Tech Talk: Car tech is all about perspective

When is a car not a car? I’ve written previously about how computer technology has overtaken vehicles, to the point where it feels like some companies are selling the software experience of their cars more than the performance or practicality.

It’s something of a peculiar trend — would you buy a refrigerator that’s compromised in it’s ability to chill food, or washing machine that can’t clean as well, because you like how the controls work?

Perhaps, if they’re also a status symbol.

When spending considerable sums of money on something, it’s often useful to consider whether it can perform it’s primary role as well as the price would suggest. A Ferrari is a work of art, but they also happen to be excellent at being cars, objectively. If you have the means, it’s reasonable to buy one based on that fact.

The first time I saw a Cybertruck in the wild, I thought it was a weird-looking dumpster in a parking lot until I realized that, no, it was, in fact, meant to be a vehicle. Of course, I knew what a Cybertruck was. But until I saw one in the wild, I hadn’t realized how unbelievably goofy they looked.

Hey, at least it’s a beast of a machine, right? Right?

Alas. It quickly emerged that, no you can’t wash them without putting them in a special mode. Unless you spring for the special undercoating, they’re probably going to rust. Well, you probably don’t want to take it off-road because, by now, hundreds of videos are out there showing these vehicles getting rescued from situations that would modestly inconvenience an elderly Jeep Wrangler. If you live in Northeastern PA, make sure you keep that light strip clean, because snow builds up in the crevasse where the headlights sit and dramatically reduces their effectiveness. Well, at least it’s a truck, so you can tow things with it. Unless they’re heavy — in which case you might damage the frame.

All of this before we arrive at the recalls. Six of them so far — for faulty accelerator pedals, delayed rearview camera output, inconsistent font size for warning messages, unintended acceleration, windshield wiper control systems, and the lining for the truck bed.

But it’s cool.

Maybe.

It depends on what you’re looking for, I suppose.

Some people value performance. Some people value looks, some value cost-effectiveness, some value reliability, and some value the experience of ownership. Everyone weighs those differently.

From my perspective, a vehicle is only as good as … how to say this simply … how good it is at being a vehicle.

Some of the best cars have no computers at all. Zero, zilch, low tech, purely mechanical, and they’re amazing vehicles. You can festoon the interior of a car with as many monitors as you want, and gee golly, the interface is cool, but if you decided to wash it and now it’s a paperweight because of all of that technology, that rather compromises it’s functionality.

At the end of the day, some companies sell cars, some sell technology on wheels, and some sell mobile experiences, and all of that is in the eye of the beholder. For me, when you leverage technology at the expense of the core function of a thing, whether it’s a car or a toaster, you’ve overshot the mark.