Re: Is moon roof only open at night time ?

Yeah, but what happens when it rains?

ROFLMAO!!!

That reply was meant as humor, but actually it's a good question. I've left the roof open when it started to rain.

A moisture sensor would be easy to implement, in fact, there's already one there with the wipers.

If the mo>Yeah, but what happens when it rains?

If you really want to be concerned about something, then you should be asking for a manual emergency handle to close the sunroof when it is wide open and decides to break down. So that you cannot close it anymore, even more fun when on a very long trip and it starts raining.

Well we come back to the question of free will... If our cars are do everything for us..whats the point to drive them? Next thing you want is a pair of electrodes so you dont even have to move a finger and burn those 20 calories trying to actualy steer the car or reach out and open the glove compartmant MANUALY!!!! Why dont we get those devices for disabled people that will help us get up our fat asses so we dont have to do it ourselves! The reason I hate the new BMW 7 series is because this car has taken this direction...it thinks for you now like you are too dumb to do it on your own. Its worse then a couch on wheels...I think with the next deneration you would feel like you are in a hospital bed....not a car. No matter how advanced the electrnics are, our brain will outperform them 100 fold. Plus I want to see what happends to a cars with 1000 microcontrollers gets into electrical problems 5-10 years down the road.

Some "Features" are indeed sales gimmicks, but what I suggested was not a convenience issue, and has nothing to do with saving time.

This is an issue about preventing damage to the car if the driver forgets to close the moon roof and it starts raining, which I've done a few times.

Some features that might be considered gimmicks are very useful. The laser cruise control is one "gimmick" that I like and use all of the time.

Many "Gimmicks" introduced on Luxury cars have become virtually standard on all cars. Automatic headlight on/off is one such example.

Another example was an "Amazing and decadent" gimmick on my parents

1958 Lincoln Premier ... when you stepped on a button on the floor, the radio would seek a new channel!

This must be some really high-tech s#!t !!

Dan

I agree that it is a useful feature. Also the technology is readily available to implement a self-closing moonroof when it rains. I'd like to see it on the Lexus.

I'd like to tilt the moonroof open to let out the heat in the summer, but I get sudden thunderstorms EVERY afternoon where I work. So I have to keep it closed and return to a hot car at 5 p.m.

Or I should just work harder to get a covered carport like the executives.

If the roof automagically closed while a small child had its head sticking out through the open roof, the child could be killed resulting in distraught parents and large lawsuits against the car company.

I must say that I was pretty when happy when VSC kicked in after I hit a 3 inch deep puddle at 80mph on the Georgia highway. I was definitely veering off the road and it was like a magic hand placed me back on track. /m

Most moonroof have pinch sensor nowadays.

Also it's illegal to leave a small child inside a vehicle unattended.

And there will be no repercussions against the car company.... Children will be skipping happily down the flower covered hillsides.......Birdies will be singing in the bright blue sky.....

Sorry. Not what I've seen.

...Mudshark

snipped-for-privacy@columbus.rr.

I've already mentioned that there are pinch sensors for moonroof. Therefore children won't be caught in there.

Given your level of intelligence, I bet that your child will be the first to help you extort millions from auto makers. Good luck with it.

Um, Lexus already has anti-pinch in their power windows - not that hard to engineer an override that detects a jam (e.g. fingers, whatever in the window's motion) and stops or reverses it. Same could apply to sunroof.

I'd guess - and it's just a guess - that a rain detector to close the sunroof is not there now because the rain sensor on the Lexus freaks out if heated severely. (Fas as I know this is not a design screwup, it's just a limitation of the state of the art of the hardware available to do the job.) Such a sensor on the sunroof would be subjected to intense solar heating, and so would be subject to failure in weather likely to produce summer thunderstorms. I doubt if Lexus would offer a feature that's failure-prone in an operating environment where it's needed.

There are other real-world engineering considerations that arise when you think this through. The sensor is an optical device and so must have a clear 'view' out of the car. Thus (unless you want to build a separate window into the roof to accomodate it) it has to be mounted on the clear sunroof, which may not be clear enough to the widget to do its job. But if you mount it on the sunroof then it can't see out when the panel is retracted!

Mounting it anywhere on the sunroof will make it interfere with structure during panel retraction and also raises issues of how to wire it. You wind up with a moving wire bundle attached to the sunroof panel operating with very little clearance, and it's obviously vulnerable to abrasion and pinch. And since you don't want wiring to be visible across the bottom of the sunroof the sensor gets put at the aft end, so retraction takes it deeply into the roof structure and causes its swept path to subtend the largest possible volume. But then if you put it at the aft end the wiring interferes with tilting the moonroof open. So it has to go on the front, where it's not pretty and the wiring is still a problem because wiring exiting the area to the front or side jsut gets ripped up at retract time. So you have to run the wiring aft, but you can't run the wiring aft because... etc.

Oh, you can't use the windshield wipers' sensor because it's powered off when the car is parked, and you can't leave it powered up becasue of its thermal issues.

Round and round and round the design issues go.

-- Pete

...Mudshark wrote:

I'm sorry my statement of my point of view made you feel a personal attack was necessary.

Enjoy your Lexus.

...Mudshark

snipped-for-privacy@columbus.rr.

It's not your point of view. It's your ability to read.

I believe that the wiper rain sensor can be used to detect rain drops when the car is parked. The sensor can be designed to stay powered on, like the alarm system.

I don't know the thermal tolerance of the rain sensor, but I don't think it's an issue. If the rain sensor can be damaged by summer heat, it won't be in the car to begin with.

The car can also use its built-in thermostat (if available) to detect a rapid drop in temperature, it's typically the prelude of a thunderstorm.

okay, so instead of severing the child's head, they should also implement a pressure sensor in the closing sun/moonroof so when someone does get a limb in there, it just pins them for long enough to scare the bejesus out of them.