On our way home after picking up the new electric car from the Ford dealership in downtown Toronto, we waved goodbye to gas stations we passed. “What are those?” we said gleefully, pointing to the pumps and lines of steaming automobiles whose owners waited their turn to pour $80 down the throats of their thirsty dinosaurs.
We just bought a Ford Mustang Mach E electric car. I can’t handle the technology of a Tesla. The Tesla has only a honking great computer next to the driver’s seat and a dashboard with nothing on it at all, as if the car has been stripped for parts. When we test-drove it we were allowed fifteen minutes along a predetermined route. I drove, shrieking, while Jonathan poked at the computer screen to figure out the features. We handed in the keys. The salesman did not really care whether or not we bought the car because behind us were a dozen would-be Tesla owners. Everyone with Musk Ox envy and an extra hundred grand has been buying Teslas.
We bought a Mustang because a) Ford has put a lot of features in it to compete with Tesla, b) it’s cheaper than a Tesla, and c) it looks like a regular car that happens to be electric. I can drive it without shrieking and without Jonathan in the passenger seat poking the computer screen. Once home, we installed a fast charger in the garage. We activated the FordPass app on our phones. You can do it all from your phones, the sales rep had told us. Here’s one real key, but put it in a drawer. You’ll never need it.
The January day we installed a charger the temperature outside was minus 25 with the wind chill. Fourteen tons of snow had turned the streets of Toronto into bobsled runs. The charger port immediately activated a setting called Plug Me in You Bastards it’s Freezing Out Here.
We couldn’t wait to drive it. Before I tell you what happened next: some of you may not know that Jonathan is a professor of computer and electrical engineering at the University of Toronto. If he can’t understand how software works, nobody can.
We programmed my phone to unlock and drive the car. The car locked me out. Jonathan fixed my phone. Next time I was in the car the computer screen said haughtily Key Not Detected and activated the alarm. There I was, in my own car, in my own garage, waving at neighbours who thought I was a common thief.
Jonathan fixed it. Or not. Wouldn’t start. Again I sat in the car, wearing a winter coat and muffler while the sales rep talked me through reactivating my key on the computer screen and Jonathan wept softly in his office upstairs. It worked for a day. Next morning the car wouldn’t start AND it didn’t like his key either. After an hour and a half wrestling our phones to the floor Jonathan told me that the car was using the Google network on the app in the house but the Safari network in the car. Was that it? Or was it my Bluetooth hearing aids? Or maybe the cold weather? His eyes were red.
It was time to take action. I told Ford I would only be driving my sophisticated new car with a real key from now on and they’d better get me a backup.
So I can drive again. But Mustang Sidney has changed my profile to Jonathan’s so that, when I turn it on, the seat whiplashes me into the position he prefers. The safety system yells at me when a car passes by on a street north in Orillia. The AutoTainment system has 260 radio and Sirius stations, Apple Play and a Bluetooth connection. When I turn it on I get Talk Radio from Southern Carolina.
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Going to bed at night I can hear the car, snickering, in the garage. Meanwhile, our daughter has acquired our 11-year-old Lexus hybrid. She drives by our house, glances at Mustang Sidney and says gleefully, “What’s that?”
We don’t mind. She can drive us anywhere.