Headworx

As a follow up to the last week's story about car dashboards - an addendum from my rental experience. It was a 2-day trip to Germany. My company has a rental agreement with SIXT, with some preferential rebates and integrated invoicing, so I went there without thinking too much. I liked SIXT in the past for their quite seamless "skip the line" online check-in (scan the driver's license and an ID, get a code to open a lockbox with the car keys). And it went OK like that this time too. But there were several things that were not OK.  During the booking process I got a number of really silly-looking options. Like "get Bluetooth for 5 EUR/day". And then "get Apple CarPlay" for additional 5 EUR/day. CarPlay requires Bluetooth so technically selecting it should select the Bluetooth option too... "Get parking sensors for 5 EUR/day".... the list was long. SIXT are you serious? There is no way to enable / disable these options remotely (or maybe th...

Cars peaked around 2005. This is the model year of my Subaru Forester STI (SG9). The best and coolest car ever made. 350 hp,  1500 kg (3300 lbs), frameless side windows, ultimate performance (including offroad), driver-focused interior, sub-5s 0-100km/h acceleration, unbelievable handling. The dashboard is driver-focused too with clean instruments panel featuring central tachometer and all distractors moved away. The other controls are just three well know knobs for ventilation (fan direction, fan speed, temperature). Then I have a 2-din aftermarket radio unit with capacitive touch and wireless Android Auto and Apple CarPlay . It also has tons of other functions including a CD/DVD player but I don't use them. Android Auto / Apple CarPlay is all that is needed these days. OK maybe an FM receiver for some old schoolers. As I travel a lot, I drive many rental cars too. The problem they all indicate is the car industry got drunk with semi/automated driver assistance subsystems and comp...