Word: smarted
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Brock Yates, the curmudgeonly columnist for Car and Driver, questions the demand for this technological gimcrackery by suggesting that consumers can be dumb about smart devices. "For a nation that can't program its vcrs," he says, "I wouldn't want to imagine a future where people will be expected to operate a 4,000-lb. smart car propelling them down the highway at 65 m.p.h." Besides, says Yates, "the auto is the last bastion of personal freedom in the U.S. It promises enormous flexibility. This smacks of Big Brotherism. I don't want 'HAL' inside my dashboard telling...
...course, getting smart costs money, as do the growing number of federally mandated improvements, and Detroit is passing on a good part of that cost to consumers. In recent months, average spending on a new car has exceeded $20,000 for the first time ever, and Ford economists predict this cost will rise to $30,000 by 2002. Indeed, the average family now spends more than half its annual income for a new car, compared with only a third in 1974. And the 4.7% average price rise for the new model year is running ahead of the current 2.7% annual...
...that reason and others, Detroit is exercising caution in introducing smart features; the industry is testing and retesting them to ensure that they live up to their promise and is carefully anticipating the degree of consumer demand for each item. It remembers only too well such failures as the talking dashboard ("Your door is ajar"), the tiny electrical wipers on side-view mirrors, the early fuel-injection systems that repeatedly stalled...
...smart feature has already gained widespread acceptance: antilock brakes. And though there is no statistical evidence that cars with these brakes have fewer accidents, many insurance companies seem convinced of their merit; they offer discounts on premiums for vehicles equipped with antilock brakes...
Detroit's drive for smart cars is getting a boost from Washington, which has joined it in a $1 billion Supercar program. The goal: development of a joint prototype vehicle that will achieve fuel economies of 80 m.p.g. by 2004 "while maintaining performance and cost of owning today's cars." Since internal-combustion engines, no matter how efficient and sensor studded, are unlikely to attain so high a gas mileage, the Supercar partnership is looking elsewhere. Aided by scientists at the U.S. National Laboratories, it is exploring such power sources as fuel cells and gas turbines, along with such energy...