As mentioned previously, that constraints are not present anymore. State of the art solid state flight data recorders can hold lots of hours, reaching even just a day back of data.
Just on example (no affiliation with such product):
L-3 FA2100 Solid-State Flight Data Recorder (SSFDR) records a minimum of 25 hs of data
The tachograph familiar to lorry drivers records both when and how fast the vehicle was moving, and is often audited by police to ensure permitted driving hours and speed limiters are not being defeated. That's pretty primitive technology, the basis dating back at least to the 1930s if not further, and it is explicitly designed to record hours and days of information for posterity.
On the British main-line railways, *every* train must be fitted with certain minimum equipment - a decent headlight, the AWS and TPWS safety systems, and the OTMR "black box" must all be fitted even to preserved steam locos if they are to operate under their own power on the national network (but not necessarily on preserved or other privately-run railways). The power required to run this equipment is often generated by a steam turbine discreetly fitted somewhere on the tender, for lack of anywhere that would not be visually or mechanically obtrusive on the locomotive itself. Many modern trains also have the equivalent of dashcams, which frequently also record at the rear of the train (since multiple-unit trains have a cab at each end). All this ensures that when the rare accidents occur, it is much easier to work out precisely what happened than it used to be.
It also means that large amounts of data are available for professional driving reviews and training. The data can be examined for signs of inefficient driving, risky techniques or poor timekeeping, which can then be the focus of a future refresher course. Airlines also use flight recorder data in this way. Remember, these are professionals - they are held to a higher standard than the average man on the street.
The huge volume of data recorded by "track recording trains", whose entire purpose is to detect track problems for scheduling preventative maintenance, is also stored for future reference. (One of these trains is a converted HST, allowing track to be examined regularly even on fast mainlines without interrupting traffic.) This includes a video feed from a down-facing camera, which is not usually examined in detail for practical reasons, but relevant portions can be reviewed if there is special concern about a track defect in a particular location - especially after a derailment, see page 11 here.
When it comes to black boxes and dashcams on private cars, the primary reason to do so is to use the data from your own car to prove your own innocence - to show that you were driving reasonably and therefore the blame must lie elsewhere. In other words, it is used to defend yourself against an accusation made by another. This is, of course, not entirely in accordance with the general legal principle of "innocent until proved guilty". But I think it would be reasonable for police investigators to collect black-box data where it exists, as an obvious route to the truth. The trick is to provide confidence that the data will not be tampered with and is also available to the vehicle's owner.
But it is generally used in a civil context - ie. "this accident has happened, no charges are being pressed, but whose insurance company pays for the repairs?" - in which the above principle does not apply. The innocent party has an incentive to provide evidence of innocence, since that avoids adverse rate adjustments on future insurance periods. The insurance company would be quite justified in requiring submission of black-box and camera data with a claim, if they are aware that such equipment was fitted and operative in their subscriber's vehicle.
As for privacy, the obvious answer is only to permit remote access to data in the event of an accident or a report of theft. The sole exception would be where the subscriber has specifically agreed to remote monitoring in exchange for rate concessions - such as some schemes designed for young drivers, which keep track of sharp accelerations (in any direction) as a decent proxy of avoidable driving hazards.
I have seen other companies use GPS data to find when truck drivers are several hundred miles away from their route which is one thing ( a blatant difference); in Tesla's case they have used the data to establish that the reporter drove a half mile around a parking lot while before plugging into a recharge station, they also used the data to establish that he did not drive the most direct route when leaving Manhatten.
Minor differences between reported observations and data is being used (in a bullying fashion) to trumpet as proof that the reporter was biased, all based on data that was collected and reported as fact by one of the parties involved in the dispute. One sided collection, interpretation, and censoring of results is a bad thing.
]]>There was a movie called Proof in the early '90s about a blind man who takes photographs as "proof" that the world really is as others describe it to him.
I suggest that the problem we are likely to have with vehicle data logging is that those with power can make better use of the data to further their ends than the actual subject can.
]]>Broder is accused of lying. He might just have had a terrible day and totally forgotten what he did when. That doesn't per se excuse the mud-slinging, or that he then defended his position instead of saying 'ok, I may be wrong', but we have to collectively own up to the fact that people are fallible.
The truth is one thing - spin is another. We forget that data collecting allows us to point out flaws without recognising that humans err. People make mistakes. If we're not careful, we end up in a society where we're judged by infallible data collections & computers, where suddenly those mistakes are visible. That will take a lot of getting used to for society.
I for one, as a person who has been in a car accident where fault was nebulous at best (and remarkably, the attending officers concurred), both love & hate the idea of perfect data on which to dispassionately judge & second-guess events with hindsight - because I know that humans, being fallible, are unable to separate 'a priori' knowledge with 'a posteriori'.
]]>If I'm in a car collision I want the truth to come out - even if I am at fault the relief of simply knowing the truth, and being able to get the post-collision court case over with quickly is worth it. Even better of course if I'm completely in the clear.
]]>But everyone would be hard-pressed to find anything funny in the NYT hatchet job and the fact that the author corrected himself several times shows that it was indeed a case of bad journalism.
In the end I think Tesla's PR was pretty bad, but when it's your business under attack it's hard to keep cool and show a sense of humour.
]]>As several commenters have pointed out, extensive logging is now standard practice in high-end automobiles. What we as consumers should worry about is how this information may be used by insurers, law enforcement, and other third parties. It is these "unintended" uses that may become troublesome. Will the traffic stop of the future include a demand for your license, registration and log files?
]]>Our society will get meaner as we point fingers at bogeymen; and our economy will continue to decline as we focus on paranoia and less on productivity.
Meanwhile, we novelists find such technology ripe for ridicule and caution. I'm certainly incorporating this in my upcoming novel sequel, The Carbon Cross.
]]>One's understanding of and ability to interpret one's logs improves with practice and comparison against real-world incidents. There is no substitute for such practice and comparison against real-world unexpected usage.
On the upside, it does seem like Mr. Musk and team, who seem to be claiming that they only do this logging for media drives, may be telling the truth at that bit-- otherwise their interpretational skills would be better!
On the downside, this may easily end up being a common growing class of problem between technologist and ordinary citizens ("lusers"), as logs of our activity proliferate, yet are used so rarely that people with a prejudice (grounded in whatever historical frame they come from) see the logs through their own filter and the objectivity of the log fools them into thinking they know more than they do, at the expense of an ordinary person.
That said I am not sure I 100% agree with Bruce's final comment that nobody will try to get to the bottom of things when it's not so high-profile. Someone working for a manufacturer who cares about quality and has sufficient management cover or leeway to do so will try to get to the bottom of these things, because it's just such anecdotal data from even ordinary users that reveals the critical real-world quality and defects in one's products. And those are issues that the manufacturer must (and is highly incented) to address. Perhaps "big business" is too sclerotic (or litigious-frightened? or optimized/tightly managed) to address such things and can coast somewhat without them, but I assure you that startups must investigate such truths about their products... or die.
]]>A lot of the argument here has been over the energy source be it Electric of Fossil Fuel.
The problem is not the energy source type but how you store it and the loses involved.
Much as I find Top Gear amusing I also deplore some of their stunts (car up a mountain, car to North pole, etc etc etc). But they also tend to be a little more honest about things than they are often given credit for.
Both Jeremy Clarkson and James may have pointed out a major disadvantage of EVs -v- FFVs in that it takes eight hours to fill an EV's tank and a minute or so to fill an FFVs tank.
They have also pointed out that an electric motor is significantly lighter and much more efficient at converting the energy source to usable motive force than the FF motor and drive chain etc.
Likewise they have also talked at length about the problems with the "tank" electric batteries are increadably inefficient and heavy in comparison to a FF tank. Also the salient point of battery life time and subsiquent replacment and disposal and all the extra energy that consumes. The Tessla uses "thousands of Laptop batteries" that are built in in a way that changing them is going to be comparable to rebuilding the vehical. They are inordinantly expensive and as some laptop owners know may need to be replaced as frequently as once a year if performace is to be retained...
And I know James May has actually discusssed why "Diesel Electric Trains" are more usable and efficient than pure "Diesel Driven" trains and included into that all the factors from the filler cap to the motive force on the track.
They have both discused the problems with "primary sourcing" the energy source and it's transportation to the "filler cap" especialy as much of our electrical energy is produced from fosil fuels (coal, gas, oil).
And James May has gone into fuel cel£llllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll
There has also been a side mention of the polution involved and how it's dealt with. The cost and issues involved with CAT converters are a complex subject in their own right, that further complicates the EV -v- FFV argument.
The simple fact is pure EV's are no where as "green" as people would like to have you think, partly for the reasons above and mainly because "Green" is so nebulous in it's many many meanings.
What both of them have done not just in Top Gear but many of their other programs is to talk about Hybrids, that is using various parts of EV and FFV technology and combining it.
]]>Hopefully [with] a warrant, but let's not get our hopes up
From an outsiders perspective, the US LEAs be they Federal, State, more local or communications/transportational are working on the assumption that "bits on a disk are in plain sight" irrespective of wherever the disk might actually be. The recent press noise about the US DHS regarding the US boarder zone to be 100miles deep and thus extending the "no warrent required zone" to cover most of the US population only makes this perspective worse.
Thus I can quite easily see the US authorities pushing to have not just the Black Box Data be made available, but to have a "Law enforcement Technical Interface" for easy access as has been seen with other methods of communication via CALEA. So either a NFC or Mobile Comms port for local / remote "easy access" on demand. And as has been seen with similar Technical Interfaces once the mechanisum exists, others will exploit it to their benifit, and as current US legislation assumes that any data gathered belongs to the person who gathered it potentialy it might be easier just to give all the Black Boxes "twitter accounts" and have done with it, that way no person in the US will be able to travel much further than they can walk before their movment gets logged and available for the government or others to use against them...
]]>I'm a flight test engineer at a major aerospace company. Our test aircrafts are often packed with dedicated instrumentation, capable of collecting huge amounts of data on every possible flight and environmental parameter. We sometimes have digital video cameras, recording the flight deck or control surfaces in glorious HD. In addition, we tend to pack personal HD cameras, and every one of us totes a clipboard, obsessively taking manual notes during every phase of taxi, takeoff, flight, etc. For the sake of safety, we never improvise tests "on the fly," but stick to a script we've written and vetted well in advance.
I mention all of this because reconstructing what actually happened can take hours of us poring over all of that data. In the midst of the action, the human brain easily becomes overloaded by too much information, and sorting out what really happened from what we think happened can prove challenging. (Dr. John Medina has plenty of interesting material on these points, at brainrules.net)
"To know that, the car company would have had to have someone in the car with the journalist."
And maybe not even then...
]]>“We're used to airplane black boxes, which only collected a small amount of data from the minutes just before an incident. But that was back when data was expensive. Now that it's cheap, expect black boxes to collect everything all the time.”
The future is already here ;-)
Flight Testing
http://www.airbus.com/innovation/proven-concepts/...
Airline Operations
http://www.eads.com/eads/int/en/news/...
http://www.boeing.com/commercial/aeromagazine/...
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/06/...
In Musk's release, he clearly reports the graph as being the thermostat controls rather than the cabin temperature. This distinction, however, has not survived the release of the story into the wilds of the internet where just about everyone (including Bruce above) has reported it as being a record of the temperature. The distinction matters in this case.
]]>Fortunately a traffic cop cannot easily check your GPS to establish guilt as that would require a warrant.
As black boxes become more invasive that may become an implied consent granted by the use of public roads.
TX already has automatic blood warrants for holiday weekends. While drunk driving (and many other illegal activities) is obviously bad, anything requiring a warrant should never be automatic.
]]>And once it's collected, it'll be used. By auto manufacturers, by insurance companies, by car rental companies, by marketers. The list will be long.
Randy - sorrycouldntresist
]]>Remote area, nothing. It's a little off I-15 between the Salt Lake and Provo metro areas -- visible from the freeway, as I recall.
]]>We really need to collect more data before we can be sure society is prepared to allow ordinary people to drive automobiles.
]]>Now that they have been calibrated, readers have the information needed to trust what they write.
]]>'I'll not further clutter Bruce's blog with further arguments about basic math.'
Oh, so you don't actually have any cogent arguments to bring?
Basic math? None of this discussion is about 'basic math'. None. That is simply your red herring. The discussion centers on the fact that the range of EVs is grossly, systemically misrepresented when it comes to any sort of real-world use, and that the makers of EVs deny this by any means they can. As they have to, because their continued existence depends on a political fairytale that assumes that mass-market EVs are a practical reality, and they have to swear allegiance to this fable to keep the taxpayer grant money flowing. That's the 'basic math' at play here - not car mileage, but taxpayer dollars.
With the level of monitoring capability of Broder's car that Tesla has displayed, and their prior knowledge of his plans, it would have been 'basic math' to tell him what he had to do to make it work. But that they could not do, because he would have reported the unpalatable truths they told him - whatever they were. Better to leave him by the side of the road and then obfuscate the matter with vague claims about bad faith and cheating, and let it all blow over. But whatever they do, they cannot tell the truth about real-world EV range, because it will bring the whole political house of cards down around their ears.
Owned, I think.
And, by-the-bye, Mr Schneier is a big boy and is perfectly-capable of telling anybody who is "cluttering" his blog to take a hike. Don't feed me a line about how you're just being bowing out to be polite.
llater,
llamas
]]>My GPS already knows where I am and where I am heading, it knows the time of day and the temperature now and in the next 24 hours, and it would be laughably simple to interrogate the driver with some very simple questions about what his plans are for the next X-number of hours. With a driving history for that driver, it would be a simple matter to produce a 95%-or-better accurate estimate of what the car's current capability is, and provide scenarios to choose from.
And, of course, they will never do that, because that level of truth-telling would be a sure death-knell for the entire product category? Much better to quote some idealized number, and then simply blow off anybody whose real-world experience falls short as being stupid and ignorant. Since the great majority of these vehicles are currently purchased by what you might call 'true believers' anyway, the makers will be able to get away with that for quite a while yet. Not many people are going to stand up and admit that their $100,000 green wonder-car is a total pup.
llater,
llamas
]]>'An EV doesn't require an expert driver, but like any other car you should know the basics. For an EV that includes how and when to charge.'
Oh, indeed? And how are you expected to figure this out, when both the machine itself and the maker don't tell you the truth? Intuition?
The Car and Driver report is a perfect example of the problem. The machine tells you you have plenty of range. You drive it in such a way that the range appears to be consumed in a predictable way - and then it suddenly changes. You're halfway there, and all of a sudden, the remaining capacity starts to decline at twice the rate you are driving. You're hosed.
How and when are you supposed to charge for that eventuality?
If you don't know "how and when to charge", what do you do? Why, you call the manufacturer! This is what Broder did - and the instructions they gave him were either so poorly communicated, or just downright wrong - that he was left at the side of the road. Maybe he should have been more judicious in his charging plans - but when he saw the machine was misleading him, he turned to the manufacturer, who misled him even more - and now berates him for telling the trurth about what happened to him.
Half of this 'how and when to charge' is based on a mixture of equal parts folklore and unquantifiable hocus-pocus about "warming the battery" and "regenerative recovery" and "recovered capacity" and half-a-dozen other unknowns that the driver is supposed to somehow intuit. Don't charge it too much! Don't let it get too empty! Just a quick charge will refresh the battery! Even my first wife wasn't this fickle.
Others have replicated the ride with no problems? Well, of course they have - now that they know what not to do! But the real world is unfortunately seldom so predictable.
I especially love the blithe way you simply assume that you know what 99% of drivers will do. It's that sort of arrogance that Tesla/Musk display in their interactions with critics, and the same sort of arrogance that has kept sales of mass-market EVs such a dismal failure. What's wrong with our dog food? Well, it's simple. The dogs don't like it. And one simple reason the dogs don't like it is that it has been grossly overpromised, and especially when it comes to range.
The sad fact is that cars like the Tesla are only useful as a sole or primary vehicle for a very small subset of drivers whose travels are short and highly predictable, who live in temperate climates with flat geography, and who have a large disposable income to indulge their taste for environmental indulgences. For the great majority of average people, they are about as useful as a chocolate teapot.
llater,
llamas
]]>Anyone who doesn't know that 32 is less than 61 should not be allowed to drive anything anywhere.
]]>Two words: Judith Miller.
]]>While there are some differences between an EV and an ICE, the ability exceed one's estimated range by twofold is not one of them. If you put 1 gallon of gas in a 30 MPG car and try to drive 60 miles you're going to fail...every time.
The infrastructure 'issues' EVs face are largely irrelevant. 99% of EV drivers will charge at home or work 99% of the time.
@llamas
FYI - CNN and 5 or 6 private owners have all recreated the drive since with no issues.
An EV doesn't require an expert driver, but like any other car you should know the basics. For an EV that includes how and when to charge.
Anyone who doesn't know that 32
You obviously, like Broder, waste a good deal of your time insisting you have no axe to grind while spending the rest grinding. Or maybe you're not even trying to present a persuasive argument, and just Brodering it.
]]>I think you are confusing Top Gear with a serious car show. It's not. It is a comedy show that has cars on it. Some of the cars are even funny (such as the Reliant Robin and the caravan).
]]>There have also been uses of the LoJack vehicle recovery tracking system, toll transponders, OnStar and other tech for both police and civil cases - where the information has been recovered and used without the owner's consent. Some car rental companies track vehicle location and also record driving speeds - and assess penalties when speed limits are exceeded.
It's a brave new world out there.
]]>My BMW measures everything. It is a diagnostic tool, but it can be so much more. It measures how fast I am going, in what gear, how hard I accelerated, at what time, and how aggressive I turned the wheel.
If I crash, BMW can see when I pressed the brake, how hard, whether the wheels locked and the ABS was activated. It can tell if I had the radio on, or if I received a call via the in-car bluetooth.
It can even tell who was driving - well, which key was in use.
Storage is cheap, relative to the price of the car. Why would they not log this?
]]>llater,
llamas
]]>'Anyone who regularly drives an EV can point out at least half a dozen things Broder could have done different to not "stall out."'
Ah, yes, the 'smart people (like me) wouldn't do this' argument. It merely reinforces my point that these vehicles simply aren't ready for prime-time - that they require an approach to planning and performing car travel that is completely alien to the current expectations and abilities of 99.987% of drivers. Tesla is not going to get very far in the marketplace with their product if their basic response to range issues is 'you need to be smarter than you are, because there couldn't possibly be anything wrong with our claims of range.'
Broder tried to test range in a real-world setting, but fell afoul of the fact that the range of the vehicle can change (depending on time and temperature) and that the range you parked it with last night is not the range it has this morning. He also tripped up on the fact that the battery capacity varies in non-intuituve ways, and that even the maker cannot accurately advise the customer what to do to achieve the range desired. But no, it's Broder's fault - he should have been smarter.
. . . 'running an EV to a halt, which is quite impossible in any rational use.'
Well, depends on what you mean by 'rational', I guess. Since even the maker can't tell you what to do in a specific situation to avoid running their EV to a halt, I guess we have different values for 'rational'.
Tesla has 'form' for failing to meet range promises. A Tesla Roadster left a Car and Driver staffer at the side of the road after promising him at the outset of his journey that he had plenty of range to make the trip.
http://blog.caranddriver.com/...
And you only have to read the stories at Consumer Reports (which has a Tesla on long-term test) to realize that even with 'rational' use by a driver experienced with the vehicle, finding oneself almost out of range despite the initial promises that the vehicle made is an everyday occurrence.
http://news.consumerreports.org/cars/2013/02/...
Like I said - not ready for prime time. A car that can't tell you how far it will get you, and then changes its mind as it goes, fails the most basic parameter for a transportation device, which is a passable degree of confidence that it will get you there. Blaming it on the stupidity of the driver is just a cop-out.
llater,
llamas
]]>@llamas:
Perhaps 'biased' does or does not fit, but as you say, I call it like I see it and what I saw was a pile-on for one side without any mention of the other side's missteps. Unless one side truly is golden and flawless, I prefer the good and the bad aired together. Of course, I won't argue that Musk slung mud too, and significantly more than you.
As for Top Gear, I did re-watch the video, and I will concede that the reviewer there did not appear to have an axe to grind, but like you said, the criticism is at least somewhat valid. I would venture it's because they so easily and selectively cross the fine line between "Let's see what it can do" and "Let's see if we can break it entirely" without any transparency of the shift in focus.
Several people here have commented that owning and operating an EV requires a different driver mindset, for both planning and execution, than owning a petrol vehicle. As you observed, Tesla is not doing a good job of educating the consumer -- both currently buying and potential future buyers -- of this, and Musk's PR disasters don't help. Only time will tell how EV works out, although I certainly think that it has a lot of infrastructure problems to overcome that legacy vehicles don't need to worry about, but I'm glad that there's a company truly trying to innovate and at least try to make such a vehicle a practical reality.
]]>The biggest issue is the industry's lack of appreciation for security controls in general, and specifically the need to isolate infotainment systems from the car's control functions.
@llamas
Anyone who regularly drives an EV can point out at least half a dozen things Broder could have done different to not "stall out." Everything he did was stupid. Some of what Tesla alledgedly told him was stupid as well, but we don't have the voice logs, we do have the car logs.
In the EV community 'Broder' is now a verb to describe the act of intentionally running an EV to a halt, which is quite impossible in any rational use.
Top Gear only got away with their libel because it was done for entertainment value, and the judge said no rational person would be expected to take them seriously. I suppose the same line of thought should apply to the NYT, just replace 'entertainment' with 'profit'.
]]>Regarding the Tesla/Top Gear fracas, you wrote
'Top Gear has been criticized in the past for allegedly "stress-testing" car brands they don't like by operating them in a way wholly inconsistent with how an actual driver would, in order to ensure a negative lean to the outcome'.'
Those criticisms, while true, don't really apply in this case for the simple reason that Clarkson loved the Teslas he tested and said so, repeatedly, during the test. I've watched the broadcast, several times. It's on YouTube. He calls the acceleration 'biblically quick!' and compared handling and other parameters favourably to the Lotus Elise on which the Tesla Roadster was (partly) based. In other words, he wanted to like the car, and he liked everything about the way it drove, but had to draw attention to the issues they had with range.
And 'Top Gear' is a show that concentrates on high-performance cars, and tests them at their full capacity. If Tesla gave them a high-performance car to test, then they should not have been surprised that they tested it that way, and reported their findings truthfully. It is (at best) naive for Tesla to complain that Top Gear misled viewers about the range of the vehicle. It's perfectly-clear from the broadcast just how they drove it (which is to say 'like they stole it'), but Tesla marketed it as a high-performance car. If anybody is being misleading, it is Tesla, for marketing the car based on top speed, acceleration and performance, but then quoting a range that you can only achieve if you drive it like a little old lady going to Sunday services, on a 65° day, with the radio off.
I don't accept your assertion that I am 'biased'. I speak as I find. Tesla loudly states an optimum range for their product, but then hedges it around with so many caveats and limitations that the average driver in the real world simply cannot say with any certainty what the range of the vehicle will be on any given day. As this and other tests have shown, getting the stated range out of a Tesla is an exercise in energy management that is simply unrealistic to expect average drivers to perform or have to live with.
Mud-slinging? No worse that the assertions from Tesla/Musk that Broder was somehow deliberately conspiring to show the vehicle in a bad light, and repeatedly lied and acted in bad faith in order to do so. These assertions are laughable. To what possible end? How does Broder improve his credibility (or sell more newspapers, or more ad space, as some have suggested) by doing this? Tesla are the people in this exchange who are keen to sell their product.
I'd love to see a completely-recorded and instrumented test - by Tesla, why not? - that shows clearly everything the driver has to do to get their rated range in a variety of real-world conditions - heat, cold, speed, etc - and let prospective buyers decide for themselves whether that matches their real-world applications. Tesla's reactions (so far) to negative reports of range have been universally awful, and have served to undermine customer interest instead of supporting it. They (and their apologists) keep telling customers that EVs are different, and they have to be owned and used in different ways, but then they totally fail to address the customer's most basic concern - will it get me there? - and lash out at anybody who suggests that this is something to be seriously concerned about.
It reminds me of GM in the '60s and their reactions to Ralph Nader - but instead of 'Unsafe at Any Speed', it's 'Unsure if I'll Get Home'.
llater,
llamas
]]>The troubling point is that most people will be willing to do just that, give all their data for an insurance discount.
Soon enough it will be the normal rate and privacy-conscious people will pay a premium.
Or mandatory for anything but statutory liability insurance.
But honestly, I have no trouble with data being collected. As long as I can read it as well.
I'm even ok with it being shared during an insurance claim/accident. As long as the data is being handle confidentially and fairly.
If for some design flaw my brake pedal stops working that data could help the manufacturer/insurance prove I'm lying, but can also help me prove it's their fault.
If they're gonna read my data at my periodic checkup, they better give me that checkup for free.
Then again, I have a '99 car, not gonna buy something else unless it happens to break down.
]]>