Had a chance to try a Bimmer

It may save gas (and not really enough to bother about for most people), but it increases wear on several components. It's simply another useless gimmick that can break down and be expensive to fix.

My steering wheel is never "cranked to one side or another" when I'm waiting to turn ... if you're doing that, then you've either almost missed the turn, or are cutting across the corner (which is illegal in some places). A proper turn requires you to move forward and then curve around.

It's probably cranked if you're pulling out of a parallel parked space. People crank the wheel and wait. It's an interesting thing that people do.

It's been many moons since I took driver's ed. One instruction was to keep the wheels turned straight ahead while waiting to turn. The reasoning was that one wouldn't be pushed into oncoming traffic if struck from behind while waiting.

That makes sense if you're making a left turn in front of traffic, but if you're waiting to make a right turn on a red light, being pushed straight would put you right into the traffic flow.

Patty

That is an opinion.

Well, actually it probably involves having the turn signal turned on too.

Yousuf Khan

Not really. It doesn't save fuel for everyone because it greatly depends on various things (for a start, how often and how long you have to wait at places like traffic lights) and it's almost certainly expensive to fix.

It's also true that starting the engine is when the most wear and tear on parts occurs ... although that *IS* when starting from cold, which this system won't be doing.

Possibly, although I'd doubt it since that would mean the silly system won't work when you're sitting at a red traffic light with the indicator going waiting to turn.

It did save quite a bit of fuel. I spent less money on fuel in 5 days, than I usually do in two days on my Tribeca, while going through stop-go traffic. Tribeca is not bad on the highway, but everything is not bad on the highway, where you don't have very much stopping at all.

I am heavily bound by city driving, even if I get onto the highway, I'd say about 80% of the consumption comes from short city driving stints.

Now as for the wear'n'tear of engine, I was extremely surprised by how quickly the car can restart. All you had to do is let go of the brake, and it would start up nearly instantly. I'd say it took a 1/10th of a second to restart, whereas a standard manual restart probably takes around 9/10ths of a second or more. I asked in the BMW newsgroups, how this is achieved, and they said that BMW puts an extra heavy-duty battery in the car (still a lead-acid, nothing exotic like a lithium-ion), and the alternator is only turned on in discrete intervals, but doesn't run continuously. I assume that also involves the connecting and disconnecting the A/C: but a lot of car companies do that anyways too.

There's also other sensors involved. For example there's an outside air temperature sensor, which shuts the auto-off system if the outside temp is below 3C. So you won't get much benefit from the system in the winter, but in the summer it should be in full operation. I got a chance to see the system in action in both warm and cold temperatures, because up here in my neck of the woods, there was warm spell followed by a sudden cold snap where it snowed again. When the temperature fell to 3C or less, then you'd see a warning buzzer and a symbol in the display indicating freezing temperatures.

Well, it probably depends on when you activate the turn signal. If the signal is already on as you're coming to a stop, then that might prevent the engine shutoff. If however, you're already stopped and the engine has already shutoff, then turning on the signal won't affect it.

Also I noticed that if you're in crawling traffic, if you ease up on the brakes and the brake again within a certain number of seconds, then the system won't activate again.

Yousuf Khan

I haven't driven a BMW since a 1973 (or was it a '74) 2002TII. It was quite a bit of fun although that was tempered by a nervous-looking salesman who went out on the test drive with me. Too bad I couldn't have afforded it on my USAF pay at the time and after all these years a good example would still be beyond my retirement income. Tough, tight little car though.

Oh, and another feature that I liked, though it was definitely gimmicky was the automatic windshield wiper. When set to automatic, it takes the guesswork out of manually setting the variable speed intermittent wipers. If the rain level goes up, it speeds up, and if it goes down, it speeds down automatically. You don't get that rubber squealing sound of a wiper running too frequently in low rain, or the dangerous lack of visibility of a wiper running too infrequently in heavy rain.

Subaru should definitely adopt this system.

Yousuf Khan

Don't worry. All cars will "soon" have automatic everything gimmicks, including driving themselves, so lazy people won't have to do anything at all. ;-)

I'd go for a car that can drive itself anyday, sign me up!

If Microsoft is involved, then I don't even want to be anywhere near a road, let alone being on it or in the car. :-(

Good point.

Auto steering is getting somewhat common on farm tractors. The darn things can easily cost well over $200,000 though. Take a look through this if pricing a car seems complicated:

The "Blue Screen of Death" would be a reality. :-(

Plus the car would randomly suddenly stop and refuse to go any further until you'd shut it down, completely rebuilt the motor and rotated the tires, and restarted it after two hours downloading a compulsory "update". :-\

Bimmer?!? Is that American?

Most people I know call them Beemers - as in Bee-M-double-U. :-)

A Beemer is a BMW motorcycle.

A Bimmer is a BMW car.

David

That's the funny thing about cars that drive themselves, you can't ever have the computer lock up - not even once. Heck, I even have to reboot my stove every once in a while. I guess we'll just go back to a DOS operating system - Driving OurSelves. :-)

Unfortunately thing is that computer driving already happens on planes and ships, so it will be coming to cars ... but what the morons pushing this techology don't seem to understand is that a plane or a car only uses that system when it's in the middle of nowhere with nothing to hit and the pilot can quickly take over if it fails. A car on the other hand is on a busy street where even a fraction of a second delay before the driver takes over can mean accidents and death. :-(

The other stupidity is that they claim it will reduce congestion in busy cities, which again is more blinkered nonsense. It's not going to reduce the number of cars, it's not going to reduce the cars wanting to come onto already busy roads, etc. Congestion problems are not going to disappear simply because the car now has more electronic gimmickry. :-\