For 20 years I did not own a car…so I really lost track of vehicle technology and trends. I have owned a Honda CR-V for 7 years now.
Recently I started poking on google and youtube to gain more knowledge as am interested in possibly changing my vehicle. My key surprise is that seems 6 cylinder and larger 4 cylinder cars seem to be on the way out to be replaced by turbo-charged engines. I just got back from looking at Lexus and they dropped their RX 350 model with 6 cylinders as government wants to restrict such engines for environmental reasons. So now they only have turbo charged 4 cylinder and hybrid 6 cylinder.
So no more new naturally aspirated 6 cylinder engines in Taiwan? I have never owned or wanted to own a turbocharged engine.
Don’t do it, just keep what you have running until full electric/hydrogen is readily available.
Most engines are turbo now and much more complicated to basically reduce emissions, but it’s all a lie.
It’s better ecologically and economically to keep what you have running until it can be replaced with an equivalent zero emission vehicle in my opinion
What’s wrong with turbo charged engines? aren’t they more efficient?
People change their car when it becomes uneconomical to keep it running. Things start to break to the point that it ends up costing more than the mortgage month after month to keep running. A timing belt costs like 2000 US to change for example.
And these days cars are built to be more fragile… I realize a big part of this is safety, it’s better to total the car than for the car to kill its occupant because it’s too rigid…
Timing belt on an older 90s car would not cost 2000 USD as it’s simpler. Turbos are bloody nightmares and so complicated, high failure rate and it’s usually due to some air leak in a rubber hose which requires half the intake to remove, and very difficult to diagnose.
I guess car manufacturers do this intentionally, make the car complicated and impossible to service by anyone other than the manufacturer. This way they limit the life of the vehicle so you have to keep buying new ones.
After all while government have emission standards they don’t have waste reduction standards. This tells me nobody cares about the environment.
Most cars in the UK are scrapped after 10 years or so, people lease them when new and then they sell them second hand just when all the heavy maintenance needs doing.
People look at things like fuel economy and emissions but they are marketing lies anyway lol
It’s the same with newer inverter AC. They’re 2x more expensive than regular AC but are supposedly more energy efficient (this is debatable).
But the government and others tell everyone else to replace your AC to “save the environment” which just results in more wastage as perfectly good AC unit (not to mention the freon it contains) gets thrown out. So more materials gets thrown to the landfills or shipped to less developed countries.
How is it more environmental to throw a perfectly good appliance away just for a 5% energy saving? How long would you have to keep that new unit (inverter AC are often more complicated, and the electronic is specific to that model so if the electronic breaks, the AC is toast even if the compressor is perfectly fine)?
We just keep throwing stuff away to save the environment.
Lexus still has a 2020 v6 rx350 in the USa, i guess you mean Taiwan?. But the v8 are going to be history for basically all car brands except specialty brands like ferrari.
Next on the list will be six cylinder ones. CAFE gas consumption standards are getting more and more strict.
in ten years you wont be able to buy just a gas car, it will have to be at least hybrid.
Electric motors have far more torque than internal combustion engine could hope to have, and if we have battery as good as, or better than gasoline then you could have a car that has extreme amount of acceleration and top speed, and you won’t need a transmission. So the car would actually be little more than a motor (or 4, one for each wheel), attached to a wheel and power supply. You would not require oil changes and other bothersome work…
Well the hybrid ones if they need a new battery and or a new electric motor… Lordy, that is going to be expensive !!
And the car will be scrapped instead.
They used to make commercial jets that lasted 40 years. Remember the 727? I was on one that was near 40 years old or older. And the old 737 were built to last past 30 years.
Nowadays they are thinking 20 years is near scrap time
Cars used to be built to last 20 plus years, nowadays I think they are thinking ten years, no more then 15. And with the batteries and electric motors costing so much to replace, more like 10 year cycles now.
Who wants to keep a car that long though? I think most people are ready to try something new after five years or so,and that’s about the last chance to get a decent trade in. I’ve had lots of turbos and never had any big problems. I think the first turbo I had was an Audi in the early 90s. It had some oomph.
my car is now 17 years old. I was ready for a new one after 2 years. But my wallet was not ready and still isnt
Audi are low pressure turbo and rarely fail. unlike subaru high pressure turbo that often blow
i want to get the cheapest subaru next , making sure its not a turbo. So what if its a bit of a slug. i dont drive fast anymore anyways. I drive my wifes prius C and that thing can cruise at 80mph all day long but getting up there is a bit of a struggle. I think of it as a jet. jet engines have not much power and need time to get up to speed but once at speed they are good.
Yes i know, i would rather have the latest Ferrari Roma instead too.
You don’t dive too much I bet. I’ve already put 26,000km on the car I got this spring. I’d rather lease given my habits, but my SO is always against it. Probably wouldn’t be much different in price since I’d surely go over the mileage limits.
A few people in my family really like Subaru too because it’s very easy to work on/maintain them yourself. I remember the oil filter being up on top with lots of clearance.
I wish smartphones are modular too, and lasts a long time. I mean those system on a chip things that actually powers a smartphone is really small, less than half the size of a credit card actually (or more like a little larger than a postage stamp).
So if they could make the batteries user replacable and the SOC can be replaced as well you could just use a phone a lot longer…
wifey has 60k on her five year old prius C and i have 260,000 miles on my 17 year old acura rsx. I would say i do drive quite a bit ! I got mine second hand at about 18 months old with 20k miles on it So i have had it just over 15 years.
Body is awesome, not a scratch of rust. California sunshine baby.
Mechanically. the engine has been awesome except recently when i hear this strange noise at about 3000 rpm when the thing running a load, like climbing an incline.
I have used for the first time Seafoam and Marvels Magic oil on the engine and the gas tank and that seemed to have cleared up the problem. I think perhaps theres finally enough sludge in the engine to make that weird noise?? Since i have a vtec engine perhaps when the valves go to higher rpm some sludge is in the way? But the problem seems to be going away.
Other than the engine, i am on my third alternator (fair enough i guess), third battery (fair as well), third starter (fair enough as well) and on second clutch, first one lasted 150k miles. Fair enough as well.
Aircon finally had problems. There are two fans and the AC fan died so i had that replaced but the chevron station mechanic is not an AC pro so he messed up the gas part of it. Now i have to get to an ac specialist (when i have a bit more dough to cough up) and get that sorted. Apparently the gas has to be drained out, and the vacuum checked for sealing and then regassed . Either that or worse the compressor may have died which is a 1000 dollar job. So im hesitant. Spent 400 on the ac Fan.
Also just had a gas pump failure (they last 200k so mine was at 260k) not the pump itself but the plastic housing cracked and leaked gas inside the cabin. Horrible, nearly gassed me out.
And the leather seats finally cracked on the drivers side, failed to put leather protectant on it for too long
so there you have it, the full check out on the thing. not that you wanted ALL that much info…haha.