Most useles piece of technology ever?

[Mercury Bullet]

I believe the starter motor is also specifically built for start/stop.

More $$$ if it goes bang.

[.:4:.]

What about automatic reverse parallel park? Last time I checked it's not that hard, but now it's allowed in the p plate test. What happens when you borrow mums Benz for the test, then jump back into your VN berlina and try to park... useless technology. I call them eyes. I have had the stresses and successes of reverse parallel parking a 7m boat trailer (5.8m boat) before and mirrors work fine, I doubt there are enough sensors in the world to make a VF commodore do that

[Junkyard-Dog]

Anyone that needs a computer to park their car for them should not have a drivers license. People can argue that it's just a handy little gizmo to take the stress out of driving and that they don't use it all the time but I know for a fact that there are plenty out there who would be using it every single time... and ultimately this comes at the expense of their driving skills and experience. Use it or lose it I say.

[.:4:.]

Originally Posted by Junkyard-Dog

Anyone that needs a computer to park their car for them should not have a drivers license. People can argue that it's just a handy little gizmo to take the stress out of driving and that they don't use it all the time but I know for a fact that there are plenty out there who would be using it every single time... and ultimately this comes at the expense of their driving skills and experience. Use it or lose it I say.

How does it work insurance wise? My mums b200 (I refuse to even drive it as she bought the first car sold to her when looking for a wagon for space when trading a dinosaur but large ml320) has it and she now can't live without it. She had a few at fault claims backing the ml into things, but what if a sensor fails. What's the claim... the car did it?. Mirrors, eyes and a turned neck. Not that hard.

[DBourne]

Originally Posted by Sox

Yerp, plus the extra wear on starter motors.

Stop/start is just a gimmick and will likely go away in time.

I thought the same as you, re: starter motors, but I read up on how it works and actually it doesn't put any stress on the starter motor.

Keeps 1 of the cylinders at just past TDC, then fires that one first when going to move away again and that kicks the engine to life.

Actually quite smart once I read about it..

Granted it would still annoy the hell out of me, but still.

[Madaya]

When I was in Germany, I was at a laundromat which was adjacent to a railway crossing on a busy road. A train would approach, the boom gates come down, the traffic stops and just about every driver shut down their engine for the minute or so it took for the crossing to be open again.
Is this normal for some driving cultures?

[castellan]

Originally Posted by XB GS 351 Coupe

Reclining bucket seats in a ute is another one that comes to mind

So you think no adjustment would be better, I can't stand sitting forward close to the wheel.

I can't believe some people who think because it's a ute it has to be backwards crap to fit in with there concept of what a ute must be, a ruff riding ill handling bucked of trash. but when I inform them that a ute can handle and ride just as well as a sedan they don't believe it.

[Olbucko]

The electric hand brake! why complicate such a simple device. You can't use it as an emergency brake any more because you can no longer control how hard it is applied.
(No more bootlegger's turns!)

[mcflux]

I'm a fan of stop-start. At least, in my limited experience driving a couple of manuals in Europe.

Over there several countries have a traffic light logic where instead of an instantaneous Red->Green change, there's a 1 second blip of the Yellow. This seemed to work seamlessly with auto stop-start, whether I was at the front of the lights or in the middle of the queue.

I guess over here with the instant Red->Green it'd cause a few horns to blare.

[Brazen]

Originally Posted by .:4:.

What about automatic reverse parallel park? Last time I checked it's not that hard, but now it's allowed in the p plate test. What happens when you borrow mums Benz for the test, then jump back into your VN berlina and try to park... useless technology. I call them eyes. I have had the stresses and successes of reverse parallel parking a 7m boat trailer (5.8m boat) before and mirrors work fine, I doubt there are enough sensors in the world to make a VF commodore do that

I believe the new Ford F series Superduty has trailer part assist. That can back in a trailer.

I have very rarely thought of any new tech has been useless, all have a use in some way.

[Ben73]

Wonder how the trailer park assist knows where the back of the trailer is or where you want it to go.

[.:4:.]

Originally Posted by Ben73

Wonder how the trailer park assist knows where the back of the trailer is or where you want it to go.

Its probably a 5k option to get the trailer fitted. Are reverse sensor waterproof for use on a boat trailer?

[Crazy Dazz]

Hydrogen Fuel Cells.
Right, so we take electricity and use that to electrolyse water into Hydrogen and Oxygen, wasting half the power in the process.
Then we use this expensive, inefficient, and dangerous technology to convert the Hydrogen BACK into Electricity.
And this gives us LESS range than the battery technology it was meant to replace. Brilliant.

Even better when you want to implement it in a country that generates the majority of power from fossil fuels.

Actually consider the redundancy, inefficiency, and waste, I can understand why politicians and bureaucrats love it.

[.:4:.]

Originally Posted by Crazy Dazz

Hydrogen Fuel Cells.
Right, so we take electricity and use that to electrolyse water into Hydrogen and Oxygen, wasting half the power in the process.
Then we use this expensive, inefficient, and dangerous technology to convert the Hydrogen BACK into Electricity.
And this gives us LESS range than the battery technology it was meant to replace. Brilliant.

Even better when you want to implement it in a country that generates the majority of power from fossil fuels.

Actually consider the redundancy, inefficiency, and waste, I can understand why politicians and bureaucrats love it.

How do you sit on wind turbines on still days? Or even better, solar power on cloudy days?. As a sparky, we have to have a solid backup, hydro works, but you need to dam a lot of rivers, so untill they either run out of fuel for the power stations, or find a better heat source then nucleur ( no good) then we just have to live with it.

[duaned]

Falcon's steering wheel controls. Useless at night because you can't see them. One of the very few vehicles on this planet that doesn't have them illuminated.

[Spurious]

"computer"!!!

[.:4:.]

Originally Posted by Spurious

"computer"!!!

It doesn't matter how "smart" computers get, they still do what the user tells them to, to an extent. User error is still a big problem with today's society

[roddy1960]

G'day , Remember in the mid to late 1990's one or two car manufacturers (Mazda was one) introduced four wheel steer cars..what a revelation that was.....I also recall the head of BMW being interviewed on that subject a year or two on from a couple of competitors trying FWS. and Bimmer wasn't .His answer.."..Why would we want to when our cars handle as good as they do " prophetic words because look where that finished..Kind of sums up the modern car industry actually..How often does the gizmo list of a car take precedence over how the car actually goes , economy etc...more often than many might think..Of car innovation that do make safety sense and I'm sure Falcon/Territory would have brought in eventually would have been Lane Departure warning and blind spot monitoring..but ....geez... frustratingly annoying one has to be parking assist..
Bloody hell...if you need the car to park for you maybe you shouldn't have passed a driving test yet...Technology is good and bad , especially in automotive regard..

[Mercury Bullet]

It will be funny once kids who are brought up with these automatic reverse parking gizmos sit a truck test where you have to reverse park a semi.

In two minutes if my recollection is correct.