I recently rented a 2012 Chevy Tahoe, here it is.
So, for those old enough to remember it, this was previously
known as the K-5 blazer. Chevy produced
the K-5 (the king of off road vehicles) from 1969 until 1994, when they changed
the name to Tahoe in the 1995 model year.
Anyway, that is not the point of this blog.
We left for Tampa while it was still dark and at some point I
accidently hit a button that turned on the rear wiper. It was dark and I did not want to stop to
figure out where the button was so it flapped back and forth for a bit over an
hour and half until the sun came up and I could see where to turn the thing off
at. We stopped along the way to get a cold
drink and use the restroom. I took this opportunity
to familiarize myself a bit with all the knobs, buttons, levers and other electronic
interface devices in this magnificently complicated vehicle.
Now as I said, I drive a 1958 ford Ranchero, fondly referred
to as “Jalopy”. I have on my dash 6
knobs, two of which open air vents to the outside. One is for the lights, one for the wipers and
one for the heater, yep one knob controls the heat and fan. If we count the input device, non-electronic
of course, there are a grand total of one, it turns on the left turn signal
when I push it down and the right turn signal when I push it up. Now I do have a couple of buttons on my radio
because some jack-wagon chopped up the dash to install a new style radio, the idiot,
and I have not been able to find a replacement dash so I live with it. All of these are within reach from the driver’s
seat. Also there are also no nested
menus on anything and especially with 9 deep directories within those menus. Seems with those 7 knobs and one input device
I can make my life work, it all makes sense to me. I did not have to read a manual to learn what
the knob labeled “lights” meant, it was pretty self-explanatory and easily understood
by anyone with a pre-kindergarten pre-school education.
So with this Tahoe, I was just blown away with the technology
that was jammed into this thing. I was
so impressed that this morning before I took it back I sat there, surrounded by
more electronic gadgetry than was in use in the freaking space shuttle. I decided to do a little exploring while I sat
here, counting knobs, buttons and other interfaces and menu directories. This will AMAZE you, or at least it amazed
me!! Within easy reach of the driver’s seat
there are 90 buttons, some of which perform multiple tasks. 90 BUTTONS, what the hell!!! That does include
the six way switch that controlled the position of the seat. I forgot that ONE in my Jalopy. It is a knob with a mechanical linkage to a
mechanism that manipulates a series of pegs that allow the drive to move the
seat closer to the dash. 90 BUTTONS, what in the world is going on? There are 23 alone that control the radio,
and best I could tell most of those are multifunction buttons that do many
things dependent on the mode one might have the radio operating in. CRAZY!! There are also four functions alone for the
rear wiper.
Don’t get me wrong, I am a gadget head and not fearful of
technology. As a matter of fact I have
made my living implementing and maintaining the latest technologies but come on
– do we really need that level of sophistication within easy reach of the driver’s
seat? I shit you not that there are 12 different
modes that can be changed using the turn signal lever, and that is NOT
including actually using the directional to tell folks which way you might want
to turn. I am surprised that we do not
have some little gadget that is monitoring your eyes and then turns the signals
on based on where the driver might be looking.
I wonder when they tell me that I should not text while driving, hell
there are more than enough distractions on the dash of this modern marvel to
kill you 1000 different ways.
Now up to this point I have only been talking about the physical
knobs and buttons, I now want to talk for a minute about the menus. Now just keep in mind that 5 of those
previously mentioned 90 buttons are dedicated to driving and manipulating the
electronic menu system. I found that I could
follow my fuel usage, average as well as in real time. It also keeps track of and displays the transmission
temperature. Now I have been a motor head
all my life and can’t for the life of me why a driver would need that
information available on the dash board.
When I started the car, the temp was 72, the temperature outside. By the time I had reached the rental place,
it had risen to 140 degrees. Not sure
what that meant or why I would need to know it.
Funny thing though, when the fellow went out to check the mileage, he could
not figure out how to get the menu back to indicated the mileage.
So as I played in this menu hell I realized, one had better
plan on reading the owner’s manual on how to operate and understand the meaning
of all the different information that can be provided to the driver. I am not kidding it was crazy, maybe everyone
else already knows this but for one who drives an old car, I had no idea. I actually found out how much life that the
oil had left, it was at 16%, what that means, who knows. 16% of 3000 miles, or is there some super
cool gadget that is actually monitoring the molecular structure of the oil and
providing the user direct feedback? 16%
of the 3000 miles is the standard I have been using for my entire adult life,
that means there are 480 miles left until that oil literally turns to water and
stops being an effective lubricant. Bullshit
I say!!
I also noticed that I could find out the tire pressure in
each of the tires, included the spare. As
I am a curious one I looked into how that works. Seems they install a wireless device inside
the rim, that little marvel monitors the pressure with a standard transducer
type device, nothing new there. Then it
sends RF signals to a receiver inside that car that has been assigned tire
monitoring duty. No new technology there,
only taking already proven technologies, combining them and applying them to a
situation that really does not need it applied to. That system alone adds hundreds of dollars to
the cost of that car. That monster
starts at 40 grand and I suspect the model I was driving to be fully loaded so it
is probably closer to 60k. hahaha, that
is more than I paid for my first house.
Engine hours, different languages for the instrumentation as
well as direction, the compass could be calibrated by mashing a button and driving
in circles, were available at the touch of a button. I learned I could find out how many hours the
engine had been running, an electronic version of the mechanical one seen on old
tractors. There was of course the backup
camera, hidden right there in the mirror.
Yep, I thought it was only a mirror, but when the vehicle was placed in
reverse, BAM, about a third of that mirror turned into a backup camera. It also has some sort of radar or sonar, sonar
I suspect that initiated a beeping in the passenger cabin as I got to close to
some object behind me. In this case it
was Jalopy as I backed into the driveway.
Well
I for one think new cars are cool, but they are just too complicated, God only
knows what it would cost to fix some of that stuff when it quits working. I also got to thinking about what other information
that computer is keeping track of, the cars exact location, the speed of the vehicle,
it staggers the imagination to think about what it is tracking, it knows how
hot the transmission is for petes sake!!
My old Jalopy, the only fancy technology in there is my Crackberry when I
carry it in there with me. Nope, for me I
will be sticking to the old faithful Jalopy type cars. If you have one, good for you but think about
all the information that car is gathering about you as you go about your daily
life.
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