Wow! Almost 10 gallons of gas. That will help so much you won't notice the extra fuel used or you could spend toward getting the A/C filter changed.

Looks like about 7 gallons here in Northern California.

.. and just about enough to leave the petrol station in Europe. Full tank or full wallet have become mutually exclusive.

That said, if it helps end that war I won't complain. Some choices are easy.

Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone started driving around and realized they could do without all that extra crap? Less s**t to breakdown, less distractions while driving. Nah, they're all too spoiled. Autonomous driving anyone?

Its so true. I would pay *more* for them to put less digital crap in the car.

Some of it is outright sleazy too, verging on DRM. Isn't it Toyota that is artificially crippling the heated seats unless the user pays a subscription? That would be hard to do if the heating coil was directly connected to the battery (with some other bits) ;)

It was BMW, in a 2020 proposal to make heated seats a subscription rather than produce separate with and without models. I don't know what happened to the proposal.

Toyota started selling the software that will allow the removal of the already paid for remote start option with the 2020 Camery. It will go subscription only in 2023 after a three year "trial". This is to be the new normal across Toyota's linup per the Toyota dealership in Napa, California. To which I replied "Fuck that, Toyota is permanently off my purchase list.". The dealer said he wasn't surprised, he's heard a lot of that.

Ford also chose to keep its F-150 pickup trucks available for sale by cutting the chips required for the start/stop feature that turns the engine off when at a standstill and back on when the brake is released.

This is actually a positive! I'd pay to have that "feature" removed.

Yeah. Stop-Start, rear seat heating & air-con controls and heated seats are three things I've never once missed in over 30-years of car ownership.

Heated seats are one thing that would most definitely be missed in -25C or lower temps by me, especially while waiting for the vehicle to start blowing heat*.

*Unlike the ex Mrs Oncoming-Scorn, who despite the engine being cold would ram the all the heater to controls to full & complaining there wasn't any heat for the time period of up to 15 minutes for a light warm gust to start blowing out in extreme temps.

rear seat heating ... I've never once missed in over 30-years of car ownership

Obviously it doesn't get very cold where you live. Not only is that a must for any car I buy, I will make sure I get a heated steering wheel in whatever I buy next.

Perhaps you need a garage.

-A.

Or an electric (heats near instantly) car

.. which loses a boatload of capacity (read: range) the moment it gets a tad chilly..

Heated car seats are creepy. Every time my wife surreptitiously turns mine on, it feels like I just peed my pants. However, sitting down on a freezing crapper seat in the middle of the night is another thing entirely.

I live in Canada. I've never had heated seats or steering wheels and I don't seen any need for them. They're gimmicks with no real practical value in a modern car.

I remember long ago when vinyl seats were common and they were rock hard and cold when you first sat on them in the morning in the winter. However, it's been decades since I've seen a vinyl seat, and cloth just doesn't have the same problems and modern foams don't get as hard in the cold. Heated seats solve a problem that ceased to exist long ago.

As for heated steering wheels, if it's actually cold then you will be wearing gloves anyway. Just leave them on until the interior warms up enough at which point you don't need a heated steering wheel to take your gloves off. Again it's a solution looking for a problem.

I have a car for the purposes of transportation, not as an expensive toy with pointless widgets to fiddle with.

Agree, but then they wouldn't be able to sell you touchscreens instead of more expensive mechanical switches..

Wasn't it Landrover who stipulated that all controls shall be operable while gloved? Sensible idea IMHO.

The start-stop in my Twingo works very well, but would be much improved by a manual override that doesn't rely on me keeping the clutch depressed.

Heated seats are a weird fetish. Wear thermal underpants. If it's really that cold then they might save your life.

-A.

... If Ford (or any other manufacturer) were to start selling a stripped-down line of vehicles with absolutely no computers whatsoever, I'd be first in line to purchase one.

Yes, that includes engine and transmission electronics ... give me mechanical fuel injection or a carb, points, and a manual transmission every time. Far, far less to go wrong, a lighter overall vehicle, easier to work on, and cheaper when things do go wrong. What's not to like?

Bonus points for a hose-out interior and mechanical windows and door locks.

Actually an electric motor would make a much simpler, lighter and easier to work on vehicle. No fuel injection or carb, no points (thank Bob), no transmission at all.

-A.

.. but a big monster of a battery which needs a metric f*ckton of management electronics not to go up in flames which kinda defeats the original point. I was astonished at just how much work it is to keep these things stable and balanced.

Far less to go wrong? Really?

How often do you see a broken down car these days, despite a far higher number of cars?

How often do you have to mess around with the carbd, because the engine is running rich?

Fouled spark plugs?

Kangarooing down the road because the choke isn't quite right?

Car not starting? Heck I freaked out the other day, because it took TWO attempts.

We moan about not being able to "tinker" with the car, but that's because we don't have to.

Heck, a £20 cable and the bloody thing tells you why it's not running right.

Rose tinted glasses and all that.

A smarter bit of marketing would be to let the buyers choose which bits they don't want. I'd choose all those that try to double guess what the driver wants to do.

Ja, but didn't the US car makers move away from huge options lists because they ended up costing them too much money?

Me, I buy poverty spec cars to avoid all the extra crap.

I find that buying second hand tends to neatly walk past all the costs of options, plus it avoids the drop in value the moment you drive it out of the dealer..

"The site of unfinished Ford Broncos collecting dust"

Site?

A SITE with all those cars parked would be a SIGHT for sore eyes

Well, they are not exactly evenly distributed around the country, so it is, in fact, a site of unfinished Broncos.

Cars?

-A.

Pretty sad they need special chips to turn the HVAC on and off, to get the engine to hibernate then wake up, or to get heated / cooled seats to work. I wonder what was used in 2008 on my Saturn Astra or Sky to do those things except the engine gag. The engine gag is just that, a gag. It provides little to no improvement in fuel economy and probably lessens the life of the starter, battery, and engine. I found reaching towards the dash and turning the key (yes, key, not some gimmicky button) to kill the engine works just as well. And the computer controlled tranny? When we had manual tranny cars is able to match the speed to the ration quite well, thank you. And most of the "auto-stick" trannys won't let you decide when to up or downshift because some goof programmer who doesn't know how to drive, only operate, a motor vehicle decided that was a good idea. (No, it's not.)

I agree completely with Jake and Doctor Syntax wrote. And a very simple way to not freeze / burn your arse is to return to cloth seats. My Astra did have heated cloth seats which I turned on when the brass monkeys were clutching theirs, but for the most part they were unnecessary. Leather seats, on the other hand, are a waste and in my opinion dangerous. Ever notice how many F1 and Indy cars have leather seats?