admin
Lovert Mafukure
Automotive technology has evolved over the years. From wasteful engines to more environmentally friendly engines, small force-fed powerful engines, direct injection, and cleaner diesels and of course electric cars are slowly making more sense for sustainability’s sake. There’s one thing that boggles the mind though, automotive design has gone off the mark, from designing functional cars to mere fancy designs.
Any car should at least make my driving experience an occasion, call me old school but I actually like the idea of pulling a handbrake and making sure that indeed the handbrake is engaged and the car will be no way slide back or forth.
In the event that I do meet some unforeseen road challenge, I also like the idea of a handbrake turn or pulling emergency brakes to bring car to a stop or a quick turn. Imagine this, you park nicely then instead of pulling up the hand brake, you press the brake button…a button! Then the computer will send a signal to lock the brakes…too fancy.
Another piece of technology that bothers me is keyless entry and keyless start. I like the idea of moving with the times but I also the whole occasion of inserting a key and listening to the clink, the clank — the key mating with its counterpart in the ignition and connecting everything to a start. It’s cool to just press a button and the car roars to life. It gives one some 21st century James Bond movie type fictional sensation. The only reason, they designed keyless start is because they can, not because people need it.
Eventually, these keys become a problem because they have computer chips inside, they use batteries and they are made of plastic! With older cars, one can easily get a spare key cut for a few dollars and that will solve all their problems.
With these remote keys, it’s not that easy, the key can easily cost hundreds of dollars then getting the key programmed to work on your car will cost more even more money. That is not all, imagine this, you have travelled to your rural area and for some odd reason the remote key stops working, what do you do? Nothing you can do without that key transmitting a signal! Now you decide. Is this technology worth the African heat?
Back in the day driving was all human input, you had to know how to drive or you would find yourself in tricky situations failing to drive. Nowadays, there are all kinds of aids to help the driver. Those that cannot drive will boast of skills they do not really possess because the cars will do everything for them.
It started with the influx of automatic transmissions, to date, if some people are asked to drive cars with manual transmissions and no funny aids, they will fail dismally. Why, because modern cars are built in such a way to promote drivers with less skill and having them believe that they know what they doing.
There are some things that you have to get trained on in order to pass your driving test, but how good is this training if the car is going to do it for you with its park assist for example. If a person cannot drive, they should use public transport or hire a chauffeur for the good of everyone else and themselves.
It’s like a maths exam that’s set with answers at the back for the benefit of those not so good with their algebra — it just doesn’t work. This feature has been designed in such a way that a driver will leave their car in parallel parking position and the car will do the rest, what happened to taking challenges head on and learning the hard things and actually mastering them.
It does not end there, there’s also hill start assist. If you are not able to do a ‘hill start’, you will never get a driver’s licence in Zimbabwe. That said, it is a crucial skill for one to attain a driver’s licence. With the way cars are being built these days, in the near future it might be done away with because cars will naturally not roll back because of hill start assist.
New technologies are being invented every day and Google is busy trying to perfect that driverless car of theirs. Very soon it’s going to be perfect and cars will indeed drive themselves. I wish I could go back in time, when cars actually used to be cars and made to be driven and enjoyed by people. Do not get me wrong, technology is good but how good is it if it makes us too dependent on it? It has lost its functionality and automotive designers are all trying to show off their imagination — a pack of iconic show-offs. Till Next time — Happy Motoring!
Feedback — [email protected]/ www.facebook.com/automartzimbabwe
Online Reporter