I like loud cars, but not in my neighbourhood.

My brother was recently in this predicament. They have a CX-5 with two kids. Way too small, especially as they get older and everything they need to carry for weekend/week-long trips gets bigger.

Brother absolutely refuses to get a van. So they have decided on a Grand Highlander...which I did not know existed, but I guess it's a Highlander with some more room.

Brother is a "car guy," but also not because he's the stereotypical "fuck minivans" that doesn't accept the utility over the "image." Also, if he was a car guy, he wouldn't have let his CX-5 turn into what his wife calls "the mouse trap"...because they literally never clean the thing and have had mice inside it multiple times munching on all the bullshit the kids leave behind.

Not surprising, people who have obnoxiously loud cats have certain other character traits too...

https://www.sciencealert.com/study-links-preference-for-loud-cars-to-some-unsurprising-personality-traits

Quote from: Morris Minor on April 08, 2024, 08:32:40 PMBump. This is still unresolved and is now moving to the front burner because of a just-announced third child, due in late autumn. They're now talking about buying two minivans.

:whut:

That's funny. Unless you're regularly driving the entire crew in two different vehicles, Overkill...

Quote from: 565 on April 27, 2024, 05:09:35 AMHere is the actual report.

https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/inv/2022/INCR-EA22002-14496.pdf

The report doesn't fault the tech per se but faults Tesla for knowing its tech is misused and is lying about it, thusly leading to more crashes and fatalities. IOW, Tesla being Tesla.

Quote from: afty on April 22, 2024, 06:19:54 PMI had a hybrid Sienna as a rental a couple years back and was amazed at the mileage. I was seeing 35 mpg in mixed driving. Also the radar cruise and lane keeping was pretty good.

Last week I had an Equinox rental. It was fine. Not great, not terrible, just fine.

The Equinox basically became the new Impala. A low-key everyday vehicle for retirees and middle aged women. I have a lottttt of customers that used to drive Impalas but now have Equinoxes.

Quote from: 565 on April 26, 2024, 03:33:12 PMEveryone got a full FSD trial this month.  It works great except in situations with stop signs.  It's because the government mandated that Teslas FSD comes to a full stop at stop signs rather than rolling through just like everyone else.  The good thing is you can nudge it along with the accelerator while it's at a stop sign so the people behind you don't go ballistic.

I would say it drives like a good tourist driver in a new city.  It follows rules and does well for being cautious but doesn't have the experience of someone who knows the area. 

FSD before version 12 was definitely not worth the subscription cost.  Now with this AI version I think I'll pay the 99 bucks a month when the trial runs out.

The tourist driver analogy is good. FSD is now nudging towards great, but doesn't know the tips, back doubles, shortcuts, quirks and local knowledge we gain over years of driving on our own turf. Here in the southern Appalachians you can always tell when you're driving behind someone who's not a local. Flatlanders we calls 'em.

I've heard though (I think it was from John Gibbs, or maybe James Douma - dunno) that they're now working on localizing, encourage drivers to intervene to train for local stuff which would become part of their profile.

Here is the actual report.

https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/inv/2022/INCR-EA22002-14496.pdf

Seems like all the 13 fatalities were from something crossing in front of the Tesla and the driver not bothering to do anything. 

All level 2 systems require you to still pay attention.

At the end of their report in comparing it to other systems, they only came up with 2 things.  First is that they argue the system discourages people to disengage it because it holds the wheel and disengages with a certain amount of torque while other systems will auto disengage if you move the wheel however slightly and then randomly engage again all by itself. The Toyota does this and I will tell you it is much less safe because you have no idea when it's actually engaged or not.  Often times you think it's still lane centering but it has randomly decided to call it quits and you drift into the next lane. 

The only other thing they can come up with is the name. Others call their system assist or use weaker language while Tesla calls it autopilot.  Yet that just proves these people don't know what autopilot means, because in other vehicles with real autopilot, like planes and boats, the system just holds a heading and speed (and for planes altitude) and navigates to set waypoints for you.  It doesn't avoid other planes or other boats, or docks or lands for you, if you set a boat autopilot to run over a island it will gladly try to run aground for you. If anything the Tesla system is more capable and safer than the autopilot systems it got its name from.

Overall the report shows that it's not autopilot suddenly going rogue and driving people off cliffs or steering into other cars.  You still got to pay attention, which the system tells you repeatedly during your drive.

Tesla system will definitely get involved in more crashes because it gets actually used. The system in the BMW and Toyota are complete trash by comparison. I only use the one in the BMW occasionally because I stupidly paid for the feature.  My father no longer remembers how to activate the feature on his Tundra because he never uses it anymore.  My wife never used the BMW feature again after trying it once and it's her car.  The Tesla travels 90% of it miles on autopilot.

Tesla knowingly commits crimes against its customers vis-a-vis Autopilot: https://www.linkedin.com/news/story/teslas-critical-safety-gap-6004596/.

A "critical safety gap" in Tesla's Autopilot feature played a role in at least 467 collisions, 13 of them fatal, according to a new report from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. The agency spent nearly three years investigating more than 900 crashes in which Autopilot was thought to have been involved. The system's design has "led to foreseeable misuse and avoidable crashes," the report says. The NHTSA has also launched a probe into Tesla's December recall of more than 2 million vehicles, saying it discovered issues with crashes that happened after the recall.

Quote from: Morris Minor on April 26, 2024, 07:17:59 AMI sat through all of this last night. It's a bit like Home Shopping Network infomercials of old but, for surface streets at least FSD now looks good. The move at 6m23 got my attention (https://youtu.be/43Lrrhn0CMk?si=7KwbNIGbKQkGKhJU&t=383), when it moved over at the red light to give the turning car more elbow room. That was impressive.

Whole thing.

Everyone got a full FSD trial this month.  It works great except in situations with stop signs.  It's because the government mandated that Teslas FSD comes to a full stop at stop signs rather than rolling through just like everyone else.  The good thing is you can nudge it along with the accelerator while it's at a stop sign so the people behind you don't go ballistic.

I would say it drives like a good tourist driver in a new city.  It follows rules and does well for being cautious but doesn't have the experience of someone who knows the area. 

FSD before version 12 was definitely not worth the subscription cost.  Now with this AI version I think I'll pay the 99 bucks a month when the trial runs out.