On Fri, Sep 5, 2014 at 12:14 PM, Jeffrey Schwartz
<xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

> On the other hand, look at the change in _user_ instrumentation
>
> We've gone from having a dashboard with meters for tach,water temp,
> oil temp,  battery amps, voltage, oil pressure... to "Check Engine"

Eh.  Most users don't care, and don't need anything more than a CEL.
They don't carry tools, and they probably couldnt fix a fried sensor
anyway.

If you want the data, you go buy a code reader.

If people were willing to *pay* for more information, there could be more.

Even if it was just a cell-sized MFD that you could cycle through.

Oh, wait, spouse's car has an MFD, above the steering wheel, to
augement speedo and gauges.

Tire pressure, oil life, speed, trip data, fuel economy, various other
things, one at a time.

And the speedo is not mechanically coupled.  We went to Canada last
weekend, flipped the MFD from English to Metric, and the speedo
changed calibration, too.  Which really surprised me, when I finally
noticed that the speedo and the MFD speed readings matched....

Dan

--

"Any sufficiently advanced parody is indistinguishable from a genuine
kook." -Alan Morgan