Car technology is constantly evolving. New models from car manufacturers offer all sorts of interesting new technological innovations, such as self-parking cars, bulbs that light up at night when you are going around a corner to make nighttime driving less stressful, and many carmakers are even testing self-driving cars – how cool is that! You can also check this site to get more information about it.
Imagine being able to get into your car and let it drive you to work whilst you sit back and catch up on your emails, read the morning newspaper, or if, like me, you’re not a morning person, you could just have a nap! But I digress. Self-driving cars are still being developed by car manufacturers, so in the meantime, we still have to drive ourselves to work, unfortunately!
Of course, there are some great features that we sometimes take for granted in the cars that we drive today. Here are some awesome car features that we can’t live without!
Power Steering
The history of power steering dates back to the beginning of the 20th century, although the world’s first commercially-available passenger car power steering system was introduced by American car marque Chrysler back in 1951.
In the UK, power steering wasn’t widely adopted on all modern cars until the late 1990s, as they tended to be offered as an optional extra on some cars and were standard only on high-end models and executive cars. These days, power steering comes as standard on virtually all brand new cars.
Automatic Transmissions
In countries such as the United States and Australia, cars mainly have automatic transmissions fitted to them, whereas, in European countries such as good old Blighty, many people drive cars with manual transmissions.
There was something of a stigma attached to cars in the UK that has automatic transmissions, as many people stereotyped them as being “old man's cars” if they didn’t have a manual transmission.
But with the need for increased efficiency and fuel economy on our cars today that trend is shifting, with many people opting either for cars with traditional automatic transmissions, or clutchless manual transmissions, which can also be driven by people that have licenses which limit them to driving automatic cars only.
The automatic transmission was invented in the early 1920s in the USA.
Air Conditioning
Like power steering, air conditioning was seen largely as a luxury in cars that were built in the 20th century. Nowadays, most cars come with air conditioning or even climate control, which lets the occupants in the car select the desired cabin temperature.
Even though we don’t tend to get year-long sunshine in Britain, air conditioning is useful for removing moisture from the air in our cars, which helps to demist windows quicker – a very useful feature for those that are constantly late for work because they have to keep clearing their car windscreens!
Central Locking
Another feature of today’s modern car that we can’t live without is central locking! The majority of cars today feature remote central locking, so we don’t even need to use a key in the door as we can lock and unlock our cars from a close distance.
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