Technology. when is enough?

[Parky]

LIKE - ABS, electric windows, central locking, DAB radio, hydraulic power steering, servo brakes, disc brakes, CVT gearboxes

 

HATE - electric power steering, electronic handbrakes, stop start systems, traction control, auto lights and wipers, flappy paddles, DMF's and DPF's

 

Wife's Fiat 500 stop start system packed up after a month and the dealer can't work out why. Was quite pleased!!

[brickwall]

I'd like paint that stays on and decent cup holders.

 

The other stuff leccy stuff is mostly gimicky.

[daverapid]

I know what you mean about unnecessary high tech stuff. My Skoda Estelle has self cancelling indicators and wipers that park themselves when switched off. It's way over the top and although both those radically high tech luxury features still work at 32 years old I can't say for sure they will for another 32 years.

[Dick Cheeseburger]

My fiancées mkiv Folg was terminally twatted by some half blind old girder last summer. The insurance company agreed to lend her a car for a month; initially they threatened to lend her a Honda Jizz, but she argued it would be too small for our strapping gurt greyhound, and that the loaner would need to be Golf sized or larger. Cue Vx Insignia estate arriving. Lovely to drive, massive load capacity, build quality comparable to Veedub, no rot in the rear arches or sills (Vauxhall have changed!), banging stereo and almost silent cabin when cruising.

Negatives?

 

Bloody stop start - what's all that about? Buggers up the starter motor and battery long term, I'd imagine, and a right pain in the arse having to remember to switch it off every time you get it in the car.

 

Electronic handbrake - just, why? I like the idea of pulling up a handle and pressing the button on the end to release the damn thing. I don't trust a button, a wire, some sensors and little motors to do the job properly, each time, every time.

 

Two clear cut examples of technology when it really isn't needed.

[Pillock]

I'm growing to like stop-start, but then I don't have to pay for the repairs to all the bits that are under more stress. It does seem to lead to better economy though, and it's nice to not have an engine wobbling away in a traffic jam.

It was better in the Peugeot I had because it had electric PAS, so the engine didn't kick in if you were rolling downhill til about 15mph. In the Astra, it happens at about 2mph because the steering is so bloody heavy you'd go off-road on the slightest curve.

 

My VW Beetle had stop-start too, it used to cut out every time you came to a halt so you just waited until the traffic moved to restart the engine.

[HH-R]

I don't mind start/stop, might not be so keen if it was my car that was having its starter and battery hammered though. If it's anything like my work van then it won't work most of the time, too short journeys and it likes a tip top battery.

[Squire_Dawson]

The technology will not stop until all autonomous actions and decisions have been removed from the individual. The aim of all authority and big business is to control the populace and take their money, all the while insinuating small changes, trumping them variously as 'improvements', 'beneficial' and, most laughably, 'progress'. A case in point is the switching off of FM radio for good in the next year or two.

 

Parking sensors are only necessary these days because cars have very poor outward visibility. Common sense is something of a misnomer, given that very few people possess it. Living in the cretinocracy which we do, one must always be alert.

[motormatt]

I'd take the opposite view - technology encourages people to be mongs. For example, people thes dayz kant fukin spel. Spell checkers & autocorrect make people lazy.

 

The current Fiesta is available with front and rear parking sensors, and a camera! If you can't park a Fiesta without electronic help, you shouldn't be driving.

 

my thoughts exactly, if you can't park a car the size of a Fiesta then you shouldn't be driving in the first place.

[ERBS]

Think i will stick to my pug 205

 

no abs.no power steering...........no telling me i should wear a seat belt or change gear

 

on the missuses car it tells me when its  -1 in the winter

 

i know its in the minus coz all the water on the car if fecking frozen

 

Don't need a weather man to know when the wind blows n shit

 

Modern cars just tell how you should drive with all the traction n crap

 

Let me decide please!!!!!

[fred]

Love to see a self park car 20 years on, fiddled and fucked about with by several DIY Dereks

 

sold on to a innocent who presses self park, and the fucking thing decides to do the Fox trot  in the middle of the road

[Split_Pin]

Electro -hydraulic power steering makes a massively annoying whine. Its a simpering sort of sound, which I imagine is what the person who dreamt it up speaks like.

[garethj]

Technology is responding to what new car customers (the obnoxious bastards) want.  No manufacturer makes a car based on what us tight-arsed buyers want when it's 15 years old, so to stay in business they've got to offer stuff that punters will pay for.

 

Parking sensors because actually parking a car is quite difficult these days with tiny windows and massive head rests in the way,

 

Adaptive cruise control because there's so much traffic on the road there's no way you can maintain a constant speed.  I agree that it makes drivers less likely to pay attention but there's already emergency brake features anyway.

 

Self driving cars?  Bring it on!  Most new cars feel like you're driving under anaesthetic anyway and sitting on the motorway is dull.  If a car can drive me so I don't have to look at the morons cutting me up 0.00004 inches before the motorway exit, all the better.  I enjoy driving a good car when the roads are clear, but how often does that happen near crowded towns?  It's like people building cars to lap the Nurburgring when actually 99% of driving is done over massive pot holes and speed humps.  If there was a self driving car with the ride comfort of a BX I'd buy one tomorrow.

 

If we temporarily switch off the part of our brains that says how much it'll cost to fix in 15 years then most of these features aren't so bad.  Let's be honest, bad drivers who don't pay attention have been around since the Horsey Horseless.

[forddeliveryboy]

 

 

People can't even be trusted to drive at a sensible speed or use their brakes properly. Perfectly demonstrated by an enormous 4 car pile up at a minor junction on my way to work last week. If the car can do it for them - then I say bring it on.

 

This "don't trust the man in the street" idea is very popular with governments. They relentlessly try to take power away from the indiviudal, then every now and again there's a revolution when those in positions of power are done away with. Followed by power slowly being sucked back as those in power forget what reality is. But I can see the sense in fully-automated pods for adolescents.

 

Given the pressures of life, the overcrowding of urban England and its roads and so on, that there's not an 'accident' every mile or two is quite astounding. It's possibly because the finest super-computer available is installed in every car out there. The more responsibility you remove from it, the more bored it gets and more likely it is to go to sleep/malfunction.

 

Driving is usually the most dangerous activity most people do so it's amazing how little education there is to qualify. Flying is no more difficult (often much easier), yet there are nine written theory examinations and at least 45 hours' flying training needed for a licence.

[Luckythirteen]

Cheers Eddy and Gordon. It's not as mad a plan as it might sound, I've got a head start in a couple of respects! And I'll never have a cheaper loan than a student loan...

 

Accident yesterday down near Perth, cars spinning off on standing water apparently. Now with all the electronics on (probably) some of them, you'd think that shouldn't happen. Nobody told the laws of physics however...

 

And why drive through supermarket parking spaces in all kinds of unlikely ways, when you've got devices watching all corners of the car?

[forddeliveryboy]

I think technology should have stopped at the automatic choke.

 

Yes, just before it. Which isn't to say that (mechanical) fuel injection isn't fine, too. Autochokes were the thing of the devil when accompanied with Bader-matic and waiting to pull out at a T-junction on a winter's morning.

 

Parking spaces should grow wider to make room for bulging wastelines - cars and humans'.

[carlo]

I do tend to get seduced by new cars all too often, looking at brochures and visiting swanky showrooms and the like.  However every time I drive a new car I discover how much I despise them, and this thread only makes me realise why.  As a poster mentioned earlier, it's being in control of a car which gives enjoyment, and the car some character.  If the day ever came where I was not allowed to drive my 405 for whatever reason, I think I too would give up.

[New POD]

Electro -hydraulic power steering makes a massively annoying whine. Its a simpering sort of sound, which I imagine is what the person who dreamt it up speaks like.

 

 

Whilst working (from 1989 to 1994) in a Corporate Improvment Leg of Lucas Industries, in a DESIGN for Manufacture department, one of my colleagues, was body shopped to Lucas Car Braking's Research Centre at Fen End (now part of JLR ? Prodrive owned the test track for a little while), in order to help them with this novel Electric Power Steering. I think he was called Wayne. He spent a lot of time doing QFD1 with them, and trying to understand the market, but it wasn't top priority for any Lucas Business, which really needed a customer to be asking for a solution, and according to Ford, and Rover, they were trying to fit a solution to a problem that didn't exist. Small cars were cheap, didn't need power steering, and they couldn't see the point.  At that point I lost touch with it, but interesting that TRW automotive got that bit of Lucas industries when it was chopped up and 25 years on it's a major seller, and is essential for technologies like self park. 

 

That simpering sound ? Yes our Generation 1 Mini does that. They had mucho reliability issues with it I understand. Lucky that recon units are available now.

[New POD]

 

 

Parking spaces should grow wider to make room for bulging wastelines - cars and humans'.

 

COSTCO !!!!!

[mat_the_cat]

When I was after a modern hack I was after something as simple as possible. No electric windows, no touch switches which you can't feel whether are on or off, needed AC for the dog but with a simple on/off switch. I managed to find a car which was all that; unfortunately I fell at the final hurdle and bought a Renault with the DCi engine...

 

That said, I think the 1.5 has a better reputation than its bigger brother, and no problems so far in a year/10k miles!

[Uncle Jimmy]

Sufficient.

[fred]

No not of most of these things, my 2000 Forester has heated seats, something which makes you feel you have shit yourself, but in a nice warm anal way, Im cutting edge - but 15 years behind