25 replies to this topic

[bpirie1000]

Still think there should be an annual test. Or roadside test on highway code carried out by dvla.

Sure bmw/audi drivers need a reminder about the orange flashing light on the sides of their cars....

[DeadSquare]

Still think there should be an annual test. Or roadside test on highway code carried out by dvla.

Sure bmw/audi drivers need a reminder about the orange flashing light on the sides of their cars....

It is not the orange flashing lights that worry me.  It's the blue ones.

[sonikk4]

Electrically operated handbrake. Never had one thankfully but don't see the point. A colleague said he had to go to a main dealer (Vaux) to have it reset by laptop so he could change the rear pads (not sure how true this is...)

VAG cars have the same and you need to tell the car to retract the brakes. There is a function in Vagcom the proprietary software we can buy that does this. I’m sure all manufacturers who have E brakes fitted will have a similar operation system.

Now the crux of this is you need the ignition system on for the software to retract the brakes. IF you don’t change the pads quickly enough or the car suffers a spontaneous battery failure the brakes auto apply. If this happens the pistons come fully out rendering the callipers fubar. So that’s if the pads are not refitted. And those puppies are not cheap.

A small specialist garage I used to use in Peterborough used to put a battery charger on just in case something failed. And this was an ex VW tech.

I should do mine myself but I haven’t bought Vagcom as it ain’t cheap. There are other systems out there that do the same thing which are cheaper but to be honest I don’t do enough maintenance on my A6 to warrant buying anything.

[h9hpj]

I have an Audi S3 and to change the rear discs and pads I used Carista OBD gadget which has a function to release the rear electronic handbrake. Front brakes didn’t require anything special. 

[mab01uk]

Britain's second best-selling EV has a 'potentially dangerous' issue, warns Which?
On three occasions MG 4's lane keeping system steered car into danger.
"Product testing group Which? says it identified the problem with the UK's second best-selling EV, the MG 4, during controlled and repeated tests that it carries out on over 100 different cars each year.
It found that the £27,000 EV's lane-assist system - which is designed to keep the car in its lane to stop drivers veering over the white lines - pulled the vehicle onto the wrong side of the road, which potentially puts motorists at risk of driving head-on into oncoming traffic.
Last year, 21,715 were registered in Britain. Only the Tesla Model Y was bought in greater numbers in the EV marketplace.
'On one occasion where the tester drove on a narrow country road and had to pass another car travelling in the opposite direction, the MG4's lane-keep assistance system steered away from the nearside edge of the road and towards the centre – and the other vehicle,' Which? said.
The tester was forced to manually intervene to prevent the MG4 veering too close to the car travelling in the opposite direction, it claimed.
'On another occasion, this time on a wider road with a clearly defined centre line, the lane-keep assistance technology twice decided that the car had left its intended lane and pulled it onto the wrong side of the road.
'Using a sufficient amount of force, our tester had to manually steer the car back,' Which? says.
A software solution to resolve the issue is very near to completion and the MG dealer network will perform the work at no cost to the customer...
https://www.thisismo...arns-Which.html

 

Reading the reader comments below the above linked article, many other makes and models of car with 'Lane Assist' technology seem to have similar problems...I think I will keep my 2006 E90 BMW thankfully without any modern software driven driver aids for as long as possible!

 

Edited by mab01uk, 01 July 2024 - 09:07 PM.

[wilsonch]

I dont much car for ANY electronic aids.
I have a mk3 vrs ovtavia. It has a manual hand brake, and gear stick.
The vast majority of aids are really gimics.
So for me, fit all the gadgets and gimics you want AS LONG as i have the ability to turn them off.

[Steam]

Just about every gimmick can be acheived by physical manual means, but you dont sell cars when they dont break things or stop working.

[mab01uk]

My nannying new car, by GLEN OWEN (political editor of The Mail on Sunday).
"The first outing in a new car should be a moment to savour. It shouldn't make you want to pull over and thrash the bonnet with a tree branch, in the manner of Basil Fawlty. The Audi which has just arrived on my drive comes equipped with an unwanted battalion of EU-ordered 'safety' features, which are now starting to infect dashboards across the country. If it thinks I am too close to the centre of the road, the car wrests the steering away from me and yanks itself back. It did this when I tried to avoid a pothole, creating the alarming sensation of fighting my own car for control and leading to a dangerous over-correction.
The Nanny State dashboard also beeps constantly about the speed limit – it gets extremely tiresome to be told off for going 21 mph in a 20 mph zone – and includes something called 'Audi pre-sense', which purports to calculate the risk of me crashing by analysing my (admittedly not perfect) driving style.
I don't want this. I want the simplicity of my first car, a throaty MGB with just a fuel gauge, a speedometer and a sound system stuck on Radio 1.
It was the product of 1970s British engineering, so it didn't start every time, but when it did it was an unadulterated pleasure.
'But don't worry,' I told myself, 'I will defuse the road rage by finding a master reset to banish the irritations.'
Nope. After grappling with the manual for several hours and consulting various petrolhead forums on the internet, I learned that Brussels has banned me from overriding the warnings. Yes, I can mute the alarms by navigating several screens – a distracting and therefore risky process – but it resets every time I turn off the ignition. So, for short journeys, I just grit my teeth rather than navigate multiple toggle buttons. Even this small mercy is expected to be extinguished by new EU laws to ban temporary overrides. Why is this happening?
It is not, as Basil would suggest, just the Germans who started it: it's the product of pan-EU rule-making over which we have no control and which applies to all new cars sold in the European Union and Northern Ireland from July 7.
When I rang Audi to complain, the reaction was effectively a long sigh and, to paraphrase: 'Our hands are tied.' A sympathetic corporate character said: 'As we make cars for the entire region, any vehicle sold in the UK will be to the same standard of safety specification as an identical vehicle sold within the European Union.' He said shortcuts could be programmed into the dashboard to override the beeps, but none of them worked for me, and even if they ever do they still have to be activated for each journey.
The speed beeps rule was passed five years after Brexit in EU regulation 2021/1958, which decreed that all new cars, vans, trucks and buses should be fitted with an Intelligent Speed Assistant, which detects the speed limit using traffic sign recognition cameras on the vehicle or Global Positioning System-linked data.
And we have EU regulation 2019/2144 to thank for the Emergency Lane Keeping System which hijacks the steering control or, in the words of the regulation, 'corrects the trajectory only when the driver is unintentionally leaving the lane'.
In my case it intervened when I was on the left side of the road and in control – but when I tested the system by briefly taking my hands off the steering wheel it completely failed to act.
Prepare to be beeped at for the rest of your lives...."

 

[Chris1275gt]

IMO car manufacturers will cram as much as they can in the way gimmicks and it’s everything to do with not being able the fix it yourself as they want you to take it back to them to fix it charging god knows what to do it! Oil warning light, alternator light, fuel and temp dial that covers everything for me.

[Shooter63]

I have a funny feeling the ECU mapping boys will soon have something to sort that sort of thing out pretty quickly if previous attempts by governments/legislation are anything to go by.

Shooter

[mab01uk]

Jaguar death crash warning: Coroner tells the firm the design of £70,000 its electric SUV contributed to rugby-loving boy, seven, being fatally crushed between two cars.
Jaguar I-PACEs do not have a conventional gear stick but instead there are three buttons drivers can select - drive, neutral and reverse. The car did not have a conventional gear stick but instead has three buttons drivers can select - drive, neutral and reverse. There being no intermediary step within the Jaguar ipace being necessary to put the car into drive/reverse other than pressing a button.
'In the police officer's opinion if there had also been a lever or something similar present in the vehicle that needed to be engaged before a button was pressed this may have alerted [the driver] to the fact that he had pushed the incorrect button on the three button console.' Action should be taken to prevent future deaths.' A spokesperson for Jaguar said: 'We have received correspondence from the Coroner and shall be responding in due course.'
https://www.dailymai...oy-crushed.html