What Shocked You Today

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What Shocked You Today

I wouldn't blunder onto the bridge if I hadn't seen him, but I can also identify it's a hump back bridge without needing to check it against a database of humpback bridges or relying on a GPS fix the trees would make a bit inaccurate for this purpose.

I think the point here is, I can keep pointing out situations like this a human finds easy that technology will struggle with until the cows come home there are literally millions of them. You'll encounter multiple on any given drive where you pick a course of action based on your experience more than the given information and you'll do it without a second thought probably to the point you don't even realise you are doing it. Collecting data is one thing, collating it, parsing it and then picking a safe course of action based on extrapolation of millions of points of possibly unrelated data quick enough to make a reasonable decision that's much more difficult.

This is not to say level 6 is not possible but flying cars are possible too we've been promised them since the 50s. But somehow they never quite happen as a mass market product.

Entirely possible if all items on the road are also level 6 or autonomous and massive infrastructure changes are made. However we live in a country where getting a pot hole filled or a working electric car charge point is considered an achievement so the likelyhood of it is low.
 
Self-driving works OK on motorways, nowhere else. With rules to keep everyone flowing in the same direction, and only crossing lanes to deal with, the car will drive very well. It is initially a little worrying, then becomes quite fun. I can see why some drivers, once familiar with it, begin to trust it and not just lose concentration, but to actively stop concentrating. And be very slow to react when the car beeps for help.

I think the programming for our roads is significantly more complex than for the US.

Single-track country roads will always be an issue. The vehicles can only be programmed for official passing places. Humans can decide on any potential space, farm entrances, field gateways, house driveways, etc., btu the car cannot use them as they cannot be guaranteed, especially field entrances that might be fine in the summer, not so much in winter.
 
This is not to say level 6 is not possible but flying cars are possible too we've been promised them since the 50s. But somehow they never quite happen as a mass market product.
I don't think level 6 would ever be possible without major changes to the whole road infrastructure and without all cars on the road being autonomous. Level 6 would mean no input required by any driver at any time, Which may be possible ironically in more complex environments where everything can be controlled and managed, but in the countryside where you have tractors and wildlife it might be a bit harder to achieve.

An interesting question is if people don't feel safe in an autonomous car, then what hope do these startups promising autonomous flying taxis have? we've even already build a port for such a taxi in the UK and the taxi itself doesn't even exist.

The airspace around London is ridiculously carefully controlled it would never cope with dozens of flying taxis, but its London that is the most likely to have people who want to use them. Anyway going off topic now.

The real benefit of autonomous electric cars is the ability to hop in and out of them like you would a taxi and not have people owning there own car, then the autonomy means cars could navigate safely without traffic signals and other infrastructure needed for humans again reducing congestion, but it only works if all cars are autonomous.
 
There is a jumping off point here as to whether or not the goal would ever be level 6.

Or whether the goal is to make the higher levels look convincing enough that a company could say keep harvesting money from investors.

Same could apply to the flying taxi company...as long as someone with money believes it's possible and will invest in it..it's kinda making money either way regardless of the results.
 
Not only do fiat now do a proper 48v hybrid, not the pointless “mild hybrid” they put in the panda and 50, but and actual proper hybrid. They also paired it with a 1.5 litre engine, not the tense 1.0 litre with and over caffeinated turbo.

Then to turn it into a truly interesting vehicle they have put a full length webasto style full length retractable fabric roof.

I think I like the 500x again
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I wonder where in the stelantis universe the hybrid system and engine came from, definitely not from fiat, but better than the recent offerings
 
A guy at work has a 2019 BMW 420. Nice car but the headlight has started to flicker now and then, apparantly a common sign of it starting to fail. Because it's LED, it's all integrated into the headlight with the control circuit boards. No individual parts inside, BMW say £2,600 for a new headlight if it fails!!!

And that following on from a failed turbo a few months ago, that BMW wanted £4,500 to sort (after a few hundred on diagnostics). Second hand turbo was only £600.

Not painting a great picture of moderm BMWs for me.
 
A guy at work has a 2019 BMW 420. Nice car but the headlight has started to flicker now and then, apparantly a common sign of it starting to fail. Because it's LED, it's all integrated into the headlight with the control circuit boards. No individual parts inside, BMW say £2,600 for a new headlight if it fails!!!

And that following on from a failed turbo a few months ago, that BMW wanted £4,500 to sort (after a few hundred on diagnostics). Second hand turbo was only £600.

Not painting a great picture of moderm BMWs for me.
Same with Audi/VW, if your steptric gearbox goes, it’s £13k for a recon one from an independent specialist, it’s £28k if you want one from Audi. Headlamp £1800
 
A guy at work has a 2019 BMW 420. Nice car but the headlight has started to flicker now and then, apparantly a common sign of it starting to fail. Because it's LED, it's all integrated into the headlight with the control circuit boards. No individual parts inside, BMW say £2,600 for a new headlight if it fails!!!

And that following on from a failed turbo a few months ago, that BMW wanted £4,500 to sort (after a few hundred on diagnostics). Second hand turbo was only £600.

Not painting a great picture of moderm BMWs for me.

Pretty much pick any modern German premium car...

Ok now never run it out of warranty just lease it as the manufacturer intended as the costs beyond that will be ruinous.

Salvage rebuilds is currently doing an M4 competition.

Power steering pump was damaged...they replaced, it didn't work. Needed coded to the car..of course it did.

Also one headlamp was destroyed...so they've had to find another crashed one with 2 lights and take all the control units from it...to be coded to this car as just replacing the broken bits it couldn't be made to talk to each other.

Damage or break it beyond warranty and to all intents and purposes it's a throwaway car.

Which sounds like hyperbole but it was written off at 6 months old and the list price was 90k...

So running into a kerb likely did what the insurance company saw as north of 40k of damage to repair..
 
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I’ve been watching a guy rebuilding a 2017 boxster on YouTube, bought as salvage where someone had already attempted a repair and given up,

He has having issues getting the car to not give a warning about a headlight fault. Turned out that the previous repair had sourced the wrong headlights for the car and nearly £5k later he was finally able to turn off the head light failure warning lights.

Worse still was the car was originally specced with some fancy matrix lights and they could not be coded out, it needed to see those headlights or they would not work, be then there was a lot of additional items that needed to be taken off the old head lights like adjusters and cooling fans, to fit to the new ones, so more money needed there as well
 
Amazing they are getting away with that, especially in the green recyclable world we live in.
 
Same with Audi/VW, if your steptric gearbox goes, it’s £13k for a recon one from an independent specialist, it’s £28k if you want one from Audi. Headlamp £1800
Makes the £3,000 it cost for the Ibiza gearbox back in the spring, look like an absolute bargain - always knew I favoured manual boxes for a good reason!

Edit. Thank goodness our headlights are good old dim halogens too!
 
Amazing they are getting away with that, especially in the green recyclable world we live in.
German car companies are oblivious to anything to do with environmental benefit. They just moved on from corporate corrupt behaviour on ICE emissions. All they know about is the pathetic pursuit of completely unusable and outrageous speed and acceleration. There are few poeple who are capable of controlling their ridculous products and driving without putting others at risk from them, This and the pointless pursuit of digital and computerised interiors is near insanity. When they finally get real and start to look at how to turn their undisputable skills and talents to making environmentally more acceptable products we will all be better off. They can and should lead the way. How they write their required environmental compliance statements when their noses are so long I don't know. The skills they have could be used so much better if they grew up a bit and focussed on not just product identity and profit but global environmental issues as well. Then they will again build things that real people will rightly aspire to. I totally despise them.
 
Edit. Thank goodness our headlights are good old dim halogens too!
To be fair, if you could just buy another and fit it...it would be less of a bother.

We've got led running lights...if one went eBay has many, two bolts, two wires job done.

Same craic with the later ones that have LED headlights as well.

Your average German manufacturer now everything needs coding to the car.

You get the feeling with a lot of this stuff that it's done to keep them in the dealer network for as long as possible.
 
To be fair, if you could just buy another and fit it...it would be less of a bother.

We've got led running lights...if one went eBay has many, two bolts, two wires job done.

Same craic with the later ones that have LED headlights as well.

Your average German manufacturer now everything needs coding to the car.

You get the feeling with a lot of this stuff that it's done to keep them in the dealer network for as long as possible.
Its all mad, the whole transport thing has been thrown so far up in the air and there is so much confusion over what the future can be they seem to have lost the plot. When you hear of people with ebven 2019 cars being unable to get parts as they have been discontinued, you wonder anyone wants to spend any money on any form of personal transport. They want you to stay with the dealer network but wont or more likely cant support you. ANd what isit with all this coding to the car, what utter nonsense. I think I will make a serious effort to locate a nice Topolino.
 
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