In reply to Opti :
Do you have any data supporting that vehicles today are less reliable than vehicles from the early 2000s and before? I think vehicles as a whole are more reliable now than they ever were at any point in history. It's to the point where buying used with 150k miles isn't scary at all anymore. All while being more capable in every metric, more efficient, and safer.
frenchyd said:In reply to alfadriver :
In a truck I want an inline 6 but no one makes that so I'll take the V8.
Ahem.
yupididit said:In reply to Opti :
Do you have any data supporting that vehicles today are less reliable than vehicles from the early 2000s and before? I think vehicles as a whole are more reliable now than they ever were at any point in history. It's to the point where buying used with 150k miles isn't scary at all anymore. All while being more capable in every metric, more efficient, and safer.
The best time for vehicles was always 15 years ago. That'll be true 15 years from now :)
Opti said:Its also incredibly unlikely that a normal person will achieve it. There is a problem with fuelly of the demographic that uses it. If people are tracking their fuel economy they probably care about it and may even take steps to improve it with hypermiling techiniques or modifications, Id be willing to bet on average it skews the real world results slightly to the right of the graph. I think the outliers on both sides of the graph are probably not very useful information. Most people should look at where the largest group of people fall and plan to fall pretty close to that.
Note that the distributions I linked are of vehicle mpg averages, which will necessarily be lower than the drivers are seeing half the time.
So while I agree that 'most' people should look at fat part of the curves for expected averages under typical varied driving over the course of a full tank, especially if it's the 36 gallon, I can also assure you that hypermiling or special mods are not required to hit a 'suatained' 24+mpg with the 2.7 EB. Just ordinary relaxed (non-aggressive) highway driving with the computer in 'eco' mode can get there. Admittedly, adding the towing mirrors seems to have made it a little tougher though.
I remember when these first came out. I had a lot of experience with turbo engines, and didn't doubt the power potential. But under constant load, in a truck towing? I was very skeptical.
I remember hearing about a crazy torture test Ford did. 300 hours on a dyno, back into a truck for truck stuff, towing an 11,000 pound trailer around a track for 24 hours at high speed (80+ mph average counting fuel stops.) Then a swap into a race truck where it won it's class in the Baja 1000. Followed up by a live teardown/ inspection by Ford....
That is pretty impressive. I just bought an Expedition with this motor, and it is wonderful. It makes the huge truck downright playful. What I shouldn't have done was look up the modding potential of this engine. I figured with the amount of low end torque, it must have tiny turbos and not much free power left on the table. Wrong. Big increases with just a tune, and 600+HP/700+ TQ with basic bolt-ons. Stock motor and turbos.
TFL Trucks Sleeper Expedition Vs. Mustang
Wow.
In reply to yupididit :
Not a lot. It mostly comes from working on cars, and being close to the automotive repair industry.
You could look at the average age of vehicles on the road going up historically. Now this could be attributed to rising costs of new vehicles, or other economic factors, but I think at least a small contributor is that now an average person can keep a 12 year old vehicle on the road. That doesnt necessarily mean that they are more reliable than a new one though
JD power said vehicles are becoming less reliable, although there opinion is more over the short term than mine
https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2022/06/j-d-power-claims-vehicles-are-becoming-less-reliable/#:~:text=J.D.%20Power%20has%20released%20its,less%20reliable%20and%20more%20expensive.
CR - New Cars Aren't Always More Reliable, Despite What Buyers Think
https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2022/06/j-d-power-claims-vehicles-are-becoming-less-reliable/#:~:text=J.D.%20Power%20has%20released%20its,less%20reliable%20and%20more%20expensive.
CR - Consumer Reports: All-new cars have more problems
https://money.cnn.com/2016/10/24/autos/consumer-reports-auto-dependability/index.html
CNBC - Drivers fed up with less reliable vehicles
https://www.cnbc.com/2016/02/24/drivers-fed-up-with-less-reliable-vehicles.html
Most of this is focused and based on cars when they are relatively new, and Im more talking about long term reliability. Look its the internet you can find something to support any opinion, but its not like this is a novel opinion Whats not an opinion is vehicles are more complex than ever, and manufactures are making compromises to reliability to chase fuel economy, its what the regulators and the market forces want.
New vehicles no doubt outperform and are safer than older vehicles. Its the reason my wife's car is only a year old.
Newer vehicles are definitely more complex than older ones. The hypothesis that more complexity could result in less reliability is not unreasonable - more things equals more failure points. But I'm curious about the data there. Something ate your links for breakfast, but from the CNBC article, it appears that the complaints tend to be around the navigation system and other user interface portions. The CNN article spends most of its time on those same issues, but then at the end mentions 8 & 9 speed transmission as well as dual-clutch and CVTs having more problems than average. They didn't go in to any detail about that, though.
Now, I think the concerns around the driver interface are to be taken seriously. Imagine today's brand-new car 30 or 40 years from now and how that tablet-in-the-dash that you need to control the HVAC system is going to work. The failures of especially the early CVTs and the DCT that Ford inflicted upon the Focus are pretty well documented, so we can't discount that, either. But how widespread are those failures and are some of the outliers like Ford and Nissan skewing the numbers? If you spent $75,000 on a brand new truck, not being able to get the pairing working with your phone without having to go back to the dealer is a problem, yes, but I think it would be more instructive to break out the non-essential tech problems from the mechanical failures. For example, the Ford F250/350/Excursion from the early 2000s have a known issue that the leather seating disintegrates. That's definitely a problem and a failure of Ford to produce the best product they could. But I wouldn't classify that as a "reliability" problem. The JD Power new car study, however, would call it that if it happened during the survey period.
I also wonder if that average age graph is controlling for the number of each category being sold year-over-year. It looks like cars are lasting much longer than trucks, but since the number of cars manufactured and sold has been declining each year, would that not necessarily mean that the average age of cars on the road would be increasing? If they stopped making cars right now and only made trucks, then in 5 years every car would be at least 5 years old whereas you'd still have trucks that were 0 years old to bring down the average. Overlaying that graph with sales data would be a bit more instructive. There was a 5 year period where the average age jumped up a full year before basically leveling out. Is that a factor of a drop in sales in the 2008 timeframe? What is happening to the size of the fleet over this time? How many of the new cars each year are taking an old car out of service and how many of them are simply making a bigger pie to average out?
That's not to say that the newest cars are or are not more reliable than a few years ago, but I do think that with more data we might be able to tease out a little more information.
In reply to wae :
I completely agree
yupididit said:In reply to Opti :
Do you have any data supporting that vehicles today are less reliable than vehicles from the early 2000s and before? I think vehicles as a whole are more reliable now than they ever were at any point in history. It's to the point where buying used with 150k miles isn't scary at all anymore. All while being more capable in every metric, more efficient, and safer.
As I've posted a more than once on this board, emissions requirements have pushed reliability more than people seem to want to accept. Powertrains have to meet emissions out to 150k now, which means that when anything emissions related becomes a clear problem, recalls happen. Add to that the IIHS, they have really pushed safety recall items to a much higher standard- for powertains- anything that could remotely possibly become a rapid oxidation problem gets a massive and public recall.
So there are good reasons that reliability and durability has gotten better.
BTW, I'm not entirely sure I would trust CR *that* much anymore- they have declared a few vehicles perfect only to have them become very problematic. It's a good indicator, sure, but not the gold standard that I used to think it was.
I've only driven the first gen 3.5 EB, but my first impression of the power curve was that it felt like a diesel that learned to rev. Right away I thought it was a better truck engine than the old 5.4 or the 5.0, mostly due to the wider powerband. Especially before the 10sp came around, that wider powerband got rid of the "wrong gear, no power, trans downshifts, engine revs up, truck takes off" moments. A friend had a 2012 that he sold a year or 2 ago after putting ~160k miles on it. No significant issues in his ownership.
For the bigger trucks that get the 7.3 gasser, the engine equation is different than in an F-150. At the 150 level, a truck is expected to spend a good bit of time un-loaded, where the smaller turbo engine can give an efficiency advantage. A 250/350 is expected to be worked harder, and the average buyer doesn't care as much about unloaded fuel economy (and if they do, they can buy the diesel). So the advantage of the smaller turbo engine is minimal, and the primary concerns are "make it cheap and durable when run hard".
In reply to wae :
I found where the federal DOT tabulates the annual vehicle registrations reported by each state. They break down "Automobiles" and "Trucks". They also have a "truck and tractor registrations" section and I'm too lazy to use that to break the truck tractors out of the "trucks" category but that reporting changed a bit over time. The number of truck tractors appears to be in the 2.5-2.7 million range, but it doesn't really seem to be responsible for that much of the "truck" growth. Maybe I'll pull that out later just to make sure. These data also include vehicles owned by states for those states that report that number. Anyway, if we consider "the fleet" to be the total vehicle registrations reported, the percentage of trucks v/s cars in "the fleet" breaks like this over time:
And the overall fleet size:
From another source (statista.com) the same 1998-2020 range of new car sales in the US:
I would assume that those numbers are not inclusive of truck tractors. Using the BLS's CPI data for new cars (all urban consumers, not seasonally adjusted, 1982-1984 is considered the baseline, and I don't know that inflation plays in to this at all):
Same basic data for used cars:
Different scale, though, so it's a little tough to compare, but it appears that at least the rate of change for used vehicles rose slower than that of new cars until 2020. So if new cars are getting more expensive, that might be the cause of slowing new car sales which could also then explain why the fleet is getting older.
But maybe cars are getting better and more reliable so we can keep them on the road longer and don't need to buy new cars....
gearheadmb said:I'm thinking it may be the ticket. I want something that doesn't get terrible mileage as a daily, but is still capable of pulling a trailer with a car or small tractor when it needs to. How are they holding up long term? Any major issues to look out for?
Let's get back to the question and leave our soapboxes behind. For towing small stuff and mostly daily driving the EB motor is great. If you are doing 90% of your driving with a travel trailer loaded to 90% of payload and tow capacity maybe not.
We have a 3.5 Ecoboost in our 2015 Ford Expedition. Other than being super fuel efficient, it is smooth, relaible and has surprising power for a 3.5 lite V6. Two thumbs up. Would do again.
In reply to Tim Suddard :
glad to hear. This will probably be my next car. Was close to buying yupididit's. Which is a lovely car. But we are still waiting for prices to fall even more. I'm seeing low spec (2015-2017) for 16-17k with less than 100k miles on them.
Fueled by Caffeine said:In reply to Tim Suddard :
glad to hear. This will probably be my next car. Was close to buying yupididit's. Which is a lovely car. But we are still waiting for prices to fall even more. I'm seeing low spec (2015-2017) for 16-17k with less than 100k miles on them.
85k miles and counting on mine, and it's been awesome. Will be keeping it for years to come.
In reply to Fueled by Caffeine :
You can add most of the bells and whistles that my Platinum has for not a whole lot. Get used parts from wrecked Expeditions from ebay and learn to use Forscan. With Forscan I was able to turn on the option for daytime running lights and turned off the double honk option just by hooking my laptop up and changing a few numbers in the right modules.
Currently driving a 2021 F150 XLT 302a w/ the 2.7L Ecoboost and FX4 with trailer tow package. Currently with 33k trouble free miles with alot of it towing a trailer. Its a fantastic truck.
Biggest gripe is the auto on/off which seems to want to kick in every single time the truck is stopped. I also do wish i could have optioned a different seating material but without going to leather(i have the regular cloth) as the stuff in the truck now doesnt like people who wear jeans daily - wear spots galore on driver entry/exit locations.
The pros - It feels like it has WAY more power than 325/400 that is advertised. The 10 speed transmission is super fast and the shift timing works without hiccups. It tows a uhaul trailer and race car like nothing is there. The 4wd and offroad capability is fantastic.
This coming from a 2017 Duramax Colorado that experienced fueling/emissions issues that GM couldnt fix.
kevinatfms said:Currently driving a 2021 F150 XLT 302a w/ the 2.7L Ecoboost and FX4 with trailer tow package. Currently with 33k trouble free miles with alot of it towing a trailer. Its a fantastic truck.
Biggest gripe is the auto on/off which seems to want to kick in every single time the truck is stopped. I also do wish i could have optioned a different seating material but without going to leather(i have the regular cloth) as the stuff in the truck now doesnt like people who wear jeans daily - wear spots galore on driver entry/exit locations.
The pros - It feels like it has WAY more power than 325/400 that is advertised. The 10 speed transmission is super fast and the shift timing works without hiccups. It tows a uhaul trailer and race car like nothing is there. The 4wd and offroad capability is fantastic.
This coming from a 2017 Duramax Colorado that experienced fueling/emissions issues that GM couldnt fix.
You can turn auto start/stop off with Forscan or with a dongle from the bay or river.
93gsxturbo said:kevinatfms said:Currently driving a 2021 F150 XLT 302a w/ the 2.7L Ecoboost and FX4 with trailer tow package. Currently with 33k trouble free miles with alot of it towing a trailer. Its a fantastic truck.
Biggest gripe is the auto on/off which seems to want to kick in every single time the truck is stopped. I also do wish i could have optioned a different seating material but without going to leather(i have the regular cloth) as the stuff in the truck now doesnt like people who wear jeans daily - wear spots galore on driver entry/exit locations.
The pros - It feels like it has WAY more power than 325/400 that is advertised. The 10 speed transmission is super fast and the shift timing works without hiccups. It tows a uhaul trailer and race car like nothing is there. The 4wd and offroad capability is fantastic.
This coming from a 2017 Duramax Colorado that experienced fueling/emissions issues that GM couldnt fix.You can turn auto start/stop off with Forscan or with a dongle from the bay or river.
Yup right here Link
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