Teutone
Guest
Ah - the wonderful sport of 'extreme sarcasm' eh?
There is a 'happy medium' y'know. No-one is suggesting a return to vacuum wipers, or acetylene lights come to that.
But... 'rain sensitive wipers'? If your eyesight and brain isn't capable of registering that there is rain on the windscreen, and then turning on and adjusting the rate of your wipers, then should you really be driving anyway?
The point is that there is reliable, effective systems that are being over-complicated and compromising reliability and sustainability for a tiny 'gain' in user-friendliness.
People get led by the nose by the marketing to believe that they want and need this stuff. And when it goes wrong at the roadside? An automatic parking brake? Give me a break - how complex is the system and electric motors, with the weight and complexity (plus its connected to the computer and dash so I'm guessing the 'brain' can shut down the car if it fails?). I will never buy a car with such a handbrake system as long as there is a conventional cable-braked alternative available instead.
The potential bills for ancillary equipment such as handbrake, wipers, and other electronics that take away simple tasks from the driver mean that cars like my mate's uber-complicated VW Tiguan are likely to mean it'll be written-off as too costly to keep on the road a lot sooner than if it was less complex. This will suit the car-maker as folk will be forced to buy more cars, while we'll all have to spend a lot more wedge to stay mobile.
Any minor issue with a car can now have you ringing for the Breakdown Truck, instead of being able to get home - you can't make a judgement call - the car goes into 'Limp-mode' or something stupid, or just won't go. So you have to take it to the 'nearest' dealer and get our wallet out.
These cars are now filtering down to the people who can't afford new, warranted cars - and they are failing all over the place. The motor that preceded my mate's new VW Tiguan was a 2007 Ford Mondeo - which 'developed' a ECU fault so it'd drain the battery - over £1K for the ECU plus labour, which they could not be sure would fix the problem. The car was deemed worth £1700 at trade-in - with 43K miles on it.
Look out on the roads - a lot of the cars still doing well on the roads reliably are often smaller hatchbacks & the like - stuff around 2001-ish. Well-engineered, new enough to be good, economical enough, and old enough to have reasonably simple and reliable electricals, and cheap enough new not to be loaded with gadgets, which makes them reliable and affordable runabouts. I think there is the happy medium and the example of a good compromise right there.
My daughter runs a late- 1990's Nissan Micra. Its kept going while many of her friends 'better' newer cars have been off for repair bills that she simply couldn't afford. But these sorts of vehicles are being taken away steadily by 'progress'.
The modern car like a Golf weighs double what the first generation did - loaded with all kinds of crap that we don't actually need. Sure some of its useful (ABS) and some of it is nice to have and does make it 'nicer'. But its gone way beyond practicality, sustainability and sense into the realms of the ridiculous IMO.
I agree with all you say.
But I still like my rain sensitive wipers
It's not the "get going on it's own" what I like, it's the fact that they adjust to the actual amount of rain. So you don't have to fiddle with the intermittend setting all the time when the spray gets a bit more or less. Don't knock it before you tried it :cool1: Just don't forget to disable them before you enter a car wash.......
I was so disappointed when I saw the "new" beetle. Rather than making a car in the spirits of the real beetle, they just covered a Golf with a beetle body. It's even worse on mpg than the Golf!!