All I want in a car came be summarized by the immortal Steve Martin in the film "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles": "Four fucking wheels and a seat."

I don't want air conditioning, power windows, air bags, or a radio-- those things all just add weight, and are more elements which will inevitably go bad.

Much less: an automatic transmission-- I will never buy a car which is not a manual; an electric motor; GPS; any kind of crap which can take control from me; ASS, which constantly shuts off the car's engine without my permission; blinking "blind spot" indicators; a steering wheel which wrestles against me if I change lanes without signaling a billion times like a confused idiot; network endpoints which the cops can use to track and even remotely shut down my car; and a whole litany of other things which are quite literally anti-features.

So, in which direction are car companies going? "Connected, Autonomous, Shared, Electric". They couldn't have come up with a paradigm so diametrically opposed to what I want from a car if they'd tried!

It's not just me who objects: the average age of a car on the road in America is twelve years, and every year that average goes up by one year. The median-priced car today is so needlessly complicated and complex that it costs over half-- often times well over half-- of a typical American family's entire annual income! Even in the article, the car companies found that forty percent of drivers say "technology [in cars] is getting too complicated." So what are the car companies doing? Doubling down!

They also found that sixty percent of people want to know exactly what data is being collected by their car, and what it's being used for. Which leads me to wonder: did they ask people, "do you want your car to record information at all?" I doubt it.

And, hence, the article describes their paradigm as something that's being "pushed". That sounds an awful like a Freudian Slip to me.

But that's ok, because frankly I don't think most of these car companies are even going to be around at all by the time we reach this supposed 2030 target date. Just to sell the bloated pieces of crap they make now requires thousands of dollars in rebates, and six or even seven year auto loans at absurdly low interest rates. They have zero wiggle room to "push" down this path any further without destroying their viabilities as companies.

The other saving grace is that as the new car industry veers further and further off into the ditch, a serious cottage industry is growing around freshly-refurbished, totally restored classic cars. Not only are these cheaper, way cooler looking, far easier to maintain, and a very close match to the ideal of a "pure" car, but they qualify for collector plates, which means they're exempt from meeting safety and environmental regulations. You can't get much better than a "brand new", original Datsun 240z!