REALLY CLEVER CARS

There are many clever car technologies out on the road right now, here’s our annual, extra- honest round-up of what you should be looking out for.

Listen, stop waiting around for affordable autonomous cars when there are plenty of other innovations happening in the automotive world.

You probably won’t own a fully autonomous car in your life. I know, it was a tough pill to swallow for me too. With the average professional salary in South Africa pegged at around R35 000 per month ( t he overall average banked salary in SA according to the Bankservafrica disposable salaries index hovers around R14 000), you can just about af f ord a semi- autonomous r i de and a modest home in a f ar- f l ung suburban development. To buy a R1 400 000 house and a R500 000 car, you need at least R120 000 in cash and to earn R40 000 monthly. That equates to, if you’re being generous with interest rates, an around R22 000 monthly expenditure on a place to sleep and a car to drive you to work.

But a telling case study in the propagation of advanced driver assistance systems ( ADAS) in the current South African car market is as simple as perusing the top- selling vehicles in the country. Of the top 10 bestselling vehicles listed in the NAAMSA monthly report for April 2018 sales, only one benefits from basic adaptive cruise control. That the Ford Ranger regularly occupies the third spot and limits its ADAS to the top- spec Wildtrak as standard specification is a striking indication of a buying public that is either ignorant to the benefits of advanced safety, or doesn’t consider it that important yet.

Ford did a great job with the Ranger design by equipping it with electric steering, so it realistically has potential to gain even more autonomous upgrades via software updates.

While the new VW Polo certainly has the hardware to comply with the latest Euro NCAP safety testing standards, namely a camera in the rear- view- mirror mounting area that can detect stationary objects, we have yet to uncover the deeper underlying systems that enable automatic braking from higher than parking speeds( the new Polo can do self- parking on higher specification models).

Point is, even after having adaptive cruise control systems that could autonomously slow the car down since 1995, the technology is only now trickling down to the R300 000 price range. Or, more bluntly, into cars that the average buyer could actually afford. With level 2 autonomy ( adaptive cruise control + active lane keeping) currently in the mainstream and Mercedes-Benz having mastered the art of one- touch autonomous lane changing in its E- and S- Class, how long before it comes down to the mass market?

There are other tricks the modern automobile has learnt that are in your immediate grasp, though. So let’s get straight into those.