Car-based subscriptions are evil
drive.com.au
drive.com.au
Between the new driver nag software not liking my driving and randomly jamming the brakes and throwing up alarms for nothing (there's a funny shadow, you're not allowed to drive more than 10mph near it)
Now they want to charge for access. It's nonsense, I wish I'd kept my old one. It needed $1000s of work, so I decided to buy a new one, but that was a terrible decision
I write this as Smashing Pumpkins - 1979 music video plays
I think it was when the VW Atlas first came out and I was test driving it ahead of a dealership floor room launch that it went crazy and it slammed the brakes when it detected a railroad track (I was going 40 mph and this is supposed to be VW's answer to the Land Cruiser) and it freaked out and kept the throttle by wire in a safe mode for ~10 miles that I realized the automotive era as I knew it had completely ended.
It wasn't just about ICE going away, which as a V10 loving fanboy I still personally laud, it was more about cars being reduced to this perpetually monitored UX that can override the driver that I knew the battle was lost--they were more like smart phones with wheels than anything else.
I'm not sure who will buy into the image of cars being a medium for personal freedom to explore the World anymore when it's essentially locking you out of the inputs to such a degree. I have owned many cars and motorcycles, and driven just about every Tesla and while I think progress is being made to revolutionize transportation, it has only been able to do so by losing it's very soul.
The UK is currently seeing 40C weather, a bad heatwave is taking over mainland Europe, and a drought in Italy and California is impacting planting and harvests so I think it's a necessary cost; it reminds me of when I was Marshaling at Pike's Peak in 2017 it was like a melancholy swan-song farewell to the dinosaur era: the EV bike (developed by the kids from Ohio State in partnership with Honda and Harley Davidson) set a record and the following year VW would come and dominate the Mountain record in the IDR.
It's funny, I foresaw about 75% of the things that have happened, but it's still sad as a 90s kid who started to turn wrenches at 11 to see how systematically worse the Auto Industry has gotten to keep up with the times, in my lifetime as most late millennials and Gen Z couldn't care less about car culture and prefer to live in cities and use drive apps like lyft/uber than own their own and learn all the lessons that come with car ownership that I think vastly transfer to real life. Most can't afford it either, so the realities are starker than just not owning a beater and learning how to ad-hoc problems solve and work around problems.
As one of these millennials that moved to a city and sold their car, I think it's for the best. I still love cars for their technical aspects and engineering, but car companies have lost me. I agree with everything you said.
Cars suck now, and car companies suck. The more I learn about cars, and how we've been pigeon-holed into depending on them, and the cost they put on society (dollars, climate, social interaction, etc), the more I despise them.
I feel betrayed. We went all in on cars for so long, and for what cost? They've nearly monopolized personal transport in North America, and culturally stigmatized the options that once were. I could list all the negatives, but I've seen them discussed on here many times.
I learned a lot about cars growing up, and was once fully involved with car culture. But now my relationship with them is more parasitic. Cars kill, cars make people poor, and they negatively impact our social interactions. I don't think millennials, Gen Z, or any other future generations should worship the car like generations past. The amount of harm is not worth it. They should understand transportation, but certainly do so with an open mind while learning about alternatives to cars.