Overdesigned
So a few weeks back, I got a new car, a 2011 Nissan Altima:
Up until this week, I’ve had nothing but good things to say about it. I have, however, discovered a serious design flaw. Like all late-model Nissans, it starts with an electronic key. There’s a manual key hidden inside that you can use to lock the glove box when you hand the main key off to the valet, but you can’t actually start the car with it. Instead, you put the electronic key in your purse or briefcase or what-have-you, where it communicates wirelessly with the car’s computer. The upside is that you don’t have to drag it out to unlock the doors or start the car.
The downside is that if any one of about a dozen links in the chain fails, you can’t start the car. Worse, you can’t even tell which link is the broken one. At least, that was the case for me this past Wednesday. I had a court appearance the next county over, about half an hour from home base. When I came back out to the parking lot, the little key recognition tell-tale didn’t light, and the car wouldn’t start. There’s a backup slot where you can plug the key in if the battery is weak, but that didn’t help. Still, it seemed like the battery was the most likely (and most fixable) fail point, so I got a spare at the next-door drug store. Still no go.
My next thought was that the key itself was damaged. A strong enough magnetic field, or a hot enough day, or an errant bead of condensation would do it. My spare house key had gone missing, so I got an office secretary to come out and pick me up so that I could unlock my house and get the spare car key, then take me back. Still no go. At that point, there was no alternative but to call the dealer, arrange a tow, and thank heavens I was still under warranty.
The dealer concluded that the computer had locked up, and so did a hard restart, the kind where they disconnect the backup power supply and you lose everything from your trip meter to your radio presets. Nissan central says that this is a known problem with this model, and although they don’t know what causes it, “nobody has ever reported it twice.” That’s not encouraging; the 2011 model years haven’t been out long enough for any kind of meaningful history to have accrued. The next time this happens could very well be some dark and stormy night, two hours from home and out from under warranty.
So, Nissan engineers, the lessons are this (1) if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and (2) if it’s a really critical system, provide an emergency override.