Dacia?
A friend of mine has just turned up to show me his new Volvo. Now, he has run his own transport breakdown business for 40 years and is a very good mechanic but the new stuff in his new car foxes him.
He and his wife have worked out how to start it, use indicators etc but all the computerised stuff, well ?? His daughter is having to work out all the techie stuff for them.
I worked in I.T for 30 years and knew pretty much most things but even after being retired for 7 years am getting lost with new stuff.
So, as we are all heading that way ( getting older) and cars are becoming more techie will any car maker and spot the hole in the market and make cars for old people.
Dacia?
Started out with nothing. Still have most of it left.
Any Honda but mainly the Jazz.
These ^.
A few manufacturers like Dacia are still doing it the old way. But touch screens are now actually cheaper to produce than physical plastic and metal buttons with electric wires attached, so they are becoming ubiquitous and the often needless functions can be added for peanuts. So expect more and more of the same.
Started out with nothing. Still have most of it left.
A very sensible point. The average car "system" is a conlomeration of "things that it can do" with little thought for use case scenarios. Info tainment is seen by most of the maufacturers that I have worked with as an add on.
Some cars you have to go down several menu layers to change the temperature/radio station /displays etc and you are supposed to do this as you are driving. BMW idrive is the best that I have come across and Lexus is ......well..... lamentable. Like anything there is a period of acclimatisation but if you are driving three or four vehicles like I am I tend to "set then forget".
It is amusing to watch my wife and her friends. They either don't touch anything and just drive it as it is and when stopped by police they then say " go on then; you show me how to do it" or they start pressing buttons randomly which is great fun to watch. :-)
B
Last edited by Brian; 19th June 2021 at 13:51.
Tbh I thought the 'magic' seats in the Jazz referred to a comfy commode
Get a Land Rover 300Tdi or TD5 with a galvanized chassis. Keep it serviced and it'll last as long as diesel is for sale (or chip fat is available or pretty much anything else along those lines you can give it).
Admittedly it might not be the most comfortable vehicle for advancing years!
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I have a new Volvo with a lot of options I thought it was very complicated but when I started there are a couple of menus to go through and most things eg safety systems you just switch them on or off a couple of things I couldn’t fathom had you tube vids on them but I am a relatively young 52
My friends and family think I'm crazy because I argue that I am doing more for our planet by not changing my car. Hence I drive a 20 year old, normally aspirated, petrol car with no driver aids whatsoever, no screens apart from a windscreen. The car I need for my old age is the same I needed in mid-life. It is cared for, serviced regularly and could outlive me. My boys are already fighting over who will get it when I'm gone.
(I should probably 'fess up that it is a 5l V8, but I didn't say I was growing old gracefully!)
Ultimately, my cars, like my shoes, suits, music, whisky (and women, sorry, woman) don't need replacing.
Car manufacturers don't need to cater for me - that ship has sailed!
I've owned almost 40 new cars in my life. When I was 25 or 30, I was looking for all the latest gee-gaws: stereo sound, eight-track tape player, A/C, alloy wheels, 5-speed, etc.
Now, 45-50 years later, I'm not mentally (technologically) astute enough to learn, or even appreciate, all the fancy driver assistance and entertainment features loaded into even entry level cars. I want the "performance" capabilities, like twin turbos, dual clutch automatics, etc., but these are mostly "passive" not "active" attributes.
So...how do I enable/disable the hill hold brake???
Up until the pandemic I used to change my cars every 6 months via short term lease. I'm mid 40s and reasonably tech savy but I agree that the tech in cars is getting fairly complicated and less obvious how to do what. I also agree that touch screens are positively dangerous. A few years ago, the main prestige brands were still using navigation wheels at the centre console such as BMW iDrive but these seem to be being phased out.
The last car I had was an Audi and it was touch screen only. There were controls on the steering wheel but not all of the functions could be controlled that way so occasionally you had to physically touch the centre screen for what you wanted. It's impossible to do this without taking your eyes off the road for considerably longer than you would using a navigation wheel. There is a voice control option but that became a frustrating comedy. Maybe it was my accent😄
20 yrs ago you could tell the specification level of a car by the number of blank switches. I remember having a BMW 3 series entry level, that had more blanks than switches!
By removing switches and adding multiple touch screens extras and improved features can be added by a mouse click. This facility could even be controlled and finalised at the dealers prior to handover.
This results in lower manufacturing costs for the OE as all cars are std, functionality is hard wired in, BUT switched off , and paves the way for pay per feature! Predictive cruise sir £300, Apple car play £220 , lane assist £££ etc
They already do it’s called an MX5
My last Audi had pilot assist, adaptive cruise control and all that gubbins. Very impressive when it works. One day the telephone, sat nav and all the driver assistance stopped working. Turned out to be a nationwide problem with audi's online data. The car contains a sim card that is constantly fed data from audi to keep it online. When the data flow stopped I lost all the functions. Ended up going to Audi for a reset.
Tesla, and no doubt others, will do this direct to your car via its 4G connection - no need to go to the dealer. Even performance upgrades.
Car Play is a step forward in terms of safety IMHO. Because the voice recognition actually works, navigation and calls are genuinely hands free. As the rest of my car is 20 years old it is reassuringly tactile and low tech and will stay that way :).
Amazing timing with that comment! My mother has just moved in for a short time and has a problem with her year old Honda Jazz, the tyre pressure monitor says there’s possibly a leak so I just spent half an hour working out how to recalibrate it to check if there really is an issue. I’ve never had a Japanese car, the last few have been either VW or Volvo and I have to say I found the menus and settings on the Honda by far the least intuitive - in fact I finally found how to do it by searching the manual for hazard lights as the tyres and tyre pressures section made no mention of the pressure sensors. I then had a look at the audio, sat nav etc and compared to my Vw Tiguan (which has a fully digital dash etc) it’s a confusing mess. The VW’s in the family all have a clear dedicated button for the tyre pressure monitor whereas this Honda has it buried in a menu. I’m surprised and unimpressed tbh!
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Last edited by RobDad; 20th June 2021 at 16:32.
A ha!
I make this same argument for my well cared for 2005 Impreza.
Ok - 25mpg is not great, but what is the carbon footprint of a new car?
I also love it as it has almost zero tech.
The boot opens with a key, and a proper lock and wire mechanism. So do the doors.
There is a tape deck, and elec windows.
And a turbo.
That is all.
Terrible for your 70yr old spine, maybe, but you would look awesome.
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When it comes to the technology and user interfaces in modern cars, the easy way is to drive it for a week and then get shown what it all does, that way you will have relevant questions, getting shown when you pick up the car is useless.
My previous car was doing my head in. Alarms going off, applying the brakes for me, overriding me, doing stupid things. I didn’t feel like I was in control of the car. I felt like the car was driving me rather than the other way around.
Solved by buying a 2015 Land Rover Defender. Such a pleasure to drive.
My 82 year old dad took delivery of his brand new Volvo XC40 on Monday. He had loads of questions for the salesman. I had to leave half way through the handover but dad said whilst the salesman was really helpful he wasn't able to provide a hard copy of the owners manual. It's all online now and locked behind a portal so I need to set him up a Volvo ID to access it. Poor bugger just wants to have a proper book in front of him and even that is being denied him :-(
I'm pretty sure anyone can learn to use tech and age shouldn't be a barrier. I think it's a lack of interest in it that means people write it off before trying that makes people claim they can't use it. I've seen plenty of old school needle-and-dial pilots in their 60s happily navigate through a flight management computer CDU with no issue and they are some of the least intuitive bits of kit going...just takes some effort to learn sometimes.
Last edited by Christian; 24th June 2021 at 19:12.
2008 - 2010 I was involved with encouraging a few hundred over 50s to get online. A lot of them had been made redundant after working 30+ years in a local quarry - the biggest obstacle was overcoming their fears. Most of those guys hadn't excelled at school and left education at the earliest opportunity to enter manual labour, so just the mention of training being in the public library would occasion an onset of cold sweats. That said, the vast majority were able to surf the internet after 4 sessions - I think I gained more satisfaction from their achievements as whenever I asked them how they 'felt' after learning how to use the computer I was always met with a dismissive incredulity for asking the question ( bearing in mind it took me 2-3 months to persuade these guys to attend the sessions).
Last edited by Suds; 24th June 2021 at 19:47.
Mine has a feature where the headlights stay on for 30 seconds after switching off. I don't want this and despite reading the manual, I still can't even find the part of the settings mentu to turn it off.
Eddie
Whole chunks of my life come under the heading "it seemed like a good idea at the time".
https://www.ownerinfo.jaguar.com/doc.../proc/G1853098
'Headlight courtesy delay operates whenever the lighting control is in the AUTO position and the ignition is switched off. The headlights remain illuminated for up to 4 minutes. Press the smart key's headlight button to switch the courtesy lights off.'
I suspect that the time-delay can be altered from the 'Vehicle Settings' area of the 'Instrument Panel Menu'. Perhaps a radical solution: you could turn off the 'Auto' lights function on the stalk...
Good luck!
______
Jim.
I have a ford tourneo minivan.
The navigation system really sucks and lags, making me miss all turns.
I slapped it and now the touch function is not working, rendering it basically useless.
Fortunately there are buttons for the radio control.
We get along much better now.
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