Technology is supposed to enhance our lives, not hinder it. It is very rare for technology to replace something. The car didn’t replace the horse. We still use horses for transportation to this day, although not anywhere close to where we used to. Even the humble automobile has turned into a futuristic spaceship that can’t fly. Any Tesla model is lightyears beyond my Ram truck. Still, my Ram truck is way ahead of the Honda Civic I had when I was 20 and that was eons ahead of the horseless carriages of the 1920s.
Having said that, I would still take my 2000 Honda Civic’s reliability over my 2020 Ram. Everything except the radio and ECU (car’s computer) was analog. There were sensors that communicated with the ECU, but when a trouble light illuminated the dashboard, you knew where to look. My Ram truck seems to have a case of Multiple Personality Disorder (or whatever they call it these days… if it’s even still considered a disorder) combined with massive bouts of delusion and Alzheimer’s.
Sure, my Civic didn’t have tire-pressure monitoring system (TPMS), but I could feel when a tire was low. It would pull to the left or right, or it would shake or not drive quite right. If I happened to get a puncture in between my less-than-routine tire checks, I knew it. The TPMS system in my truck doesn’t seem to alert me until the tire is 20 PSI lower than it should be. Then, it won’t turn off until it’s above where it needs to be. In the winter, if it goes from 50 degrees (F) one day to 15 degrees the next, the tire pressure will be low. The PSI should be between 36-40 PSI, but on a day like that, it can drop down to 29. The TPMS system will alert me that one tire is 29 PSI, another 30 PSI. It doesn’t alert me until I’m a mile down the road though. To make it worse, my other two tires will be at the same PSI, but it doesn’t show as low on the system. When I drive, and the tires warm up, heating up the air inside and it expands to 32 PSI, the system won’t make those tires as good, even if they are higher than the tires it says are fine.
To make things even worse with this system, the system will not alert me when the oil is low or the battery is dead, but it will give random “check engine” lights that disappear a few restarts later. Last week, I started the truck via it’s push-button start, and the truck did a little seizure, started, and then said the “auto-stop/start” feature was disabled. It didn’t tell me why, but it’s not the first time it’s told me this. I go to start it the next day, and the battery is dead. It somehow starts, but it doesn’t tell me the auto-stop/start feature is disabled. I go to the battery voltage display, and it just reads “–” for the voltage. It was going to let me stop at a light and then shut itself off without being able to start back up. I had to manually turn off the auto-stop/start feature so I wouldn’t be stranded at a light, blocking the road. I had to spend $300 on a battery which fixed the problem. It now reads anywhere for 13.3V to 14V. When it gets below 13V, it should warn me the battery is dying. Maybe a CME hit and took it out. It should have warned me the day before when it had it’s seizure.
A few days later, the check engine light came on. The truck didn’t tell me anything. It just dinged as I was driving down the road and the light came on. Oil pressure was fine, the temperatures were good (or as good as they could have been for a 100 degree day). I was going to hook up the code reader when I got to my destination. When I turned on the truck at my destination, the code was gone. No light.
A couple of months back, the check-engine light came on after I was driving pretty hard to hurry to get somewhere. I hooked the reader up and got some generic, non-descriptive code. Looking up the code was no help. It could have been a dozen different things. I cleared the code, and it didn’t return again for about a week. I just thought it was a glitch. It returned a week later with the same generic code. I figured I’d take care of it when I got home. While getting on the interstate, the truck would not accelerate no matter how far I pressed the gas pedal. I checked, no additional codes. I let the truck sit for five minutes on the side of the interstate, cleared the code, and the truck started functioning normally. The code didn’t return. I babied it for the next 25 miles. Once I got home, I checked the oil… over one quart low!
What the actual fuck?! Do you mean to tell me that my 2000 Honda Civic could tell me when my oil was low, but my 2020 Ram can’t? “Oh, but it warned you!” Pa-lease! Giving me a non-descriptive code is not saying I’m low on oil. Even if that were the case, why didn’t the light come back every time I cleared it? It was low, then fine for a week, then low, then fine, but oops, nope it was low? I had a 2016 Camaro, that liked to use oil. It wouldn’t tell me the oil was low until it was almost catastrophic, but it told me in plain English it was low.
Is the issue with Ram, or do all modern cars do this? Have we become so reliant on technology that the simple things get ignored? Well, yes. I thought improvements in technology were supposed to make our lives easier, not ignore the fundamentals of car maintenance. My Ram can calculate fuel usage in real-time and calculate my engine’s oil life, but it can’t tell me when the oil is low or the battery is going bad. The damn thing will even crash and reboot itself in the middle of driving. The more complicated a system, the more prone it is to have failures. I know Teslas have their fair share of issues, but that thing is like driving a time machine. If I owned one, I’d expect it to work. My Ram has the base-model head unit. It looks like a 2005 vintage computer was stuck in my dash. My $60 Anbernic console emulator is more advanced than my $50,000 truck!
What is the point of having all of these sensors and monitors if the system won’t tell me what is going on? It’s almost like the system code was written by a bunch of Gen-Zers who were too busy uploading TikTok videos to pay attention to the fundamental details, or they were DEI hires that don’t know anything about how automobiles work. I’m guessing their work wasn’t tested either. Where was quality control and the testing criteria? It reads oil pressure and battery voltage, so it must work. Maybe the wrote the code to read the voltages but not the code to check whether it’s within tolerances/limits. This shit baffles me, and it makes me not want to buy a new vehicle, especially a Ram.
One last gripe… who the fuck designs a transmission shifter in a dial the same shape as the AC/Heater and radio dials? Do you know how many times I almost accidentally shifted from drive to reverse at 70MPH when I was trying to turn down the heat? Why the fuck are those two dials next to each other? Those fucking engineers and designers are fucking idiots!