Why I Hate Cars

You know, for all the advances car manufacturers make, they still completely avoid one thing. They haven't made cars easier to repair.

Time and again, the novice among us (including me) must place trust in people who have no incentive to be trustworthy. There are, I'm sure, many a mechanic that is honest, and many a mechanic who will exaggerate a problem or even suggest a problem that doesn't exist, so they can make more money.

This is where you'd hope that consumer activists would periodically go from mechanic to mechanic on behalf of people with car problems, and see whether you have a real problem or not, and if the mechanic suggest something outrageous, they would get sued.

I know. I know. Our litiginous society. Too many lawsuits. But there should be some effective way to make it painful for mechanics to suggest outrageous repairs when they are not needed. Clearly, I don't want mechanics to end up the way of doctors, who much spend a great deal of income protecting themselves against lawsuits, but I want a negative incentive to make mechanics have something to think about before they say you need something that you don't.

But, to get back to the point.

Here's something that should be reinvented.

The car battery.

Let me explain the situation. I came back from out of the country to be greeted by a car whose electrical power went away. Was it the alternator? Was it the battery? Was it both?

To replace the battery, one of my housemates, who had done this before, helped me change it.

Let me recount what was needed. A battery is held in place by these two clamps, that are held by a nut (what a name). Thus, you need a wrench of some sort to remove this nut.

Except of course, this is a battery, and batteries corrode, and so there's a bunch of corroded stuff on the nut, which means that even if you managed to completely remove it, which you would think you should do, there's not a good change you can get it put back on again.

The nut is low to the battery, and adjacent to some other piece of metal that makes it rather difficult to remove, even under the best of circumstances. Thus, you can barely get access, even with a wrench, to remove the nut.

But my housemate doesn't remove it. Instead, he just loosens it some, then gets a rubber mallet, and hits at it. The idea, again, is to shake loose some of the buildup so that it isn't so glued to the battery terminal, then, he tries to knock the entire clamp off the battery.

This is not exactly an obvious idea, and clearly, if this is what you're supposed to do, then it's very badly designed. This is, to me, the equivalent of taking a wrench to yank out a floppy from a drive. Surely, this horribly awfully wrong.

And yet, I know, this is practically how it's supposed to be done.

Once removed, there is this plastic cover that also needs to be removed, which also has some kind of screw holding some bar in place, which is also corroded. This contraption also makes no sense. I understand it's meant to prevent the battery from moving around, but seriously, there has to be a better way than this retainer for car batteries.

So once this metal crossbar is removed, then the plastic covering that is meant to keep the battery from wobbling is removed, the battery can be taken out.

Except the battery is like 20 lbs. It's very heavy, and worse still, it has no plastic handle.

Everything so far is meant to discourage, well, to be sexist, women. While women, undoubtedly, could do what is being done, plenty of things have been put in place to make this the messiest operation imaginable.

And let's not forget that to jump start a battery, you require clamps that barely clamp, and the clamps need to be clamped in an order that everyone forgets (red dead, red live, black live, black dead).

Let's figure out how this really should be done.

First, the battery should not use clamps to be hooked to the car. It should use something like an oversized plug, and that plug should be insulated in such a way so you don't accidentally touch it.

Second, the battery should be placed elsewhere, perhaps in the back of the car somewhere, so that it isn't susceptible to outside weather and corrosion.

Third, jump starting should be done inside the car, with some mechanism that doesn't involve using oversized alligator clips.

Fourth, there should be some other, more permanent battery that can be used, instead of the one that is used. Replacing the battery should then be a matter of opening the trunk, popping out the battery, popping in the new one, and done.

The point is, car manufacturers and battery manufacturers have done very little to make this process any easier. Indeed, it's just as complex now as it's ever been, with the exception that you no longer need to add water to the battery.

Indeed, a car manufacturer, if it's trying to keep the customer happy (and not its own dealers) should make every effort to make repairing one's own car easy, and that means redesigning the parts to make that happen.

Were it not for the fact that connectors to computers keep changing every few years, thus making things obsolete way too quick (USB, USB2, Firewire--what will we have in twenty years? And what will happen to these?), then we could have a connector (heck make it a car standard) that you could attach to your computer, and could give you diagnostics so that a mechanic couldn't rip you off. You'd have some idea of what to do first.

Indeed, more companies should hire a mechanic, part time, to evaluate cars, and find out what's wrong before it gets sent to a real mechanic. This would make everyone's life easier, and make employees that much happier.

That this isn't a standard benefit is rather surprising.

Sure, I know this means I'm addicted to a piece of technology I don't understand and don't really care to understand.

Such lessons, alas, are unlikely to be learned, as manufacturers make deals with dealers so they can make a living. You'd think that somehow, somewhere, someone would try something different, and yet, they don't.