Scott, I join you on this one. Long gone are the days when I could successfully "fix" a problem with my carburetion, transmission, etc etc. I, like most engineers, pretty much grew up working on cars. Of course that was in the late '50s and early 60s and boy have times changed. I suppose for the better but at any rate they have changed. One good thing--the diagnostic equipment, seemingly, has changed with it but your "shade-tree mechanic" (like me) does not have that equipment. We are dependent upon others, supposedly trained, to affect any and all repairs. From past experience, issues with electronics seem to be the most difficult to diagnose when problems arise. As automotive technology advances, the ability to make necessary repairs must keep pace.
Every ad I see on TV especially for the Korean cars I ask is this going to be a collectable? Where will it be in ten years. It will be recycled into another car.
@naperlou. Much as I'd like to believe it, the Morgan 3-wheelr doesn't have a wooden chassis: it's tubular space-frame like the originals. You may be confusing it with the wooden floors they used to have. The only wooden chassis I can remember was the 1960s Marcos that originally used a marine ply and fibreglass monococque, but sensibly abandoned it in favour of a conventional steel chassis.
economic justification is the predisposing influence in buying most cars in our world, electric cars are nice, except lithium batteries heat up and the car creeps along, then there is a disposal cost for the petro chemical coalfired electric powered carbattery, and the replaement costs, All this talk about tesla, a company fueled by obama but since elon took the company away from eberhardt in the early 2000's it has lost more money than anyone knows except the bankruptcy expert playing the electric, solar green hype, spacex, iron man to get unwary investors to buy and or invest in the invisible cars and the missing manufacturing company. wind energy and lithium batteries make a good source of power for laptops, but on a matter of scale, it does not pass the economic justification model and will eventually fail taking its unwary investors with it, in the NYSE IPO's where las vegas ethics are the dominant power, similar to farce buck where IPO's get unwary investors to invest in cheap india produced software, selling the invisible, for the more visan=ble gold, works well for the NYSE criminal commercial gang who stole america exporting our factories and ending our family businesses, for chump change FREE TRADE IS SLAVERY
The New York are able to International Auto Show proven that car manufacturers and other auto repair are not reluctant to phase into the app progression area. But of all of the applications we saw on the program ground, the best one we saw was also the most realistic, Chevy's $50 GoGo Routing app.
I agree completely, MMorgan. I'm still surprised by the reliability of cars I've owned in the past 15 or 20 years. I drove my last three cars beyond 150,000 miles with no major problems. A new alternator here, a new battery there. That's about it.
Andrew Morris designed a circuit that could detect a stroke victim's groan and convert the sound into a signal so caregivers would know when help was needed.
New disc magnet motors fit into the design trend of stepping up to closed loop performance while maintaining the cost advantage of stepper motor technology.
At the Design News webinar on June 27, learn all about aluminum extrusion: designing the right shape so it costs the least, is simplest to manufacture, and best fits the application's structural requirements.
On April 21, NASA launched a novel project, putting into orbit three satellites that employ an off-the-shelf commercial smartphone as the control system.
From Dell / Intel® New Paradigms in Design Work Scott Hamilton, vertical market strategist for Dell Precision workstations, 5/2/2013 5
Early in my career, I worked as a draftsman and remember the days of drawing on vellum with numbered pencils and Mylar with plastic lead. This was a fun experience in the sense that I ...
I've been using workstations for more than 10 years and love finding ways to get more performance from my system. With demanding professional applications that require more power each ...
A lasting memory from my first job as an engineer in an auto assembly plant is standing on hard concrete at six in the morning, vending-machine coffee clutched in hand, listening to ...
For industrial control applications, or even a simple assembly line, that machine can go almost 24/7 without a break. But what happens when the task is a little more complex? That’s where the “smart” machine would come in. The smart machine is one that has some simple (or complex in some cases) processing capability to be able to adapt to changing conditions. Such machines are suited for a host of applications, including automotive, aerospace, defense, medical, computers and electronics, telecommunications, consumer goods, and so on. This radio show will show what’s possible with smart machines, and what tradeoffs need to be made to implement such a solution.
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