…and makes things more expensive while offering very little in practical benefits.
I saw a demonstration of gesture technology allowing people to open their car doors without touching the handle. While I understand this technology might have practical applications for those with disabilities, for most of us it’s just something that adds to the cost of a vehicle, it’s another thing that can break, and if I’m right next to the car anyway, what use is it really?
Can anyone else thing of technological advances, or new applications of existing technology, that are kind of cool, but cost more than its worth?
If the “gesture” is “stand near the car w the key in your pocket” thats huge.
It’s been a decade or more that trunks and hatchbacks open automatically when you wave your foot under the bumper.
A godsend for Mom’s w one arm full of kids, or anyone w arms full of crap to offload into the back of the car.
Adding the “wave you foot” sensor to the side doors seems pretty trivial.
I totally do not get this Luddite “one more thing to break” whine. 1950s cars had crap w MTBFs of a couple years, tops. Modern cars? If it’s purely electronic it’ll be working when the rusted hulk is crushed 30 years after it was built.
I didn’t really consider my OP to be a Luddite whine as I wasn’t complaining about technology in general, instead directing my complaint at a technology I thought was likely to be costly and yielding very little in practical benefit in return. At least as applied to the automobile. You’re absolutely right that today’s automobiles are much better than they were in the 1950s. I’ve gotten more than 100,000 miles without any major problems with my Toyota whereas you expected to have major problems when you reached 30,000 on many automobiles in the 1950s. Although I’d argue most cars looked more stylish at the time. I sometimes walk by my car in the parking lot because it looks like every other car to me. Early onset dementia perhaps.
If you listen to radio (remember radio?), especially on a cross country trip where you are unfamiliar with the stations, the remote is a great way to scan for stations without having to look at the radio or reach for the knob (remember knobs?). Especially if you are in traffic and don’t need the distraction. Just place your thumb on the remote and push away until you find a station you like. It doesn’t sound like much, but it is really useful for that.
I hate any kind of electronics on appliances. I’ve heard too many horror stories of electronics going bad on clothes washers and dryers, for example.
We have a Maytag washer and dryer that were made in the 1990s. Electro-mechanical controls. The washer has never had a problem, and I’ve only had to make minor repairs to the dryer.
I also wonder if using all these computer/database systems for doing management & admin tasks at work has actually made us less efficient. Stuff like timesheets, travel, purchase requests, etc. Here is a thread about it.
My both my car and pickup radio already have a push button for that that is easily accessible to the driver and will not get lost under a seat or some other random place in the vehicle. If traffic is that clogged up that performing that function would be “distracting” then I usually turn the radio off to give my full attention to what’s going on.
Or not. My car is starting to do weird things and (yeah, I’m not an automotive technician, but I do understand technical stuff) the only connection I can see between the cruise control, the ABS and the air conditioner quitting simultaneously would be the computer. And when my last washer quit working, the repair guy told me flat out that the computer had fizzled. Electronics aren’t infallible or unfailable. It’s an imperfect world…
I’ll see your taillight and raise you 8 months in the shop, chasing electric gremlins, shooting parts cannon of BCM, Gauge-cluster, radio/touch screen module, ECU, various, connectors, sensors, and a wiring loom. Along with pinning out the connectors for the BCM and ECU. Only to find that the inside of the connector to the can-bus and the ECM is corroded and has arcing damage. Because the door drains in the rear doors were not working correctly. when it rains they filled up with water and then drained out slowly. The door mounted impact sensors were submerged at times and the water in the door wicked up the wiring loom and somehow got up to the back side of the connector to the ECM and causing corrosion and arcing… it took Ford Dealer in Austin about 8 months to figure out what happened and to get fixed… ( this started in mid October of 19, and ended in June of 20. I imagine that the covid pandemic was partially responsible for the time spent in the shop, but not totally.) Thank God for the warranty… but on the bright side I got a new loaner car every 3000 miles.
And no I don’t have this car anymore… because I kid you not, it happened again exactly a year later… and it was the same thing… it only took them a about two weeks to fix it this time around. When I picked up the car, I immediately drove it across the parking lot to the used car sales office at the same dealership and sold it to them. I have a Honda now. And the problem car was a 2016 Ford Taurus Limited, 3.5 V6.
Wait until everything is controlled by neurolinks and you have to have the implant in your brain if you want to interface with anything at all. If I should live so long, I’ll retire to a reservation for primitives before I do that.
I had a Ford c-max with mysterious electrical problems. Most of them were fixed between a major software upgrade and a mechanic tightening some electrical connections, but we sold it early (for us) because we just didn’t trust it.
The two weirdest stories:
i parked it normally, in a row of cars in someone’s long circular driveway. When u returned, i couldn’t get the car to shift into “reverse”. After repeatedly turning it off and on, it eventually worked. But it took me about 20 minutes.
it died on a suburban road, and we called Ford emergency service. (Covered by the warranty.) The mechanic showed up after a while, and said, “can you open the rear door?” I replied, “no.” He looked annoyed, and said, “that’s where the battery is, i can’t fix it without opening the door”. I said, “I’m sure that’s true, but there’s no way to open that door mechanically, and the car is dead. I can’t open it.” Eventually, he jumped the little battery, and that was enough to open the rear door, and then he did something to get it running again.
I’ve also had some Hondas that has basically no issues ever, that were driven ~200k miles. But electronics can certainly fail in difficult-to-diagnose & fix ways.
Wow, I have that same brand of washer/dryer. I know well the feel of the settings, when I flip those dials etc. We had a newer washer/dryer, but they are already kaput. We had kept these older ones and are using them again! The broken washer/dryer with their bigger loads, window viewing, and computer wing dings sit in a corner, useless. We were told they would be expensive to repair, just buy new! But we went back to the old!
The only advantage was that the newer models used less water.
As I get older and crankier, I’ve become convinced that we’ve entered the age of what I call “Consumer Serfdom”: you can’t buy what you want anymore, you can only buy what the powers that be care to sell you, however enshittified. Demand is no longer consumer choice-driven.
My husband’s Civic is a 2008. He refuses to replace the radio but that’s the only part that doesn’t work.
I’m driving a 2016 CRV, but it has a computer in it, so I’m a bit concerned about planned obsolescence.
I can be an extravagant person at times, but not with cars. Cars move from point A to point B. All that I ask is that they keep running.
The most trouble I’ve ever had with a Honda is the sensor lights are finicky. Sometimes they turn on when they shouldn’t turn on. But it’s usually just the tire pressure gauge, not anything serious.
Generally anything with a computer in it will not last as long. Appliances don’t last anymore either. It’s all designed to fail.
Everyone: I’m in the market for a long lasting toaster oven so hit me up if you have a recommendation. My current one didn’t make it three years (Ninja. Second Ninja product to fail on me.)
