Re: Thoughts on industrial design

On 4/28/2025 3:19 PM, Wolfgang Strobl wrote:

Am Sun, 27 Apr 2025 21:26:23 -0400 schrieb Frank Krygowski
<frkrygow@sbcglobal.net>:
 

I've never owned a car with automatic transmission. Of course, my
current EV has only one fixed ratio reduction gear, so I've moved beyond
playing with multiple ratios. Just step on the gas ... no, throttle ...
no, accelerator, and it goes.
>
Half of my bikes are friction shifting, which is a vaguely similar issue
for discussion.

 I never owned a car with automatic transmission, either. If I rent a
car, I don't care, but why should I get used to something that I don't
need and that only costs money?
 We still own a car manufactured 25 years ago, that we bought 20 years
ago, for less money than we spent for the parts of the two bikes I built
in early 2023.  A car that is driven infrequently, carefully and only on
a few long journeys and that is properly maintained can last that long -
at least some of those produced before 2000 do.

Here in Northeast Ohio, it's difficult for a car to last that long even if given normal good care and driven infrequently. That would have described "the pinnacle of automotive achievement," the 1990 Honda Civic Station Wagon that I sold when it was over 21 years old. It was a quirky thing, fun to drive, efficient, with surprising carrying capacity. But "rust never sleeps" as Neil Young said. I'll skip the long list of seriously rusted bits that caused me to finally give up on the car. (But have you ever had a car's gas tank drop due to rusted and broken support straps?)

Our bikes have wireless electronic 1x12 shifting with two simple
switches. It  isn't automatic, if you take it literally, but simple
enough. My wife likes it, and so do I.  I see no value in memorizing
irregular gear ratios or guessing these on the fly while riding. I can
do that but don't miss it.

Huh. I have never had a problem figuring where my desired gear was. It may be because I seem to be very tolerant of gear ratios, cadences, etc. But my three friction shifting bikes all have essentially identical "half step" gearing, so I'm very, very used to that.
--
- Frank Krygowski