This is Technology Bytes, episode 105 for March 9th, 2025.
Technology Bytes is a microcast where I share brief bytes on interesting technology.
Enjoy, and here we go.
As I mentioned last week, I bought the Kia EV6 and I talked about why and how I liked it and some general highlights.
And I also said that there’s going to be more to come, that this is going to take a number of the podcasts that I do to cover all the things about the car.
And today I want to talk about things that the EV6 does on the automatic, which means it just happens because that’s the way you set the car up.
And some of them are maybe mundane.
Some of them are very common to other electric cars.
Some of them may be common to other cars in general.
But for me, these are new features that I have not had access to in my previous vehicles.
So that is not entirely true because the first one I want to talk about is the automatic headlights.
Now, automatic headlights is something that almost every new car seems to have and it just does the headlights that come on when it gets to a certain light level in the environment.
And so you might be driving through a tunnel and bright daylight while your headlights come on because the car thinks it’s dark outside.
It may be raining, so your headlights come on.
And the other thing that the Kia has is auto high beams.
And my Honda had that as well.
I kind of like it because you don’t have to remember to shut them off, I guess.
And they come on at times when it’s dark and you want to see a little further down the road.
So just a neat feature that happens on the automatic for the Kia.
Now, the next thing that the Kia has that is something that I have not had before on a vehicle is automatic windshield wipers.
And I remember when these came out and someone said their car had them.
I’m like, there’s no way.
How in the world does a windshield sense rain?
And I don’t think that’s exactly how it works.
I was thinking of, you know, water on the windshield and the windshield just somehow knows there’s water on the windshield.
And I think what it really is, is just the camera noticing that there’s water on its lens.
And they have taught that camera to see what looks like water to be rain.
And so the windshield wipers come on.
So not new in any sense, I guess, because it’s been around for a while, but I haven’t had it.
And the one thing that I noticed was the very random nature of the times that the windshield wipers would go.
I’m used to either having it in mist where I just, you know, push it a little bit and they go and I control it.
Or maybe if it’s not raining too hard, I put a timer on, but it always happens in the same amount of time.
It’s like swish, swish, wait, wait, wait, swish, swish, wait, wait, wait.
And, and then if it’s really raining hard, then it’s just, you know, maybe you have it on slow and it’s just bump, bump, bump, bump, bump, or maybe it goes fast and your windshield wipers are going whichever way it is.
But it’s funny in the automatic windshield wipers that all of a sudden it’s like, go, go, go, stop, wait, wait, wait, go, wait, go, wait, wait, wait.
It’s very, almost disconcerting.
It can be a little bit distractive, but still pretty cool.
The other thing I want to talk about was regenerative braking.
Now this is particular to electric cars.
I may have actually talked about it last week as well, but I really take advantage of it.
My boss drives a Tesla and so he was telling me about it as well.
And I set it to the highest level.
My wife doesn’t like to drive it like that, but I find that I can start to get used to that.
And what it does is when you let off of the accelerator pedal, because I guess an electric car, it’s not a gas pedal anymore, that the car just slows down, significantly slows down, and then we’ll just come to a stop.
And what it’s doing is trying to recharge the battery in that stopping motion, at least a little bit to save you on some miles.
And the other thing that it does just to really side benefit is that it makes it so you don’t ever have to really use your brakes.
And so the brakes on my Kia should last for a very long time.
It’s something that you have to get used to, but something that I like as well.
Other things is just in how the car reacts to the environment around you.
So there’s some cameras and sensors all over this car.
And I was at a stoplight.
I don’t even know what happened exactly, but the cameras came on.
And now what I’m seeing on my secondary screen is the cars beside me, the car behind me, the traffic light in front of me.
And it says, Hey, pay attention to your environment.
There’s something going on.
It doesn’t know what’s going on either, but it wants me to see more than I’m seeing with my eyes.
It wants me to see everything around the car on its edges that the cameras and sensors have for me.
And that’s pretty cool.
It also has cross-traffic sensors.
So when you’re backing out of a parking spot and a car’s coming, it sees that both front and rear.
Some blind spot sensors so that when a car’s passing you, you see it.
When you turn on your blinker, there’s a camera that’s looking right to the side that you’re turning towards, whether it’s a lane change or actually a turn onto a street, all those things that just happen on the automatic.
So they are set to do that.
I’m not even sure you can turn them off.
And some of the things happen when you’re not entirely sure why they’re happening.
And it is pretty unique that when those cameras come on, you always see a picture of the Kia from the top.
I don’t know where that comes from.
I think it’s just made.
I think they know what the car looks like.
They know what’s around you and they just show it from the top down.
It’s pretty unique.
Not exactly sure how they do it all, but it is pretty cool.
And then you get to see the environment around you that you’re in.
All of those things that happen so that if you are a little bit distracted, then it pulls you back into the driving environment.
And one other thing, I actually forgot to put it in my notes, but when you’re at a stoplight and the car start moving and you don’t start moving, it says, hey, the car in front of you is moving.
Do you want to go?
Okay.
It doesn’t say it in that language and it actually doesn’t say it out loud.
It just pops a message on the screen that says the leading vehicle is driving away.
And so that’s kind of fun to see if you aren’t exactly pulling at the same speed as the car in front of you, as the light turns green.
So all of those things help me to be a better driver and I can get distracted at times, especially going to work where I’m thinking about the day and what I have to do.
All of these things in the Kia environment, the EV6, make it so that I am driving more safely.
Well, that is all I have for today.
If you have comments, suggestions, or questions, you can send them to technologybytesatmerigfamily.com.
As always, I want to thank you for listening to the Technology Bytes microcast, and I look forward to the next time we are together taking another bite of technology.
