I believe, deep in my soul, that car companies’ number one goal in life is to ruin the experience of driving. I don’t have any direct evidence of this conspiracy to rob us of the pleasure of the open road, other than the cacophony of beeps, blips, bloops and blops that greet us in the latest models. Oh, and the screens. Every year, they try to find a new place to glue a touchscreen in a car, like Pizza Hut hunting for more orifices to stuff cheese into one of their pies.
Everything is computerized, automated or impossible to turn off. According to surveys of new-car buyers by the market research firm Strategic Vision, satisfaction with car controls plummeted by 23 percentage points in the last nine years. The whiz-bang gizmos foisted on the North American car buyer have devolved from the glorious, life-saving back-up camera to gesture controls that allow you to turn an invisible knob to crank up the volume on Espresso without touching a single thing in your vehicle.
Back in January of this year, BMW ditched gesture control in their cars after a decade-long run of forcing adults to poke and prod the air like a mime drunk on cheap wine. Gesture control was cheaper for the automaker because they could cut back on making actual knobs, plus it’s just funnier to watch while stuck in traffic.
Here’s what you had to do to make your car work, according to the company:
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Turn the volume up: circle your finger in a clockwise direction.
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Turn the volume down: circle your finger in a counter-clockwise direction.
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Accept a call: point to the BMW iDrive touchscreen.
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Select navigation/custom setting: use two fingers to point to the touchscreen.
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Change rearview camera angle: draw a circle using your forefinger and thumb.
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Regret your life choices: look in the mirror for 10 seconds.
When do I have time to learn this? You want me to draw a circle with not just one, but two of my fingers? What do I do if I lost a digit in a particularly gruesome lathe accident? Drive an Audi, that’s what.
If carmakers aren’t trying to ruin driving, then I’m pretty sure they’re just bored. After decades of the industry claiming an electric car wasn’t commercially viable, the Toyota Prius came along and realigned our expectations of what could be under the hood of a car. The hybrid engine – part gas, part electric – was the first baby step toward the fleets of all-electric vehicles from Chevrolet, Volkswagen and that one used car you are desperately trying to sell but no one would dare drive in it any more.
Car companies have solved the greatest problem in the history of automobiles: that these vehicles emit actual poison whenever you operate them. So the ennui has set in: “And Alexander wept, seeing as he had no more worlds to conquer.” Yes, but what if Alexander could remove some knobs from the console of your Mini Cooper? Perhaps a retractable door handle that you constantly have to be reminded how to use? Hey Alexander, quit weeping and start playing Cat Quest in your car.
The Volkswagen ID.4 electric car was designed with electronic sensors inside the door handles. VW alleged that this helped with “drag reduction”: the handles were flush with the car, making it less wind resistant, or something. This “innovation” barely registered with me. The only drag I care about is banned in Tennessee. Of course, the ID.4 went through a massive recall because water was getting into the door handle sensors and corroding the electronics. Also, drivers reported the doors would open on their own while the car was in motion. At last, I can do a barrel-roll out of my car, hands-free.
In an effort to solve problems that don’t exist, carmakers are creating more problems. Ambient lighting to make your car look like an airport lounge. Touchscreens in the passenger seats. Cameras so you can watch your child pick their nose instead of looking at the road. Driving is frequently a frustrating pursuit as it is. You have road hazards, aggressive drivers and gridlock to contend with. But, the auto industry says, what if it was worse?
I guess that’s why Elon Musk, the world’s least popular car company owner, got into politics. It’s yet another endeavor we all have to suffer through that’s pretty bad, but could be significantly more painful with just a bit of tinkering. Firing countless government workers, gutting entire departments and withholding legally appropriated funds isn’t too far from looking at a car and saying: “What if the door had no handles?”
Cars and governments are necessities of modern life. They are because we, the people, designed life to need them. We are hopelessly intertwined with the car, with democracy, with a massive, heaving bureaucracy that does annoying stuff like ensuring we don’t all die of plague and our food isn’t riddled with rat droppings. To Musk, getting rid of vital government services is just like replacing your air conditioner with an entire video game system. A fun thought experiment! What if you had to solve a series of increasingly complex word games in order to unlock your car? Would you just give up and walk to work?
I’m old enough to remember when things got better, not worse. Televisions got bigger, cars became more efficient, movie special effects dazzled us and Pizza Hut was still discovering new places to put cheese. Someone decided to put a water dispenser on a refrigerator door and we all rejoiced. Now, technology is solving for issues that don’t exist. AI has finally fixed the problem of … summarizing emails that are a couple paragraphs. Praise the Lord, technology has rid us of the scourge of reading comprehension. And, as an added bonus, now I can turn a photo of myself into a Simpsons character. I can die fulfilled.
I contend that things do not have to be worse. In fact, allow me to be so bold as to suggest they could be better. When the president of the United States says he “couldn’t care less” if foreign automakers jacked up their prices because of his tariffs, he is saying very plainly that things must be worse for some reason. If we just allow the knobs to be taken out of our cars that now cost twice what they used to, some vague good thing will happen. We’ll be happier. We’ll be richer. We’ll have fewer knob-related injuries, I suppose. Imagine telling someone that you’re about to do a thing that will deeply inconvenience them and then expecting them to be thrilled about it. America used to be a place to value convenience above all else. Today, it feels like what we actually expect is to be harassed, put out and given a screen in our face to shut us up.
#car #door #handles #days #Dave #Schilling
