Modern car tech does a lots of different things, and not all of them are good
Do you own a smart fridge? The probable answer is no, you don’t. In fact you’re twice as likely to have no idea what a smart home appliance is than be one of three in 100 people in the UK who own one.
Smart appliances are those that are in some way connected to the internet or a home network. From a chiller perspective, this means your fridge will turn from a machine that keeps your food cold and has a little light that comes on when the door opens into something so much more useful like… well, honestly, it’s hard to say.
One that plays music, like your phone or stereo or TV already does ; or that can tell you what the weather is like, like looking out of the window can. Some fridges have interior Al scanners that can help write shopping lists or even recipes.
I don’t know if they recommend throwing away those capers that have been on the back of the top shelf for nine years. Either way, according to a recent YouGov survey, they remain an incredibly niche item in Britain. They have, in other words, features most people don’t want.
The adoption rates of other smart items is more variable. Nearly 40% of us have a smart energy meter, but there’s no way of knowing whether we actually wanted one or were just asked to have one by the electricity company.
The next biggest take-up is in smart alarms, sensors, security lighting or cameras. Though, as with locking front doors, it’s hard to know how many people really want these, rather than believing that they’re the only way to prevent somebody nicking their stuff.
What’s not included in YouGov’s recent survey is the number of people who own a smart vehicle. Not Smart as in the compact car, but cars that are data-connected. The answer is that it’s just about all of the new ones. Do we all want that? I’m not so sure.
The difference again is that when it comes to how many features and screens and options your fridge has, you have a choice. Even with a smart meter, if you ignore your supplier for long enough they’ll give up on the idea.
But with a vehicle, you don’t get much of an option about the things it comes with. Partly this is because of a necessity to have an SOS function that will alert someone if you have an accident, and partly because of the creep towards over-air-updates, which leads to the offering of continued services, which means subscriptions rather than ownership.
And I suspect that many cars today have too much of that stuff for the likes of most buyers. It’s hard not to write about this without sounding like an old man yelling at clouds.
But I think new cars come with more of this ‘stuff than most people would like; too many screens, too few buttons, too many menus to wade through. It’s not as though I dislike technology.
I have computers and games consoles and two telephones and a camera to see the cat when I’m on holiday. The other day I even replaced the light bulb in the fridge. But I have these things through choice rather than necessity.
What I’ve found 10 months into driving an Audi A2 is that when I get in and drive away, it doesn’t irritate the bejesus out of me.
As I think we’ve found with most domestic appliances, there is a level of ‘rightness’ with the technology one wants from it. Maybe in a car, it is the fact that it can call someone when the airbags go off.
I also want one to be able to read my map and stream audio from my telephone. There are a number of hard safety features I’d like too, of course, from it not catching fire to anti-lock brakes and more.
But beyond those – and particularly should anything require a subscription – it can bog off and leave me alone.
My concern is that they don’t, and that we’ve already passed a point of peak happiness, where a car does the things we’d like it to, and doesn’t do too many of the things we don’t.
