Posted on 06/14/2020 10:17:22 AM PDT by DUMBGRUNT
Variable Gear Ratio steering:
https://www.autozine.org/technical_school/traction/Steering_2.html
Infiniti produced an actual steer by wire system for a year or two?
I traded by older care that had dial controls for heating/cooling. They were easy to find and use. Minimum time with eyes off the road. My new car has touch screen controls. Now I must look to make sure I hit the right places to change the temp or fan. Eyes must come off the road. I like the old knobs better.
Nissan introduced it in 2012 but a clutch would engage the mechanical linkage in a Failure of the electronic system.
My parents bought a 1966 Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser, white with luggage rack, and took nine of us on a grand tour from coast to coast. The Vista Dome was great to have among the giant redwoods and canyon streets of the big cities. Almost 20 years later I bought my Father-in-Law's very low mileage 1972 Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser. He had only used it to tow his camping trailer to the mountains once a year. That was a true land yacht.
“I traded by older care that had dial controls for heating/cooling. They were easy to find and use.”
Mine has automatic temp/fan control. Convenient buttons with red/blue labels but rarely need to use. Big Button for MAX centrally located.
“nine of us “
Close family?
Quick, Volkswagen! Hire some Indians before quarter-end and tell the CEO all that ugly computer stuff is solved...cheap! /s
I remember those. I had a ‘66 Pontiac for a while, too.
I rent cars often when traveling for work and vacation so I've driven a lot of different makes. I find them intuitive enough to drive without having to stress out too much about where a particular control is located. I recently purchased a 2020 Outback with all the bells and whistles and the center display looks like somebody just stuck an extra large iPad in there and you have to swipe for this and swipe for that. The car in general probably has more electronics than the Space Shuttle. Even the parking brake is electronic. But that doesn't concern me much and I haven't had to consult my owner's manual once.
Funny story about the owner's manuals, which these days are about six inches thick and won't easily fit in your glove compartment. I sold my 2014 Nissan Murano with 140,000 miles on it and the new owner asked if I still had the manuals. I rummaged around for them and realized that there was an upper shelf in the glove compartment that held them. I pulled them out and there they were in pristine condition, with the business card of my 2014 Nissan salesperson neatly tucked into the little plastic insert. I had literally never touched the things in six years of ownership.
Basically when I have a question about my car, I just do a web search and the answer comes right up along with links to YouTube videos and such.
You are entitled to your opinion but battery technology advances, even though they are way overhyped, are advancing steadily and will surpass the distance gasoline offers. Perhaps the future will be not be batteries but fuel cells. Whichever way technology advances to provide electricity power to cars the internal combustion engine is going to be put aside for electric dive trains. Electric drive trains are much simpler, controllable, powerful, durable, and adaptable to many driving needs from cruising, off-road, and racing.
The Stone Age did not end because they ran out of stones.
Because the interface is delivered by screens controlled by software what is displayed can be simplified to suit anyone’s tastes and mental abilities. Totally customizable and I am sure cars of the future will offer a ‘Jitterbug’ option without “all those confusing buttons and features.”
Yep, the i3 is so gay...
The i8, on the other hand, gets in the $200k range. 0-60 around 4 sec.
Not because the "green" movement wants it - just the natural progression of technology. I think a lot of Freepers are hostile towards electric cars because they associate them with Bernie Sanders and Al Gore, etc.
I'm thinking my new Outback will perhaps be the last all-gas car I ever own.
It cuts the other way too.
Great contributors may not be able to teach and lead. Good leaders might not be able to do the same work.
That is the problem. Few can do both.
Problem is energy efficiency. As a whole, battery vehicles are pretty horrible on efficiency from source energy. Gas is better.
Then there is the fact that there are not enough rare earth metals to build the batteries, or electrical infrastructure to charge them (that takes a large 3 phase transformer for starters).
Not saying it can’t be done, but the engineering problems are pretty big. A better path would be nat gas or hydrogen.
Where does the energy needed to mine the material for the batteries come from?
Right now?
Rice.
As in child labor for a portion of it.
The bottom line, though, is that with everything being electronically controlled, software engineering in a car has become very important.
________________
The real question is WHY?
The internet was no great shakes either. In the early days of Free Republic, you would get hollered at for linking images. People at home were still using 9600 or 14.4k baud rate modems and it would take a few minutes to fully raster a simple JPEG.
So think of battery vehicles in that context. They are still in their "early 1990s" mode, but great advances are on the horizon.
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