GM Collision & Repairs

[autobodyforums]

God forbid GM makes things easy,

I am in tons of Collision shops and wouldnt you know the bigest problems are with GM Automobiles. They now have around 13 ON board Computers and they all communicate one to another.
Put it this way The new GM cars Even have a little black black box on board alot like the black box in an aircraft.

When the Cars are TOTALED out, the car is scrapped sent to the yard, and the Boxs are sent back to GM "Who" buys them back.
From the Data collected from the Box the Dealer can tell you what happened in that Crash of yours and "IF" you where telling the truth about the crash.

Isnt this big brother going a little to far???

All the best,
Autobodyforums.com

[drdisque]

why would GM care if you were lying or not?

[autobodyforums]

Originally Posted by drdisque

why would GM care if you were lying or not?

I dont think its GM that would care, but later in the future the DATA collected from the on board computer systems will be able to stand up in court??? This is a guess.... And a shot in the dark, but you watch...

Look at the ONSTAR system,
Watch GM releases to the Law the tools to track the cars that are "Speeding", stolen, or even missing people. Its going to happen.
Missing people drive cars too "sometimes".

Going back on topic,
Many smaller Auto Collision Shops cant even work on the cars anymore that are brand new do to now having the "TOOLS" it takes to work on them right. The cars these days will even monitor AIR PSI in the tires.

And when a person goes to rotate the tires it messes with the sencors.
What about the Airbag's??? Have you ever tried fixing a dent in a car door with Side air bags!???? It's nasty.....

All the best,
Matt
www.autobodyforums.com

[GMMerlin]

Originally Posted by autobodyforums

I dont think its GM that would care, but later in the future the DATA collected from the on board computer systems will be able to stand up in court??? This is a guess.... And a shot in the dark, but you watch...

Look at the ONSTAR system,
Watch GM releases to the Law the tools to track the cars that are "Speeding", stolen, or even missing people. Its going to happen.
Missing people drive cars too "sometimes".

Going back on topic,
Many smaller Auto Collision Shops cant even work on the cars anymore that are brand new do to now having the "TOOLS" it takes to work on them right. The cars these days will even monitor AIR PSI in the tires.

And when a person goes to rotate the tires it messes with the sencors.
What about the Airbag's??? Have you ever tried fixing a dent in a car door with Side air bags!???? It's nasty.....

All the best,
Matt
www.autobodyforums.com

Well Matt you are partically correct. Some GM vehicles can have up to 20 modules that need to communicate.
Any modules that are bought back by GM are used for crash data to make the vehicles safer..WHY..because the goverment and the motoring public demand safer vehicles.
Can some of this info get in the "wrong" hands? Sure, corporate thieves steal info everyday. I'm a GM tech and I can't get the engineers at GM to install the software into my scan tool to read the data that they can.

As far as small independant repair shops not being able to "fix" cars because they don't have the tools or training...TFB for them.
The future of the automotive world is moving into the direction where independant shops and DIYs will no longer be able to work on vehicles (sorry members of AF, but it is true)...multiplexed modules, LAN and CAN communication, fiberoptics are really taking off..wait til Hydogen fuel cells and 24-48v systems are being used.
It is going to take a factory trained technician to be able to negotiate around the vehicles operating systems...now before you get your panties in a wad, this means dealers are going to have to invest in finding highly skilled and trained techs if they want to stay in business. The days of hiring any monkey with a Kmart tool kit and allowing them to trash customers vehicles are coming to an end.

[tom3]

All this technology. Why? I really don't see any major improvement in the latest complications. I see no reason for a BCM to tell the windows to roll down when I push the button. When I turn the key to start, no computer is required to control the starter. Useless technology as far as I can see, unless they are actually trying to eliminate non-dealer repairs of even the most simple items. Looking at fuel economy numbers these days, I'd think they would have better things to work on.

[Century 2000]

I think this could be bad news (technology that records driving habits, etc.) Now as GMMerlin said, GM may have noble intentions for using this technology...but like he also mentioned, other companies would just love exploiting this kind of technology. Insurance companies are the first to come to mind. In fact, I thought I read an article online that Progressive was putting monitoring devices in 50 vehicles of people who volunteered. They swore it had no correlation to insurance premiums. Anyhow, I could easily imagine insurance companies demanding that customers install these devices in their cars, and then basing premiums based on your driving habits. The end of independent shops probably isn't far off. They won't disappear altogether, but I wouldn't be surprised if they became scarce. This is unfortunate, as indy's are so great and care about their customer. My experience with the dealer service is unfavorable.