AUTONOMY

Many of our cars had sensors fitted for radar-cruise control, semi-autonomous driving and assisted braking. We all know autonomous driving is coming, but what a few days driving in Sweden told us is that snow does a fine job of stopping it.

Iced-up parking sensors gave us not just irritating squawks, but in the case of the M5, a refusal to even let you reverse. Rear cameras were blinded and warnings popped up on dashboards to tell us various systems weren’t available. Come the autonomous age, this will be an issue (although a Finnish company, VTT vehicle research centre, has developed a system that can read roads with no visible lines, and keep its sensors clean).

At a more fundamental level, cars are already well adapted. Special mention here to the Range Rover Sport’s scalding heated steering wheel, everything with bum warmers and heated windscreens and the Tesla’s remote start that allowed us to pre-heat the car via the phone app. When it’s 20 below outside, that’s tech we can get on board with.