics live in the real world where you have rusty bolts and broken plastic clips and the ability to manipulate your fingers in a way that would make a contortionist blush. You also get the joy of having to explain to a customer why it took you 10 hours to replace an H Vac actuator in their Lexus. These repair times assume that you didn't break off any bolts in the process. And then there's what should be a straightforward oil change that makes you assume the engineers are Dr. Evil and have the goal of destroying all mechanics. However, engineers are not free to design. They are asked to solve problems within a massive number of constraints. Marketing has already decided what the car needs to look like and what features it's going to have. Before they can even look at repairability, they have to go through a whole list of non negotiable demands. And on top of that, financing is asking them to cut 10% off the bottom line, adding government regulations and increased fuel efficiency requirements of the year. Then there's pedestrian safety and crash test and emissions rul. Package this all into the space that's allowed to them and you start to understand why all the cars look the same. Why don't we just make cars simpler and cheaper? The problem is all the profits are in the luxury features. If you don't believe me, I've got a uh, heated seat subscription to sell you. The other day I was driving to town and my wife looks at me and says why is my phone trying to connect to the braking system of the car next to me? Yes, it's gotten a little crazy. By time the project makes it to the Design for serviceability engineer. It's pretty locked in with the level of complexity that we have in modern cars. There's always going to be something that's just difficult to get to. There are no solutions, only compromises. And if that part that's impossible to get to never breaks, the problem is when that hard to get to part is one that is also prone to breaking. And unfortunately we're not going to know what that part is until several years after the vehicle's already been on the road. Designing cars is kind of like dating. You can have intelligent, attractive, sane. Pick any two. One of the topics I covered in my previous video was putting the starter under the intake manifold. What was really interesting is mechanics were very divided on this. Some looked at it and said it was absolutely ridiculous. Others said, yeah, it took a couple hours, but it really wasn't that bad as long as you don't break off the plastic clips from the electrical connections. And one person said it was a great design because he didn't have to worry about breaking off rusty bolts underneath the car. Another controversial topic was the need to remove the cab on the Ford pickups that have the Powerstroke engine in order to service them. Some people thought this was absolutely ridiculous. And I had another mechanic who said, I can pull that cab off within 30 minutes and then the entire engine is out in the open for me to work on. He thought it was the greatest design ever. And some people look at this as Ford doing it right after they dealt with all the problems from their 6.0 and their 6.4 diesel engines from the previous models. However, if you're an at home mechanic, there's a good chance you don't have a lift to pull that cab off. So now you have to take it in to get it serviced. So once again trade offs. Then we have engineering that should have been great, like the Ford EcoBoost, which was designed to be ultra efficient. However, to get what they needed, they ended up having a wet belt system for the timing belt which released rubber particles that got into the oil system and clogged everything up. You ended up killing complete engines because of a failing rubber belt. And it also had direct fuel injection which was really efficient. However, in this direct injection system, you now had the fuel not going past intake valves, so there was nothing to clean the valves off. And carbon would build up on these valves and reduce the airflow. So these are just some examples of problems, but every mechanic has their own horror story. So let me know what some of the more difficult cars are that you've worked on in the comments. And also some design changes that you think were great and should have been done a long time ago. One place that I think most people can agree on is the fact that cars are getting way too complicated and there's a lot of cars that are just cheaper to replace than repair when most of the car is still in very good running condition. I've seen examples where chassis bushings went bad and the manufacturer did not Sell that bushing. You had to buy an entire subframe just to do the repair. Is this bad management or is this cost savings or is this the company just trying to stick it to the consumer? I don't know, but it's definitely not consumer friendly. I've had times where I had to go to junkyards or buy the parts off ebay because you just couldn't get them otherwise. So who's the real villain in the story? Unfortunately, the answer is not quite that straightforward. Regulations get tighter, competition gets harder, consumer expectations increase, Vehicles keep getting larger. Part of this is so they can meet safety requirements easier. And other parts is consumer preference. The fuel efficiency requirements for cars keep going up. Look at the old suburbans. From the 90s, they were getting 10 to 14 miles per gallon. Now we have the new 3 liter diesel getting 21 to 26 miles per gallon. Some people think we should not care as much about fuel efficiency. However, there's only so much oil out there and eventually we're going to use it up. And right now people are already struggling to pay their bills. And gasoline and diesel are a big part of that bill. If we look back to the 90s, cars were really getting much better. We were finally getting our technology to catch up with the emission standards, which were initially pushed through back in the 70s and then increased into the 80s and the 90s. Electronics were getting better, electronic fuel management was huge. Coming to the 2000s, we had really refined the electronics and the tools necessary to do those repairs have become simpler and we're now available to the average backyard mechanic. These cars are well made, reliable and fairly easy to work on. However, recently manufacturers have been trying to squeeze out that last mile per gallon. And they have to do that with things like zero weight oil cylinder deactivation, direct injection, Add in the variable valve timing and your engine turning off at every stoplight, it starts to look a little ridiculous. We're now getting to the point where we're pushing the limits of material science, chemistry and physics. That makes everything very complicated, very difficult to repair, and everything riding on a knife edge. Add in a hybrid system and you're now driving around a physics lab on wheels. Engineers are being asked to optimize every last little piece to shave off the last penny. And even if they do a great job, 99% of the time you have that one plastic impeller pump that just fails. Cars are now a commodity. It's a very well established market and with things changing rapidly, such as self driving cars and electrification, no one wants to stick their neck out too much because they don't know what the next turn of, uh, the market is going to be. Even high flying Tesla now has crashing profits. And add in the fact that we no longer have a car culture. We don't even know what cars are supposed to be. I don't think it's as simple as planned obsolescence. I think it's just a failure to plan for anything beyond the current model. These cars have become so complicated, it's hard for the dealerships to even manage the repairs, let alone even think about the average person trying to work on their car. There's really no incentive to do anything differently. The amount it would cost to make these cars more repairable would make them even more ridiculously expensive than they already are. If things are going to change, it's, uh, up to us. We're going to have to demand something different. We're going to have to refuse to buy what we don't want. You can see this already in the huge popularity of the early 2000s cars, especially if you can find one in good shape because they're reliable, they're repairable, everything about them, um, is what people wanted the automotive industry to get to. The problem is they got there and then they kept going. Cars went from getting better to getting worse. Cars are now less reliable than they used to be. And that is the first time that cars have become less reliable since the automotive industry started. The, uh, glory years in the auto industry are not coming back. I don't know what this market is going to look like in five years. We may not be buying cars, we may not even be leasing cars. We may be buying a subscription service that gives us access to transportation. It's no longer about engineers against mechanics, it's about corporate interest against the consumer. What do you think needs to happen with the automotive industry? And if you found this interesting, check out my other video where I discuss the difference between overbuilding and over engineering.

Guest: Mhm.