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The Right Car For Your Dog Part One: The Legal Bits
Come on, fellow pet owners: admit it. You’ve sometimes considered the needs of your furry friends (who you might refer to as your fur-kids) when purchasing a car. I’ve done it myself. I’ve said no to some lovely little numbers in the past simple because they weren’t compatible with our doggo. I haven’t gone so far as to sell a vehicle I already owned because it wasn’t dog-friendly – although I did do this for my children.
OK, now we’ve got that out in the open, so let’s talk about it. There you are: the time has come for a new set of wheels for whatever reason and you’re looking for a new car. You want to make sure that all of the family is happy, and this includes the four-legged members of the family. Meaning the dog, that is. Cats don’t always take too well to riding in cars – some do and some don’t, but dogs usually enjoy riding in cars. So what do you have to think of when choosing a car that’s compatible with your dog?
First of all, you have to keep the legal stuff in mind. Fortunately, the laws for travelling with dogs are a lot less stringent than the laws about children in cars. Here’s what you need to know:
- It’s illegal to drive with a dog sitting on your lap. Obvious in the case of a St Bernard or a Newfoundland that might weigh more than you do but it also applies to Chihuahuas.
- A dog (or any other animal!) has to be in an appropriate area of the car where your pet can’t interfere with the driver. This means that the driver’s footwell is out of the question Small dogs probably also shouldn’t sit on the bit behind the back seats in a sedan where they block the rear view mirror. It’s best if your dog is restrained but this isn’t a legal requirement – yet!
- Your dog probably shouldn’t be in the front passenger seat. The only possible exception would be a poodle or other teeny dog in a handbag. Anything larger could easily become a nuisance to the driver, either by whacking you with a wagging tail or putting a nose (or paw) onto the controls. A big dog will get in the way and a small dog would be badly hurt or even killed by an airbag going off in an emergency situation. If you feel you absolutely have to have your dog in the front passenger seat (e.g. in a single-cab ute on a nasty cold rainy day) then use one of those doggy seatbelts or Doggo will try to get all over you. Or at least my dog would.
- If your dog is on the back of a ute deck without a canopy, it has to be restrained so it can’t jump or fall off (or lunge at passers-by when the ute’s parked).
- Don’t leave your dog in the car – your dog can’t stay cool enough and can overheat very, very easily, which constitutes animal cruelty.
While we’re on the topic of dogs in cars, there are two things more that you need to know. First, opening the window a weeny bit doesn’t do much to cool down the air temperature in the car, and it’s cool air that your dog needs to stay at the right temperature. Leaving the A/C on or parking in the shade does something but not much. And giving the dog water does nothing because the water heats up inside the car as well. The only time that you’re probably OK to leave a dog in a car is if it’s a nasty cold rainy day, preferably during winter. Second, breaking into a car to rescue a dog that you think is suffering inside a vehicle is considered vandalism, breaking and entering. What’s more, if the dog in question isn’t suffering from heat exhaustion – for example, if it is a chilly day – the dog will see “strange person aggressively breaking into my property” and will react accordingly. Dear well-meaning person who tried to break into my brother’s Subaru (which was parked in the shade with the windows half open during winter) to “save” the pair of pitbulls sleeping on the back seat, you were flipping lucky that said pitbulls were a soppy pair of wimps and not at all like the stereotype pitbulls.
The answer to the question as to what to do with your dog when you’re out and about and need to nip into a shop where you can’t take the dog? Step One is to leave the dog at home but this isn’t always feasible. When I took my dog to the vet and I needed to pick up some bread from the supermarket practically next door, I did not drive home, drop off Doggo then go back to the supermarket! Step Two (which is what I did) is to have the right sort of car: either a ute where you can open the back door of the canopy, which does allow enough air to circulate, or something with nice handy spokes on the alloy wheels or else a towbar so you can tie the dog up outside the car. Step Three is to look for an alternative to tie your dog to. If you’re lucky, your local shops have a spot where you can “park your dog” outside. Failing that, a parking meter will do and it will keep your dog entertained with the doggy equivalent of social media at the same time.
OK, but what sort of car do you need for when you’re travelling from A to B with Doggo beside you for company? The breed of car will depend on the breed of dog – and that deserves a post of its own, so I’ll cover it in Part 2.
BabyDrive: Everything You Wanted To Know About Kids In Cars In One Handy Place
If you’re about to become a parent for the first time – or if you’re revisiting parenthood after a long break (it happens) – then you might be wondering what sort of car is right for your new family. It’s not a stupid question. Once upon a time, it might have been all right to sling the carry cot across the back seat and make the older siblings share a seatbelt and/or ride in the boot, but you’d get in major trouble if you tried that today. They’re serious about car seats for children these days and the law says that children under the age of seven can’t wear an adult seatbelt – and even then, this depends on their size and height and some children may need a booster seat until they’re 12 or so. (As an aside, I’m kind of glad that they didn’t specify a particular height or weight for using a booster seat – some petite adult women, such as my 18-year-old daughter, may not meet these and who wants to sit their license while sitting in a booster seat?).
Anyway, if you’re a parent-to-be, you mind may be buzzing with questions about what sort of car you need to get. And if it isn’t, it should be! A lot of first-time parents fall into the trap of putting a lot of thought and care into the birth plan and how they want the birth of their new baby to go. While this is all very well, what they don’t tell you (and what I wish I had known all those years ago) is that labour and birth only last (at most) one day. All the other bits about parenthood and life with a small child go on for months – years! So if you haven’t started thinking about what sort of car you need as a new parent, it’s time to give it some thought.
There are a lot of things to consider and it’s easy to make a mistake. Let’s just say that there’s a possibility that you may have to put that little sporty roadster on hold for a bit and buy something more family-friendly. Been there, done that. We said goodbye to our old Morris (which would be an absolute classic and worth a mint today if we’d hung onto it) because the pushchair wouldn’t fit in the boot and got a Toyota sedan – which was then traded in when Child #2 came along because there was no way that anybody could sit in the front seat when there were two car seats in the back – and no room between said seats either! I’ve been watching my brother and his wife start to go through the same series of problems.
Imagine that you could find someone who could give you all the advice you need – kind of like a motor-savvy big sister who can answer all those very practical questions even better than we can here at Private Fleet (although we try our best!). For example, if you’re expecting Child #3 and the eldest is still of an age to need a booster seat, or if you’ve got twins or triplets on the way, are there any cars out there that can fit three car seats across the back? Which cars provide enough leg room in the rear seats so that bored toddlers don’t try whiling away the time stuck in traffic kicking the driver in the kidneys? How do you know if the stroller will fit in the boot?
Well, this sort of big sisterly advice is exactly what you’ll get from a great new site that’s linked with Private Fleet called BabyDrive (yes, this is a shameless plug for the site but no, I did not write it, although I wish I had, and I wish Tace the reviewer lived a bit closer than Queensland because she’d probably be my new BFF). This is a great site that has all the answers you need to do with choosing a new vehicle that will suit your new family – yes, it even tells you which vehicles can fit five car seats comfortably and which MPVs have the easiest access to the third row of seats. It’s the sort of thing I wish that I had on hand when I was a new parent – and I’d certainly recommend it to any parent-to-be looking for a new family vehicle. Like we do, BabyDrive reviews vehicles, but unlike us, they do it all from a parenting perspective. You won’t find the hot little roadsters reviewed here and the car reviews don’t cover torque or fuel economy stats much. However, each car is rated for driver comfort (you’ve got to love a review that tells you whether the headrest position works well with the typical ponytail hairstyle adopted by mums on the go!), carseat capacity, storage, safety and noise. The reviews include some descriptions of driving as a new mother that will give you a rueful chuckle or two – even if you, like me, have your baby days well behind you. It’s the sort of review that we couldn’t do here on Private Fleet unless I kidnapped my baby nephew. We’ll tell you the other bits and pieces – as well as helping you score a great deal on pricing (another thing that’s appreciated by not just new parents!). The reviews feature a video segment as well as a written review – great for those who are more visually oriented.
The noise review is particularly useful, especially given the tendency these days for cars to produce all kinds of beeps as warnings. If you don’t know about the old parenting trick of going for a wee drive to help soothe a fretful child off to sleep, you know it now! However, all the good soothing work of a nicely purring motor and the gentle motion of a car on the go can be undone by some wretched lane departure warning shrieking or a parking sensor bleeping, waking your baby up just as you get home.
And yes, you will find some hatchbacks reviewed on BabyDrive! Of course, the big SUVs, MPVs and 4x4s feature heavily (and, as an extra piece of advice from a more experienced parent, these will stand you in good stead once your kids hit the school and teen years, and you have to take your turn doing the carpool run, or if you are ferrying a posse of teens to the movies or a sports match). However, if it’s not a “BabyDrive” (i.e. something suitable for small children), then it won’t feature!
Check it out yourself at BabyDrive.com.au.
Household Appliances And Cars From The Same Maker?
Don’t worry – Dyson’s proposed EV probably won’t look like this.
I heard the other day that a household appliance manufacturer is going to have a go at the electric car game. Although my first reaction (and possibly yours) was to snigger, I then realised that it’s possibly not all that loopy after all. For one thing, it’s not the first time that a company has had a go at making household gadgets and motor cars: Toyota makes sewing machines as well as their very popular cars and they’re not bad (the cars or the sewing machines – and I can vouch for the sewing machines, as I’ve got one). Peugeot also started out making coffee grinders, umbrellas and crinolines.
For another thing, the makers of household appliances are already used to working with electric motors for – well, just about anything. Household appliances just about all run on electricity and a lot of them use electrical motors – so why not scale up from teeny electric motors in electric shavers to motorcars? We’re used to other things that can run on either electricity or internal combustion engines, such as lawnmowers, so it might be just a matter of scale.
The household appliance manufacturer in question is Dyson, who also makes vacuum cleaners. Cue jokes about “My car sucks.” At the moment, they’ve managed to get a nice big factory space and the plan is to put a car out by 2020. Or 2021, depending on which press release you get your hands on. Details are still being kept secret but here’s what we know so far:
- They’re going to convert a bunch of old World War 2 era aircraft hangars in the UK to use as factories.
- They’re doing the research and development in Singapore, the Philippines and Malaysia as well as the UK.
- One of the former hangars has at least 15 km of vehicle testing tracks. Presumably they don’t test the vacuum cleaners on these.
OK, the idea of producing vacuum cleaners and EVs seems ludicrous. However, I’ve often noticed that advertising for vacuum cleaners has a lot in common with quite a few car ads, ranting and raving about the power of the motor and how many kilowatts it can do. In fact, I think that cars (OK, boats and motorbikes as well if you’re picky) and vacuum cleaners are the only things that use engine power as a selling point. Dyson’s experience with filters and air flow will probably also come in handy for designing a car. Maybe we’ll also see some interesting styling, given the way that Dyson produced a completely new style of vacuum cleaner when they put out their Dual Cyclone.
However, we need to hope that the Dyson EVs have better handling ability than the typical vacuum cleaner. I don’t know about you, but I always have much more trouble getting a vacuum cleaner to go where I want it to, and they’re probably worse than supermarket shopping trolleys for bad handling. Work to be done here, Dyson!
We also need to hope that Dyson learns a thing or three about pricing if they want to be really competitive. Dyson may be the luxury marque for vacuums (and hair dryers, fans and hand dryers) but is there really room in the luxury EV market for somebody other than Tesla? Especially now that more widely known makers, especially the European ones, are turning more and more to EVs and hybrids. Your typical Dyson vacuum costs about 10 times as much as the bog-standard vacuum, after all.
My one humble suggestion to Dyson would also be to change the name for the vehicle line. Toyota may be able to get away with producing sewing machines but they’re better known for their cars. Not everybody does home sewing but most people except total slobs use vacuum cleaners. Dyson, however, is a big name in the household appliance world, so that is going to be what people think of first when somebody announces that they’ve just bought a new Dyson with a powerful motor. It doesn’t quite have the same kudos or cachet as, say, Lexus or Mercedes. Perhaps Cyclone, in honour of the Dual Cyclone, or JD Motors for James Dyson would do the job.
It will be interesting to see if this venture comes off. If it does, would you drive a Dyson car? Would you prefer them to use a different brand name? Does the idea suck or does it clean up? Tell us what you think!
Oh yes – if Dyson could add in an in-car vacuum cleaner so we can clean up mess straight away, that would be grand!
Fossil Fuel, EVs or Bio Fuels?
Fossil Fuels
Is petroleum diesel still a fuel that is going to be around to power our cars in the future? On the surface, it might look like the era of the diesel engine might be drawing to a close, especially when we hear that some manufacturers are pulling the pin on building new diesel engines. The truth is that non-renewable resources, which include fossil fuels such as oil, coal, petroleum and natural gas, are all finite in their quantity available in nature for the future. Diesel fuel is a petroleum product, and so is considered to be a finite non-renewable resource. Certainly it would seem that petroleum-based diesel has a limited window of opportunity for powering motor vehicles around the globe. But is this actually the case?
Added to the seemingly limited supply of our fossil fuels, we also hear that some car manufacturers are deciding to avoid building new diesel engines all together. Volvo was one of the first to announce boldly that by 2019 there would be no more diesel powered Volvo cars and SUVs in their line-up. Volkswagen Group’s diesel emissions cheating scandal has meant that they have decided to stop selling diesel models, as well. Volkswagen Group is pretty big when you consider that VW, Audi and Porsche are all under the same banner.
Because our global economy relies on so many diesel engines for performing many mechanical tasks we can’t drive the world’s diesel fleet over the cliff and forget about them just yet. The reality is that even America’s economy would grind to a halt immediately if they decided to go without diesel power overnight. Diesel engines are used in so many commercial applications – trucking, construction, shipping, farming, buses and much, much more. Diesel motors are still far more energy frugal (assuming proper and legal emissions treatment is followed) compared with gasoline equivalents. For any sort of heavy-duty transportation work or for towing purposes, the low-end torque of a diesel engine simply cannot be matched by gasoline motors which have to be worked much harder for the same amount of work – and therefore pump out more emissions.
EVs
EVs are getting plenty of press at the moment, but in reality they have a very long way to go before they can truly be considered as a true logistical alternative to the diesel motor. There just simply isn’t the network in place to produce so many EVs nor power so many EVs for our global economy to continue growing at the pace it is.
Biofuels
What I haven’t heard so much of lately is the advancements made in biofuels. Biofuels seem to me to be the much more sensible replacement option for petroleum diesel, as biodiesel fuels are a renewable resource. Biofuels are derived from biological materials such as food crops, crop residues, forest residues, animal wastes, and landfills. Major biofuels are biodiesel, ethanol, and methane; and biofuels, by their very nature, are renewable over a period of less than one year for those based on crop rotation, crop residues, and animal wastes or about 35 years for those based on forest residues.
Emissions from burning biodiesel in a conventional diesel engine have significantly lower levels of unburned hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, particulate matter, sulphur oxides, odour, and noxious “smoke” compared to emissions from the conventional petroleum diesel motor that we are more familiar with. Also, carbon dioxide emissions from combustion of biodiesel are reduced by about 10% when compared to petroleum diesel, but there is a more significant carbon dioxide benefit with biodiesel made from plant oils. During the photosynthesis process, as the plants are growing and developing, carbon dioxide is drawn from the environment into the plant, while the plants release beneficial oxygen into the environment.
How are EV batteries made? Are they as clean as renewable biofuels? If EVs are running on electricity produced by burning dirty fossil fuels, the climate benefits are limited. Because of the complex batteries that EVs use, it currently takes more energy to produce an electric car than a conventional one. While fewer emissions are produced by the cars themselves while driving on the streets, CO2 is still being emitted by power plants needed to charge the EVs. And, disposing of those complex EV batteries creates an environmental hazard in itself. EV batteries also need to be made from non-renewable minerals such as copper and cobalt, and rare earths like neodymium.
Some other negatives for EVs are that the mining activities for the minerals in countries like China or the Democratic Republic of Congo often cause human rights violations and vast ecological devastation which include: deforestation, polluted rivers and contaminated soil. Not so great! And, in addition, many automakers use aluminium to build the bodies of EVs, and a tremendous amount of energy is required to process bauxite ore into the lightweight metal.
Trucks, ships and tractors still think diesel power rules! Even though some car manufacturers have abandoned petroleum diesel fuelled cars, there are other automotive manufacturers that have actually ramped up their diesel vehicle production. General Motors, Jaguar, Land Rover, BMW, Mazda, Kia, Jeep, Ford, Nissan and Chevrolet are all manufacturing plenty of new diesel motors.
Hmmm?! Biofuels then?
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