It's one small change for car makers, one, erm, giant leap for car owners
Earlier this week I came up with an idea that has already been adopted by the world's newest automotove brand, and should be taken up by every car maker on the planet. Possibly.
A couple of days ago I was at a photographic studio in Munich for a briefing on the new cars from the start-up Israeli-Chinese Qoros brand. All the details have to be kept under wraps until the Geneva show in early March, but I can say that you’ll be more than pleasantly surprised.
After taking a good look around the outside and inside of the cars (they’re very slick and impressive in the flesh: the Qoros chief designer is Gert Hildebrand, who oversaw Mini for a decade) somebody flipped the bonnet up.
All of a sudden, a thought I’d had in the back of my mind for months came rushing forwards. As a prelude to making my profound point, I flicked up the cap of the washer bottle… which completely detached, span upwards and then fell down into the engine bay.
‘Anyway’, I said to the assembled Qoros bosses as the technicians peered down the side of the engine, ‘why is the capacity of the washer bottle never moulded into the cap? When they are empty, I never know how much washer fluid to mix up.’
Daniel Backman, ex-Volvo and Qoros’s director of product strategy, looked at me and then picked up his phone. I didn’t quite notice him walking to the other side of the studio. When he came back, I button-holed Backman and pressed home my point. Backman looked back at me with a serious face and said ‘it’s done’. Seems he had emailed the Qoros engineers and asked them to change the washer bottle cap moulding so the capacity was displayed. Amazing.
After a bit a thought, I’ve now refined the idea, so that the amount marked on the cap relates to capacity when the washer warning light comes on. Of course, it’s possible that some manufacturers already include the nicety, but I’ve yet to encounter it. It requires only a tiny effort from car makers, but it’s a remarkable omission.
So, what do you think? Significant breakthrough or damp squib?