The future of electronic stuff

coffeegoat

Adventurer
This may be the wrong place for this but all the various "what's next?" Posts have got me thinking about what/when/how do we start treating electronic/complex off-road aids as preferable to the "old ways." For example, the 2003+ traction control (and generally similar Toyota/Kia/Land Rover) systems are good and getting better, but they're considered not "as good" as a true locking differential. In comparison, I don't know anyone that would really prefer a distributor and carburetor over fuel injection and solid state ignition. Will add-on electric hybrid systems be preferable to adding turbo someday, some sort of piggy back ECU to add traction control to old rigs, etc?

Anyways, just a Saturday morning noodle with my coffee... article for reference:
 
complete oposite perspective here.
our current aid in traction control is superior in every way, to what worked 15 years ago.

automatic shift is vastly superior to manual gear.
thus said, there is a fun factor, to the equation, absent that factor, u get the modern gx 570 or the Discovery, or the new ranger/colorado, lovely machines but just a tad....boring.
 

shade

Well-known member
Some of the opinions expressed are based on specific vehicles. For example, manually shifting an automatic transmission doesn't require looking away from the road in some vehicles. Some ATs can shift faster than humanly possible, too.

To the original point of the thread, reliability is a concern, and an old, dumb system may continue to work in more extreme conditions, or a field repair may be more easily performed. I've fixed the center electrode of a distributor cap with a chunk of #2 pencil, and I never had a transfer case actuator fail on my Toyota Pickup. There are many benefits with modern systems, but when they fail, they're often just dead until new parts arrive.
 

shade

Well-known member
Objective and countable facts are not opinions.

This is not chocolate vs strawberry ice cream it's pint vs. half gallon.



And yet still slower than humanly practical because a human can already be from 6th to 3rd for an upcoming grade before the auto begins shifting. Because the human observes the road ahead while the auto transmission only observes the road beneath the vehicle.
When I manually shift my truck, I don't take my eyes off the road. Perhaps when you're driving my truck, you do it differently.

You appear to be unaware of how quickly some automatic transmissions shift, and how easy it is for the driver to make those shifts.
 

Salonika

Monterror Pilot
I think we need to better define “off-road” here first......everyone has a slightly different vision in their head when they say that. Mine is not what Toasty’s is for example. And that means a lot when comparing older vs. newer....also define “superior”.....feels like an episode of Top Gear.

For some people, off roading means rock crawling (which itself requires specific definition), which I’ve never seen anything doing serious rock crawling with traction control based electronic systems.....but I’m not an expert. But wait....don’t the Gen-3’s employ electronic traction control systems? I’ve seen Gen-3’s handling the same trails as the younger gens in some videos on here......
 

nickw

Adventurer
Traction control in particular is something that can't really ever be as good as a mechanical traction aids operated by a competent driver.. though both together is better than either alone. The reason a locking or limited slip differential is better is to do with being proactive instead of reactive. The wheel that wasn't going to lose traction already has access to 100% of engine torque before the opposite wheel ever loses traction so slip isn't necessary first, to begin the transfer of torque. It happens in real-time.

I view that as similar to why a manual transmission is superior for mountain driving; you can preselect the right gear for the grade or condition ahead instead of waiting for the vehicle to lose momentum and realize it should probably shift.

Automatic stuff is really good these days but it still can't predict the future or predict driver intent - our sluggish meat brains do.
While I understand where you are coming from, I gotta disagree. As much as I like my sticks, autos can easily be downshifted manually ahead of time. Regarding traction aids, I think it depends. On snow and ice, computers do a much better job since you can't be pro-active when you don't know when your'll slip, it's a re-active situation and a computer that can think 1000 times faster than you will do a better job and keeping you straight.

I do agree that having the OPTION is the best bet, which allows you to select something like a locker when it is needed and turn off traction control when it's not, but I wouldn't consider one better, very situational.
 

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