Seen on the street in Kyiv.

Words of Advice:

"If Something Seems To Be Too Good To Be True, It's Best To Shoot It, Just In Case." -- Fiona Glenanne

“The Mob takes the Fifth. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?” -- The TOFF *

"Foreign Relations Boil Down to Two Things: Talking With People or Killing Them." -- Unknown

“Speed is a poor substitute for accuracy.” -- Real, no-shit, fortune from a fortune cookie

"If you believe that you are talking to G-d, you can justify anything.” — my Dad

"Colt .45s; putting bad guys in the ground since 1873." -- Unknown

"Stay Strapped or Get Clapped." -- probably not Mr. Rogers

"The Dildo of Karma rarely comes lubed." -- Unknown

"Eck!" -- George the Cat

* "TOFF" = Treasonous Orange Fat Fuck, A/K/A Dolt-45,
A/K/A Commandante (or Cadet) Bone Spurs,
A/K/A El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago, A/K/A the Asset., A/K/A P01135809

Thursday, March 26, 2015

Not Ever Giving Up My Old Honda

Ford is planning to introduce cars that will automatically obey the speed limit. I will wager that the insurance companies will discount rates for the owners of those cars.

Progressive's Snitch "discount" is, no surprise, resulting in raising the rates on drivers which the Snitch software doesn't like. One of the things the Snitch doesn't like is drivers who drive between midnight and 4AM, so if you work a second or third shift job, it sucks to be you.

(H/T)

7 comments:

Nangleator said...

If enough cars obey the speed limits, tickets for "swerving" will explode.

Can't mess with the blue gang's protection racket, you know.

CenterPuke88 said...

Good news is the program is Europe only...for now.

Imagining the lawsuit after the first person in the US dies, if this was introduced, because they couldn't escape someone chasing them...

Comrade Misfit said...

If you floor it, that apparently will override the governor. But it'd make for a shitty ride, as you'd let up on the gas and then the stupid car would try to slow back down.

BadTux said...

You will have to give up your old Honda, eventually, because the electronic parts that control the engine will die and there will be no replacements for them. This was not a problem for older cars whose engines were designed before electronics, but any car designed within the past twenty years has engines designed such that they *must* have electronic engine controls. The variable valve timing in your Honda, for example, would not work at all except for the electronics that very carefully decide what the valve timing should be based upon a myriad of data such as engine temperature, throttle opening, engine RPM, amount of air passing through the intake manifold inlet, and so forth.

Today's cars are disposable, in other words. You still see cars from the 1950's driving around today, 60 years later, because all their components are mechanical and easily fabricated by any modern machine shop. You will see no cars from the 2010's driving around in the 2070's even assuming civilization lasts that long and doesn't collapse due to peak oil and population growth and the inevitable famines that will result. The electronics simply will not exist anymore to make their engines run.

Comrade Misfit said...

So I'll get an older one.

Will said...

Your are incorrect about electronic controls disappearing for older cars. If there is a market for them, someone will build it. This appears to be mostly for the higher performance models, since people want to drive them. The biggest problem is the smog rules tend to bias toward the OEM parts, as the important thing for some states is that it be original. This, of course, drives up the cost of keeping a car on the road, which is the important point of the smog Nazi's. Results aren't the most important thing, but the process is, which is typical bureaucratic thinking.

TL;DR
There are aftermarket control systems for some, but they don't meet the oem rule for those states that care about it, in other words.

The cpu for my 1st gen Turbo Talon was only available from Mitsubishi (long story why) for $1200. Recently they have turned up at the auto parts store for 1/4 the cost.

BadTux said...

Will, that is true for older cars with simple electronics. But the electronics in new cars have hundreds of thousands of lines of software code in them which is copyrighted and proprietary to the auto manufacturer and which cannot be replicated by any 3rd party vendor. My 2012 Jeep Wrangler has seven (7) computers in it and is completely electronically controlled. Electronics modify the valve and ignition timing in sync with the fuel injection timing for best power and ignition. Electronics determine the automatic transmission shift points, and electronics, not hydraulics, actually shift the transmission. There is no -- zero -- way that *any* third party vendor will *ever* replicate all of this. It's just impossible to reverse-engineer without the source code to the software, which is always impressing me with how well it works especially given its size and the complexity of the systems it is controlling.

Note that I am an engineer who designs computers. I know of what I speak here.