Many people who read my blog could naturally think that I am a European car fan but I would like to reinforce my points about the pros and cons of both European and Japanese cars. Japanese cars such as Toyota are known for their outstanding reliability which I believe is well deserved since it is rarely that you see a Toyota break down on the side of the road. The durability of the cars are second to none and it is also the reason why terrorists love it in the Middle East since the models such as the Hilux or the LandCruiser doesn't break down!!
Despite the amazing durability and the punishment Japanese cars can take the one thing that they fail miserably at is battery life! The average Japanese car battery life is between 12-18 months! Rarely do you find a Japanese car with a battery life that extends beyond 2 years. I know they usually fit a smaller battery to save weight and this small battery is good enough to power up the electronics in the car but it does nothing for durability. It is also very annoying to the car owner to have to change batteries every 12-18 months. In comparison the German car such as BMW, Mercedes or Porsche which have a much larger battery would easily last 5-7 years! If you work it backwards the cheaper and smaller battery in a Japanese cars that you change more often will end up costing you more than changing 1 large battery in a European car! this is not taking into account the down time you have to endure when the car's battery goes flat!
Till this day, Japanese car manufacturers have not designed a car that can have a long lasting battery or at least they need to rework the electrical system to be less battery hungry! Surely it cannot be that difficult!!
The other point I would like to bring to the readers' attention is the battery life of the second battery in any Mazda car with the Skyactiv engine. The Skyactiv models come with the engine start/stop function and the restart motor is powered by the second battery. This secondary is notoriously expensive and offer a ridiculous use life of 12-15 months! to make matters worse, if the owner of the car chooses not to replace this battery the car's start/stop (called iStop) function will not work!! the concept is so stupid because it is contradictory to Mazda's objective of saving fuel and saving cost! the cost of the replacing battery is more than the cost of fuel savings over the life of the battery. The car would be better off without the iStop function since it costs the owner more to run it than the fuel savings they can get! It defeats the purpose totally and renders the system useless. Mazda dealers have receive numerous complaints about it but nothing can be done about it. In my opinion, it is a very stupid concept. On one hand you want to promote fuel saving but on the other hand you are incurring more cost for the car owner to replace the stupid battery that costs more than the amount of money saved from fuel savings. It is obvious that not enough thought have been put into this before implementation.
No comments:
Post a Comment