Not the grandkids

Good news if you ask me: [gearpatrol.com]

the cost of Boxsters has not gone up in the last 20 years if you adjust for inflation. The base prices are slightly lower and there are more options.

Be nice to drop the turbo 4 into the entry-level car and put the NA flat six back in the Boxster A boy can dream.

Just as likely as adding back a Flat 6 will be adding a Round 1

[www.autocar.co.uk]

Sign me up. Maybe even spring for the Mexico Blue. Just have to make sure my future Beach condo retirement home will have plug-in option.

I am just not interested in electric cars.
But it looks like all the companies are heading in that direction.

My grandkids will not understand what it was like to drive.

They might understand steering or piloting, but driving may be a thing of the past.

Generations before you would say the same thing about today's cars with ABS, traction control, stability control, ABD, air conditioning, power windows, automatic choke, automatic timing adjustment, yada yada. These are all devices that take something away and give you something else in return.

Other than stability control - which can usually be disabled in some respect, the rest of the innovations are clear improvements.

Even moldy figs would not object to them. They do not radically alter the experience. Changing to electric - driverless vehicles will though.

Electric cars are but the first step.

The Tesla's and even my volvo could probably operate without a driver on the highway already.

Driving will be a lost art/skill within 20 or so years. I am not happy about that.

I am also not happy about electric cars generally. It is a step toward making them appliances. While I appreciate that - for many - a car is already an appliance, it will never be that way for me.
Further, I submit many of the arguments in favor of electrics do not withstand scrutiny. At best, we are exchanging one problem for another. How are we generating all the extra electricity? How are we going to dispose spent or damaged batteries? Where are we getting/mining/creating the materials to build the batteries?

I appreciate the technology is in its infancy - but some of the explanations are infantile.

I have driven hundreds of miles with a Toyota keeping the speed, watching for cars on the Interstate, and slowing to maintain my distance all while keeping me in the lane. That part is easy. But I am still responsible and only have a few seconds of hands off the steering wheel before it is nagging me to pay attention and at least have a finger resting on the wheel. So that part is there today. Come upon a stretch that has just been paved and has no lines and you better in charge. Or an unexpected speed limit change. Or a cop car pulled over on the shoulder where you either slow or move lanes and again you better be the one to initiate action. Somehow I don't see a computer doing that until the cop car is linked to a data base that the car's software interacts with. Even then, I've seen some squirrely things happen in my years of driving I somehow doubt the software has been tested against.

I guess I'm old school enough I don't really want or expect any more. I enjoy driving.

by a large margin. And they're still getting better by leaps and bounds. Just saying.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/01/2020 08:04PM by Boxsterra. (view changes)

I suspect that is true in many, but not all, situations. I am not sure that equates to "better" in all senses.

To be clear, I am for safety, but there is a line somewhere. I remember having to replace child seats because of a regulation based on - "if is save one child then it is worth it." The seats we swapped out were one of the most advanced when new. When replaced, they were probably better than 90% on the market. But they were older than the PD recommended. So out they went. Where the new seats "better"? I could see no difference in any respect. Same model - just newer. I still think it was a waste of money. But I spent it because I would never want to find out that there WAS an undetectable improvement that would have made a difference.

In most circumstances autonomous cars are safer. Does it have to be safer in every circumstance for you to consider it acceptable?

"acceptable" or not is in the eye of the beholder.

Sure.

Here was a pretty savvy man. Engineer at Google. He had previously complained about the Auto Pilot feature of his Tesla before. Despite this knowledge, he relied on it in this exact same situation (something, that I think, people quickly tend to do because of the "convenience" ). It cost him his life.
[www.cnbc.com]

I prefer to do my own thinking and decision making. I'm not ready to let a computer decide my future.

The investigation found that this man was playing a video game on his phone while using a partially-autonomous vehicle feature that requires the driver to be watching the road.

So I see this as another case of driver error causing a crash.

I have to disagree. The driver did nothing to cause the accident. That was the fault of the software / sensors / AI logic which accelerated and steered the car into the barrier. Yes it's only partially-autonomous, but I don't see how it can ever be fully, successfully autonomous. Maybe under ideal conditions. But I just don't see that sensors are ever going to be able to deal with snow covered roads, snowfall, partially covered / damaged signs, improvised warning markers and countless other unusual things a vehicle can encounter.

The only thing the driver was guilty of was trusting the software / sensors / AI which he already suspected was defective in some way since he had complained about the vehicle's behaviour at that location before and had even taken it in to be checked out by Tesla.

So it comes down to us being responsible for ourselves.

The driver was completely inattentive with a system that is not designed to take over for the driver's eyes and ears. If you say that the partially-autonomous vehicle should always do the right thing then I would suggest that contradicts both the stated capabilities of the system and the meaning of the prefix "partially-". The car puts up a big warning screen that says that you must be paying attention to the road when it is in operation. The driver accepted the warning and then proceeded to ignore it.

The way that fully-autonomous vehicles are possible is through billions of miles of data. It doesn't make decisions solely based on reading signs and neither do humans. The technology is well on its way. During the same time a small handful of people have been hurt with semi-autonomous Teslas, hundreds of thousands of people have died in non-autonomous cars.

I do not profess to be and I do not want to extend the debate.

But by way of one singular example....

On my way home from work there is an extended slope. The roadway is slightly elevated, but not a bridge or similar. The roadbed is just higher than the surrounding area.
For no particular reason I can discern, the roadway can become absurdly slippery in winter months. This on days when all other roads are perfectly fine. No precipitation - nothing.

Because I drive that road every single day, I know to use judgment and be very cautious in the winter. Even then, I have lost control slightly (rear tires on my E90 have spun or slid a little bit) depending where it occurred, i have decided to turn around and take another route.

There is nothing one could visually see on the road. You just need to know to be careful. How would an AI car know that? How could the car exercise judgment?

Electric cars have two game-changing advantages over gas-powered cars when it comes to traction. They can both detect and react to slippage extremely quickly (at least thousands of times a second). When the computer has individual control of each wheel and this level of granularity of control, at sane speeds the car can compensate for virtually anything that happens in a way that would be impossible for a human or even a computer-controlled ICE.

In your example, I highly doubt that the car would have any trouble handling the conditions. Where the AI comes it is that just like you, it could remember the conditions (in this location it was cold and slippery) for the next time.

Some years ago I was acquainted with an airline pilot.
He used to complain about the differences between Airbus jets and Boeing jets. His concern focused on the amount of computer control Airbus insisted upon vs. the ability to manually control a Boeing if one needed to. (There was more than that, but I do not recall exactly).

Fast forward to the 737 MAX controversy. That entire fleet is grounded because the computers were overruling the pilots and the pilots could not disengage the computer - or at least not fast enough. (Again, there are a bunch of other issues and yes, I am over simplifying.) By saying that, neither I nor my acquaintance objected to autopilot as a concept. But we can rely on tech to a fault.

I submit that if we start to assume the computer can think of everything and all things - we do so at our peril. That is not to say computers have no place. That is not to say humans are infallible - far from it. But I do not want to be fighting with my car while driving.

To be clear - I have a 2018 XC90. It has all kinds of "driver aides." I have disabled most of them and defeated others. I was quite literally afraid to drive the vehicle before I figured out how to eliminate the "aids." I tremble to think how a much more intrusive system will be.

I welcome the idea that one could put their vehicle on the interstate (or other limited access hwy) and let the car take you to your exit while you do something else. Other than that, I will look elsewhere or I will look to defeat the so called "aids."

The software for the 737 Max -- and hence the decision to disable the possibility of human intervention -- was written by humans. No computer decided it knew better than humans.

The idea with autonomous driving is not that it is infallible, just that it is much less likely to fail than humans. When the driver behind you beeps at you at the very same instant a child runs out into the street in front of you, the computer is prepared and you're not.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/09/2020 01:42PM by Boxsterra. (view changes)

Whether it be faulty snesors or faulty code - or whatever - the computer effectively overuled the pilots. We started the conversation when I said that in most cases, electric and autonomous cars are better - but not all. I stand by that view.


[abcnews.go.com]

One of the aides I did not disable was the front end collision sensor.
I has annoyingly triggered the brakes, but it does seem to legitimately help.

I might fell differently if'n i gets me rear ended. But for the sudden stop in front or the dart out kid .... I agree.

Quote
JMstamford,ct
I am also not happy about electric cars generally. It is a step toward making them appliances. While I appreciate that - for many - a car is already an appliance, it will never be that way for me.

cars have been going that way for a long, long time. when was the last time that most people pulled out a dipstick under the hood to check the level of dinosaur juice in the engine? change a tire? replace brake pads, spark plugs?

the vast majority of people just want an appliance to take them safely and comfortably from A to B. the sooner self-driving cars do that for us, the better for most people. driving isn't fun like it used to be. teens today aren't even interested in getting a license. call uber instead, human driver or not, doesn't matter! they can be on facebook/twitter/instagram/et al instead of driving.

--
MY 2000 S, Ocean Blue, Metropol Blue, Savanah Beige.
Bought June 2000 - Sold May 2010

when was the last time that most people pulled out a dipstick under the hood to check the level of dinosaur juice in the engine? Sunday - on the Tribeca. ( I have two cars without dipsticks - it drives me nuts - along with a bunch of the other electronics in the car.) We also changed a light bulb.

change a tire? About 3 mos ago -swapped snows on. If you count plugging a nail hole, then last month. The latter on the Volvo SC90 - I am pretty sure it does not even have a spare but not sure. (I know the E90 doesn't).

replace brake pads ? Two weeks ago. It took me longer to figure out how to reset to service light than to change the pads. (The pad change would have been even shorter if I did not have to remove the fender liner to replace the wear sensor. BTW - I approve of wear sensors.)

spark plugs? Last Spring, also swapped out all the coils.

Most of this work on my E90, a car that is fine. But drives me nuts as often as not. For instance, i have a piece of electrical tape on the mirror to defeat the unwanted autodimming mirrors. I want to see what needs to be seen. The windows are already tinted so there is no glare. With the autodimming, I do not see things and my side view. I uderstand the function can be coded out, but the dealer refused to do it, and I am not into trial and error that can brick the car.

I also cleaned the MAF in the Boxster two weeks ago because it was throwing codes again. First time in several years.

I despise the idea that owners will not be able to do this work on a go forward basis.

the only problem with your reasoning is that you and i are not representative of the "most people" that i referred to. what percentage of the population would clean a MAF let alone know what a MAF is and know where to find it? i doubt that 1-in-1000 would know. 1-in-10,000? maybe not even.

the times they are a changin'

--
MY 2000 S, Ocean Blue, Metropol Blue, Savanah Beige.
Bought June 2000 - Sold May 2010

They're already on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram/etc. while they're driving. At least with autonomous cars they won't be endangering everyone around them.

Autonomous cars are coming.

And for commuting on freeways, I generally support the idea. It will maximize the number of cars on the hwy and maintain the speed that can be maintained.
Ultimately, the freeways will be like trains and cars will move very efficiently.

Off freeways, I am not sure how long it will be until truly autonomous cars take over. We might be teleporting by then.

I agree. It's all old fogy stuff. Even the silly, slow, inefficient electric cars will go the way of the dinosaurs.

I can't wait for the ultimate transportation system. Teletranspotation. Beam me up Scotty. Now that's the way to go if you really want to get your mojo going. Do away with charging stations, wait times, doing up seatbelts.

Even at home, a teletransporter would take up a lot less space than a garage.

I give you the future.

Me? I'll continue to enjoy the act of driving.