My dream car

My previous car year

My car has had a troublesome year. I've got a new battery, new exhaust and new

timing belt. The timing belt was replaced after it had broked, which meant

taking the engine out of the car, taking the heads of the block of the engine,

sending them to a machine shop to get restored and then putting it all back

together again.

Right now the car has a broken radiator and will probably need new brakes

(something sounds really bad when driving). From the engine sounds I'm also

waiting for the crankshaft bearings to needing a replacement soon.

Needless to say, it's an old car by now. It's a 2008 Subaru forester.

What I want from a car

I want a car that can diagnos itself. If that's not possible I want the

workshop manual, with instructions on how to do error triage and instructions

on how to fix them, built in into the infotaiment system. With todays car it

should also be possible to instead of only manuals, also provide a nice video

on how to do it.

I also want a _minimum_ of needed tools and _no_ special tools needed. Common

and easy tasks should not require lifting the car, for example changing oil.

The FB20 engines from Subaru is closer to this, the EJ20 engines are really

bad at this.

Just give me a car that I can maintain! Easily, without going through workshop

manuals I can't access and youtube videos from third parties.

Changing brakes on a new Subaru

Newer Subarus have electrically controlled brakes, meaning you need a computer

to release the brakes before doing maintenance on them. This computer can be

bought from Subaru for a subscription, a third party computer is around 2000

EUR. This is ridiculus!

Open sources next battle?

Cars should be easy to repair and extend, just like the Framework laptop. Why

can't I add new functionality to my old car? We need to stop thinking about

cars as consumables and instead think of them as platforms. Where parts can be

exchanged and upgraded.

I think this battle is close to the right to repair battle fought by US

farmers and the software battles of Unix and GNU.

The car that might come close?

There is actually an open source and open design car. It's called the Rally

Fighter and is no longer in production. Although it looks cool it's way behind

a production car in the terms of safety and gadgets.