Bought a New Car

As my wonderful Audi wagon was about to go off warranty, and that itch had come again to get a new car - I had been hunting around for this particular model when it was first rumored back in 2018, then it was delayed for U.S. launch, then finally announced but in very limited release, then not in the color I wanted so I had to place an order, then the order was canceled when they decided they weren't going to produce any more of that particular trim in that color...and finally, my local dealer tracked one down with exactly the equipment and package I was looking for, and in my hard-to-find color, so they dealer-swapped for it and I closed the deal on Wednesday.

After my last car being black, silver before that, a brown one in between, black before that, silver before that, and black before that...I decided I needed something with a color for a change, which is why I was being such a stickler to get a hold of the eyeball-searing, glowing golden color of 'Kurkuma Yellow'.

The car is a 2019 Volkswagen Arteon SEL Premium R-Line, a large 5-door hatchback entry-lux sedan, with as much space as my wagon, plus AWD:







New car tech is a little nutty though - I haven't used (and probably have no intention of using) any of the automated features, but the thing can pretty much drive itself - all that weird hands-free steering and driving, distance following, GPS map reading, self-parking stuff. I love driving cars, so I can't see myself using a lot of that trickery.

Should be much easier to find this car in the Disney parking lot than my black one.

 

Thank you Scott! Been really enjoying it. It's so nice to have a little color again, after a long line of black and silver cars. Definitely gets a lot more attention...I haven't had so many people ask about the car at stoplights and in parking lots for a very long time.

The only real features I use with all the safety self-driving systems so far are the ACC - that indeed is convenient just for not having to tap the brakes and shut it down when closing on a slower car and the left lane is full...and the emergency braking forward collision function which I do leave on, just in case...though hope to never have to use it.
The other thing I've really come to love is the 360 degree camera - for parking, it's wonderful to see the overview of the car and all the parking lines and curbs and obstructions...and when backing out of a space, or pulling forward into a road where the view is blocked, it can engage the front and rear angle cameras for a peek around that obstruction you can't see.

Still haven't really tried the self-parking functions, or the the lane-keep assist.

 

Hope they figure all that out for you. My mother has a 2018 Subaru Crosstrek Limited, with all the same fancy stuff...but I doubt she's ever used any of it. She drives her car a couple miles a week - so she wouldn't have time to trigger any of those things. though the rear cross-traffic alert is good for her at the supermarket parking lot.
I forgot about that one other thing I do like - my car has the new Apple Car Play integration (as well as Android Auto, but I have an iPhone so that's all I've tried). Integration is painless and instant and I like that I can even get all my phone icons on the screen and use any of the phone Nav systems instead of the default VW one.

 

I beg to differ. The in-car display on my 2018 Honda recently upgraded itself to the latest version of Android Auto without me doing anything. I suspect it was installed from my phone, unless it was bundled with the software update that came with my first oil change.

 

All I know is that the car display looks like the "new" version of Android Auto, and that is significantly different from the old version that came with the car. The blog post announcing the new interface was published on July 31 and I saw the upgraded interface appear shortly thereafter. It was either downloaded over the airwaves or from my phone.



But I agree, carmakers stick us with these lousy interfaces and never update them. Give me good old buttons any day. And if I dig deep enough into the Honda menu system, I see a copy of Android 4.2 running.

 

Let's put a nail in this coffin: I read something about changing a setting on the phone to enable the new interface. I turned that setting off and now I'm back to the less-cluttered old interface. So I now know that, on my car and phone at least, the interface is driven by the phone.