you state all the improvements made to the electronic components, and in an office building that's great and they may be more reliable. but.... I hope you are putting into consideration the extreme conditions a car presents to electronics that an office doesn't. extreme temperature changes and constant shaking and bouncing driving down the road... I believe those conditions to be the cause of the broken solder joints, etc I see in failing control units. How many "average" lcd displays are meant to operate and be reliable at -5 degrees for several months of the year????I do agree that many failures, possibly this one are due to cost cutting in production. alpine may have given an estimate to build this unit that was 5 cents more per unit than honda wanted to pay, so they reduced the price by using a cheaper bulb in the display. oops.... same thing audi did with the ignition coils on cars just a couple years ago. cost them a few hundered thousand bucks to recall almost every car they built for three years. and the only reason it happened was because they wanted to save a little money building the car......
