Most liked posts in thread: In-car electronics to become as valuable as horsepower?

I will buy a new MINI in 2025, and I will name it "HAL 9000". I will take it to the track and attempt to turn off the DSC, at which point HAL will immediately deploy the airbag and kill me.

 

A self driving Google coupe will be the car of choice by 2020. People will realize they have no more time to drive, because they have to make sure they post a few more 'likes' on facebook before they get to work.

On the upside - excuses like "sorry officer, but I think I caught some sort of malware at a rogue gas station's wireless that took over my ECU. I wasn't really in control when you saw my car run the red light" will be common. And when self-driving cars really neuter the driver's role, the term "blue screen of death" will take on a whole new meaning...

I work in technology and see things moving more and more towards "geared for dumb users" as being more important than advancing the human race through excellence. Dumbing **** down to make it usable for complete morons is the next phase of the electronic revolution of our lives, and it won't be pretty. We are all assumed to be idiots until proven otherwise. Systems like seat belt chimes or air bag warning lights that annoy us right now are not even the tip of the iceberg. Over time we will make sure our gene pool will be unable to cleanse itself by making our world completely safe for those who traditionally would have thinned themselves from the herd.

What everyone is missing is that life gets really boring without risk. I drove a Toyota Tundra Crewmax battle tank for a few years to protect my kids from the forces of stupid around me, but in spite of being the safest place in traffic, it pretty much ate my automotive soul with its blandness and living room-esque driving experience. DVD screens in the back, GPS, backup cameras to prevent you from killing your neighbor's dumb poodle, idiot lights for almost anything you can imagine. I had to break free. I bought a Mini (and towed it home with the Tundra..., yeah, I know... but it is for sale now to buy another Mini ;-))

Like this **** on facebook. Vote up this thread of the day, post your review of the product you just bought on Amazon, rate this seller, feel important because some robotic corporate retail engine wants your valued input. It gives you some placebo recognition in the faceless crowd, just for a moment, but it can be addictive if you truly are a loser and live in your mom's basement. You want more of that crap in your car? Must get peer recognition or your empty life has been wasted on lonely twisty roads using your primal reflexes to thrash a machine that makes noise and smells, but has no touch screens? OK, so there could be worse things than that.

Went shopping in the Mini last night, saw a great low sun and rising moon on the other end of the sky. My 4 mile trip to the store became a 40 mile run, only slowed down by the smell of a possibly slipping super charger belt. No electronics in the car were needed to diagnose that it's time to order some more maintenance parts for my Mini, and I won't be rating any vendors or posting any box opening videos on youtube. Life is too short for social media and gimmicks in my car. Too bad the majority of the car buying public is more interested in fads than what really matters in the real world around them.

Audi will sell a lot of cars in the future, but none to me. I almost bought one of their V8 S4Avants a few weeks ago, but then used the interwebs to learn that the engines in those things are freaking time bombs with timing chains shoved under the firewall. A $8k maintenance job when the lifetime tensioner lets go around 130k miles. Maybe they should spend more time on building better machines rather than impress me with a wifi hotspot in the trunk or whatever they may be thinking of for 2020. Perhaps they have better demographic numbers - there must be a lot of dimwits who can afford a $60k sedan that has a lackluster engine but sports desirable top flight internet connectivity, than potential buyers who have enough gray cells in their skulls to judge a car's value by what its purpose is...

Trust me, those Audi engineers are not really thinking of adding electronic suspension and ride height controls to their entry level cars. The electronics they are talking about are self-parking, self driving, self everything so you, the operator, are free to take some selfies on the Dragon.

I better lay off the caffeine

and here's what Audi must have been watching: https://vimeo.com/79695097

 

I'm a gadget guy and a technophile, but honestly beyond the ability to play music from my phone and use its GPS, I don't care about any of the gizmos in the car.

Give me an Aux-In, a mounting place, and a power source. Beyond that I just want the basics; speedo, tach, fuel, and the ability to install any other gauges I feel like.

 

Phones.

 

Yeah, I remember several years back when Honda first brought out the CRZ. I had owned a CRX that I really loved and with enthusiasm ran to the dealership to try out the new CRZ thinking it would take me back 'to the good old days'. What a let down! I miss the days when you bought a car and your choice of options consisted of a radio, white walls or full hub caps.

 

The 'good old days' for me were air-cooled VW's. NO COMPUTERS!! I could tune it myself, I could fix it on the side of the road. I traveled far and wide. That's why they were the good old days...I was young enough to enjoy the busted knuckles, dirt in the eyes, and laying on my back.

Not so much anymore at my age...

 

I was serious about the 'vette, my wife actually was pushing me toward it. It is a beautiful car, and the looks got me hooked...You're right, it wasn't just one person's decision, it came down to a number of things--I've spent so much time in the MINI world, it was not easy to give it up. But the truth is, it's not what I enjoy on the track at the end of the day. I'm Calvin, I want to piss people off passing them in my little MINI. I wouldn't have nearly the fun doing it in anything else short of a Lotus.

I took a LONG look at Lotus's, and I would have seriously considered buying yours (I followed the Lotus forums too), I seriously thought about an Exige S240. But, they're not exactly easy to work on, not sure what part availability will be in the U.S. with Lotus's outlook seemingly changing on a daily basis--they don't fit on my lift without serious modification, and there's no one around here I trust to fix it if there's an issue. Still, it was the closest I came to selling the MINI. The driving experience is the only one that I can honestly say is more enjoyable to me than the MINI.

Caterham, and Porsche, never really considered. Had the Alfa 4 C Spyder been coming out this year, I might have gone for that, but it looks like at least 18 months, probably longer. And they're already having tranny issues with those.

I'll never argue the "nannies" aren't faster, they certainly are, they do things the average person simply cannot do--and I agree with you wholeheartedly--if you want to crush the stopwatch easily, and in comfort, a 'vette is hard to beat. But that's not what floats my boat. Just my personal preference, I recognize I'm in the minority.

 

Ding ding ding....
We have a winner. :yesnod:

 

If a thread hasn't had it's identity changed by page two, we haven't tried hard enough.

 

Must remember not to let sky net become self aware.

 

Yep, all that new tech, that'll be easy to modify....Cheap I'm sure too.

 

I agree with that, but let's break that down:

Powertrain, suspension, brakes. All mechanical. All fantastic. On paper looks great. Too much for the average human to drive without help.

Torqu Vectoring: Electrical Nanny, what the thread is all about. The part that prevents you from doing something stupid. What disconnects the driver from the said superior mechanical parts.

The GT-R is a great car, as is the new 'vette. I was seriously tempted to buy a new Corvette, until I talked to someone who told me it's insanely easy to turn fast laps in, the car prevents you from going over the limits, to the point that lap after lap it gets boring after awhile. That's great if you want to drive a car fast with minimum fuss and bother, it'll make virtually any driver look good, but it's not what I want. I want it as much as possible on my shoulders--the good laps are mine, and the bad laps, I have to own those too.

These cars have gotten so powerful, you need the nannies to control them. I'd rather have a less powerful car that I've got full control of, for better or worse.

 

Trouble is all the of the (non-driving telematics) are incorporated in peoples driving making their driving a lower caliber. Maybe a nanny that shuts that carp off when the car is moving?

 

Studies done back when ABS and DSC were options showed that the "nannies" in the car the less people paid attention to driving. They figured the computer would save them.

 

I am getting to old to buy any of these new cars.........

 

It's funny how everybody wants all the software and tech stuff but everyone hates the Nissan GTR for being the King of tech.

With all that tech dome right anything can be made fast even a Big Brick from Japan.

 

The GT-R is a brilliant machine. "All that tech" is better said as "fantastic powertrain, excellent suspension kinematics, brilliant torque vectoring, and great brakes". On the macro it's not any more complicated than that.

 

I see what you're saying. I just have a problem with the dismissive condescension e.g. "nanny". McLaren threw a hissy fit in 1993 Formula 1 when Williams had active suspension, because it was within the rules, yet was way quicker around the track. The cars were quicker regardless of the driver.

If the point is the cars aren't as "pure" because they're quicker regardless of the driver, then of course that's a genuine point, albeit a hopeless ideal that's totally deaf to the stopwatch.

There was an advertisement Bosch put in print years ago advertising for ABS. It had a picture of 4 brake pedals, and the by line was something to the effect of "if you can use all 4 at once, then you're just as good as our ABS system". That extends to CBC and EBD. We only have two feet and most of use can't competently use 3 pedals at once. Hell there are tons of YouTube videos of grey-hairs getting even one pedal all wrong (mistaking brake for throttle).

Somehow I doubt you were ever that serious about the new Corvette. One person's opinion driving your purchase decision? Not likely. Now, just admitting that you're not ready for the mandatory embroidered jacket? That's understandable. Surely if you're serious about what you just wrote, you'd have an Elise or Caterham or air-cooled 911. Those aren't easy to drive and you earn every bit of pace. For those that want to do an HPDE and simply crush the stopwatch without giving up a shred of luxurious air conditioned comfort, none of those are good options, however a new Z06 Stingray or GT-R are excellent options.

So, dare we say, different strokes for different folks? I'm not sure if the "nannies" are anything more than bench-racing ideals for people to complain about, as how they're actually implemented is going to be market-specific and have nothing to do with ideals apart from making money.

 

^^^ Yes this is how I see things in my little part of the world. :yesnod:

To this I'll add, if all those nanny's are so great why do folks still crash their cars?