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No, I really want a car with no computers. I want analog gauges, a real gear selector lever, and switches and knobs for other accessories. A tactile environment

No, I really want a car with no computers. I want analog gauges, a real gear selector lever, and switches and knobs for other accessories. A tactile environment that doesn't demand my visual focus to use is what I want. I have no need for a computer in my car, and to the extent I do, my phone is perfectly capable.

mavhc 5y ago
No engine control, no brake control, no airbags, no power steering, no engine starter, no automatic windows, no intermittent wipers, no central locking, no alarm system, no automatic lights
- hilbert42 5y ago
  - Engine control - unnecessary, cars ran for 100 years without it. - Brakes work perfectly well without computers. - Airbags don't need computers, they work perfectly well by mechanical means. - Power steering works perfectly without computers or any electrics at all. Every car I've ever owned had mechanical power steering without any fancy electroics including my latest one. Why tamper with something that works perfectly well? - Engine starter? Cars have starter motors since just after the hand crank ers, computers were still nearly 100 years away when starter motors were introduced. - Automatic windows are a damn menace, they are reliably unreliable. When one failed - fortunately the driver's side - I had my garage man retrofit a traditional hand windup one. On the three remaining windows I got him to isolate them so they only worked on their individual switches. - Mechanical intermittent wipers have been around since at least WWII. No computers or electronics to go wrong and complicate matters. - Central locking on my last two cars has been a disaster. You obviously have never experienced a situation where the locking gets out of sync and some doors remain unlocked - unlock the others and then the unlocked ones lock and vice versa. - Where I live alarm systems are likely to get you a brick through your windscreen - not from burglars but from annoyed residents who are fed up with car alarm noise. - Automatic lights are another menace, you often can't control them, they switch off when you want to leave the lights and so on. (It seems to me that the designers of these systems never anticipate what we drivers actually need. Perhaps they only test them in the most tame and predictable environments.) All this gumph is unnecessary, it makes the car less reliable and more expensive to buy and fix. Moreover, they're impossible to fix when you're in places where there's no service mechanic or garage (out on the open road for instance - I've some excellent instances from long trips 3,000 - 4,000 miles anf of cars in convoy on rough roads. Cars with all these unnecessary gadgets were, without fail, the first to break down. And they were a disaster because none of us techies could improvise in the usual manner that we could do with a more traditional car, often we could be stranded for days whilst waiting a tow truck to come from hundreds of miles away. What's more that's hellishly expensive. You people are just gadget mad.
  - mavhc 5y ago
    Engines that massively polluted did. Brakes without traction control are worse Airbags without computers go off too often Power steering driven by a pump and a belt was very inefficient, more fuel wasted Weirdly you don't hear alarms going off much now, wonder if they're smarter somehow.... Cars are much more reliable these days "in the 1960s and 1970s, the typical car reached its end of life around 100,000 miles (160,000 km), but due to manufacturing improvements in the 2000s, such as tighter tolerances and better anti-corrosion coatings, the typical car lasts closer to 200,000 miles (320,000 km)" Not sure why you think a load of extra moving parts is going to be more reliable than some solid state electronics.
    - hilbert42 5y ago
      "Not sure why you think a load of extra moving parts is going to be more reliable than some solid state electronics.“ Because cars can go anywhere including right outside tow truck range especially where I live. Here, being rescued can be days away. Then there's the adverse conditions, temperatures well in excess of 40° C and from my bitter experience, the electronics fail much more frequently under these harsh conditions than do the mechanics. Then there's the issue of make-do. When one is hundreds of miles from anywhere, one can often improvise a mechanical repair whereas it's nigh on impossible to quickly sort out an electronics problem (unless it's trivial). I recall being in a convoy of four cars in central Australia when the computer failed in the one and only Volvo in the group. What an unholy mess that was. None of us could fix it. Note, everyone in the convoy was skilled in electronics (we were all radio amateurs on a field trip) and almost everyone had a full-time professional job in electronics. We even had lots of electronics test equipment as well as various electronic components with us - semiconductors, resistors, capacitors etc., as they were to service our HF transceivers when they failed. That's just one instance albeit one of the worst cases. My car chucked a universal joint on the same trip and although very inconvenient, we fixed it on the spot. Similar repairs were made on the spot when my petrol pump was ripped clean off the bottom of my car by huge ruts in the road. From what you've said, I'd guess you live in a temperate climate in the suburbs of a city and only a few kilometers from a service garage. The fact is, electronics and harsh environmental conditions (high thermal cycling) are not good bedfellows. Moreover, most electronics faults are thermally related (caused by thermal stress). I know firsthand as I ran the electronics department of a large corporation for years, before that I worked in the prototyping (design) department of a large US corporation designing professional electronic (not domestic stuff). First rule of design: 'keep it simple stupid'. __ Edit: "1970s, the typical car reached its end of life around 100,000 miles (160,000 km)." Uh? When I was younger all I could afford were cars with over 150k on the clock - and that's miles not kms - and I usually drove them to about 300k. The usual reason for getting rid of them was was rust - not because of mechanical problems. Sure, there were 'junk' cars around but you'd have to be mad to buy one. One final point, around the time the Volvo broke down I was averaging 44,000 miles per year (~70,000 km/yr).
- hilbert42 5y ago
  - Engine control - unnecessary, cars ran for 100 years without it. - Brakes work perfectly well without computers. - Airbags don't need computers, they work perfectly well by mechanical means. - Power steering works perfectly without computers or any electrical stuff at all. Every car I've ever owned had mechanical power steering without any fancy electroics including my latest one. Why tamper with something that works perfectly well? - Engine starter? Cars have had starter motors since just after the hand crank era, computers were still nearly 100 years away when starter motors were introduced. - Automatic windows are a damn menace, they are reliably unreliable. When one failed - fortunately the driver's side - I had my garage man retrofit a traditional hand windup one. On the three remaining windows I got him isolate them so they only worked on their own individual switches. - Mechanical intermittent wipers have been around since at least WWII. No computers or electronics to go wrong and complicate matters. - Central locking on my last two cars has been a disaster. You obviously have never experienced a situation where the locking gets out of sync and some doors remain unlocked - unlock the others and then the unlocked ones lock and vice versa. It's a nightmare, any attempt to properly lock the car fails. - Where I live alarm system are likely to get a brick through your windscreen - not from burglars but rather from annoyed residents who are fed up with car alarm noise. - Automatic lights are another menace, you often can't control them, they switch off when you want to leave the lights and so on. The people who design and program their operation clearly don't use them except in the most tame surroundings. All this gumph is unnecessary, it makes car less reliable and more expensive to both purchase and fix - and they're impossible to fix when you're in places where there's no service mechanic or garage (out on the open road for instance - I've some excellent instances from long trips 3,000 - 4,000 miles of cars in convoy on rough roads. Cars with all these unnecessary gadgets were, without fail, the first to break down. And they were a disaster because none of us techies could improvise in the usual manner as we could do with a more traditional car. Often we could be stranded for days whilst we waited for a tow truck to come from hundreds of miles away. Moreover, that's hellishly expensive. You people are just gadget mad.

mavhc 5y ago

No engine control, no brake control, no airbags, no power steering, no engine starter, no automatic windows, no intermittent wipers, no central locking, no alarm system, no automatic lights

hilbert42 5y ago
- Engine control - unnecessary, cars ran for 100 years without it. - Brakes work perfectly well without computers. - Airbags don't need computers, they work perfectly well by mechanical means. - Power steering works perfectly without computers or any electrics at all. Every car I've ever owned had mechanical power steering without any fancy electroics including my latest one. Why tamper with something that works perfectly well? - Engine starter? Cars have starter motors since just after the hand crank ers, computers were still nearly 100 years away when starter motors were introduced. - Automatic windows are a damn menace, they are reliably unreliable. When one failed - fortunately the driver's side - I had my garage man retrofit a traditional hand windup one. On the three remaining windows I got him to isolate them so they only worked on their individual switches. - Mechanical intermittent wipers have been around since at least WWII. No computers or electronics to go wrong and complicate matters. - Central locking on my last two cars has been a disaster. You obviously have never experienced a situation where the locking gets out of sync and some doors remain unlocked - unlock the others and then the unlocked ones lock and vice versa. - Where I live alarm systems are likely to get you a brick through your windscreen - not from burglars but from annoyed residents who are fed up with car alarm noise. - Automatic lights are another menace, you often can't control them, they switch off when you want to leave the lights and so on. (It seems to me that the designers of these systems never anticipate what we drivers actually need. Perhaps they only test them in the most tame and predictable environments.) All this gumph is unnecessary, it makes the car less reliable and more expensive to buy and fix. Moreover, they're impossible to fix when you're in places where there's no service mechanic or garage (out on the open road for instance - I've some excellent instances from long trips 3,000 - 4,000 miles anf of cars in convoy on rough roads. Cars with all these unnecessary gadgets were, without fail, the first to break down. And they were a disaster because none of us techies could improvise in the usual manner that we could do with a more traditional car, often we could be stranded for days whilst waiting a tow truck to come from hundreds of miles away. What's more that's hellishly expensive. You people are just gadget mad.
- mavhc 5y ago
  Engines that massively polluted did. Brakes without traction control are worse Airbags without computers go off too often Power steering driven by a pump and a belt was very inefficient, more fuel wasted Weirdly you don't hear alarms going off much now, wonder if they're smarter somehow.... Cars are much more reliable these days "in the 1960s and 1970s, the typical car reached its end of life around 100,000 miles (160,000 km), but due to manufacturing improvements in the 2000s, such as tighter tolerances and better anti-corrosion coatings, the typical car lasts closer to 200,000 miles (320,000 km)" Not sure why you think a load of extra moving parts is going to be more reliable than some solid state electronics.
  - hilbert42 5y ago
    "Not sure why you think a load of extra moving parts is going to be more reliable than some solid state electronics.“ Because cars can go anywhere including right outside tow truck range especially where I live. Here, being rescued can be days away. Then there's the adverse conditions, temperatures well in excess of 40° C and from my bitter experience, the electronics fail much more frequently under these harsh conditions than do the mechanics. Then there's the issue of make-do. When one is hundreds of miles from anywhere, one can often improvise a mechanical repair whereas it's nigh on impossible to quickly sort out an electronics problem (unless it's trivial). I recall being in a convoy of four cars in central Australia when the computer failed in the one and only Volvo in the group. What an unholy mess that was. None of us could fix it. Note, everyone in the convoy was skilled in electronics (we were all radio amateurs on a field trip) and almost everyone had a full-time professional job in electronics. We even had lots of electronics test equipment as well as various electronic components with us - semiconductors, resistors, capacitors etc., as they were to service our HF transceivers when they failed. That's just one instance albeit one of the worst cases. My car chucked a universal joint on the same trip and although very inconvenient, we fixed it on the spot. Similar repairs were made on the spot when my petrol pump was ripped clean off the bottom of my car by huge ruts in the road. From what you've said, I'd guess you live in a temperate climate in the suburbs of a city and only a few kilometers from a service garage. The fact is, electronics and harsh environmental conditions (high thermal cycling) are not good bedfellows. Moreover, most electronics faults are thermally related (caused by thermal stress). I know firsthand as I ran the electronics department of a large corporation for years, before that I worked in the prototyping (design) department of a large US corporation designing professional electronic (not domestic stuff). First rule of design: 'keep it simple stupid'. __ Edit: "1970s, the typical car reached its end of life around 100,000 miles (160,000 km)." Uh? When I was younger all I could afford were cars with over 150k on the clock - and that's miles not kms - and I usually drove them to about 300k. The usual reason for getting rid of them was was rust - not because of mechanical problems. Sure, there were 'junk' cars around but you'd have to be mad to buy one. One final point, around the time the Volvo broke down I was averaging 44,000 miles per year (~70,000 km/yr).
hilbert42 5y ago
- Engine control - unnecessary, cars ran for 100 years without it. - Brakes work perfectly well without computers. - Airbags don't need computers, they work perfectly well by mechanical means. - Power steering works perfectly without computers or any electrical stuff at all. Every car I've ever owned had mechanical power steering without any fancy electroics including my latest one. Why tamper with something that works perfectly well? - Engine starter? Cars have had starter motors since just after the hand crank era, computers were still nearly 100 years away when starter motors were introduced. - Automatic windows are a damn menace, they are reliably unreliable. When one failed - fortunately the driver's side - I had my garage man retrofit a traditional hand windup one. On the three remaining windows I got him isolate them so they only worked on their own individual switches. - Mechanical intermittent wipers have been around since at least WWII. No computers or electronics to go wrong and complicate matters. - Central locking on my last two cars has been a disaster. You obviously have never experienced a situation where the locking gets out of sync and some doors remain unlocked - unlock the others and then the unlocked ones lock and vice versa. It's a nightmare, any attempt to properly lock the car fails. - Where I live alarm system are likely to get a brick through your windscreen - not from burglars but rather from annoyed residents who are fed up with car alarm noise. - Automatic lights are another menace, you often can't control them, they switch off when you want to leave the lights and so on. The people who design and program their operation clearly don't use them except in the most tame surroundings. All this gumph is unnecessary, it makes car less reliable and more expensive to both purchase and fix - and they're impossible to fix when you're in places where there's no service mechanic or garage (out on the open road for instance - I've some excellent instances from long trips 3,000 - 4,000 miles of cars in convoy on rough roads. Cars with all these unnecessary gadgets were, without fail, the first to break down. And they were a disaster because none of us techies could improvise in the usual manner as we could do with a more traditional car. Often we could be stranded for days whilst we waited for a tow truck to come from hundreds of miles away. Moreover, that's hellishly expensive. You people are just gadget mad.