Car tech that failed to catch on
Carmakers have to take risks to innovate. But taking risks mean potential for failure, reports Damien O’carroll.
Not every innovation that carmakers come up with is useful. In fact, some of them are downright silly. Or annoying. Or just plain unnecessary. And sometimes even the good ideas fail to fire.
Here are some of the innovations that failed to catch on in the car world.
Night vision
Manufacturers have toyed around with the idea of night vision in cars for almost two decades now and it has yet to capture consumers’ minds and, most importantly, wallets. Cadillac introduced it first in the Deville in 2000, but dropped it in 2004. Honda, Mercedes-benz, BMW, Toyota and Audi have all had stabs at it, but none have seen it blossom into an actually useful accessory. The reason for this is simple – most of them require you to look away from the windscreen to a screen on the dash, thereby completely eliminating their usefulness as a safety feature.
Lexus tried a small head-up screen at one stage, but it was too small and hard to see, so it quietly dropped the system.
Automatic seat belt
This was an American innovation created to get around the fact that Americans were too lazy to put on their seatbelts. Or freedom. Or something like that. Anyway, most systems consisted of a belt that was attached at one end to a motorised track in the door frame and at the other end to the base of the seat at the usual place.
Not only was this incredibly ugly and something just waiting to break down halfway through its operation, the majority of systems also required the driver to manually fasten the lap belt, therefore completely missing the point of the technology. There were other systems that included the lap belts as well, but they required passengers to slide under the belts to get in, which no one was willing to do.
Talking car
Today we’re all pretty used to satellite navigation barking orders at us in pleasantly accented European voices, but how would you like it if your car started telling you other things, like the lights were on or your seatbelt wasn’t done up. That would be really annoying, right?
Too right it would, but that didn’t stop carmakers from giving it a go anyway. Datsun was the first to try it in 1981 with the 810 Maxima that would remind drivers to turn off the lights, but it soon grew to epically silly proportions with some systems even instructing the driver when to shift gear. The earliest systems couldn’t be disabled; later ones included an ‘‘off’’ switch, but by that time everyone had pretty much decided that talking cars were a remarkably silly idea in the first place.
Solar panel sunroof
This one actually seems quite sensible. The idea is that solar panels embedded in the roof or sunroof are used to power the ventilation fans on a hot day, keeping the interior of the car cooler. Clever.
Toyota had a go on the Prius, the Renault Zoe EV has this feature and Mazda, Audi and Volkswagen have also played around with it.
The big reason behind its failure seems to be that it really has a negligible effect on the temperature of the interior of the car, as it’s only running the fans and not the air conditioning.
It’s useful in moderate temperatures, but doesn’t really do much when it’s really hot – when you would want it the most.
Pedestrian catcher
Back in 1896 a woman named Bridget Driscoll was the first person ever to be killed by a car when she stepped out in front of Arthur Edsall’s speeding Rogerbenz. Edsall struck her at the thoroughly reckless speed of 4mph (6.4kmh), somehow killing her and making history all at the same time. Ever since then people have tried to come up with ways to make pedestrians safer.
One of the best early innovations was an adaptation of the ‘‘cow catcher’’ installed on steam trains.
Essentially a large scoop, net or, in one case, rollers attached to the front of the car, it was designed to either scoop the pedestrian up, or brush them away to safety.