Top 20 Ways Microsoft Would Change The Auto Industry
Submitted by Joe Szabo and Liane Goodrich.
- 20. The radio would be computerized, but you'd need to install 64 Meg of RAM, a new sound card, a game card, a new video driver, a CD drive, and type C:\radio\talk\rush*.* to get it to play.
- 19. The entire engine wouldn't be in the bay at once, and the car would have to keep stopping and starting to load in the relevant parts.
- 18. The speedometer would read 70 even though you are only doing 50.
- 17. You would have to have a full service every 500 miles.
- 16. Your car would refuse to start with a message "Abort, Retry, Fail?"
- 15. For some reason the engine controller would need a 1G hard disc and would take 5 minutes to boot up.
- 14. The steering wheel would be replaced with a mouse and you'd need to memorize the keyboard short-cut for "Brake".
- 13. A particular model year of car wouldn't be available until after that year- instead of before it.
- 12. They wouldn't build their own engines but form a cartel with their engine supplier. The latest engine would have 16 cylinders, multi-point fuel injection and 4 turbos, but it would be a side-valve design so you could use Model-T Ford parts on it. There would be an "Engium Pro" with bigger turbos, but it would be slower on most existing roads.
- 11. The air bag system would say "Are you sure?" before going off.
- 10. New seats would require everyone to have the same butt size.
- 9. We would all have to switch to Microsoft Gas.
- 8. The U.S. government would be forced to rebuild all of the roads for Microsoft cars; they will drive on the old roads, but they run very slowly.
- 7. The oil, alternator, gas and engine warning lights would be replaced by a single 'General Car Fault' warning light.
- 6. Sun MotorSystems would make a car that was solar-powered, twice as reliable and five times as fast, but would run on only 5% of the roads.
- 5. You would be constantly pressured to upgrade your car.
- 4. You could have only one person in the car at a time, unless you bought a Car95 or CarNT -- but then you would have to buy ten more seats and a new engine.
- 3. Occasionally, your car would die for NO apparent reason and you would have to restart it. Strangely, you would just accept this as normal.
- 3a. Occaionally, executing a maneuver would cause your car to stop and fail to restart and you'd have to re-install the engine. For some strange reason, you'd just accept this, too.
- 2. Every time the lines of the road were repainted, you would have to buy a new car.
- 1. People would get excited about the new features of the latest Microsoft cars, forgetting that these same features had been available from other car makers for years.