How important is high-tech for motorists? I can usually do without it myself. I drove my own car to Berlin for the introduction of the Nio ET7, an impressively good high-tech limousine full of gadgets that I would never use. What was I doing in the fossil Volvo on the way? Thinking and playing CDs, looking around me. Stupid, fine, nineteenth-century things. So driving. Wonderful ride.
I’m in an impulsive detox phase online. While I tech like it, and sometimes reasonably see the meaning of it. I don’t mind route guides warning you about traffic jams, detours or dangerous objects on the road – my i3 can do it too. Only Googlemaps does that on your smartphone usually more accurately than the often retarded software of your car. I always switch off active safety assistants and I can park myself. Nice, cars that read your email, but it’s not an enrichment of my life. Voice control? Has one of my other cars too. Never used. Indeed, the 850 does not have bluetooth. I just don’t call on the road.
Because keeping up is an expensive duty, I attend a Hyundai online presentation about Software Defined Vehicles, or the Kias, Hyundais and Genesis of tomorrow. It makes me dizzy what they are up to in South Korea. Completely redefining mobility, also for those who do not have a car but wish to rely on the Mobility As a Service-like services that Hyundai will of course also offer. Tomorrow’s Hyundai will let cars update themselves automatically. A procession of Korean top dogs, each more serious than the next, successively explain the rollout of the plans from a five-storey virtual Software House. From vehicle platforms does it go to electrical/ electronic architecture, software, data and the future of mobility. The abbreviations are flying around my head. OTA for Over-The-Air, MECA for ‘Mobility, Electrification, Connectivity and Autonomous Driving Platforms’. ADAS for ‘Advanced Driver Assistance Systems’, ccOS for ‘Connected Car Operating System’. HDP is ‘Highway Driving Pilot’, RPP stands for ‘Remote Parking Pilot’ and AAM for ‘Advanced Air Mobility’, because flying will eventually also be included in the mobility chain. Learned something again.
I sit fascinated with my software-free Berlin trip in mind. My destination, Berlin Brandenburg Airport, I was able to find without navigation. There were signs on the highway. I had already seen where I needed to be at home and that was next to a parking garage that was signposted at the airport. My smartphone was able to complete the entire route.
This is about my mobility needs. In Berlin, I especially regretted not taking my bike with me. He could have easily sat in the back in that big station of mine. Then I would have parked the Volvo on the edge of town and avoided the mask hell of public transport. Cycling in such a megacity is a wonderful thing.
Hey dude, you also use Googlemaps there, right? Only to find the way to a museum, car dealership, wine store or restaurant. Then it goes out. I like to wander. Those nerds forget that; sometimes a person doesn’t want to go anywhere at all. It’s called relaxing.
So while I listen to those Korean wizards with admiration, I’m constantly thinking; what does this have to do with me and my mobility experience? For autonomous driving yes, which I do not believe in. Real life is analog. You have to earn your living in a way that is not too unpleasant. Furthermore, it is about people, nature, music, kicking a ball, a nice glass, good conversations, reasonable health, chugging around and the manpower to give the Russians a huge kick in the ass. The rest is secondary.
I don’t doubt the good intentions of the tech players. They want to make life better and more comfortable for you, I take my hat off to the car manufacturers Kia and Hyundai. But the digital perspectives of their worldview are far removed from mine. In my opinion, we should actually prevent the further virtualization of life. We no longer live in the infectiously chaotic reality of smells and colors, but in the sterile pseudo-reality that we let game builders and software engineers create.
Does that make us happier? I hear a Hyundai techno lady ask the key question: “Perhaps you’re wondering what value and experience these technologies bring?”
There is no good answer. Then I’ll give it myself. No. Come and cycle in Groningen or Drenthe, dear technicians, or borrow my old Volvo if necessary. Let go, return to base. Drive, slide, avoid.
Tomorrow I will allow Volvo to build another car without a single screen or display. I’ll buy it right away. Although the old brick still works fine. And I just love those old-fashioned meters, that beautiful green light. Feel free to call me a retarded romantic. I got everywhere with that 27-year-old, software-free Swede.
– Thanks for information from Autoweek.nl