Cars – Page 2 – The Burning Platform

The Car Biz Goes Full Clover

Guest Post by Eric Peters

Well, that didn’t take long.

The car companies have decided – on their own – to install automated braking in all the cars they make by the 2022 model year, just six years from now.

They have come to love Big Brother.

No, they have become Big Brother.

Anticipating a federal mandate, they have decided to pre-empt NHTSA – the federal bureaucracy that has somehow found authority in the Constitution to “keep us safe” (I’ve looked, could not find the clause) by making us pay for new, expensive technologies most of us neither need nor want.

Like automated braking.

It appeared a few years ago as a gewgaw in high-end cars – which nowadays justify their high prices mostly by touting electronic gewgaws such as this, because meaningful amenities such as power windows and locks, AC, cruise control and a great stereo are standard equipment in nearly every new car made, down to the humblest “economy” car.

Seemingly overnight, automated braking – which is typically marketed as “collision avoidance” technology – is almost everywhere, available optionally (which is ok) in probably 50 percent of current-year new cars.

But optional is never enough.

Everyone must have automated braking. Just as they must have six air bags, ABS, TCS, seatbelt buzzers, tire pressure monitors and back-up monitors.

NHTSA will make the official announcement this week.

The systems use radar or laser (which is always on, and makes radar detectors practically useless) to scan the area around the car for objects in the vehicle’s path. If the driver doesn’t step on the brakes when the computer thinks he ought to – which is typically a football field’s length away from the object – the computer steps in and applies the brakes for him.

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GLOBAL WARMING OR JUST PURE STUPIDITY?

About 15 cars sank into the water in Lake Geneva, Wis., about 50 miles southeast of Milwaukee, Saturday — a warm winter day where the main attraction was supposed to be the town’s Winterfest and the U.S. National Snow Sculpting Competition.

No one was injured, but 10 of the 15 cars are believed to be a total loss, according a Fox News television station in Milwaukee. The other five could be driven away.

Midwesterners sometimes park on frozen lakes, and according to one press report, motorists were being directed to park on Lake Geneva Saturday.

Cheap Gas… Big Problems

Guest Post by Eric Peters

Some happy news: Gas is officially cheaper than it’s ever been.

In my area – southwest Virginia – it is about $1.59 per gallon as of Feb. 7. Of this, about 60 cents (18.4 cents federal, 36 cents state) is taxes, so the actual gas costs about $1 right now. Back in 1967, the low water mark for cheap gas, it cost about 30 cents … in 1967 money.

That 30 cents – in 2016 money (inflation-adjusted) is $2.13. In other words, gas currently costs us about half what it cost back in ’67, almost 50 years ago.

It is the one necessity of life that – for now – costs less now than it used to.

But, it’s weird – like a 70 degree January afternoon up here in the hills of the Blue Ridge (we’ve had that, too).

Makes you wonder.

Is it a bad omen of not-so-happy things to come? Like the out-rushing tide, just before a tsunami arrives?

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Another Car We’re Not Allowed to Buy

Guest Post by Eric Peters

Would you be interested in a brand-new, fully warranted, five-door crossover SUV built by a major, name-brand automaker that gave you 50-plus MPG with a gas (not diesel or hybrid) engine, that has a top speed around 125 mph, is capable of getting to 60 in 12 seconds (about the same as a Prius hybrid) that stickered for less than $5,000?

Yeah, me too.

It’s called the Renault Kwid (see here) and it looks kinda-sorta like a Nissan Juke or Kia Soul and is about the same size as those units.

It isn’t a latter-day Yugo either.

The Kwid comes standard with AC, power windows and a digital dashboard, a seven-inch LCD display in the center stack and most of the apps you’d find in a new Soul or Juke.

It also has a modern, fuel-injected engine and a five-speed overdrive transmission.

The difference is the Kwid costs about a third what a new Juke or Soul would cost you to buy: Its base price is just $4,700 (not counting taxes and tags).

Too bad we can’t buy one.

Not because such a vehicle isn’t available.

It’s just not available here.

Neither are other such cars, like the Suzuki Alto 800 (53 MPG and a base price of $3,870; $5,755 loaded) and the Hyundai Eon (50 MPG and $4,856 to start; $6,636 loaded).

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Crippling Technology

Guest Post by Eric Peters

So much would be possible – if it weren’t for the government.

Government, remember, is not composed of experts in much of anything – except control and manipulation. Politicians and bureaucrats are not people who do things.

They force others to do things.

In the car world, you have the ridiculous spectacle of non-engineer mechanical imbeciles dictating functional parameters of engine design to people who actually do know how a four-stroke engine works, the meaning of stoichiometry; who understand that there is an inherent conflict between fuel economy and “safety.” That the more a car is designed to meet the first objective, the less it will meet the second.

And the reverse.

Result?

The engineers are told to deliver both in equal measure – and we end up with cars that are heavy and thirsty.

It’s a tragedy – a comic one, when you put it in context.

Here we are – almost 2016 – and the typical new car is about as economical to drive as the typical car of 1985. This is hard to believe, but you should believe it because it’s true. The typical car of the early-mid-1980s was averaging mid-high 20s – just like today. There were numerous models available that approached or even exceeded 40 MPG on the highway. A few (like the diesel-powered VW Rabbit) got into the 50s.

They did this without direct-injection or even port fuel-injection. Many still had carburetors. Eight and nine-speed transmissions (with the top three gears being overdrives) were unheard of. Most automatics of this era had four speeds. Some still had just three.

But the one thing the cars of that era did have was less weight – about 500-800 pounds less of it, on average, than comparable cars have today. And the sole and only reason for all this additional weight is the increased demand for “safety” eructing from the solons in Washington. Well, so we must presume. Because the people who actually buy the cars were never offered the free choice. It would be interesting to find out what they’d choose if they did have that choice.

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The War on Cars… Parked and Otherwise

Guest Post by Eric Peters

If you are a car person – or just want to be able to park your car in your own damned driveway – be sure you read the fine print before you buy a house in a neighborhood that has an HOA.

Or – worse – peculiar zoning ordinances.

But even if you do read them, it may not matter. Because the rules can change at any time – and when that happens, your choices boil down to obey – and pay.

Or, move.

For instance, this:

A local news affiliate in Cobb County, Georgia (see here) covered the saga of the Oviedo family, well-scrubbed and extremely middle-class. The family was targeted by local code enforcement bureaucrats (remember BTK?) for having “too many” cars parked in their own driveway.

How many is “too many”?

Four, as it turns out.

The county passed an “open space community” zoning ordinance after the Oviedo family bought their house. Faster than you can say ex post facto, it became an offense – punishable – for any homeowner to have more than two cars parked outside.

The idea being to “encourage” people to not own cars at all – by making it a hassle to own them.

It wasn’t that the cars were parked on the lawn.

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Great! Now you never really “own” your car either

GM thinks that because they hold a copyright to some software, that somehow gives them ownership over what you do with the copy you legally purchased with the car itself. Once that purchase is concluded, the vehicle owners should be seen to have given up any proprietary interest in the single vehicle you bought. But thanks to copyright and Section 1201, that’s an issue that faces “uncertainty.” And that’s a problem.

From the comments section; “The logical next step is to disallow the use of the car without a software-license from the manufacturer, rendering most cars unsellable on the second hand market without paying large sums to the car-maker. Further steps: yearly license payments to operate your vehicle & payments per designated allowed driver.”

Here’s the GM statement:

“Proponents incorrectly conflate ownership of a vehicle with ownership of the underlying computer software in a vehicle…. Although we currently consider ownership of vehicle software instead of wireless handset software, the law’s ambiguity similarly renders it impossible for Proponents to establish that vehicle owners own the software in their vehicles (or even own a copy of the software rather than have a license), particularly where the law has not changed. “

First, EMP can knock out your car. Now, this. When were computers first put in cars? Mid 1970’s? I wouldn’t be surprised if one day there isn’t a huge demand for pre-1975 vehicles. Really, who needs this shit?

GMES

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150421/23581430744/gm-says-that-while-you-may-own-your-car-it-owns-software-it-thanks-to-copyright.shtml