New wheels

New wheels and I’m feeling old.  I never really appreciated how easy my previous 17 year old Toyota car was to ‘operate’ until it got replaced.

I had been thinking the old Toyota was modern enough.  After all, you had to press a button on the key to unlock the car.  You would know soon enough if you had reversed into something by the sound of the crunch.

With our new wheels, you simply walk towards the car, grab the door handle and it all magically unlocks itself and welcomes you.  And as for reversing (or going forward for that matter), you hear a beeping sound which gets louder and faster as you inch closer to something.  Needless to say there’s a camera and screen to watch it happen and a diagram of where the car is.  The ultimate piece of the car’s driver management is stopping itself if it thinks the driver isn’t up to much.

When I asked the salesman about the owner’s manual, he smiled and handed me a 2cm thick booklet, which I thought was quite good going.  That was, until I learned it was simply pointing me towards the online manuals, of which there are two.  Of course there are two, there could never be just one.  The first manual is for the incomprehensible infotainment feature and the other explains the rest of the car.  It appears the combined number of pages is close to 1,000 to wade through.

It now seems that every car worth its place on the road has its own app, including our new wheels.  Apparently if I’m away from the car I will get a text if a warning light comes on, or if a tyre needs a bit more air.  It will tell me when a service is due and all kinds of other things I never knew I needed.  Once that’s done, it will give me a pep talk in driving economically.  So far it says I’m quite good but suggests I could do better.

A friend asked if I was enjoying the cruise control and laughed when I explained I haven’t reached that section in the manual as yet.  Thing is, it is almost as quick to try and figure it out yourself by trial and error, although I do accept that’s probably a ‘man thing’.  I have never driven a car on cruise control before, so my fear is then about being out of control on the road.  Mind you, if I transgress on the road, apparently the autonomous steering will wake me up through making it vibrate and slow the car automatically.

Although I’ve had it a couple of weeks and driven over 1,000 miles (yes, really!) I am still waiting for it to become second nature.  I still forget I have to push the ‘Power’ button instead of turning the non existent ignition key.  I still have to wait for the steering wheel to glide into position while the pretty graphic animation finishes its performance before I can even push the pedal to the metal; but even that seems to be controlled electronically.

Being less frivolous for a moment, I do hope the right decision has been made.  It is 13 inches longer, five inches wider and somewhat lower.  I can’t fling my bike in the back and it’s too complicated for my friend to service as he normally would.  However the old car was 80-90% through its life and only did 46mpg, compared to 58mpg on the new car.  Vehicle tax is considerably cheaper but they get you in the end with more costly insurance.

Above all, it has ticked the right boxes on my shopping list.  Comfy, heated seats, a nice stereo and soft, quiet cruising.

Trouble is, I could be mistaken for someone’s chauffeur nowadays.