Why do you need it to be AWD? It seems to be a similar fad to SUVs. 99.999 % never actually needs it.
I live in a hilly area and it often snows in the winter, but I never thought, hell yeah, let's buy an AWD car for the 2 days of the year when the snowplow didn't pass our street before I drove on it.
I have come to really like AWD for winter driving. I would be OK with FWD, but seeing that I live in a part of the world where I have no choice but to occasionally drive in the snow, I would never opt for RWD in a daily driver.
Here we usually get more than 2 days of snow a year, but not much more. I don't like to ever be dependent on weather to get anywhere I want to go. I will buy the equipment to get me where I want to go when I want to go there no matter what is going on outside. I have zero tolerance for ever letting conditions stop me from doing anything I need or want to do. I even put dedicated winter tires on my car, an anomaly around here.
Well, you say that, but I wish I had self driving features when I'm in stop and go traffic. Which was quite often recently since my dear government was taking 4 years to do routine maintenance to the highway I usually take to work. Yeah, since 2017 there wasn't a single day until last week where all traffic lanes were actually open on the road.
That's fair. But really, driving in traffic doesn't bother me much. Don't get me wrong. I hate the waste of time, but if I'm going to be stuck there anyway, I think I'd rather be driving.
So far the most self driving I experienced was radar assisted cruise control and I loved that too. Not having to constantly manually adjust my speed because the idiot in front just can't decide on a speed.
My S90 has Radar assisted cruise control and Volvo's "Pilot Assist" system. I would never have paid for it, but you don't get much choice when you buy certified pre-owned. Does the car you want exist and the amount of miles you want? You get it with whatever options it has.
I almost never use the system. It's more of a pain in the *** than it is worth. It gets confused by widening lanes, and certain turns, especially when the lines on the road are worn. I find that it is more work to step in and control it periodically when it loses a fix on things than it is to just drive it myself.
The radar assisted cruise control is convenient, but it too is annoying. The **** thing refuses to coast down to speed. You set the distance to the car ahead of you, and as soon as it get slower than you set it, the thing starts riding the brakes instead of consuming some space and coasting down to speed like a human driver would. I have never gone through brakes this fast in my life. So, most of the time I just don't use that either.
Ironic, since in the early 2000s or 90s we considered 6s sports car acceleration. I think for any traffic situation 10s is more than adequate. Don't get me wrong, I like fast cars, and I think anything bellow 9s is an indulgence and absolutely unnecessary.
I'd mostly agree, but there are a lot of really bad old highways around here with REALLY short onramps. And unlike most places in Europe where the car on the onramp has the right of way, and the cars in the rightmost lane must let you in, here in the U.S. it is the other way around. Those on the on ramp must yield for traffic on the highway.
It also doesn't help that everyone tailgates here. Literally near 0% of the population leaves a safe following distance to the next car on the highway.
If you don't have the ability to get up to speed, and get up to speed very fast, it could be outright dangerous, or you could wind up spending a very long time trying to merge on to a highway, with drivers behind you getting very frustrated.
My old 168hp NA base model Volvo v70 Wagon is the slowest car I've ever owned in that regard, at about 9 seconds. I usually don't drive it on the highway though. I do that in the S90.
I actually love connected features, I wish my dashcam was connected so I didn't have to pull the SD card and manually get stuff of it. Also it'd be great if I didn't have to put my phone up with a fugly holder on the dash, but the car just mirrored it on my central screen. And while at it it could utilize my spotify account or just stored music on the phone to play through the speakers.
I don't trust them. At all. I'm the "Engineer" from that meme about connected devices:
I don't use any so called "smart" devices, ever. Whenever I get a new phone or computer, I go through it and disable every single feature that has anything at all to do with syncing or cloud capability, and set all security features to their least permissive, regardless of what features I lose. I also always completely disable any "assistant" features of any device I own.
I find it particularly bothersome that my car has a GPS and a second non-removable "always on" simcard that sends god knows what back to the manufacturer. I almost tried to return the car when I found out.
I want absolutely none of that in my vehicles, or anywhere else in my life either for that matter.
I am a huge tech enthusiast, but I have absolutely zero tolerance for things that dial home without my explicit permission. I expect every device to never use the network unless I explicitly tell it to, and I am unwilling to ever compromise on this.
If that means I have to stay in the 90's, I am perfectly happy with that. I was happy in the 90's, and if I am honest, there is absolutely nothing new tech wise since then I really feel I need. I run my own servers and I am happy with them.
Heck, I've even had a policy of "no new accounts" for the last 5-10 years. If something (software or hardware) requires me to tie it to the internet, and create a username and password, I simply refuse. I bought Far Cry 3 on steam a few years back, and it force installed Origin and wanted me to create an Origin account. I said absolutely no way and requested a Steam refund. I still run Windows in a local account only, and do not have and do not want a Microsoft account. If they ever force me to create one, that will be the day I wipe my Windows partition off of my drive.
I want to be connected, but I want to be in manual control of everything that connects at all times with nothing ever going on behind my back.
I'm with you on that. I hate these esp. toyota and tesla dashboards where there is nothing behind the steering wheel.
Conceptually I don't mind digital dashes, but I just see them as an uneccessary point of failure, so an analog speedo and rev counter is my choice.
My S90 has a screen based instrument cluster behind the steering wheel. I thought I would hate it, but it hasn't wound up bothering me much. At this point I am mostly indifferent. (If it ever broke and I had to pay a ton of money to replace it, that would instantly be a different story though)
What I am completely opposed to is that minimalist nonsense where there is no instrument cluster at all, just that supid ipad looking thing in the center. Do not want. You could create the god of all cars, but if it is designed like that, I won't buy it. I wont even accept it for free.
Another thing I really prefer about older cars is having phyical buttons for everything I can reach out and touch without taking my eyes off the road. Putting a touch screen in a car was the dumbest thing I ever heard of.
From the looks of things the stupid will be the norm going forward even in non EVs.
I'm not really bothered, because livingi n eastern europe from a salary means I'll never be able to afford a new car anyway.
Once my newer Volvo starts getting up there in the miles, I may just sell it before **** starts getting expensive to replace, and just keep using my 2000 Volvo V70, because it appears you are right, new vehicles (and devices) all just keep getting dumber and dumber and I want no part of it at all.
If we could have a complete ban on any and all data collection, with severe financiual consequences for the violators that are actually enforced (not like that weaksauce GDPR in Europe) I would maybe change my mind about all of this, but I am not holding my breath. There are too many of these god awful silicon valley ****holes whose entire business model depends on it, and they won't let it go without a political fight to the death.
So it seems we are stuck with this big brother nonsense.
