Monday, June 29, 2015

Rental car

I flew back to Minnesota for a wedding this past weekend and had to rent a car. Got a Ford C Max hybrid.  It had the keyless start. The first problem was getting the car out of the rental lot. I'd push the start button and since this is a hybrid you don't hear any sound of an engine running.  I put the transmission in gear and nothing would happen. Finally figured out that the seat belt needed to be buckled. Very poor user design with no error messages or notifications on why the car won't get going. I don't expect to have to open the owners manual just to get the car moving, it should be intuitive. I'm driving my parents to the wedding so we hop in the rental because it has USB ports to plug in the smartphone to keep it charged while the GPS is used. Once again the car will not engage any gear. No messages except for my swearing which I never do in front of my parents. Finally dawned on me to unplug the USB. That allowed the car to be drivable. Complete stupidity on lack of user testing on Fords' part.

On the way back from the wedding Dad was complaining of being too cool from the fan pushing AC air. So we looked for the fan speed control, did not find it, pushed some buttons which managed to put the fan speed up to high, which elicted a bunch more swearing on my part.














It is so godamned simple to control, a knob or lever that controls cool/heat, a similar knob/lever that controls fan speed. Complete failure on the designers part. I was finally able to see the universal electronic on/off button
Image result for electronic on/off icon and pushed that to turn off the complete air system. My parents with no electronic experience would never have been able to figure that out.

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