The Expert Podcast

very deep within the automotive industry is kind of a dirty little secret that could up end the future of gasoline vehicles. here's an example look at this wiring harness for a vehicle this wiring harness is four eight two thousand and twelve to two thousand fourteen Toyota Camry. it's the assembly of wires which connects all the different parts of the vehicle not a very big part. you know this is probably maybe five four five feet from end to end in this little bundled up grouping and that part cost two thousand and seventy two dollars. seems like a lot of money you would think that the whole front end and fenders would cost that much. and this is a small part it's not an engine not a transmission it's a wiring harness and this is just for the engine room season for the whole vehicles. not the wiring harness that connects to the tail lights or the interior lights. this is just inside the engine compartment under the hood wiring harness two thousand seventy two dollars. so if your engine overheats and burns the wiring harness or there's some catastrophic damage that breaks the wiring harness you're gonna be in for two thousand dollars. just for that part we'll take a look what's the book value of two thousand fourteen Toyota Camry while somewhere between eleven to thirteen thousand so this could represent almost twenty percent of the value the vehicle with just one wiring harness. that's a big deal. some states require that if a vehicle has more than forty or forty five percent damage has to be totaled. so this wiring harness you're halfway there to being totaled being a salvage vehicle. and anything that damaged a wiring harness is probably gonna damage some other stuff the wiring harness probably is not going to be the only thing that breaks. so if you have a high-heat event under the hood of your car melts the wiring harness maybe cooks the computer chip which might cost the same amount now your car's totaled. the other thing is that vehicle manufacturers are not producing these parts they're not producing a whole new supply of these internal engine parts. and the reason why is because they're not banking on the future of these gasoline vehicles. how serious of a problem is it serious enough or Reuters one of the largest financial publications is saying that cheap components could help kill off combustion cars. and they give the example of wiring harnesses a cheap component the bundles cables together. because supplies of these parts first of all they're blaming the war which could be part of that but even these low tech and low margin parts made from wire cars can't be built without them. supply crunch could accelerate the plans of some legacy auto firms to switch to a new generation of lighter machine may harnesses designed for electric vehicles so there you go. is this part of the plan to remove gasoline vehicles from the market place and replace them with electric vehicles. there was a story that is infamous and it happened about twenty some odd years ago maybe thirty years ago now it was an airport outside of Chicago called miggs field it was a private airport wasn't a large international airport that had domestic flights and international flights from airlines. it was used for private aviation general aviation small Cessnas Lear jets people flying for their own purposes.
and for many years the city of Chicago want to get rid of miggs field because they wanted to develop it as a park and also some commercial development and residential development. but there was some pushback from the general aviation community from the airport itself and some other parties that want to keep that airport running. so one night in the middle of the night the mayor of Chicago ordered to the city facilities department to bring over bunch of bulldozer and dig up the runway. gouge big huge slashes in the in the runway knowing full well the once you did that you couldn't rebuild it. it would take tens of millions of dollars to rebuild the runway and it could never be done and that was the end of the airports called the miggs field controversy. and whether or not it's the same philosophy behind these auto part aeration of markets it's unknown. but a wiring harness for two thousand seems like a lot of money whether it's intentional or accidental it's still having the same effect. the effect is it's very difficult to repair older vehicles and at some point it might be impossible to repair old vehicles because key component parts may not be available. look if you have a nineteen sixty five Mustang you can fix it yourself there is no complicated wiring harness there is no complex computer chips. the parts are all there for you to see it when you open the hood you can rebuild the engine yourself if you have mechanical abilities. even a pretty well trained backyard mechanic can't fix a lot of things on vehicles that are two thousand and new or even mid nineties and newer. too many computer parts too many chips too many complex engineering parts. it just fix it with the wrench. you have to get specialized parts of but also specialized knowledge and how to fix it and sometimes you need specialized tools even to take apart these engines. the repair shops the service departments of dealerships have invested hundreds of thousands of specialized parts provided by the manufacturer in order to do some simple things like taking off pulleys or removing custom parts from an engine which you wouldn't have as a mechanic. so if these tools are not to be available anymore or replaced or the parts will be available repair of these vehicles which are not that old you know two thousand fourteen camry seven years old maybe eight years old not a very old car. two thousand for wiring harness a lot of people would just throw away the car. you know that average price of eleven to thirteen thousand kind of implies median mileage but if you have one with two hundred thousand miles it's maybe beat up it's not in good shape it's maybe only worth five or six thousand are you gonna put two thousand it's a wiring harness or are you just gonna chuck the car. probably chuck the car. so these are some of the factors behind the scenes not very frequently talked about they could be putting pressure on the resale market and the retention market of older vehicles. it's not unprecedented wouldn't be the first time back in the two thousands they have their famous cash for clunkers program. where the government was paying thousands of dollars for five thousand dollars for any car you could drag in car could be worth nothing they give you for five thousand for because they want to get older cars off the road. at the time the reason was to generate sales for newer vehicles gasoline vehicles now the cash for clunkers program probably would cost too much money so maybe there's another way of doing it maybe making it difficult to repair or retain these older vehicles. whether it's intentional or not it's having the same effect older vehicles are coming off the road at a very fast pace being replaced with hybrids or even electric vehicles. tell us your thoughts in the comments below what do you think about this is this what's happening have you seen in your market have you tried to repair vehicles found that the parts are unreasonably expensive to get the car back on the road