Take this to the bank. I was a lifer in the car parts business until the last 20 years of being employed full time. Then I retired and got this part time job delivering for NAPA. I was shocked at the changes. All I deliver anymore are fluids, filters, and brakes. Throw in a few steering and suspension parts and that's 95% of what goes out the door. There is no such thing as a "tune up" anymore. I can count the number of spark plugs I deliver in a week on my two hands. No caps, rotors, or wires. Even belts are rated at 60K miles. Oil changes at 10K and you can get away with 20K with synthetic oil.
One of the problems with going electric vehicles and machines etc.
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Take this to the bank. I was a lifer in the car parts business until the last 20 years of being employed full time. Then I retired and got this part time job delivering for NAPA. I was shocked at the changes. All I deliver anymore are fluids, filters, and brakes. Throw in a few steering and suspension parts and that's 95% of what goes out the door. There is no such thing as a "tune up" anymore. I can count the number of spark plugs I deliver in a week on my two hands. No caps, rotors, or wires. Even belts are rated at 60K miles. Oil changes at 10K and you can get away with 20K with synthetic oil.
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anon_mya1phvcpf5x4
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Truth doesn't matter to these woke idiots making up crap.
Bad thing is most of these turbo small cube 6 engines are going with open deck designs. Not a fan of those. My work car is a 13 escape 2.0. It’s a closed deck and the newer open deck stuff has inherent issues. This car has been great and it’s at 300,000 miles. Still gets 25 combined. Hybrids are great. I’m really on the fence. Hybrid is very attractive though.
Why will the brakes last longer? Just curious and probably missing a key detail.
That’s why dealers are having a hard time. Most gravy work left is brakes and tires. Flushes..etc. electric cars have even less parts.
Joe, take this from a guy who spent the lion's share of his working life in dealership parts & service operations -- the only thing the manufacturers care about is new car sales. Everything else they're involved in goes toward that end, including -- believe it or not -- quality and reliability. The best and most reliable cars sell the best. That's why Honda and Toyota lead the field.
Regenerative braking. One peddle driving. It uses the electric motor to pull the car to a stop. Tesla has refined this well. Even hybrids do this.
The guy running the Honda parts operation today is/was my protege. When I was running it we didn't want to have anything to do with tires. Total PITA. Too much inventory $$$, too much space, too many SKUs, and not enough margin. He had to get into the tire business several years back just to keep his head above water. Said if it wasn't for crash parts and tires they'd be in a world of hurt.
Joe Joe, I like that and it made me chuckle.
This isn't a pissin match about the auto industry. It's a business/ product focus discussion. They are NOT going to design these things to last a million miles. Through natural attrition and designed obsolescence they have got to get you back into the show room every 3-7 years or they go broke. They can extend that time range buy designing the vehicles a little differently but they have to get your $ every 3-7 years some why.
How many 6 yrs old dead Prius are around now that take $10k to replace the battery and stop the smoke that comes from under the dash when you turn on the wind shield wipers? They don't get fixed, they get you back on the lot.
Like Mark said, it may not be spark plugs caps and rotors, it will be interface boards, Resistors, HBI panels. When everything is all summed up, it will cost equal too, or more than now. It's just business. This is NOT about saving a damn penny for you and I.
That is exactly what I was saying. Now there could be some hang up on the original comment being about "Maintenance", I can walk that back some. But over all ownership cost will not be cheaper. Especially since the little maintenance that will need to be done due to actual failures now will require a pHd (so to speak).
I bought EV in January and haven't missed the gas station at all. Love the new ride!
Now you're talking repairs, not maintenance. There's no question that maintenance is waaay down. Repairs are another question, that may or may not play out as you describe.
My wifes creampuff 2015 Focus in down in the shop with a fvcked transmission control module. It's covered under their 8/80 emissions warranty. Even after that, Ford is covering this particular issue up to 10/100. They're even providing free rental cars. Why? Because they want her to buy a new Ford some day (not happening) or at least tell people she was treated well. It's all about selling the next new car.
Victor, if you don't mind me asking, what IS your automotive industry background? Just curious.
Victor's an oil man too. Brings a lot to the board. Way better than all the nerds, lawyers, lawyer nerds, fake financial advisors, and worst nerds of all: academics.
No it won’t. Way less parts. Software is easy and three phase stuff is the same. We were learning and training on electric stuff in 2005. The biggest learning curve will be safety which isn’t all that difficult. Ownership is already cheaper especially the Nissan Leaf and now the bolt. Those are actually as affordable a car as you will get. Are they perfect? No but neither is any ICE. For my mileage I drive those cars would save me 100’s a month. My nephew is a college baseball pitching coach/recruiter and he uses a tesla model y. Goes to Chicago 2 times a month. Loves it.
I’m a geek too. I build stuff. I might even build some storage batteries soon. My son loves to get his hands dirty. I was a GM ASEP student, I worked on getting my certification. Became one of two World class certified technicians in indiana. Also was one of the first Cadillac V series field mechanics. I owned my own shop for five years too. (Hated that)I topped out in the industry (for my education)and left to be a traveling fleet mechanic in the oil industry. I got to do some research for IU too. That was fun. Very large crash study. Now I’m a plant mechanic. Doing the grind at home. Miss the freedom of the oilfield. Anyway I pretty much know how this stuff works. The big 3 wouldn’t be investing in this stuff if it wasn’t profitable. The jigs up on energy. You can’t say it’s a democrat or republican thing because this has been coming down the pike a long time. I saw it years ago in the 90s. Was told by a GM engineer it was coming. Solar is so stinking cheap right now. Easy to install especially now that the mini inverters have hit the market. Big energy sees it too that’s why they are hesitant to put more infrastructure in(among other things).
Yeah your background means I will include you with the list of men who post here. Congrats.
Dude, I know all about that but less parts is a win for us. 1st gen Prius was a success but it’s also not a true electric car and the batteries are old tech. Was a great car and a template. Batteries are now lasting over ten years (active heating and cooling) pretty regularly as the first Tesla is still going. The notion the batteries just sit around is old news. They are already being reused as storage. Lots of scrappers are mixing and matching cells to get even more life. The old leafs are still going on crappy degraded batteries. If you know what to do they make great everyday cars(not extended travel).
Most team up with tire warehouses and get them same day delivered for the space issue. Dealers will be vastly different very soon. Cadillac pulled some franchises this year to get ready. Some of those were a hundred year old legacy dealers too!
Fascinating. Cool stuff. Most the posters on this board just push papers. Talk. Create problems.
It’s nonsense for me to hear people say it’s not affordable. It really is. The fuel savings alone subsidizes part of the cost. Factor in solar with battery back up and it save or even generates money. It’s simple math. Even battery back up systems alone save some. You buy the cheaper off peak energy at night and run off battery during peak. Then add solar and it’s a game changer. Especially if you are smart enough to install it yourself. Big energy loves to push article after article on how bad solar is all while investing in it for themselves. It’s a crock.
Trains will be magnetically moved. Won’t need a conductor either. Will move massive amounts of goods. The technology is being held up with back door deals, lobby and dirty politics. Free market isn’t always free. Lots of greasy palms.
Yeah, I don't know the details of how he handles the tire side, just what he said and what I've seen sitting in his department. We have a local distribution center that most of the local shops use and I'm sure he does as well. If I was there, I'd have done everything I could to have fast movers on hand but on consignment.
I loved my time at the Honda dealer, insofar as the actual job was concerned. That job fit my skill set perfectly. I was damn good. It was in the mid-late 90s and early 2000s, when reliability was great (no warranty work to speak of) and the customers didn't bat an eye for $300 services at 30K and 60K and $1000 at 90K (timing belt and water pump). I was a numbers guy and had tweaked my inventory system to the point that my OOS numbers were minuscule (and rarely were of anything that impacted driveability or safety). I flouted the industry conventions and kept a wide and shallow inventory, but with the same inventory investment. I loved it when I passed out the last set of Accord brake pads at the same time the truck was backing up to the dock with my weekly stock order. My protege still tells people I'm the guy that taught him how to be an inventory control Nazi. I turned my inventory something like 8 times annually based on gross profit when the Honda benchmark was less than 5. My revenue numbers were 150% of Honda benchmark, as were my $$$ per employee numbers.
The problem was the suits. We had an absentee owner and the GM was his henchman. No matter how good your numbers were, they were never good enough. Nevertheless, since "numbers don't lie" and mine were freaking great, my monthly commission which was based on the numbers (and was the lion's share of my salary) kept growing and growing and growing. They couldn't deal with that. So they decided to start fvcking with the departmental P&L and the commission schedule. That was the last straw, and when I had a chance to jump I took it.
That was around 20 years ago. The dealership has since changed hands and is in a new facility. My protege says they're not nearly the assholes that he and I dealt with back in the day, but that it's gotten tougher to do well and it's not nearly as much fun as what it used to be.
Yep. Typical dealer. Always moved the goalpost. Same here. We had a bonus structure nasa couldn’t even decipher. I remember how mad I got when we started parts matrixing. It was designed to screw the customers. I’d had it with upselling too.
I’m old enough to remember when the oil companies bought the patents for, and then suppressed, the carburetor that gave 100 mpg. That was a crock of crap too.
Ehh. That’s a bit of a myth. It goes along the lines of the brown gas generator. You still have to fill the cylinder with the right mix of fuel. If you don’t then it creates detrimental hot spots that drastically reduces life of the engine. That’s why smaller displacement with positive displacement(turbo/supercharger) engine are popular. Makes up for efficiency. I play around with turbo cars too. Own a Buick GN got 30 years. Fun stuff but it’s about run its course.
I was fine with parts matrixing. Using a fixed margin % is dumb. Some stuff you have to be competitive on, other stuff where you're the only game in town you can hit a home run on... as long as you have it in stock and the car gets fixed same day. That's where I shined. I had the part; you would pay a pretty penny for it but they didn't care all that much as long as the car would be ready by 5 o'clock. Nothing pissed them off more than having the car down in the shop and having to pay a premium for the parts that had to be ordered in.
Dominate? Depends in what context. Passenger cars, possibly. Over the road trucking, industrial, agriculture, much less certain. Tech & infrastructure is a looong way off. We shall see…
Yep. Lots of same day or late/next day parts services. I always found it hard to explain to customers anything technical. They just don’t understand the car business in general. I hated owning my own shop. Always wanted a deal and fixed in less than 24 hours. Fired a few customers.
I'm dreaming of a day when hybrids can get 250 miles of EV range, but still have the gas option in case I'm driving back to Indiana and would rather take a five minute break to fill up than a 30 minute one.
Plus as far as efficiencies go, my understanding is electric rules from 0 to 60 but gas is more energy efficient above 60.
Again making the most sense for a hybrid.
Lastly when people ask 'just wait til the battery dies' it then just turns into a car that gets 35 to 40 mpg.
There are volts out there with 500,000 miles on them. The battery struggles to hold a big enough charge anymore but it still works because the gas generator.
And those are first generation models that are still going.
Especially with the negative view of electric. Local trucking will probably be very soon.
Dealing with the uninformed public….sucks
When I was researching one guy mentioned that the only problem he had was one of the breaks dropped.
I was like 'ummm wut!!!?'
Then he clarified it was from lack of use.
LOL. There was a time when I had a computer repair business I ran from home. Not enough to be a "real" business, but enough to know I didn't want to take the dive and open up a real shop. Even then I fired a few customers myself, or at least priced their repairs such that they chose to go elsewhere.
Yep. They are turning into safety devices. Almost emergency brakes.
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