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Tesla, Ford, Amazon Hint At Cloudy Future For Cars
Nerval's Lobster writes "The automobile, once the most analog of technologies, is rapidly becoming a smartphone on wheels: Amazon announced Feb. 13 that Ford SYNC Applink-equipped vehicles will include the Amazon Cloud Player, allowing drivers to access their music libraries via voice command or dashboard controls. Ford isn't the only automotive company seeking to integrate cloud computing into the driving experience. Tesla Motors' Model S electric sedan boasts a 17-inch capacitive touch-screen in place of the usual dashboard buttons and dials. And who could forget Google's self-driving car? This isn't a future everybody wants—there are more than a few wannabe Steve McQueens who won't feel complete unless they can stomp on a pedal connected to an internal-combustion engine, flick a physical dashboard knob to the radio station of their choice, and peel out their driveway in a cloud of burning rubber. But as the latest technology migrates into automobiles, it could well be the future we're going to receive."
Oh! I see what you did there!
Just what I need, the reliability of Amazon cloud systems in my vehicle.
it doesnt move depending on what mode my screen is in or require me to look to change the volume
This stuff has a ways to go. It's a major software undertaking to get it all to work. As an example, we recently bought a Prius with some web-enabled computer thingy in the dashboard. It's supposed to talk to the smartphone via Bluetooth and do all sorts of stuff. However, according to a list published by Toyota, only half of the integration features work properly with our iPhones. Basic things such as MP3 song time display are missing.
The determined Real Programmer can write Fortran programs in any language.
Until that key moment when the Royal American Federation prohibits manual control that you'd actually lose your freedom, & that's not due for another 50 years. Besides, road deaths account for 1/50 of all deaths; we COULD undo that cause of death almost entirely, but no, let's just let them die because people might end up too stupid to know how to turn the governor off & then can't play IRL Mario Kart.
I didn't think there was anything worse; but in the rush to jam inappropriate technology into everything, they've outdone themselves. I'm going to have to replace my canonical, "I can't use my word processor, the network is down" with "I can't start the car, the network is down".
Except most of the manufacturers won't want to expend the effort to keep their old products up-to-date. Look forward to drive-by hackings of your buggy car firmware. And new web technologies relegating your $60k+ car to the status of a 5 year old PC.
A touchscreen dash is an absolutely horrid idea. Physical buttons can be accessed via muscle memory. A dynamic control with zero tactile feedback requires you to focus on it for every function. How can anyone in the automotive industry not see this as an enormous liability?
Having a video or computer display in the line of sight of the driver is already illegal in most states (distraction) and having a computer in the front seat of a vehicle is illegal in at least California. I can't help but wonder how a 17" touchscreen with computer controls will be viewed by the police and court systems.
- Preferences: Solaris 10 (servers), Ubuntu (desktops), Solaris 11 (personal servers) -
What they are really afraid of is the fact that once cars become self-driving, no one will need to own one anymore.
Technology is actually upended the business model of the entire autoindustry. They might innovate themselves right out of business.
I mean seriously who cares about cloudplayer in a self-driving car? If it can drive itself I'll just leave my earbuds in.
The most common vehicle in 10 years will be the autonomous Dodge caravan, taxiing us all around. Rich people will have maybe their own auto-Bently's or something, but the rest of us will just share a car.
Nowadays it's pretty clear that anything with a processor will be connect to some cloud some time in the future, like it or not. What I don't get is the logic in the middle of the summary: how is having a touch screen a hint for cloud computing on the car? Not only having to take the eyes of the road just to change a radio station or increase the AC quite dangerous due to the lack of mechanical feedback, but the Amazon/Ford and Google efforts seem a lot more concrete when it comes to cloud uses. It just feels out of place not being relevant to the article and it's there just for the sake of being trendy.
An existing example in another market is the Boeing/Airbus duopoly. In the current world market no one outside of Europe or the US has a lot of control over what kinds of long and intermediate passenger planes are built. (Short range passenger aircraft are a different story.) The Chinese are already working on joining this club, by the way.
The future is cloudy because the manufacturing base is shifting. Everything else is a secondary effect.
Why is Snark Required?
It already costs a good amount to get, for example, a basic replacement temperature control knob thing, whatever the hell the proper name for it is. I don't want to know what a 17" touchscreen will cost, even a decade into the future, just to get your fan/heater/AC controls working again. I really do not like the way cars are heading; even without the cost, who says I want all this bullshit? Seriously, the more computerized they make cars, the more revolting they get.
I agree. Cell phones and texting and all that jazz is making crashes more common. It's killing people, literally. It's as bad as driving drunk, some people have said. I just bought a '12 Civic Si and I plan on driving it for 10+ years, so I don't have to worry about tech ruining my ride. Stick shift n' clutch all the way, baby. Electronic doodads are just a sideshow anyways. The real advancement in automobile tech will be whatever energy source dethrones these godawful fossil fuels we use to power vehicles.
Entirely unrelated: the more digital cars get the more unreliable they will become.
You realize cars have been almost completely computer-controlled for about a decade? Digital isn't to be equated with unreliable, bad design is.
How long til a malicious person is able to crash (potentially lots of) cars in the real world by hacking into some cloud servers? Or make the cars run over pedestrians instead of avoid them?
This is potentially a really serious problem, that people so far are ignoring. Maybe we need a law requiring physical isolation of a self-driving car's control computer from all networks. They need access to GPS data, but this can probably accommodated with special hardware that does its best to ensure only GPS data is passed in.
I really like the idea of abstracting the console to the point where I can customize/control my interface with the car's computers. I'd like to be able to connect my own control device (tablet, bluetooth handset, mp3 player, GPS, ...) to enhance the driving experience.
However, the CAR needs basic built in controls to turn OFF all non-essential options and simply drive, especially if an input device/accessory FAILS. If done properly, with open connectivity standards, this is a great trend. There's the problem though: too much integration without open connectivity standards.
Cars' computer systems are becoming powerful. They need to be treated like any other advanced tech resource. Think: Security, connectivity standards and graceful failure modes.
Happy V-day, btw!
commenting to remove my accidental -1. mod parent underrated.
FCKGW 09F9 42
The biggest problem I see with these systems is very rapid obsolescence. You'll generally replace a phone or tablet a lot more often than a car. There should be a standard port to attach a tablet to and the car manufacturer can offer software for all the major platforms, or you can choose to use something else. Instead we seem to be getting a bunch of built in tablets running code that we have no control over and can't replace. Is anybody sorting this out?
well.. that depends..
the 17" touchscreen instead of proper controls is actually a cost cutting measure. less designing, less tooling, less commitment early on in the design phase.
so a 17" touchscreen should be easier to source than exotic lever systems.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
he's on a motorcycle.
#DeleteChrome
Funny, i passed on the Civic partly because the instrument cluster was too hi-tech. Went with the '11 Corolla with a more standard instrument cluster.
Good-bye
The problem I see with more and more electronics is the loss of control, not just of the vehicle but also of your privacy. You are already driving with a black box in most vehicles, and access to that is not restricted to accident investigators - data gets pulled every time you have the car serviced, with you having nil control over how it is used.
A secondary issue is that entertainment electronics is subject to far less security checks than the stuff that makes sure your engine runs best and that steers traction control and ABS, yet they are interconnected. Research teams have already shown it is possible to use the one layer to affect the other by completely killing the brakes of a car on remote - do you really want to make it possible for a script kiddie to do this to your car?
The privacy issue is very current. I can already see Google powered systems enter into some vehicles, without any alternative options being presented. Not only does that require the most expensive wireless connection you can get as a family (mobile/cell), especially if you travel internationally, it's also handing data in large uncontrolled gobs to a company that has as yet to prove it can be trusted with it. I don't want to become part of the Streetview data collection system, thank you - not even if they paid me for it.
Insert
Everyone is going to have a smartphone in their pockets, which they'll change every 2 years. I'm hoping a new car will last longer than 2 years, so let's just leave the smart phone capabilities up to my smart phone.
How about they just wifi up the car and leave me a slot to put a tablet or something?
Indeed. I think however that as with any trend it will evolve. I think cars becoming more sophisticated (well ....) become also more and more expensive. It may be that automation of driving experience may be at t he same time expensive for a common owner and cheap if used as a service. If these things can drive by themselves why not let them drive the whole day long instead of two commuting drives a day plus some odd shopping, cinema, massage parlor drives a week? I can imagine that you live in a metropolitan area this may be a good choice and one enforced by raising prices. I do not mind if that were the case. OC car companies would not appreciate that this much as such new trend would mean less cars sold but if I look at our streets and park lots I see too many cars not too few and frankly owning a car is a nuisance unless you live in a countryside. I have already met people leasing cars: one for commuting and common needs and another for holidays etc. Moving this direction would be perfect for me and I think plenty of other folks that do not want to bother having a car and caring for its maintenance etc. Hell if I had real brains I would patent the idea the hell out of public domain.
It's not just the touchscreen either as it'll be a whole assembly, which certainly will not scale in the consumer's favor 10 years after the car was built.
I was really interested in the Tesla S, until I saw the interior and found that everything is operated from the large touch screen display.
No thanks. I will only buy a car with knobs and buttons for radio and climate controls.
I want my car reporting my rural speed transgressions directly to the cloud-connected police, so law enforcement can be efficiently vectored to intercept me.
Better still, it can be wired to go "driverless" automatically and take me straight to the nearest court-house for doing 66 on a deserted back-country road posted 65.
Judge Dred meets Knight Rider!
Scruting the inscrutable for over 50 years.
Yeah. Could you imagine driving one summer evening as the sun begins to lower behind you, and it's shining with all its brightness right onto your screen? How are you supposed to do anything... adjust fans, temperature, radio, and whatever else if you have to rely on that now-useless LCD screen? Waiting until I turn off or just hoping you'll get lucky that thick enough clouds cover it don't exactly sound like very good options. Very, very bad design.
Am I the only one who thinks a touch screen is a *terrible* idea in a car, especially if the touch screen device is supposed to be used while driving? With conventional knobs and switches, you can often find what you want to do just by moving your hand to the approximate position and feeling for the appropriate control. I can operate my car radio without looking at it. But you're forced to look at a touch screen - in other words, stop looking where you're directing nearly two tons of metal to fiddle with some device.
Hopefully there will be some statistics taken on crashes as to the accident rate of touch screen equipped vehicles vs non touch screen equipped vehicles. Intuitively, it would seem that touch screens would have a negative safety consequence.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
It will be more expensive. Mercedes asked me the equivalent of $150 to replace my side mirror. Only the glass - no enclosure. And I have to give them my details for the privilege of buying it. You'll be paying $2000 if your 17" monitor cracks.
Touch screens are a really bad and dangerous idea in cars if not coupled with very good voice control. I briefly used Pioneer's App Radio and found it a good idea but utterly dangerous to even change radio channel whilst driving.
Knobs and buttons all the way!
Dennis Onstenk
On the outside chance you're serious...
No thanks. there's nothing worse than dealing with the unintended consequences of nanny alerts/auto-restrictors. Today's cars are already loaded with them and it drives me nuts (seatbelt beeper, proximity beeper, scrolling text on the instrument cluster, and other stupid bullshit put there by 'helpful' manufacturers and control freak, knee jerking politicians. Leave it to committees to make driving a car a process that rivals the time it takes to walk to my destination..
my ideal car has 3 main gauges (tach, speedo, fuel, water/turbo/oil pres depending), manual transmission, and the three dials (NOT touch screen, physical, touch identifiable controls): fan speed, airflow direction, temperature slider, and an A/C button. A radio/mp3 player, lights, wipers, and fuel/trunk release rounds out the package.. No programmable electronics, no black boxes tied into the ignition or other critical systems. They're not needed, and they don't save nearly as much fuel or emissions as people claim. They're just expensive 'fuses' that ensure the dealer makes post-purchase profit on repairs.
The future is, where you do not own a car. If you need one you borrow one. Of course it can communicate with your phone otherwise it would not know what you mean by "drive me home". Furthermore, in metropolitan areas, other means of public transport are much more efficient and easier to implement. For example, street cars, underground trains, smaller and bigger buses, which are easy to access and allow you to bring stuff with you, like buggies, trolleys or bikes. Cars supplement that, can be called, like cabs, but without a driver. Wonder where all the aliens will work in future ;-) In some countries the use of mass transport facilities will be (kind of) free, as it is financed through taxes. Some towns already do that, others subsidize mass transport, as it is cheaper than building new roads. Ah yes, gasoline cars will be extinct.
In one hand, you have the greed of the entire industry, wanting to put every single communications device they can think of inside a car, and connect it all online, and then sell all the statistics we all will generate to target advertising.
In the other hand, I have the countless deaths racked up by just texting on the road today. I believe if we left it unchecked, it would likely surpass every other killer (including alcohol) on the road, if it already hasn't received this coveted title of dishonor.
Not everyone wants self-driving cars? Something tells me that should be the first damn thing on the mandate list before they start dragging the rest of the internet into the car.
Can't wait until the spoiled 16-year old down the street with a week-old license steps into Daddy's new car and gets online, to pay about as much attention at 70MPH as they do walking and texting.
Gee, I feel safer already.
What they are really afraid of is the fact that once cars become self-driving, no one will need to own one anymore.
Technology is actually upended the business model of the entire autoindustry. They might innovate themselves right out of business.
I mean seriously who cares about cloudplayer in a self-driving car? If it can drive itself I'll just leave my earbuds in.
The most common vehicle in 10 years will be the autonomous Dodge caravan, taxiing us all around. Rich people will have maybe their own auto-Bently's or something, but the rest of us will just share a car.
...like me, they'll own motorcycles, probably. Riding a bike (full disclosure: I love my Ducati 1098) is about as close to flying as you can get in two dimensions. The subset of the population that enjoys driving cars and riding bikes for the sheer exhilaration of it (vanishingly small, to be sure, but extant nonetheless) are immune to the marketing gimmicks you are basing your argument on. I have a BT-enabled comm system in my helmet that already lets me voice control my phone -- I can drag a knee at a buck-twenty while listening to Moby *and* send a sell order to my broker at the same time. No amount of autonomous vehicle goodness (and it is a goodness, btw) will alter that in the slightest.
Distractions aside, let's say it is the middle of February and I am trying to operate this thing at 6:30 AM, like I will be in a few minutes from now when I leave for work. Let us also assume the touch screen has similar tactile properties to my smartphone.
I doubt this will work with gloves on. If I take off my gloves, my fingertips will be hard as rock and that also does not work. In my experience, touch screens require fingers that are not too dry, not too wet, not too cold/hard. Winter could make these things nearly impossible to use, which would create a catch-22 if these things control the heater and defrost.
I will take my old school knobs any day. I can operate them by feel, increasing safety. They work the same regardless of what the weather or season is.
Another thing that will annoy me the next time I buy a car is crap like putting an iPhone port in it. Great: my family uses Android. Even if we did use iPhone, you know the next version that Apple shits out will change the connector anyway. Why not focus on the technology under the hood and stop feeling compelled to add the latest buzzword to the dashboard?
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
I'm currently repairing my friends car made in 1999 that has the heater controls on a 7" LCD. It's not touchscreen, it uses physical controls but the setting is shown on the screen and it is impossible to even demist the windows without it.
The replacement is prohibitively expensive but used units are available from end of life cars, however they may not last very long and the labour involved in fitting them is very lengthy.
The engine, body and other car-ish stuff may be good for thirty years, but in five the in-car entertainment and cloudy navigation systems will be as obsolete an eight-track. Time to go out and buy a new car. Welcome to the upgrade cycle: The computer and smartphone industries got there long ago.
Not entirely true. If some of these components are standardized, then the cost of producing a few thousand mechanical airconditioning control systems for your 97 saturn might be higer than the cost of producing 10 million capacitive touchscreens.
Downside is, if the touchscreen breaks, all your controls break. Its a bit of a tradeoff. And if you want a basic basic car, get a Tata Nano.
I don't want to know what a 17" touchscreen will cost, even a decade into the future, just to get your fan/heater/AC controls working again.
More than that: I can work the controls on my 2003 Golf TDI without taking my eyes off the road. The folks at VW did their homework enough that most knobs and buttons having a unique enough feel and movement that I can adjust settings (audio, HVAC) with my right hand while keeping my left hand on the wheel, and my eyes on the road because of the tactile feedback.
I cannot see how the same thing can be done with an all-screen control panel.
I wouldn't against a large screen for information display, with touch functionality, but I also want (properly designed) knobs as well.
I just want a plain AFFORDABLE electric car. 100 miles a day on an over night charge. $20000 or less. What is so hard about that?
No hour on a horse is ever wasted. Winston Churchill
Mercedes asked me the equivalent of $150 to replace my side mirror. Only the glass - no enclosure.
Just use an independent garage. Even better, get a Haynes manual (are they available in the US?), buy the glass online, and fit it yourself. It shouldn't be a difficult job; I once replaced an entire wing mirror (on a Fiat, not a Merc, but it shouldn't be too different), and that was easy. Took less than half an hour.
It shouldn't affect the warranty either, assuming it's still got one.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
I've got an 05 car without anitlocks or traction control and an 08 car with both. Guess which one I drive in heavy winter weather? Just because the last fifty miles were cleared perfectly doesn't mean the 500 ft when I want to be able to stop aren't pure ice. I want all the "oh shit where did my dry road go" gizmos on my car I can get since I can't spot ice a few hundred feet ahead of me in the dark.
I still want a V8, rear wheel drive, manual transmission car but self driving cars are something I want. I may be a good driver (have not damaged a car in driving since I was a teen, even on icy roads) but being able to spend the time going to and from work productively rather than watching traffic would be awesome. On the other hand I want an override as I'm not sure I'd trust a car programmed in California to West Michigan winters...
I am an experienced mechanic who loves old cars. Your post is bullshit.
Those cars were simple, pretty, unreliable, maintenance-intensive, and did a fine job of killing their passengers in a crash. Their brakes were garbage (front drums, single master cylinders) which is why brake shops in mountainous areas were a common sight.
Your post is nonsense and deserves no respect. I grew up working on those rides. It's no accident that many modern owners update them so they actually steer and stop.
Feature bloat is not necessary, but sells cars. I can and do work on my modern vehicles and don't pay anyone else to wrench them. The way to repair modern vehicles reasonably is the same as ever. Use good parts from salvage with a few new bits as needed. I've built many cars and trucks for a used car lot where we did this. It's standard. I'd rather bolt on factory parts as assemblies to save time and labor, so salvage rules.
I'm disgusted with "mechanics" who won't learn modern systems. Modern hot rodders take full advantage of improved ignition control and fuel management, so there is no excuse for snivelling.
Modern CNC production methods are what make TODAY the new Golden Age of performance. It's cheaper and easier to maintain your beloved antiques than ever before. The aftermarket has plenty of support for whatever you want to do.
I'd get off your lawn but I can't find it and suspect it's located in Atlantis.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
Companies who get much of their revenues on massively overpriced, ah excuse me "high margin" proprietary spare parts.
Yeah, I looked at my in-laws new truck loaded with seat warmers, large touch-screen interface, maps, voice activation, backup camera, etc. etc. and my first thought was: nice, but this will be damn expensive to repair with so much electronics to go wrong. That would actually shy me away from buying one.
What planet did you grow up on? Of course it will affect the warranty! Car makers don't like you screwing around with the car while it is still under warranty for multiple reasons, with one being they like to squeeze money out of you.
"You can't make a race horse of a pig"
"No," said Samuel, "but you can make very fast pig"
you can get gloves with just enough metal/carbon in the fingertips to trigger a touch screen (or for single finger stuff use a stylus)
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
This is just the tip of the iceberg though. I keep my "stuff" in my car so I don't have to carry a huge man-purse everywhere. A generic fix-it kit in the trunk, medical kit in the glove box, device-specific holders for my electronics (as well as carefully routed power cords), plus a pen, pencil, utility knife, flashlight, map, and some work-related gear in case I get a call while I'm out. I've seriously considered getting a second, super-fuel-efficient car for longer trips (I drive a full sized truck which gets abyssmal gas milage) but then I realized I'd have to be swapping stuff back and forth - or buy two of everything. I hate having to do that when I have to take my wife's car somewhere...I can't imaging having to do that every time I leave the house.
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
For replacing a piece of glass? It's no different than replacing a bulb or a tyre.
No colour or religion ever stopped the bullet from a gun
I wish I had mod points for you. This is something I've realized for a while and is, at least in my mind, the number one reason that self driving cars won't become a reality for a very long time.
For every post, there is an equal and opposite re-post.
Not only that, but some parts are pretty much guaranteed to fail after X years, and be very expensive to replace. Example on my car the passenger side central locking was working only sporadically. Wasn't the solenoid; turned out to be the controller module, so cost over £500 to replace to fix the problem. Also, rain sensor on the windscreen - notorious for failing at around 4-5 years, requires a complete new windscreen + sensor module as they're bonded together. You might wonder why bother, but if that is not working, you either have to have the wipers full-on, or off; there's no intermittent setting, which quickly becomes very annoying.
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
The NYT writer lied. It's over for that story. But the damage is done.
He was told to do certain things. Instead, he:
-Turned the heat up.
-Speeded, consistently. Over 80 mph at some point.
-Didn't stay at the supercharger long enough, almost every time - and lied about it.
-Pulled away for 60+ mile trip even though he knew it only had a charge for less than 40 miles left.
-Circled a supercharger station, for some reason.
-Lied about the car going dead. It did not.
Broder should lose his job. Read it, please!
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2013/02/tesla-logs-nytimes/
Tesla Driving Logs Contradict New York Times Claims
What planet did you grow up on? Of course it will affect the warranty! Car makers don't like you screwing around with the car while it is still under warranty for multiple reasons, with one being they like to squeeze money out of you.
In the US, as long as you keep to the maintenance schedule, don't upgrade components (don't "chip" the engine, put those crazy large wheels on, etc.), and keep the receipts, working on your car yourself or having your own mechanic work on the car will not void your warranty. Modern cars usually have long service intervals (longer than someone should probably go between services if he will be keeping the car beyond the warranty period), so it isn't hard to keep to the maintenance schedule.
The previously mentioned mirror likely costs $150 because it contains a heating element. One of my cars has a heated door mirror that is throwing intermittent failure codes; it is not just a piece of glass. Replacing just the glass in a door mirror (as opposed to the entire mirror assembly) can be complicated.
Voice control is getting better. I can do almost everything that required physical interactions earlier with just voice commands on new cars.
...like me, they'll own motorcycles, probably. Riding a bike (full disclosure: I love my Ducati 1098) is about as close to flying as you can get in two dimensions. The subset of the population that enjoys driving cars and riding bikes for the sheer exhilaration of it (vanishingly small, to be sure, but extant nonetheless) are immune to the marketing gimmicks you are basing your argument on. I have a BT-enabled comm system in my helmet that already lets me voice control my phone -- I can drag a knee at a buck-twenty while listening to Moby *and* send a sell order to my broker at the same time. No amount of autonomous vehicle goodness (and it is a goodness, btw) will alter that in the slightest.
I sold my Duc last year because too many clueless drivers tried to take it out. Some like to blame this on texting and cell phone, but it seems mostly because people don't pay attention because they have a million other things to occupy their minds when they should be focused on driving. And these people don't see bikes.
Remind me to not be anywhere near you when you are riding hard enough to drag a knee at 120 and doing a stock transaction at the same time. Doing that is just as dangerous as the distracted mom in the minivan coming at your bike.
Electronic doodads are going to lead to the biggest change in our life in the last hundred years. GPS and cruise control will lead to the car knowing where it is and what is the speed limit and where there is and intersection. Therefore your car will not allow one to violate the law. There will be communication between every car within 300 feet of each other and traffic lights. If one is approaching a traffic light it will send the car the speed it will need to go to reach the light at the green condition. Cars will not allow lane changes unless it is safe and they will know when it is safe. Self driving vehicles will lead to a reduction of about a half in the need to drive. One will shop at home and everything will be delivered to them. This will lead to a reduction of at least 50% of the needed land for commercial enterprise. I can just see the local store with shelves 20 feet high because robots will collect the products and there will be no need for a parking lot since no one will shop there anymore. I do not see any reason why electronic doodads can not make driving an automobile just as safe as traveling by airplane
Entirely unrelated
I think you meant "entirely bullshit" cars are more reliable now then they ever have been.
Easy to work on? no.. but cars are more reliable, cleaner, safer, and faster than ever. A car that didn't need some kind of serious engine or transmission work before hitting 100,000 miles used to be the exception, now we get pissed off if we don't get this kind of reliability.
The second part is entirely untrue. If you grew up in the 70's and 80's you would remember that a car owner would feel lucky to get 100,000 miles out of a car. Now, if you don't get at least that many miles, you bought a lemon. Better manufacturing techniques are part of it, of course, but no small part of the increased reliability is computer controlled combustion.
God is imaginary
Why not focus on the technology under the hood and stop feeling compelled to add the latest buzzword to the dashboard?
Because excitement and emotion sell cars, not practical merit. Sure, fuel economy is a practical consideration. But really cars are sold on image.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
I've got an 05 car without anitlocks or traction control and an 08 car with both. Guess which one I drive in heavy winter weather? Just because the last fifty miles were cleared perfectly doesn't mean the 500 ft when I want to be able to stop aren't pure ice. I want all the "oh shit where did my dry road go" gizmos on my car I can get since I can't spot ice a few hundred feet ahead of me in the dark.
I have a 2006 car with anti-lock brakes, but no traction control. It's the perfect combination for me. Anti-lock brakes are great for threshold braking, and I don't have traction control getting in my way. If one learns proper skid control, traction control is really not necessary. I personally hate it because it takes power away from me just when I want it most. Besides, if you are actually on ice no amount of traction control will save you. There is no traction to control! People would be better off buying better tires than having electronic doodads.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
I dunno, they all seem to still get 'confused' a bit by my incessant yelling of "Asshole, get fuck out of my way you slow ass cocksucker..."
It keeps asking if I want to turn left or something....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Not sure where you live, but unless you live in one of the few cities, like NYC or Chicago, in the US, if you don't have a car, you can't get anywhere.
In most of the US, it isn't a nuisance or really even optional...it is a necessity of modern life.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
going to pay a monthly charge to get an overpriced data plan for my car!
I hope to God this never happens fully in my lifetime...I actually have FUN driving.
And, I only look at the speedometer when the radar detector comes on, or I see a cop nearby.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
I agree traction control is less useful but the main advantage for me is if one tire is on ice and one on dry pavement, the traction control prevents the slipping tire from using up all the power. I don't think I've ever found traction control all that valuable when I'm already moving. Plus that 08 is a tank and gets traction on anything...
I'm sure there will be a market for private roads where people can continue to drive manually for fun. Honestly, I don't want people having fun on the road I'm using to commute. I want them to be focused on operating their vehicles safely.
Make me a friend and I'll mod you up
there are more than a few wannabe Steve McQueens who won't feel complete unless they can stomp on a pedal connected to an internal-combustion engine, flick a physical dashboard knob to the radio station of their choice, and peel out their driveway in a cloud of burning rubber.
This is conflating unrelated things (internal combustion holdouts with "cloud connecteness" and other user interface aspects).
Electric drive is coming, like it or not, and it's a great thing. As for the other, there are good and bad ways to execute, and it's healthy to be wary of change.
Software UI (a la what Tesla is shipping on the model S) can be a great thing, and there are also plenty of ways to do it poorly. I don't want to have to re-learn the controls every time the manufacturer hires a new UI designer and pushes out a software update, for example.
Ditto for connectivity. There are amazing applications for vehicle connectivity, and many that have not yet been conceived, but there's also a bad potential for orphaned products (dangerously close to "planned obsolescence"). Instead of losing content when a game service goes poof, you could lose a big piece of your car's functionality at the whim of the automaker (or a partner third party).
Way back in '89 I ordered a car with only the options I wanted, and of course when it came in two months later, they hard-ball pitched an extended warranty. When the guy said "But if your digital dashboard fails, it'll cost you $1,300 !" it was nice to be able to respond "Yes, I specifically avoided that option". Aside from the dirty look he got for talking about the failures I was going to get with a new vehicle.
Again, I'm sure that once manual driving becomes illegal on public roads, folks will start opening more private roads and tracks where you can do whatever the heck you want.
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That is why I welcome this change. Yeah, I lose my ability to handle the car, but it keeps the people that shouldn't be driving from crashing their car into me. I will look forward to the day where I can take a nap on the way to work in my car.
Another thing that will annoy me the next time I buy a car is crap like putting an iPhone port in it. Great: my family uses Android. Even if we did use iPhone, you know the next version that Apple shits out will change the connector anyway.
Totally agree with that. I wish they would just stick a microusb port into the center of the dash with an adjustable cradle. I hate proprietary connectors.
You might wonder why bother, but if that is not working, you either have to have the wipers full-on, or off; there's no intermittent setting, which quickly becomes very annoying.
So, if you get rain sensors you lose the ability to have incremental adjustments to the wiper speed. One step forward and three steps back. I've also noticed on some cars you have no option to turn off the headlights either (not talking about daytime driving lights). I think I saw that in a Corolla I rented. It used to be polite when driving up to a manned gate to turn off your headlights, now with that there is no way to this.
Yeah, basically the rain sensor (BMW) overrides the intermittent timer, so although the controls are there for it, they don't actually do anything if the sensor hasn't enabled the wipers. Afterwards I found out that if the sensor's fuse is removed, then the intermittent hardware works again. Wish I'd known!
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
To me, whenever I get in the car to go anywhere I need to go...it is an adventure.
I'd not like to see my fun and adventure relegated to only the weekends in certain places.
Same with motorcycles...are we going to ban them from the open roads too?
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Actually, I was semi-serious, at least on the first part about blocking cell phones while in the car. Like you, I think cars have become too much and my list of features would be very similar to yours with two exceptions. I would allow electronic ignition instead of points and I would allow automatic transmission for those who simple can't/won't drive a stick.
I actually drive a stock 72 VW Beetle, daily, although I did replace the am radio with an am/fm/cd/mp3 and upgraded the brakes to front discs. There are a few days in August that I wish it had A/C, but otherwise, it's not too bad.
My 40 year old car that was actually designed about 80 years ago gets 27mpg around town and 34 on the highway (if I drive 65 and 32 if I drive 70). It is good, basic transportation to get from point a to b with a minimum of fuss. My wife has a 2002 Ford Focus that gets 26mpg city and 32 mpg highway, is definitely a smoother ride and definitely spends more time in the shop ($$$).
Do I think everybody should drive an old VW? No, of course not. My point being though is that most new cars today are extravagant luxury items based on what was considered standard transportation a generation or two ago.
Yeah...but that will make my drive to work a bore.
Too bad. My drive to work is boring already, automated driving would allow me to spend my time in the car productively rather than having to pay attention to the road the whole time. I don't understand your need to turn a commute into an adventure, I get in the car to go to the place where I will be having the adventure.
Same with motorcycles...are we going to ban them from the open roads too?
Yes. By the year 2100 people are going to shake their heads in disbelief at how reckless we were for operating our motor vehicles manually. And they'll look back in amusement at the first generation of automated vehicles which will still have manual controls, in the same way we look back at the first motor vehicles which had wooden horses attached to the front.
Recreational driving should be separated from regular commuters for the same reason that you separate skate parks from pedestrian traffic.
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Ahed of its time because when I get a self-driving car, the touch screen will no longer be dangerous.
You're right. Instead, in those days the way the car drives on a road occupied by other computerized cars, human-driven cars, animals, pedestrians will be the danger. Not to mention all those specialized and sometimes high-traffic areas, like parking lots and random long and curvy driveways out in the middle of the country...
In this case, I honestly don't know which is the greatest danger... the current roads full of people who can't drive anyway and are always distracted, or the roads of the future where your life is purely in the hands of software on wheels. They're both bad, but I can't see computerized auto-driving cars as being an improvement except in cases when it can prevent drunk driving accidents after someone leaves from a long night at the bar.
And, I only look at the speedometer when the radar detector comes on, or I see a cop nearby.
You do realize that by then, it's too late?
There are better ways to not get caught - 90% of it is watching what cars are doing ahead of you (which you should anyway, of course).
I live in West of Germany which of course can be significantly different from your experience. Still the motives and issues are similar everywhere only the pressure and ability to solve them may be different: price and convenience as well as public policy are main factors to me and If I can get where I want in comfy way without hassle of switching trains, buses and god knows what then I would go for it. What I said about trends is also a fact in metropolitan areas - in Europe or at least in Germany and some other Nordic countries people tend to live in such centers - it is often possible with little trouble to live without a car for daily needs even if you have kids. I understand this is not something you can do on your own - public transport must be available to make it possible but that is what I just stated - if t rend continue we may have an opportunity to have public transport service that suits the individual needs better that it ever could and I am pretty sure some of us will have the chance to use it too then. Again price and convenience but also public policy may change things drastically. You would not expect such changes to happen in countries where big parts of population consider public policy as evil and their cars as god given gift but I would hate my life if I had to rely on my car for everything - driving is work for me and I work enough already.
Goodness...I feel sad for you.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Here's an idea: THE PRIVACY CAR. Yes, a car with no GPS, no Internet connection, invisible to radar, a license plate that cannot be read by a camera, no RFID tags in the wheels or anywhere elase, and tinted windows.
What, for having different hobbies than you? You're the one who feels the compulsion to make your commute interesting, is that because you don't have anything particularly interesting to do on either side of it? That sounds a lot more sad to me.
I perform music. The rush of playing a packed house dwarfs anything that you could do even remotely safely on a public roadway. Sorry if I don't share the same emotional attachment for what I see as a tool for transporting myself and equipment between the things I do which are *actually* interesting.
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Just was sad that you don't enjoy what myself and many others enjoy.
I LOVE music too...play a little, but certainly not in front of an audience, I'm not shy about getting in front of a crowd (I would have loved to have been Jimmy Page back in the day)...but I just don't know that much.
Anyway...let's just agree to disagree on this one topic....we all get our rushes in many different ways, and hopefully in a number of different ways within the same individual!!
Hoping some day, I see you playing while on tour...
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
... and what would one do with one in a car?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"