Designing cars to be more servicable.

A couple of weeks ago I decided to change the cabin air filter in my Evoque. I was getting an odd smell and with the fan on full, the HVAC system whistled so I figured a new air filter was the first place to start.
To do this job, on my car at least, you need to take out some plastic covers under the passenger side dash, and unbolt part of a metal frame in the fuse panel. So far so good. The problem is that the filter is 12 inches long and there's only 3 inches of clearance to the side of the HVAC unit to get it out, meaning it has to be twisted and bent considerably to remove the old filter. Putting the new one in was even more problematic because the twisting and folding had to be done at the same time as trying to feed the new filter round a 90 degree corner into the unit. Imagine trying to thread a needle with a sausage, whilst blind, around a 90 degree bend.
My car's not the only offender in this area either. I know on many Honda vehicles, to do the same cabin air filter change, you actually need to hacksaw a piece of plastic off the HVAC unit before you can even get to the filter cover.
This leads to the obvious question : why are these items not more servicable? Air filters need to be changed - that's a given. The engine air filter is normally easy to do (unless you're talking about the 80's-era Audi Quattro where you had to disassemble the fuel injection system just to access it). The cabin air filter ought to be just as easy to get to.
It's not just the air filter, obviously. The oil filter on my Honda Element was in such a place that when you took it off, the oil that drained out of the engine went all over the driveshaft and lower suspension arm. It was so bad that the "official" Honda kit to change the filter came with a drip ramp that you had to clip on to the suspension arm to redirect the flow.
There are cars where even something as simple as changing a headlight bulb can involve removing considerable amounts of bodywork, and others where something as basic as removing the sump requires the suspension to be dismantled and/or the engine to be dropped out of the car. It's not just cars either. The LT series of BMW touring motorbikes have so much bodywork and such a tightly packaged engine that the labour cost for changing spark plugs is something like 4 hours. Fifteen minutes to change the plugs and three and a half hours to disassemble and reassemble the bike.
In this day and age, shouldn't these parts be more accessible? The cynic will say that they're designed like this to encourage drivers to take their cars to dealers for service. Maybe so, but at the dealer, there's still a human being who's going to have to do the work, meaning that there's still someone who's going to curse and swear because of the inaccessibility of one or other component.
I'm not naive - I know how cars are built - I understand that the cabin air filter was put into the unit at the company who manufactured it while it was out in the open on a production line. The unit was then sent to Land Rover who simply bolted it into their car then built the dash around it. But come on - a little more forethought would make for a lot less frustration.

4 seats or 5?

I had an interesting conversation a couple of weeks ago about the number of seats in cars. It was the oddest thing but they said they decided not to buy a Chevy Volt because it only had 4 seats. It became a point of contention because realistically, every car only has 4 seats. The hump in the middle of the rear bench isn't really a seat. It's uncomfortable and ergonomically questionable and if you're an adult, it's essentially unusable.
What made the conversation weird was that the guy I was talking to had no children, so it's not like he needed a bench seat to get three kids on.
Rear seats have been a point of debate for me for years. Hands down the best vehicle I ever owned for rear seats was the Honda Element. It unashamedly had four seats. The two rear seats were physically separate from each other, meaning great shoulder room for passengers, and they had plenty of space to the seats in front, meaning great leg room for taller people. (I often have 4 people in my car.) They were comfortable and uncompromised by the desire to have a fifth seat in the middle.
The same is true for two-door sports cars. Ford Mustangs, Subaru BRZ and such - why the manufacturers put anything in the back is beyond me. For any reasonable driver, the front seats have to be in such a position that the rear seats have literally 10cm of space between the front of the seat base and the back of the front seats. No average human could ever sit in them.
I feel the same way about "third row" seating - sure you get two extra ones in the back for dwarfs or people with no legs below their knees, but you lose all cargo capacity so there's literally nowhere left to put even the smallest bag.
I guess because I have no kids, I don't see the need to jam that many humans into a metal container in close proximity to one another. If I wanted that sort of misery I'd buy an airline ticket and fly somewhere.

The moral dilemma facing the makers of drone cars.

Self-driving cars, drone cars, call them what you will. Long-time readers will know I view this as a bleak, joyless future. However there's a serious question to be asked, and that is the moral dilemma facing the people programming the software. At some point, your self-driving car is going to be faced with a simple decision : does it kill you, or does it kill the pedestrian at the side of the road?
Think about it - someone jumps a red light at an intersection as you're approaching. It's obvious to the onboard systems that even with full braking, you're going to hit the vehicle that sits in the intersection, and hit it hard enough that the airbags and restraints might not save you. The alternative is to steer and brake at the same time, but the sidewalks are full of pedestrians waiting for the next green light. The crosswalks on the side streets are full of already-crossing pedestrians so at this point, what's the right decision? To kill you and save 3 or 4 pedestrians? To kill the pedestrians and save you? Or to brake as hard as possible and hit the vehicle square in the middle in the hope that you and the occupants of the other vehicle will survive the impact?
Would you want the job of programming that logic? More to the point, would you accept that in a very particular set of circumstances, the car that you're sitting in could be programmed to sacrifice your life to save others?

How NOT to mount your phone when driving

I was recently browsing sites that offer car-mounts for my phone and I came across one from a company called 'Studio Proper'. The mount looks awesome but their promo video advertises the absolute worst location for a phone mount that you could imagine. In the video, they have it at eye-level, just a little off-centre from the steering wheel. Seriously - check it out for yourself here : https://vimeo.com/113662097
I know in places like California it's against the law to have anything mounted to your windscreen, but what they show in that video is just irresponsible. From the driver's point of view, yeah - great access to the phone. But it comes at the expense of being able to see anything out the right side of the windscreen. At one point in the video you even see a pedestrian disappear behind the phone because of it's location in the car.
The sad thing is I see people mount their phones and GPS's like this all the time, and it amazes me how they haven't the common sense to realise how dangerous they're being when doing this. But to see a company selling a phone mount and doing this bad a job with their PR video was a real facepalm moment for me.

RIP Top Gear - we knew you well

So the BBC did what we expected the old dinosaur to do - they cancelled Top Gear. Well technically, they haven't yet - all they've done is sack Clarkson. But given that James May and Richard Hammond won't do the show without him, effectively Top Gear is dead. If Chris Evans - the rumoured frontrunner replacement - becomes the main presenter, then the BBC will have pulled off the impossible by making a show that is actually worse than the US Top Gear. And believe me - that would be hard to do.
The BBC mishandled this in the style only they could. They should have kept this quiet and done the investigation whilst continuing to finish (and air) the three remaining episodes. The presenter's contracts were all up for renewal at the end of this season anyway. The BBC could simply have not renewed Clarkson's contract, and then stated the reason for it. But to blow this up out of all proportion and turn it into the public airing of their dirty laundry has cost them a lot. It's cost them credibility, to start with. We know it's also lost them about 4M viewers in the UK. Worldwide, the financial cost is pretty steep. They're in the hole for at least £250,000 for cancelling the Norway Top Gear Live - and that's just in ticket sales alone. Lost revenue from the 180 countries that air the show could come to anything up to another £200M per year. Factor in the magazine, live events, books, DVDs and all the other tie-ins and merchandising and that could creep up to £250M per year. Then there's the lawsuits that they will have to settle with all the TV stations with whom they're now in breach of contract to supply the show - that'll be a one-time cost but it will be expensive.
And why? Because the hyppocritical leeches at the BBC continued to make money hand-over-fist whilst publicly complaining about Clarkson at every opportunity. They're archaic dinosaurs who have no idea how to handle their own talent and deal with their own problems without them becoming public. Interviews with other former BBC alumni like Noel Edmonds have revealed just how terrible the Beeb are to work for.
So what now? My money is on Sky or Netflix - my hope is Netflix because they have no advertisers, which means Ambitious But Rubbish could shine there. The BBC will continue to attempt to make Top Gear, I suspect, but it will slowly die a long, agonising death. My suspicion is that it'll take a couple of years for them to realise they have nothing, and they'll swap presenters three or four times trying to come up with the magic combination before the inevitable happens.

Be wary when filling a rental car near an airport.

It almost goes without saying but I'll say it anyway: if you're returning a rental car to an airport and you need to fill up, use your brain. A couple of weeks ago I was returning a car at Orlando airport and needed to fill it. On the road out of the north side of the airport I came across two filling stations opposite each other. One was over $6 a gallon and the other was $5.95 a gallon. My initial reaction was a very loud WTF. Why? Because literally 15 seconds further north, on the next block, petrol was under $2 a gallon. Think about that for a moment. For the sake of driving an extra 15 seconds I spent 66% less for the petrol. You see this everywhere of course - the petrol stations near Heathrow Terminal 4 and 3 ask silly money for petrol. The big Shell station just south of Amsterdam airport is 25% more than anywhere else in the country.  But triple the price? This was the most blatant price gouging I've seen in a long long LONG time. I'm calling these guys out: Suncoast Energys and Sun Gas on South Semoran Blvd: you guys are criminals of the lowest order. 

For everyone returning a car at Orlando, drive one block further to the Wawa and save yourself a crapload of money.