Wonkette
SELF-PARKING CAR WILL SAVE AMERICAN AUTO INDUSTRY: This is why Ford don’t need no stinking bailout — all it needs is some good old-fashioned frivolous vehicular techmologies nobody wanted in the first place! “The technology uses ultrasonic sensors on the front and rear of the vehicle, combined with electric power steering to angle and guide it into a snug parking space — all with the push of a button.” Awesome, we will take twenty million of these pointless thingamajigs. [AP]
I’d take 50MPG over this bullshit, any day.
Park-by-ear technology has not failed me yet.
It would be much cooler if Lexus didn’t already put this feature in a car 2 years.
Lesson in advancing technology, Ford: You’re doing it wrong.
This feature is already available in the Lexus IS.
Too bad anyone in the suburban US has to parallel-park exactly never.
But can it FIND a parking place?
The commenting on the stupidity of this inn-o-vation has gotten so intense at HuffPo that Ford has brought in some paid commenters/defenders of the faith. I would love to see that happen here. (but mostly the subsequent smackdown of the paid commenter). They don’t have no idea we have Ecodriving skills as a secret weapon.
I have seen the future…
http://pagesperso-orange.fr/Jas-n-Geoff/Geoff/homer.jpg
Yeah, fantastic. Everyone with one of these devices is going to love it. But everyone whose car is blocked in by some douche using his sideways-moving car-parking device will key the crap out of every Ford they see until the end of time.
A better innovation would be to finally install a working waffle iron in the dashboard of a car. Maybe a butterchurn, too, because who eats waffles without butter?
I’m waiting for the day when we can put our cars in a transporter room like they have on Star-Trek, so we can get to where we want in our cars, without driving and using gas.
If they just made the bumpers rubber, there’d be no reason to be careful about parking in the first place! Let’s bring back bumper car technology!
Monsieur Grumpe: But does it it play La Cucaracha on its horn? If it doesn’t, I’ll settle for the Hyundai instead
Bruno: I remember going to Disneyland as a child, and wandering through the World of Tomorrow. It was there that I first heard someone predict that in the future, we’d have cars that could parallel park themselves. I could not imagine that I would live in a world where . . .
oh fuck it. I just want a car that gets decent gas milage and won’t blow up if one of my drunken neighbors taps my bumper while parking. Anything else is unnecessary.
Have we become this lazy and useless we can no longer park our own cars?
(I offer this question as a person who does not drive)
Anyway, I’ll hold out for the shoelaces that tie themselves.
I’m sure they can make replacing an ultrasonic sensor hella cheap too.
But there already is an effective carparking technology. It’s called ‘men’.
Also, it will piss on any nearby Chevys.
Their definition of renewable energy is WAY COOLER than mine.
I just need a car that sticks out a middle finger for me.
What about a car that is also a mobile meth lab, Ford? Middle Amurica would eat that shit right up! Sure there’d be periodic explosions on the freeway, but you could pay off the car after one big cook-up.
NoWireHangers: Colin Powell was right!!
http://a.abcnews.com/images/WNT/ap_biological_agents2_070313_ssh.jpg
It’s simply a prototype for the Mobile Meth Lab, but I think we should invade another country over it, don’t you?
I mean, someone COULD have the vehicle depicted that does not actually exist, right?
I blame Canada.
If it does it in NYC at rush hour while taking into account alternate side of the street parking, I’ll take a dozen, please.
And wrap them to go, if you don’t mind.
“…The driver will still need to shift the transmission and operate the gas and brake pedals…”
Uh-oh. So we’ll still have those incidents where blind 92-year-olds who can’t remember their right pedal from their left plow Crown Vics into 7-11s and then say, “Something went wrong with my brakes!”
Larry Fine: Me, I want the Jetsons car that folds into a briefcase.
So does this trump the underside coating and extra cup holder?
I’ll take the heat, I gotta say it… At last, a car the average chick can park!
actor212: Of all the fantastical, logic-defying inventions on the Jetsons, briefcase car infuriated me the most.
Damn. Just as Bill O’Reilly was about to announce the Self-Fucking Penis Shaped Vibrator.
Larry McAwful: Mmm, waffles. With a self-warming syrup dispenser.
MrAgro: Really? For me it was the fact that Judy could shower in less time than it took me to blink.
Frikkin’ solid cartoon walls…
What’s Ford going to call it? I hear Edsel’s not taken.
MrAgro: Man, I hate to break this to ya but ‘The Jetsons’ was a cartoon, you know, and a work of fiction too I’m told… Maybe you need to think about a New Years resolution to slack-up on the bong a little.
cal: I never thought of warm syrup! It’s that lack of vision that’s keeping me from landing a job designing cars with the best of ‘em in Detroit.
Tyrone Biggums: How about 43.8?
http://jalopnik.com/5107064/ford-fusion-hybrid-gets-fuel-economy-rating-of-438-mpg-in-jalopnik-road-test
…and that Lexus self-parking tech is maybe not so useful:
http://www.automobilemag.com/multimedia/videos/6201158/2007_lexus_ls460_sort_of_parks_itself_video/index.html
Anyway, this is a dumb idea, but it kind of makes sense if you spend some time in Detroit, where no one needs to parallel park because no one lives in the city (duh!), so parallel parking fills even the most experienced MI driver with dread.
A better innovation would be to stop making these cheap ass cars out of aluminum foil and use some other material like…um, oh…perhaps steel?
A better innovation would be to stop making these cheap ass car with cheap ass engines that combust when you plug in your cell phone car charger while working the windshield wipers!
Who the fuck is in charge over at that hot dog stand anyways? A bunch of dumb asses?
Yeah, when they invent crystal wineglasses you can put in the dishwasher, call me.
plowman: But Oprah said ALL stories are supposed to be true! Or she will kill the authors.
plowman: DON’T EVEN GET ME STARTED ON TEX AVERY.
My old boss, who is the world’s shittiest driver bar none, has this in her fucking Lexus. Guess what? She still can’t park any better than a drunken aardvark.
My car already has a Flux Capacitor. I don’t need to go sideways.
Jesus Christ. I can ALREADY parallel park my car just fine. But I cannot jump out by the side of the road and, say, replace my alternator. So please, Detroit, don’t give me a car that can park itself, just give me a goddamned car that doesn’t break down every five minutes like the last American car I owned (A 1980 Pontiac Phoenix. The most comfortable car I have ever sat in. I could sit in sublime comfort as I waited for the towtruck to arrive. When that car died at a mere 120K miles, I bought a Honda Civic and never looked back).
Oh, the Detroit Auto Show in January should be a real blast. Busty models caressing soon to be rusty models; augmented by the hovering and always haughty ghost of Kwame Kilpatrick. Bring the family.
Formerly Preferred: The Lexus video was an absolute scream! My face hurts from laughing!
As for parallel parking - I thought it was supposed to be a sacred right of passage to demonstrate that you have learned this before being allowed to drive on your own.
No wonder GEICO and Progressive are rolling in dough!
Mr. Spanky:
My only “test” on parallel parking consisted of my Sears driving instructor asking me to visualize a parallel parking situation in the parking lot of Twelve Oaks Mall in Novi, MI, and then execute it. Seriously. There were no other cars, so we did a hypothetical parallel park between two imaginary cars.
The DMV (Secretary of State, in MI) did not require a driving test if you’d taken a private driver’s ed class.
I’ve gotten much better at it since moving to a “city” inhabited by actual “humans.”
friendlynerd: Wait, we still have suburbs? I thought the subprime ACORNs had turned them all into hobo-infested foreclosed toxic hellholes.
Boy do we know what is important. We certainly have earned global warming, haven’t we?
Show me a Terminator car that finds and runs over CEOs of financial institutions and you’ve got a customer for life!
Hmm, I can’t think of a single american car brand, or car, that I would ever consider driving. What kind of 1950s ad executive even came up for these stupid names - Pontiac, Cadillac, Buick…what the hell kind of names are those? Do you think anyone outside of Michigan or in the rest of the world think those are nice brand names?? God, the image I get is some smelly Depends wearing granny. I hope those companies all suffer and finally die in the new year.
That being said, all the best to the rest of you!
For the younger folks here: the only name of a car line or “brand” (”make” - they usta call ‘em “makes”) that they came up with in the 50’s was Edsel. All the other ones have a lot of history behind them.
kapish: since ‘taint’ is on my mind, these makes/brands are tainted like a toddler’s first underwear. They have negative brand value. You’d be better off killing them all off and manufacturing a new name like Lexis did. Audi, BMW & Honda have long histories too but have managed to avoid taint. Why are people in Detroit so stupid?
My mil better get one of these ASAP.