My car has an engine problem on my way home after dinner tonight. The ETC and engine warning light is on, I can feel the car is losing power in low RPM and the RPM meter is swinging up and down wildly. I turned off the car, waited a while and re-ignite the car. Luckily the problem goes away temporary after a few trial. I managed to drive the car back home having the same problem only once half way. The first thing to do next morning is call the Volvo service center and get the car fixed. I hope it is not a serious problem that won’t cost me a lot. This incident makes me wonder why can’t car be more like computer. When my computer crash, I can diagnostic the problem and even do some emergency repair myself. When the car dies, giving me the warning light is not very helpful. I don’t need the light to tell me the engine is not working properly. When something liek this happens, I don’t know what goes wrong, let alone trying to fix it. It seems no auto company emphasis on the ease of DIY repair on minor problem. The after market service is a milking cow for the auto companies, they won’t cannbalize their own revernue stream by making repair easier to do. I wonder, is there a market for the car hackers? If cars are like computers, I can assembly the car myself from the best components. When something is not working, I can swap out breaken parts with new ones. This would drive down the cost of car ownership.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"