Useless or Redundant features
 

Driving my car last night when I realised that I never pay any attention to the analogue speedometer. It's the rev counter and the digital speedo that I find I am drawn towards. Is it just me or does anyone else think the analogue speedo a waste of space.

Agreed, total waste of space. I'd rather see some extra gauges there, oil temp and pressure, and god willing one day from the factory, a boost gauge.

HA! I'm the opposite, I ignore the digital speedo and only watch the revs and the analog speedo.

I have always been a little suspicious of digital speedo's since the late 80's when they really started getting used in cars. They were horribly inaccurate for the time. That's why they went away for nearly a decade before coming back.

That's interesting as I found the digital spot on as I have been through speed traps and the speeds up on the displays matched.

rear seat

Fog lights

User interface for head unit

Fog lights?? Please elaborate?

We have an analogue speedometer???

Automatic transmission

Yes please do explain how foglights are useless... do you not have fog where you're from?! Fog lights saved my ass from running over wildlife countless times.

I know what you are saying.

Factory navigation.

Someplace on this forum there is an explanation for why it exists. There are some places where the analog is required. Where those places were I do not remember.
That shadowy thing with the impossibly small numbers hiding in the neither regions of the gauge cluster.

Some base models don't even have the digital speedometer.

You're right that some countries require analogue but I can't think where.. it can't be the UK as we had cars here just with digital dashes.

Also acceptable: That thing you cover up with a boost gauge.

Mine is def off my a mph or two. Heck even my digital one seems to read about .5 mph faster than any speed radar signs I pass on the road.

All speedometers can be off that much. It doesn't display fractions so a reading of 50MPH could actually be 50 or 50.9. If another source is off by .1 of a MPH that means it will show 49 or 60 MPH even though that isn't really what you are doing.
Now if there is a difference of 5 or 10 MPH then you have an issue but go with your car not the remote device. By the time the device reads and displays your speed it may already be different then what your display tells you at the instant that you look.

AFAIK speedmeters are always set to overestimate rather than underestimate. I mean, each measuring device has a certain amount error, both due to intrinsic inaccuracies and due to external influences (e.g., tire pressure).


The manufacturers set up speedometers in such way, that whatever the error comes up to be (within reasonable limits), the shown speed will be same or lower than the actual speed.


This is to protect the manufacturer from drivers suing them saying "the speedometer showed I was at speed limit and I got ticketed anyway". No one is going to (successfully) sue for damages because "the speedometer was shoing 70 mph all the time, yet it took me as much as 32 minutes to drive 35 miles"

As I recall it (and checked against the source of all knowledge, Wikipedia) the international standards for speedometers is they must 1) never display an indicated speed "slower" than actual speed and 2) must not show an indicated speed of greater than 110% + 4kph of actual speed at certain "check speeds".

Various nations may have various or additional standards but nearly all of them say the speedometer can never show less than actual speed, but can by off in the other direction by quite a bit.

The example given on Wikipedia for the UK says "For example, if the vehicle is actually travelling at 50 mph, the speedometer must not show more than 61.25 mph or less than 50 mph."

"Son, do you know how fast you were going?"
"About 0.5 bar."

See? It works!

Cops also allow for this, 10% error.

nether regions

Nein Nein Nein Nein

pretty sure they can only be off to a higher reported speed than actual speed (in other words, going 50 with speedo saying 51 can happen, going 51 with speedo saying 50 should not happen). Can't remember where I saw this or the exact reasoning behind it but I believe it's regarding legal liability (oem/manufacturer could be held liable if speedo reads lower than actual travel speed as it is unsafe... e.g someone going 60 in a 50 zone because speedo says 50.)


I may be wrong though

Until you guys change from 17 to 18" wheels with the same tire sidewall... or does it not work that way anymore?

Can't read that far off in any direction. When they are that far off it means something is broke or has been changed on the car.

N00b question but how do you fix a speedo after going up an inch in wheels and getting wider tires?

Beats me, that is way too new tech. Back in the day of mechanical cables driving the gauge (yes the speedo is a gauge) we had somebody pace us and tell us how fast wee were going. Then made the corrections in our head once we had that baseline. Now I bet you can change some numbers in the computer and bingo, it is right again.
I will let somebody that knows what they are talking about field the real answer to this.

To me the trunk key lock, is totally redundant. I am taking it out and mounting my backup camera in the hole.

my radar detector has speed detection with GPS and when the car was stock, the digital gauge was dead on with my detector. however, I now have slightly taller tires and my digital speedo reads about 2 MPH lower. afaik, you cannot calibrate it but I doubt it will read anything significantly higher/lower for you to be worried unless you're on 22's.

for me personally, because of where I live, the foglights are useless as well as the heated seats/mirrors. it's a miracle if it gets below 40F in the dead of winter before the sun comes up. I would rather wish I had cooled seats since it gets over 120F in the middle of summer and even with the AC on, my back still gets sweaty lol

there are a few cool details that I found pretty nice though, one of them being the tow hook next to the spare. I never had a car that came with one and it is great to use on the track and not have to worry about buying one. of course, screw it into the back and not the front since you're most likely to go straight off

Then I'm assuming people with modded cars get accurate 0-60 times with a GPS?

accurate? depends on a lot of variables such as road condition, tires, and how fast you can shift. but it will probably be the most accurate you can get since it uses a GPS instead of the stock speedometer which calculates rotations of the wheels (that's how it measures speed I believe)

Except the ones that just flat out lie about your speed.

Maybe you did that. What we did was swap out the speedo gear in the side of the transmission for a gear with the correct ratio for whatever tires we were running.

Seems like I remember reading here that you can calibrate the speedo for tire size using Techstream, but now I can't seem to find that post.

Without the rear seats, you wouldn't be able to fold it down flat to transport things.

-alex

The fake side vents. Almost didn't buy the car because of these retarded pieces.

Then I caved in and got an exhaust with coffee can tips to match them.

The cars I had with big tires usually did not warrant the work nor cost of swapping out a speedo gear! I was quite able to do the math in my head and after about two days didn't even need to go that far. Of course had to tell anybody else that may drive the car what the real speed was.

I know the gap was too much lol i jusy felt it illustrated what i meant better

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Analog speedo reflects rate of change better. Digital speedo reflects mostly just the current speed. The scaling of our analog speedo is too narrow to be very useful though.

Most useless "feature" in my book are the Primacy's that kinda feel like driving on hot Crisco (for more fun, right?). Toyota, please just make them optional and give us proper summer shoes.

or they could have done like Japan and give us a steelie package for the ones that change their wheels right after they get the car (like me, though I sold the stock tires and wheels for $500 so I can't complain)

Make sure you never hit the valet button in the trunk then, or you'll be SOL.