On the subject of car design

 

 

Liftgates.  For cars that have liftgates on the rear, it’s generally the handle or a button on the outside that triggers the gate to open.  But once the gate is open, the handle is up high out of reach, so there needs to be another button still within reach that will make the liftgate go back down.  Some cars have a button on the lower end of the liftgate, which is now on the outside of the car.  The Jeep has a button on the inside of the car, so you have to lean inside the car to push it.  It would be easy to disparage the Jeep button placement as a design flaw, imagining a person having to stick their head inside the car to push the button, then run so they don’t get crushed by the closing gate.  But of course, there is no design flaw.  There is a delay built into the system.  Pushing the button to close the gate triggers a repeating warning beep.  The warning beep sounds several times before the gate actually starts to move.  There is plenty of time to push the button, pick up the last heavy thing in the back of the Jeep and walk away before the gate starts closing.  It’s a sensible design. 

 

Now back to my expensive dome light assembly.  On the face of it, it doesn’t make sense to make something that can’t be repaired if a small part of it malfunctions and the whole more-expensive thing has to be replaced.  But it's also my observation that even when something doesn’t make sense to me at first, if I think about it for a while, I can usually come up with a possible reason why such a thing was done; why it would make sense to somebody.  This dome light thing.  It’s not just a one-off.  I think lots of car companies do it now.  They do it with other assemblies too.  Headlight assemblies.  Taillight assemblies.  It’s not an unusual decision.  But decisions can have both positive and negative consequences at the same time.  One would expect that for smart decisions the positive would outweigh the negative.  The first negative that comes to mind, the downside of this trend of building little easily replaced parts into more-expensive units, is pissing off customers when a small repair seems unnecessarily expensive.  What is the upside?  I’m having trouble coming up with anything.  Cost savings?  Enough cost savings to offset a hit to customer satisfaction?  It has to be a good idea for somebody.