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Heated Seats – An Everyday Luxury
Would you like to have a hot butt? No, this is not an ad for some fancy-pants workout programme or weight loss gadget. Instead it’s all about one of my favourite driver conveniences, heated seats.
Electrically heated seats were the brainchild of the designers at Saab – those Swedes certainly come up with some great practical features. This isn’t surprising, really. We all know how cold it can get up there in a country that lies partly inside the Arctic Circle. Saab, like the other Swedish giant, Volvo, know how to build cars that are toasty-warm and can cope with cold conditions (perhaps a little too much so – in a Saab I once had, the soft lining on the inside of the cabin roof came away because the adhesive melted in the warmth of a summer Down Under).
However, according to the Saab History site (a fun place to poke around if you, like me, are a fan of Swedish vehicles), these heated seats were designed with another purpose in mind. Instead, the aim of heated seats was to reduce backache and driver fatigue, rather than simply warming up after a brush with a Swedish winter. This does make a certain sort of sense. After all, there are other ways of ensuring that your lower half is warm enough, including a snuggly blanket tossed across your knees and wearing ski pants or long woollen underwear. On the other hand, given that it’s the extremities that get coldest first and driving in mittens or ski gloves is pretty tricky, if dealing with chilly conditions was the aim of the game, you’d think that heated steering wheels would have made it onto the scene first (the patent for the motorbiking equivalent, heated grips, was acquired by BMW in the early 1980s). And it’s certainly true that having something nice and warm on your lower back and around your hips eases the ache of long periods spent behind the wheel… which could easily be a topic for another post.
How do heated seats work their magic to give you that nice warm feeling? Basically, it uses the same principle as an electric blanket. This means that the seat contains a heating coil that is supplied with electricity from the car’s battery, and also contains a thermostat to make sure that the heating coil doesn’t behave like the other heating coils we’re all familiar with (ovens and bar heaters) and fry you. Switch the heated seats on and the electricity flows through the coil (which is a resistor, for all you more scientifically inclined folks), which heats up. When the thermostat detects that you’ve reached the right temperature, the electricity is cut until the temperature falls below a threshold.
If, however, you have seats that have a heating and cooling function (which you do find on some of the latest models), the technology is a little different. Here, the seat has air vents in it (not so big that they become uncomfortable, of course) and either hot air or cold air is piped around your nether end, similar to what happens with other parts of the air con or ventilation system.
One of the things that was mentioned in that old Saab press release was that the heating system was safe and wouldn’t cause electric shocks in the presence of moisture. This is a problem with electric blanket, after all, and is why I’m not alone in preferring a hot water bottle on chilly nights. Some commentators have sniggered at the suggestion that drivers or front passengers might be wetting their pants and thus need the protection. These commentators obviously have never spilt coffee in their laps or worn those raincoats that ride up and let your bum and thighs get wet. Or slipped and fallen in a puddle. Or, presumably, worn a wet swimming costume while driving… although if it’s warm enough to swim in a location that doesn’t allow you to get changed properly, you aren’t likely to be needing the services of a heated seat. Unless, of course, your back aches.
Now if only they could make every single seat in the home as well as in the car heated…
The Driverless Audi At The Racetrack
Well, I guess we saw this one coming as soon as the driverless car concept started becoming more than being reserved for use by science fiction authors. Audi has been doing some tinkering to find out if a driverless car can get faster lap times than a conventionally driver car.
For most of the designers and other boffins playing around with driverless cars (i.e. Google, Volvo and Toyota), safety is the main idea. Human error is the main cause of car accidents, so by getting technology to do it, the human error is thus eliminated (although I’m reminded of the saying that came out in the 1980s: To err is human but if you really want to stuff things up, use a computer). However, when Audi started modifying an Audi RS7 to make it into a driverless car, the idea was to see if a fully computerised driverless car could do it faster than a real person.
The first thing that Audi did was to put loads and loads of sensors all around the body of the car – an absolute must for any driverless car or, indeed, just about any production car worth its salt these days. (Those of you who have read Anne McCaffrey’s “The Ship Who” sci-fi novels may wonder if we really are heading towards a world where humans can mesh completely with a machine and its sensors. OK, no more speculative sidetracks…). These ultrasound sensors on the Audi RS7 check how close the vehicle is to the side of the track and other objects, and the front camera can read road signs as well. Just for fun, they threw in an infrared camera to give the car night vision. These sensors are designed to work in with a super-precise GPS navigation system. Most of the navigation systems you’ll find on good cars are pretty precise and can pinpoint your location to within about 15 m – enough to get you home or to help you find the nearest public loo or café. However, the one on the driverless RS7 is much more precise, tracking and pinpointing locations within 10 cm or 1 cm (one of the videos shown below says 1 cm; the . Add in a mapping programme showing the road ahead that can work at really high speeds (up to 240 km/h) and the car’s ready to roll. All this information gets fed to the central computer that controls the steering, the brakes and the throttle. And here’s the result, as demonstrated at the Hockenheim track:
This wasn’t the only public outing for the driverless Audi RS7. They also got it out to race against a human at the Ascari circuit in Spain, with the result that the driverless car beat the human:
One of the big secrets behind why this driverless car gets such good lap times is that the tracks are pre-programmed into its system. We all know that the one thing that computers do a lot better and quicker than humans is to carry out complex mathematical operations. This means that a driverless car doing laps can calculate the perfect lap line, probably with a bunch of quadratic equations (see, they are useful in real life rather than a torture inflicted on you during high school mathematics). It can also calculate the perfect time and level of braking and acceleration to get around the curves perfectly. What’s more, the car probably doesn’t have to worry about driver discomfort and the amount of G-force involved, meaning that if it needs to brake hard or swing around a corner hard, it can, even though this would feel ghastly for the human body. And the car can adapt itself to the conditions.
It’s pretty amazing; there’s no doubt about that. Part of me loves the idea that the effect of any momentary distractions and bad habits can be eliminated just like that. However, there’s another part of me that’s just a little bit technophobic and doesn’t like the idea at all. I mean, we’ve all seen how computers and other electronic equipment can throw wobblies and do what you didn’t intend them to do at awkward moments. Take my electronic keyboard (of the musical type), for instance. After being in storage for a month, it developed the habit of suddenly making a loud “WOP” noise at random and resetting every single tone to plain piano (including the preprogrammed drumbeats), which means that we can’t take the out to perform in public because it’s got faulty electronics that cost a bomb to fix. Imagine if the circuitry in a driverless car failed at a critical moment – it would be a lot worse than merely embarrassing. And we all know how spell checkers, autocorrect and speech recognition software can get things badly wrong. One clanger I’ll never forget that happened to me were when Microsoft Word decided that the British slang for gumboots, “wellies”, should really have been “willies”. The other was when my phone decided that instead of texting my brother “Dropping off hay bales at your place,” it should have been “Dropping off gay baker at your place.” Check out the website http://www.damnyouautocorrect.com/ for worse examples. Again, if simple things that think for themselves can get it so badly wrong, then can you imagine what would go wrong with a fully driverless car?
The other objection I have to a driverless car is that it takes all the fun out of car ownership and driving. Remember the day when you first got your car licence and could actually be in charge rather than merely sitting in the passenger seat being driven? Driverless cars seem to be a bit of a step backwards. If they become really common, why bother learning to drive at all? For that matter, if all you want on your commute is to sit back and check out your social media feed, read a book or just daydream, then why not just take public transport?
However, if they manage to iron out any electronic kinks that are the equivalents of autocorrect fails and other gremlins, then it is kind of exciting to think of a world where drunk drivers, idiots who can’t keep their eyes off their mobile phone and other distracted drivers won’t be a problem. I know I’ve got a few bad driving habits myself that an autonomous car would probably correct. I guess that people felt jumpy about automatic gears when they first came out; they certainly thought that the internal combustion engine was black magic when Herr Benz first developed it.
So what do other people think of the driverless car? A great idea or a bit of a party pooper? Would you ride in a driverless car? Own one? Or would you rather stay firmly in charge of things?
Is A Hybrid Vehicle Right For You?
Ever since Toyota came out with the landmark Prius, the first hybrid car to really capture public attention, more and more manufacturers have been coming out with hybrid engines. Everybody’s doing it, from Mercedes-Benz to Nissan (well, not quite everybody, but you know what I mean). You might be running your eyes through the reviews we have here at Private Fleet and wondering if a hybrid will be right for you. Surely, you ask yourself, a hybrid will be cheaper to run and better for the planet. Why shouldn’t I buy a hybrid car?
The answer to this question is yes and no. It really depends on you and your situation, just like it does for any other vehicle. To help you find out whether you should consider a hybrid, ask yourself the following handful of questions:
Do you live in the city or in the country?
Hybrid cars do best if they are driven around town. The stop–start style of driving and the low speeds are the moments when the electrical motors in the hybrids are designed to kick in. If you do a lot of round-the-town driving, then a hybrid engine will improve your fuel economy figures. However, if you live out in the back blocks and/or do a lot of open road driving, the electric part doesn’t quite get the same chance to do its thing and you may get similar fuel economy figures with a regular petrol or diesel engine (of course, this depends on how you drive but that’s another story).
Are you a petrolhead?
By a petrolhead, I mean someone who likes to hear the roar of the engine and chooses vehicles based on their performance. As hybrids tend to be quiet (electric motors are whisper-quiet) and tend to not quite have the performance flair of their petrol and diesel equivalents – although the designers are working on this one – they might not press your buttons.
How big is your family?
On the whole, hybrids tend to be smaller vehicles rather than larger ones that fit in the kids, their friends, the sports gear and the dog. Again, this will probably change in the future, but it can be very hard to find a hybrid vehicle that has seven seats. But not impossible: you do have a choice between a Nissan Pathfinder Hybrid and a Prius V . It may be tricky finding a second-hand version if you can’t afford to buy new, especially as the Pathfinder hybrid has only recently been released. If you’re like my sister-in-law and have six kids plus a dog, then you may need to postpone getting a hybrid. On the other hand, if you’ve only got a couple of kids or if you can afford to buy new, then you can probably find a suitable hybrid.
Do you need to tow trailers, caravans or horse floats?
If you do a lot of towing, then the extra demand made on the engine by getting that load on the back up to speed will mean that you won’t get the main benefits of having a hybrid engine. What’s more, as mentioned above, hybrids tend to be on the smaller side and small vehicles don’t quite have the towing ability of bigger brutes (not to mention making you look a bit silly if you are a contractor or tradie).
If you are thinking about a plug-in hybrid, do you know where your nearest charging station is?
For some reason, Northern Territory doesn’t seem to be too well supplied with charging points, at least according to myeleectriccar.com.au . However, most other main centres in Australia and a lot of minor centres have charging stations for plug-in hybrids and electric vehicles. However, if your nearest charging station is miles out of your way, then don’t get a plug-in hybrid. If you can’t recharge it properly, you aren’t going to get the benefits of going plug-in. Either stick to an ordinary hybrid or go for fossil fuels – or put up with the higher power bills of at-home charging (you thought your mobile phone was bad…).
Metal Beasts: Cars That Are Named After Animals
When the marketing team for a new vehicle put their heads together, they put a lot of thought into the name. At least that’s the theory. With some marques, they stick with a system of numbers and letters that let you know some of the details about the car, such as the engine size (this is the preferred method of Mercedes-Benz and BMW). Other manufacturers pick an actual name: a word that will stick in the memory of potential customers and possibly capture what the spirit of the vehicle is. Often, the design team look to the animal world for images of beauty, speed and possible danger; alternatively, they give them cute, cuddly names that are likely to appeal to the more family-friendly segment of the market.
Here’s a selection of vehicles that have already been named after animals:
Cute, cuddly and pretty animals:
- Beetle (VW)
- Bluebird (Nissan)
- Rabbit (VW – in the US; it’s called a Golf )
- Kitten (Reliant)
- Escargot (French for “snail” (escargot) with a pun on “cargo” – Nissan)
- Robin (Reliant)
Reliant Robin
- Panda (Fiat)
- Swift (Suzuki)
Fast animals:
- Mustang (Ford)
- Impala (Chevrolet)
- Colt (Mitsubishi)
- Starion (a Japanese mishearing of “Stallion” – Mitsubishi)
- Pinto (technical term for a black and white or brown and white horse; Ford – probably about the worst vehicle they every made)
- Marlin (AMC)
- Stag (Triumph – although this could go in the “dangerous animals” category)
- Falcon (Ford)
Dangerous animals:
Ford Pinto
- Ram (Dodge ) – some sheep aren’t just fluffy things that go baa
- Bighorn (Isuzu )
- Jaguar (probably about the most successful animal name out there)
- Spider (Alfa Romeo)
- Viper (Dodge)
- Cobra (Shelby)
- Cougar (Ford, formerly Mercury)
- Barracuda (Plymouth)
- Stingray (Corvette)
Corvette Stingray
- Amarok (Inuit for “wolf” – VW)
- Blackhawk (Jeep Cherokee – although they might have had the military helicopter in mind… which is named after the bird).
- Thunderbird (Ford)
- Gripen (Swedish for “griffin” or “gryphon”, a mythological cross between a lion and an eagle; Saab)
- Golden Hawk (Studebaker)
- Tiburon (Spanish for “shark” – Hyundai)
- Cayman (variation of “caiman”, which is a small crocodile or the Spanish for crocodile/alligator –Porsche)
- Puma (Ford)
- Yeti (Skoda)
- Taurus (Latin for “bull” – Ford)
OK, so that’s cars that actually exist that are named after animals. What are some other possibilities that could work for the cars of the future? And what animal names definitely won’t work?
Cute and cuddly:
- Labrador
- Alpaca
- Swan
- Ladybird
- Corgi
- Koala
- Dolphin
- Racoon
Fast:
- Kestrel
- Oryx
- Appaloosa
- Palomino
- Peregrine
- Greyhound
- Elk (this would really suit a 4×4)
- Saluki
- Pegasus
- Tiercel
- Camel
Dangerous:
- Dragon (although SsangYong means “twin dragons”, so this might be already in use)
- Alligator
- Pitbull
- Jararaca
- Bear
- Boomslang
- Lynx – hang on, that’s men’s deodorant.
- Orca
- Taipan
- Basilisk
- Anaconda
- Mamba
- Komodo (as in Komodo Dragon)
- Raptor
- Osprey
- Aquila
- Mosquito (yes it’s a dangerous animal (spreads malaria) and it works for fighter planes, so why not for cars?)
Ummm – perhaps not!
- Hippo
- Baboon
- Slug
- Dog
- Emu
- Cow
- Gorilla (although this might work for a big commercial pickup – you never know)
- Goldfish
- Pig
- Duck
- Echidna
- Whale
- Turtle
- Seagull
- Bitch
- Monkey
- Octopus
- Giraffe
- Hyena
- Platypus
- Troll
- Boa
- Jellyfish
Any other suggestions for animal names that will work – or that definitely won’t? Let us know in the comments!
Level 2, 9 Help Street