I WANT A CAR
Driving home after dark from Tennessee recently, my wife touched a button on the steering wheel by mistake and exclaimed, “I don’t know what I just told the car to do.” Nothing showed up on the dashboard, but if you change a radio station a light on the dash tells you. Why would a manufacturer do that? I want to know what I erroneously told the CAR to do. More importantly, why are all those buttons you can’t see at night right where they can be accidentally touched? Did I just tell the car to throw away a tire, or change over to rocket fuel? I really wish I could buy “a car.” They haven’t sold cars in quite a while now.
They sell automatic windows, adaptive cruise, touch screens, On-Star, push button start, and one armed bandit machines (they require the money you should use to feed your kids).
I don’t want it to connect to my phone. I don’t want the car to communicate with my thermostat so the heat will be up when I return home. I don’t want it to act as a Wi-Fi hot spot. I don’t need it to sense things (or even lick things) on my behalf.
Even this “basic vehicle” (picture) has too many things:
I survived my whole life (even had a few accidents in my younger years) without an air bag going off in my face or against my head from the side. At what point did engineers think it wise to set off an explosion propelling a ball at the heads of front seat occupants? Today’s monsters won’t even allow a sack of groceries in the front seat without its own seat belt.
I survived as well without the car speaking a single word, telling me I missed my turn, or asking if I’d like that with cheese. I don’t want a garage door opener (or bottle opener) integrated into my steering wheel gizmos.
What I would like … a full-size spare. Those do come in handy, from my own experience. I bet even a thingymobile with a touch screen could use one of those on occasion. Some new cars don’t even come standard with a doughnut tire or a jack; they will sell you a single-use can of air for about $99.
They also want to sell me something that isn’t easy to use; an EV. I saw a map of EV chargers. The map in the article showed how many chargers each state had per 100,000 people. That seemed odd since my question has never been “How many people does it get per mile?” It isn’t even, “How many chargers per 100,000 EVs?” It’s “How many chargers per 300 mile trip?” Gas stations are less than 20 miles apart in most of America even though most real fuel vehicles get 300+ miles per tank. Are chargers that common? Will they be in 10 years? 25 years? Nope. There’s no money in building them; if there was they would be everywhere.
Privacy researchers at the Mozilla Foundation in September warned in a report that “modern cars are a privacy nightmare,” noting that 92 percent give car owners little to no control over the data they collect, and 84 percent reserve the right to sell or share your information. This quote was in an article which pointed out security concerns for car owners … one of which was that the car manufacturers often record an entire year or more of individual vehicle locations. Why would they need to keep long records of that data? It makes sense, kind of, to know where a vehicle is which went off the road. But why do they have to know exactly where I parked Thursday at 10am? And Tuesday at 2pm? That ‘s not a car, that’s a data-mining operation.
You know, if manufacturers put actual back windows in those thingys we wouldn’t need a digital screen at all. Just look back from the driver’s seat and you can see it all clearly. That’s how we used to do it all the time. The US Government has dictated that there must be a back up camera. Do THEY have one for the laws they pass?
What I want is a CAR. Sure put in a tiny computer-like doohicky to help the engine run more efficiently, like in 1970 (those were hiding under the driver’s seat). But no one needs one that tells the outside temperature (you probably were just outside getting into the vehicle). Tire pressure indicators used to just light up and the driver had to guess which tire was low. Now they tell you the pressure in all 4, but never tell you how much pressure the spare has (who hasn’t tried to put a spare on and found it was flat? It took 4 years with a very slow leak, but it got it done!) The real problem with tires is that the manufacturers “air” them with the same product which has consistently leaked out for over 140 years. That’s poor use of technology. Ordinary air has very small molecules, which expand and contract with amazing ability. Why aren’t they using nitrogen? Larger molecules = less leakage. Nitrogen doesn’t expand or contract as quickly either, meaning that tires can last longer instead of bulging or cupping depending on temperature. That’s tech we could use!
The military pays billions for “airplanes” which would have no hope of actual flight if it weren’t for an onboard supercomputer. We don’t need a billion dollar car, do we? Do we need a car whose engine would not propel it without a supercomputer? I’m not against supercomputers, by the way. I just want a car. I suspect that half the cost of a new car is all the gizmos which have nothing to do with getting from A to B. I once owned a “fancy” car that had an AM radio (only 3 preset buttons worked) and it still got me where I wanted to go.
I would love to get to B, and even C occasionally without all the hassles. Gotta tell you … I have seen lots of messy accidents with these gizmo machines … they don’t seem to be any better at avoiding a bumper tap than when I first learned to drive in the 70s. They do get a bit better gas mileage, but you can’t pass on a steep grade anymore, and you need a shoehorn (remember those?) to get in and out of the seat. Those V-8 engines had some serious reserve power.
I don’t even need a V-8. I don’t care about passing on a grade since I’m no longer in that much of a hurry. But I sure would like to buy a car.
Copyright 2025 Donald Whelpley
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