Category: Cars, including self-driving

The idea of indirect monitoring of tire pressure with sensors already on the car, e.g., wheel speed from the ABS system (just look to see if wheels are spinning at different speeds and/or look at GPS distance traveled versus wheel rotations), seems to be unpopular. In trying to clean up our 2007 Infiniti M35x so that the hulk could be sold (rather than moved to the Florida Free State where one gets no points for being a frugal Yankee driving an old car into the ground), it turned out that the slow leak in one tire was actually being caused by the TPMS sensor itself. Also, the shop said that the systems in older cars usually accumulated programming mistakes that led to the display being inaccurate regarding which tire was at what pressure. An indirect system wouldn’t be subject to these human errors.

A good example of how a system that is great in theory is weak in practice? Direct TPMS is presumably engineered to work well for the three-year standard new car warranty. But the service life of a car is closer to 20 years (average age of a car on a U.S. road right now is 12.1 years).

Would it have been smarter if we’d insisted on indirect sensing that couldn’t be a new source of leaks?

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In prep for our move to the Florida Free State, we stopped at Home Depot in Waltham, Maskachusetts to pick up some packing supplies and a trash barrel (out of stock, of course, like everything else in the U.S. economy).

Here’s a rare situation in which the owner of a Ferrari 458 Italia would have to be envious regarding our Honda minivan:

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(And what do they sell at Home Depot that would fit into a Ferrari?)

Readers: What do you think about the yellow brake calipers? Has this trend run its course, so to speak? Why can’t wheels be wheels, including everything that is part of the wheels? Why do they have to be part of the body?

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Our recent trip through the charred American economic landscape involved three rental cars and five Uber/Lyft rides. Nobody in Detroit wants to work, apparently, so it was tough to get rides. We ended up having to pay over $100 for a 20-minute trip in a “luxury SUV” because nobody was available at 5 pm in any of the other options. One out of five Uber/Lyft drivers wore a mask correctly and consistently.

Our National Ford Fusion in Cleveland smelled like it had been owned and driven for all of its previous 50,000 miles by a chain smoker. Hertz in Niagara Falls didn’t deliver the car to the airport as promised (“we don’t have enough staff”), but then “upgraded” us to a BMW X3. The ride was harsh, the electronics were confusing, and the kids gave the prestige SUV a thumbs down. As an example of how bad the user interface on the car is, here’s the key fob. Unlock is an unlock symbol. To lock the car, press the BMW logo:

Note that they still had to put a subtle lock symbol next to the logo, as a guide for the bewildered. That the interface had to be patched like this did not prompt any second thoughts!

In Oshkosh (Appleton, actually, since we wimped out on the KOSH VFR arrival), Enterprise gave us a new BMW 530i, offering some dual instruction on how to change gears “because nobody can ever figure it out.” I was prepared to love this expensive machine, but the suspension interacted horribly with slight waves in the Interstate 41 pavement. The BMW bucked for every highway mile and let us feel every pothole. Maybe it was the suspension configuration? We found a “Comfort setting” next to the gear selector, which didn’t seem to help, but led to a fun exchange with the kids. “Put in on Comfort” they shouted when we entered the highway. “I don’t have any comfort!” said the 7-year-old after a minute or two. Thumbs down on this one too!

Maybe the answer is that BMWs offer race car-like performance and therefore we shouldn’t expect the suspension to be compliant? The 530i didn’t seem to corner especially well or handle nimbly. The thing weighs as much as our Honda Odyssey minivan and seemed to have almost as much body roll in corners, a poor showing considering that it is 2X the price and 1/2 the interior volume.

Can someone explain why BMWs are good?

Bonus: Niagara Falls…

Related:

• Car and Driver on the 5-series (a mediocre rating)
• Car and Driver on the top-of-the-line 3-series (beaten by an Alfa Romeo sedan)
• Department of Minimal Inflation: The $70,000 Tesla S is now $91,000+.
• Department of Automotive Karenhood: “New York Auto Show Officially Canceled for 2021” (“The show had been rescheduled to August but is now off due to the COVID-19 Delta variant and increasingly stringent restrictions in New York City.”)

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“Comparison Test: 2021 Ford Mustang Mach-E vs. 2020 Tesla Model Y” (Car and Driver) has Ford crushing Tesla in every area except straight-line acceleration (useful in a country of 330+ million people using a road network designed for 150 million?) and charging network (#BidenWillFixByTaxingTheRich). The Ford Mach-E is built better, has a better user interface, offers more comfortable seats, is cheaper, and is quieter. The Ford accelerates 0-60 mph in 4.9 seconds, which should be more than fast enough for street driving.

A comment on the C&D article:

I can’t get over how bad Tesla interiors are. Take away the giant tablet in the middle and it’s completely empty inside. A $60k car with the interior quality of a Mitsubishi. The Mach E is cheaper and has better quality. If Ford is killing you in the quality department you have issues.

Loyal readers will recall my obsession with Dog Mode, going back to 2003 (see Car/Kennel). The legacy car companies seem to be refusing to add these 10 lines of code, perhaps because they don’t want to be held responsible if the feature is used improperly and a dog is baked to death? I wonder if therefore this will become Tesla’s only long-term competitive advantage vs. Ford, VW, Hyundai/Kia, Toyota, Honda, et al.

Also from Car and Driver: “Every Electric Vehicle That’s Expected in the Next Five Years”. It seems that there isn’t much interest in building the Toyota Camry of electric cars, i.e., a car that doesn’t purport to drive itself, that doesn’t accelerate faster than a C5 Corvette, that doesn’t have a huge touchscreen stuck in the middle of the dashboard, and that therefore doesn’t cost more than necessary.

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Every time there is an interaction between an American subject and an American police officer or officers there is a chance that the police will shoot and kill or cripple the subject. In addition to the loss of life, other subjects may lose tens of millions of dollars per incident when the city has to pay civil damages to the survivors of the person who was killed.

Our beloved 2021 Honda Odyssey (“like a Tesla, but spacious, quiet, and smooth over bumps; lacks Dog Mode”), at least when a phone is plugged in (haven’t checked, but maybe it is getting it from Google Maps?), displays the current speed limit. The engine is controlled electronically. If I mash down the accelerator, it could certainly say “I’m afraid I can’t do that Dave” and accelerate only to, e.g., 55 mph. If nobody can speed, nobody can be pulled over for speeding. This wouldn’t eliminate potentially deadly interactions between the police and the general public, but it certainly would reduce them.

Maybe have a single exception: passing another car that is going more than 10 mph slower than the speed limit on a two-lane road. The Odyssey already has all of the hardware and 99 percent of the software necessary to detect this situation (the adaptive cruise control has a radar to see how fast cars in front are going and the lane-departure and lane-keeping systems (the latter adds some steering inputs) use a camera to see if you’re staying in your lane.

Readers: Stupid or Clever?

Related:

• Save lives by limiting cars to 35 mph? (if we look at what we’ve done out of coronapanic, it is irrational not to eliminate most driving-related deaths, which kill far younger people (more life-years lost) and which are far easier to prevent)

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Only 10 percent of the USPS’s new delivery vehicles will be election (Green Car Reports):

U.S. Postmaster General Louis DeJoy confirmed to lawmakers Wednesday that electric versions of the trucks will make up only 10% of the next-generation fleet and claimed that a fully electric contract would have cost up to $4 billion more for the whole contract.

They won’t even be delivered until 2023. Given the generally short routes, slow speeds, and guaranteed overnight idle time for recharging, how is it possible that electric can’t be more cost-effective than gasoline-powered?

See also “Oshkosh’s NGDV Mail Van Looks Incredibly Dorky for a Reason” (Automobile):

If electric isn’t the smart choice for USPS local delivery, how could it ever be the smart choice for a family that wants to take some evening/nighttime trips, some intercity trips, etc.?

Loosely related:

• a comment on a Tesla article: Every time I ask a Tesla owner to list the tech that makes some kind of difference they can’t come up with anything meaningful. What is it? Dog mode? Cheetah mode? Flush-mount door handles? A big tablet stuck to the dash looking like a high school shop project?

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