Auto Correct

Allison Walker, The Lady Auto Mechanic, shares tales from rebuilding her race car. https://www.facebook.com/theladyautomechanic78/

Here are the recalls for the week:

Approximately 267,000 model-year 2013-15 Toyota Prius hybrids and model-year 2014-17 Prius v hybrids: Dealers will update the hybrid system software. For customer satisfaction, if the car has experienced an inverter failure with certain hybrid system faults related to this condition, the inverter will be repaired or replaced. All repairs will be done for free.

2020 Ford Expedition, Lincoln Navigator: Dealers will inspect and replace the attachment bracket for the second-row driver-side head restraint, as necessary, for free.

You can find out if your car has a past recall by going to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration’s website: https://www.nhtsa.gov/recalls          and inputting your VIN number.

Consumer Reports rounded up the poorest used models of the past decade. Today, we’re going to caution you about:

Ram 1500 Detroit’s 1500 pickup trucks scored well for the decade’s worth of results (2007-16) in Consumer Reports testing, but Ram showed a few weak spots. The 2014 and 2016 models got the “never buy” rating due to poor reliability scores. Heavy-duty models (2500) from 2012, 2014, and 2015 also rated poorly in the reliability department. Brake systems and power components were trouble areas in these trucks

Please consider reading up on the reliability of this car before purchasing it as a used car, suggests Consumer Reports. https://www.consumerreports.org/used-cars/used-cars-to-avoid-buying/                   https://www.carcomplaints.com/ is another resource for unreliable car lists.    

If you’re interested in reviews of new cars Casey Williams is the automotive correspondent for WFYI, a public radio station in Indianapolis. He has reviewed cars and covered the auto industry for 25 years. His review this week is on the 2020 Cadillac XT5 Sport, Mercedes-AMG GLC43 https://www.wfyi.org/news/authors/casey-williams

What’s in the news: Tesla driver blames Autopilot for crash, faces negligent driving charge. The driver reportedly told police he “must not have been paying attention.” When he plowed into the back of a parked police car on the side of the road.

this isn't uncommon behavior for adaptive cruise control systems. Often these systems use radar to match the speed of moving vehicles ahead. This is fairly easy to do with radar, which can directly measure another vehicle's velocity. However, such systems may completely ignore stationary vehicles since radar has poor angular resolution and can't distinguish stationary objects near the road (like a concrete lane divider) from an obstacle in the vehicle's travel lane. Adaptive cruise control works well enough most of the time, but it can lead to the rare case where, if a car is parked in the travel lane and a car with adaptive cruise control is being driven by a driver who isn't paying attention, the two can crash.

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/06/tesla-driver-blames-autopilot-for-crash-into-police-car/