June 29, 2018 (Friday)
Cars have changed through the years.
Let’s think about extras found on many vehicles today. There is the satellite radio, and you can select virtually any genre of music you want, and, I suppose, you can select the artist and song you wish to hear (don’t know that for sure, because I’ve never operated one of those radios). Many cars today have a GPS system that gives directions and other information about your desired destination. Some cars have individual personalized settings for seat adjustments, including lumbar settings and temperature. I suppose the car knows who you are when you take your seat.
It goes without saying that your car is climate controlled, with guaranteed comfort for each person. Long ago some cars became equipped with automatic settings of headlight beams. Many cars have a screen on the instrument panel that shows what is in the path of the car when it is driven in reverse. Alarms also sound if there is danger.
And, of course, the innovation that is most talked about these days is the self-driving car. It is not yet without difficulties and accidents, but most manufacturers are planning big on the self-driven car as the wave of the future.
Yesterday’s blog cited examples of old-time cars and how they were sometimes crude in operation, and also how things have changed through the years. Every year has brought more sophistication in design and operation, with added safety and automatic features, such as brakes that work to avoid collisions even without the driver controlling their actions.
And, of course, prices keep rising. Much of the increased cost is due to inflation, but is also due to innovations that add value. Financing the purchase of a vehicle has become very sophisticated, with leasing instead of buying being a prominent feature. Dealers have had to exercise initiative with new ideas about how to pay for cars these days, but they do keep coming up with imaginative plans.
One great result of better engineering and automated assembly is the existence of old cars that still look new and perform as well as new cars. I heard a person reporting to a radio announcer one day that his odometer had just rolled over for a total driven of one million miles!
Great strides are in the making for mass transportation, but it will be a long time before the public gives up private vehicles.
