Speak to me, Ford Explorer

The auto industry has been taking a lot of flack lately. I guess they deserve some of it. They just can’t seem to get it right.

The current price of gasoline runs their whole “engine.” Prices go up and they take notice, but the “vehicle” is so slow and lumbering that by the time fuel-efficient vehicles start coming off the line, prices are down and no one wants low-power, low-appeal cars anymore. Detroit is really good at giving John Q. what he wanted last year, but not this year.

I guess it is a little more complicated than that though, since John Q. is not the only one driving the markets. Your big brother Uncle Sam tries to steer the bus too. (I know, my metaphors right there are kind of like government spending.)

The auto-makers get some things right though, things like heated seats and dual temperature controls. The closer my car comes to having the intelligence, real of artificial, of KITT on Knight Rider, the better I am going to like it.

In case you were not around in the 80s, KITT (according to Wikipedia) is the “acronymic descriptor for the fictional TV adventure series Knight Rider character… an artificial intelligence microprocessor installed in a 1982 Pontiac Firebird Transam.” (The acronym stands for Knight Industries Two Thousand.)

KITT was a wonder, catching all kinds of criminals— a Superman on wheels. The automotive industry is doing it’s best to catch up. However, I am waiting for the day when the car that does it all and then communicates in modern English can be parked in my garage. I hope I don’t make a critical mistake if ever it is.

My car thinks (psuedo-intelligence only) that R2D2 language is sufficient for relaying information. Hence “ding-ding-ding,” which translated is “buckle your seat belt,” and “beep-beep-beep” meaning “your headlights are still on, idiot,” and “ding-ding, ding-ding” a little louder this time, “hey you, driver, the key is still in the ignition. Do you really want to lock yourself out?” (And you think your wife and kids nag.) That is about the extent of my bilingual abilities in the language of Microchip.

I think that some cars have GPS systems that do tell you where to go in English. I just don’t have one of those yet.

Meanwhile, I am happy for the messages written in English that appear on my dashboard in red or green LCD or LED lights (I don’t know the difference). It is very kind of Mr. Computer to tell me when one of the doors is open so I won’t lose my groceries out the back, or when I need to put gasoline in the tank. It would be good if he could tell me when I have left the gas pump nozzle hanging from
the side of my car though. I wonder what kind of stupid he would call me if I did.

He could have saved me a headache or two by warning me when I have gotten out of the car without using my parking gear. If he figures that out, in English it will probably sound like this, “Eeek, are you crazy? Get back here now and put this car in PARK or prepare to call your body-fender man.”

My car’s psyche seems to understand the level of attention I am willing to pay when he whines. Don’t think that he is going to sit by while I ignore him though. At least not on certain points. He gets most touchy about the question of an oil change. His first notification is respectful words on the dash that say, “Change oil.” If I ignore that request for a few days, he gets a little more strident, “Oil change required.” Then if I try to pretend I didn’t notice that warning, he starts in with “Change oil NOW.”

So I have always gotten the oil changed when “brain-behind-the-dash” (BBTD) puts it that way. I keep wondering what he would say if I pushed him one step further on the oil-change argument. Probably something like, “You’ve done it now. Your engine just seized up. I tried to tell you, but, no, you wouldn’t listen.”