Loading ...goldie, the sidelight is built into the headlight unit, and it is illegal to not have it working. The headlight unit is a totally sealed unit, impossible to get into unless you break it, and even then the electronics are sealed into the plastics. They are not serviceable, the LED “bulbs” are probably manufacturer specific so you couldn’t buy an after market one, and so on. However, all this is what makes a car so cheap today. To buy.
Mr.Copper, I don’t think that there is a conspiracy to use this technology to get rid of cars. All these innovations are driven by cost. In the example above the whole unit is assembled by robots, and probably installed by them too. Electric handbrakes are cheaper to manufacture and install for the same reasons. Electric windows are cheaper to make, and lighter (fuel economy and emissions, doncha know) and initial cost and fuel economy are what sells cars to new customers, most of whom will sell the car before it starts needing repairs. And so on and on.
Thus the situation we find ourselves in now is driven by new car buyers, which in Australia are mostly corporate, who are only interested in a three year timeline. They aren’t going to pay extra for a car designed to be easily maintained, not our problem.
Food
The same thing has happened with our food. It is far too cheap, and very poor quality. Because that is what the consumer demands. Farmers overcrop their land by pouring artificial fertilisers and pesticides onto GMO crops in the name of efficiency, killing the land. Most farm soil is now actually dead, stripped of the living mass that used to go down six inches or so. And most of our food is now dead, stripped of nutrients and flavours, bred for sweetness. Crops can only be grown because of fertiliser. But, this is because people can’t see beyond the end of their noses, the $$ is all that counts. As a proportion of their spending, food costs have never been lower. Ironically, the carbon in the soil lost to the atmosphere by ‘efficient’ farming is a huge contribution to the CO2 levels which has greenies wetting their pants, almost infinitely more so than cow farts.