Subaru Automobiles

   / Subaru Automobiles #31  
Wife got a 2020 Outback Limited. I'm liking it.

Has lane assist that nudges you back towards center if you get what it thinks is too close to the left or right side of your lane. It's not hands free by any means. If someone was following you and you were letting the car do the work, they'd see you wandering back and forth between the lines like a boat and probably assume you were drunk.

I find it will be useful if I ever got distracted and it would remind me to pay attention. By no means would I ever take my hands off the wheel or yes off the road purposefully, but once in a great while, you pay attention to something on one side or anther and your car drifts. It nudges the wheel you feel it.

You have to fight it to change lanes without signaling. Activating the turn signal and it doesn't fight you.

Has adaptive cruise control. You can set several distances where it activates. I also like this feature. As I mentioned in the other thread, I got on a highway with 2 lanes in each direction, sped up to about 75, and set the cruise control. When I came up on slower traffic in my lane, the car automatically slowed down to match its speed. I purposely tried to change lanes without signaling and the lane assist fought me. I signaled like a proper driver, and it allowed me to change lanes with no fight. Then it accelerated back up to 75.

I then came upon a slower car in the passing lane and was again automatically slowed to match its speed. When it finally pulled into the driving lane, the Subaru again accelerated back to 75. Worked great.

A lot better than using my foot to control speed, and no need to try and adjust the cruise control. It did what I wanted to do, but smoother.

Automatic braking. I was following a car on a county road and it was slowing to turn right. I purposely did not brake to see what it would do. It beeped and braked on its own. I had my foot over the brake just in case. As the car in front of me slowed to almost a complete stop before turning, the Subaru came to almost a complete stop as well. It even disconnected the cruise control when we got down to around 10mph. Once the car in front of us finally turned off, I had to use the gas to get up into the teens and just hit resume on the cruise and off we went back up to the last set speed. I was impressed.

It's nice to know that if I'd get horribly distracted, something happened in front of me while I was glancing in the mirror, or worse, incapacitated, the car would slow to a very slow speed on its own once something got in front of it.

Auto headlights. Still on the fence about this setting. I assumed it would switch between low beams and high beams, but it doesn't. It makes a blend-like transition somewhere between the two settings. When it's activated, you can't turn the high beams on. You can flash them, but not turn them on or off. It just determines the light it thinks you need and constantly, almost imperceptibly, changes not only between high and low, but off to the sides as well. While the lighting is always about perfect to me, it's obvious that it's too bright to oncoming drivers, as I had a few flash their lights at me. I know how annoying that is when I see it coming towards me, so I turned it off and then I could manually select either high or low beams. No one flashed me when the low beams were on.

Verdict is still out on that setting.

Rear camera. I like it. It works well in light or darkness. Enough said about that.

Rear crossing alarm. I like that, too. I put the car in reverse and immediately heard an alarm. I looked at the screen and saw nothing, but about 2 seconds later, a car came behind us from our right side. So it looked pretty far to the side and detected movement coming towards us. Nice!

Apple car play. First car I've had with that. Plug a cable between the phone and the USB port and my maps, music, contact, phone, etc. are all available in the large touch screen on the dash. All my voice activated phone stuff works through the car. Very nice.

Phone charging pad. First time I've used this technology, although I've seen it for a few years. Just lay your phone on the pad and it charges with no cable. Works through induction. Wife really likes that. My phone, however, is in an industrial protective case and won't easily slid into the pad slot. It will fit with a nudge. Her case is thinner and it slides right in.

Rear tailgate. I can open it with the button over the license plate, the button on the remote, or the button on the dash. Very nice.

It has a setting that you can set a limit how high the tailgate will open in case you have a low garage roof, etc. That's nice.

Rear seat flipper levers. If you open the tailgate and need to slide something long into the car, you can flip a lever on either side right inside the tailgate and the corresponding rear seat will automatically flip forward. You don't have to go to the front of the seat and release a latch. That's very handy and we used it the first day we had the car.

The rear seats fold fairly flat, too. However, our 2013 Impala folds completely flat. A surprisingly nice feature of the Impala.

The rear trunks space AND the back of the rear seats all have a rubber mat on them. That's nice to keep the backs clean.

Killer stereo! Wow! Just wow! Great sound. Very happy.

That's all I've got for now. Will post more as we learn more features.

Subarus are incredible vehicles for Colorado. AWD and safety features are must haves in our terrain/climate. We have 3 Subarus (2 Forester, 1 Outback) in our immediate family (wife, 2 sons). The outback is 12 years old still running great.

I have a F250 but there are many days I wish I was in the Subaru. Great little cars.
Our Foresters have all of the safety stuff (lane assist, adaptive cruise, auto stop).



The only annoying thing is the driver assist stuff like telling you to keep your eyes on the road. It only works 1/2 the time and there is no way to permanently disable it. I have to press the button to disable everytime I get in the car.


A few funny quirks about these vehicles.

1. You will hear the fuel system running at times when the car is parked in the garage. I cant remember exactly what it is for, but its normal. Doesnt bother the battery really.

2. The driver assist stuff has gestures that can be used to adjust climate controls. We found this out only after my wife kept compaining about the heat and temp adjusting itself at what seemed like completely random times. It turns out if you wave your hand in front of the console it triggers this. Another reason I turn the driver assist stuff off. It is annoying and no way to disable I am aware of.
 
   / Subaru Automobiles #32  
I believe the artificial shifting points were added to CVTs at first because people were freaked out they weren't feeling the shifting on the CVT. I never noticed any artificial shifting on my Crosstrek, but it did on another vehicle we tried out, not a Subaru. I wondered about that on a CVT so went down some rabbit holes on the Internet and talked to a few people and consensus was the freak out effect. I did take my 2014 in and they updated the shifting computer firmware i notice right away when i picked it up. In my opinion, better shifting, a bit slower on take off from stop. They were known to be a bit "high geared" on take off, so you had to watch the car in front of you so you didn't climb up their tailpipe. Better passing shifting as the older version might have a tendency to leave you in the lurch if you needed to pick up speed quickly and you learned to manually downshift on the paddles, the new firmware took care of that. Very smooth shifting more akin to a boat, where you hit the gas and it just goes faster and faster.
I think it was a 2018 Impreza if I'm not mistaken. I asked the salesman and another Subaru owner about it and was told there was no way to remove them at this time.

 
   / Subaru Automobiles #33  
We are having to look at "new" cars because my truck is 22 years old and the wife's SUV is getting up there as well.

Looking at all of the new technology in the vehicles is both a good thing and a horror show. Can't imagine how hard and expensive it is going to be to fix these systems when they start to fail.

The staying in the lane technology could be useful but we had a rental car in Ireland that warned us about getting close to stuff. PITA since the roads are mere lanes and they let the hedges grow in the "road" so the alarm was always working. I could see the lane features being helpful here in the US. The adaptive cruise control, if it works, would be very helpful in some of the driving I have to do in heavy traffic on the Interstate.

The rental car had the stop engine feature which is just a PITA. It only turned off a time or two but I hated it. From what I have read, some of the US cars will not turn off depending on how hard the brake pedal is pressed. If there is a high engine load from power, HVAC, heat, etc, the engine will not auto stop. I do wonder if they ECM programmers will allow one to fix this "feature." My understanding is the auto stop is turned on because the car companies used it to maximize there MPG ratings and thus it has to be enabled.

Because of all of the technology in these vehicles, I do wonder if the vehicles will just age out when the repair bills get to a point of being unaffordable. Certainly the auto companies are trying to drive us, pun intended, to a subscription model for some services but I think they would love it if the subscription was basically a lease that never expired. Get a new car every N years and always have a subscription, aka, car payment.
 
   / Subaru Automobiles #34  
We are having to look at "new" cars because my truck is 22 years old and the wife's SUV is getting up there as well.

Looking at all of the new technology in the vehicles is both a good thing and a horror show. Can't imagine how hard and expensive it is going to be to fix these systems when they start to fail.

The staying in the lane technology could be useful but we had a rental car in Ireland that warned us about getting close to stuff. PITA since the roads are mere lanes and they let the hedges grow in the "road" so the alarm was always working. I could see the lane features being helpful here in the US. The adaptive cruise control, if it works, would be very helpful in some of the driving I have to do in heavy traffic on the Interstate.

The rental car had the stop engine feature which is just a PITA. It only turned off a time or two but I hated it. From what I have read, some of the US cars will not turn off depending on how hard the brake pedal is pressed. If there is a high engine load from power, HVAC, heat, etc, the engine will not auto stop. I do wonder if they ECM programmers will allow one to fix this "feature." My understanding is the auto stop is turned on because the car companies used it to maximize there MPG ratings and thus it has to be enabled.

Because of all of the technology in these vehicles, I do wonder if the vehicles will just age out when the repair bills get to a point of being unaffordable. Certainly the auto companies are trying to drive us, pun intended, to a subscription model for some services but I think they would love it if the subscription was basically a lease that never expired. Get a new car every N years and always have a subscription, aka, car payment.
Subscription models just raise my blood pressure. Trying to remove individual ownership of anything and everything and making slaves to the company store. It's anti-American.
Reminds me of Microsuck and CrApple of late along with housing in most of Europe
 
   / Subaru Automobiles #35  
I think it was a 2018 Impreza if I'm not mistaken. I asked the salesman and another Subaru owner about it and was told there was no way to remove them at this time.

That's interesting. So ya i don't feel any shifting points on the crosstrek, just feels like a motor boat, going faster and faster.
 
   / Subaru Automobiles #37  
I was an early adopter customer of Subaru in 1983 when we took a chance and bought a new 1983 Subaru GL Wagon 2wd , std trannie, despite dealer was 100 miles away. Loved the boxer engine and manual shift, and stereo system, gas mileage etc. Kept for 6 or 7 yrs when family outgrew it. I would never buy one now because I enjoy the driving experience and don't want to pay for technology I would just turn off.
 
   / Subaru Automobiles #38  
I was an early adopter customer of Subaru in 1983 when we took a chance and bought a new 1983 Subaru GL Wagon 2wd , std trannie, despite dealer was 100 miles away. Loved the boxer engine and manual shift, and stereo system, gas mileage etc. Kept for 6 or 7 yrs when family outgrew it. I would never buy one now because I enjoy the driving experience and don't want to pay for technology I would just turn off.
Ditto, but good luck finding one without. On a brighter note, pretty soon it will all be subscription based so you'll only have to pay, monthly, to use the tech that's already sitting in your vehicle. <--(sorry, could not find the sarcasm font for that last bit.)
 
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   / Subaru Automobiles
  • Thread Starter
#39  
If you push it hard, you can feel odd shifting "feel". It's not like a "normal" automatic where you know you can make it shift through the gears with certain throttle actions at certain RPMs. That feels weird to folks that want to feel those shifts that they are so used to. It's really odd to hear and feel. That's about the best I can describe it.

However, if you drive it normally, like my wife will, and like I will when she's in the car 🤣 , you'll not feel a thing. It just goes nice a smooth.

It's a very comfortable ride.
 

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