Tag: Automotive

The Menachem Begin expressway is one of the better engineering projects built in Jerusalem in recent years, providing a rapid path for driving across much of the new city. It has cut my commute time to work by 70%…

Image: Adiel lo, via Wikimedia Commons.

There is only one minor detail about it that I always find amusing yet annoying. The builders picked a logo for it, which is prominently displayed on the signs leading to it. And here it is on the left.

Now, at first glance it seems highly appropriate for an expressway, showing lanes and an interchange. But when you look closely, you notice:

1. The symbol is pretty tangled, like a knot really. Hardly the image of a freeway, where the main concept is that you zip right through. The standard freeway road sign, at the right, does a far better job of conveying this idea.
2. There is no way to travel this path on a freeway interchange. At first I thought you might do it in the UK, where they drive on the wrong side of the road, but even that is not true – there, the road on the logo would cause cars coming from both directions to collide in the middle of the bridge.

What were they thinking!? 🙂

Modern car dashboards have numerous indicators and controls. Some are necessary: without a fuel gauge, for instance, we’d be in frequent trouble. Others are optional but quite useful: the rear collision warning beeper is a good recent arrival. But one indicator is totally unnecessary, yet present in a great many car models: the Tachometer, or engine RPM indicator.

This meter is very impressive, to be sure, and on a race car would be quite useful to help the driver wring the ultimate performance without destroying the engine. But this meter, at left in the photo, is not from a Formula 1 car; it’s from my faithful but mundane Mazda 3, with which I navigate the congested roads daily to get to work. You think I constantly glance at the tachometer to set the gears so my engine’s not redlining, when I’m stuck in traffic jams half the time? Even if I were so inclined, this car has an automatic transmission!

Fact is, nobody uses this indicator on a family car; yet the manufacturers put them in – adding just a little bit extra to the waste of energy and resources needed to produce the car. I suspect this is another of the cases where fashion, vanity and marketing get together to override commonsense design – we get this meter because it looks flashy, fashionable, macho… hey, I have an RPM gauge like the race track pros!

Millions made – none needed 🙁

We saw how Our car had a turn indicator lamp in the side trim, where it was vulnerable to damage. Even more interesting is the turn signal on some newer cars, which is put on the most smash-worthy part of any automobile: the side rear view mirror. And not at the base of the mirror like in this red Citroen C4; but at its outer edge, as in this blue Mercedes!

They used to speak of “Planned obsolescence”; looks like today’s automakers are unwilling to wait for their parts to wear out, so now they’re actively soliciting breakage by design…

As a conscientious techie I do what many car owners don’t: I check the oil and other fluids in our cars once a month, rain or shine. But our latest car, the 2007 Renault Clio, seems determined to foil this good intention.

It used to be simple: A fluid would either have a straight dipstick with marks for Max and Min, or a clear reservoir with lines marking these two limit levels. The new Clio, however, abuses these age old concepts.

Like most modern cars its engine compartment is as densely packed with systems as an animal’s belly is with entrails; and the clear reservoirs for coolant and brake fluid are so positioned that there is no way on earth you can see all the level lines without either a dentist’s mirror or X-Ray vision. You can see the Maxi lines, but the Minis are hopelessly hidden (see photos).

As Obelix would’ve said: Ils sont fous, ces ingenieurs!