Partner's Driving Reaction?

Although my wife is the one who wanted a new car - even though she loves driving our 16 year old Avensis - and is paying for half of it, she is very nervous of driving the PHEV. I don't usually have a problem driving different cars but my wife has had cars she "can't" drive (e.g. hire cars abroad, Citroen BX) and had never liked autos.

So, how have your "less petrol head" additional drivers coped with all the gizmos etc. or have they just been able to drive like normal and let the car take care of itself?

I am certain it won't be a problem to my wife. She regularly drives a 7.5 tonne lorry and is happy driving large 4x4s with trailers. I think she'd be quite insulted if I even suggested that any vehicle would be a problem to her.

Steady chaps, wives/GFs have an unerring talent for founding out all we say .... :shock:

Mrs T. (or rather Dr. T), whose first degree was was a first with Hons. in Psychology and has an IQ of 158, is finding it problematical to incorporate the technology that is available to her. She is not using the paddles, even though it was the only way that she could drive my Maser and is still struggling to get any better than three Eco leaves because she is enjoying flinging it about a bit :lol:

It is classic left brain - right brain differentiation. Its a boy's car.

Incidentally, how many female members are there regularly contributing to the forum?

I had hospital appointment day after I got the car, so my wife had to drive home. She drove it straight through the Amsterdam rushhour without any problem.She would never have done it in her little Suzuki Swift. It is that easy to drive.

Even though the Mrs completely agrees with all the green money saving virtues that I had extolled before we test drove the PHEV all she could say to the salesman was "It's an automatic? :shock: Does it come with a manual gearbox? If not why not?

I still haven't driven a PHEV - my wife did the test drive and we purchased on the strength of her opinion.

Well feel free to call me a sexist p*g, but this did worry me! Actually it's a piece of cake and my OH can just stick it in drive and......drive. That's the beauty of the phev!

Thanks guys - I've read out the responses to my wife but I fear it's going to be "suck it and see", as she's still not convinced!

She's already talking about hanging on to the Avensis "just in case". As she uses the car most day's around town I could end up with the PHEV only being used on long journeys, meanwhile still paying Road Tax and 2 lots of insurance for a very expensive toy.

Greendwarf

Do you know what's worrying her? It might just be that it's a new car vs a 16 year old one - that is a bit scary in terms of not scraping it, for instance. Not that I go around scraping my cars, but I quite liked having my 12 year old polo as it didn't matter too much if anything happened to it.

It might be that it has a lot of gadgets compared with the avensis. Make sure she can easily listen to the radio/ her music. Don't bother re phone or consumption stuff. Reassure her she can drive it like a normal automatic. Don't let her see the manual!

It is big too - I am used to it after 3000 miles! If you have the 4h, the camera is great - I actually find it easier to park than the polo.

The driving position and visibility is good, including big wing mirrors to see the kerb, and it has a fairly tight turning circle for its size. The keyless thing means no rooting in the handbag for the key - a major benefit!

If she wants to allay any other worries, she could pm me although everyone is different so not sure how/whether I could help. Then again, it perhaps depends on age and experience - although I had the polo a long time, I have driven lots of other cars in the meantime from a Toyota iq, Prius, Audi a4, Audi tt, merc Slk, various hire cars on hol, transit vans and a 7.5 tonne wagon so I am not worried about dealing with new vehicles.

I take exception to people thinking women can't cope with the paddles etc. :roll:
Some can, some can't - in fact, given men can't multitask I reckon women are more likely to cope with the gadgets... :lol:

And I would consider myself a regular poster on here....
H

The nice thing about the Outlander is that it is designed to be driven effortlessly without doing any button pushing and paddling etc. Don't try to get your wife to go around activating all gimmicks and toys they have built in to satisfy our male drive to feel that we are mastering the beast
Just tell her to get in, the only button to push is the start one and the rest is just driving...

Once she finds out it is nothing more and nothing less than an exceedingly nice car she'll find her way to the toys that she finds useful.

Actually, this advice goes for any new owner, regardless of sex.
It is the way I started out, as my dealer had run out of manuals on delivery.

My wife is not adventurous when it comes to new cars or new technology, and she was nervous about driving the Outlander PHEV demo. However, with a little coaxing and support, after ten minutes or so she loved it. And she hadn't even driven an automatic car before! There was only one instance of her hitting the brake with her left foot thinking it was a clutch (out of habit to reverse onto our drive), but she's looing forward to getting ours in a couple of months. I don't expect she'll bother with paddeling, setting FCM, or even cruise control, probably just stick it in B3 and go!

Dad constantly moans about the driving position and the seats for being 'rock hard'.

My mother's first drive in the car resulted in squirrel being squashed under the wheels :lol:

Has anyone has any issues with the sat nav? IMO it's very slow and dim-witted. I've set around half a dozen known routes and it's only got two correct.

phevmike said:

Dad constantly moans about the driving position and the seats for being 'rock hard'.

My mother's first drive in the car resulted in squirrel being squashed under the wheels :lol:

Has anyone has any issues with the sat nav? IMO it's very slow and dim-witted. I've set around half a dozen known routes and it's only got two correct.

Click to expand...

The satnav certainly does not attract many compliments - hopefully it will be updated on a future service pack!
And the seats will be fine, it just takes some time to soften them up a bit, depending on your weight and shape of your behind.

I have a suspicion it has to do with the underlying maps. My previous car (Jaguar) had the same data and was pretty exact on the Continent, but not in the UK. We always treated it as a it of a joke, not knowing its way in its own bedroom...

jaapv said:

I have a suspicion it has to do with the underlying maps. My previous car (Jaguar) had the same data and was pretty exact on the Continent, but not in the UK. We always treated it as a it of a joke, not knowing its way in its own bedroom...

Click to expand...

I thought the complaints were primarily functionality and usability? Optimum routing is a difficult problem and I've seen virtually every product get it wrong sometimes. My Garmin Nuvi that died some months ago had a history of sending us on some very strange routes in response to reported traffic problems!

I cannot say there is much wrong with the functions and usability. One always has to get to grips with an unknown user interface in my experience.

phevmike said:

Dad constantly moans about the driving position and the seats for being 'rock hard'.

My mother's first drive in the car resulted in squirrel being squashed under the wheels :lol:

Has anyone has any issues with the sat nav? IMO it's very slow and dim-witted. I've set around half a dozen known routes and it's only got two correct.

Click to expand...

How is it you set routes? It stores the last 50 automatically, works quite well.

maby said:

Dad constantly moans about the driving position and the seats for being 'rock hard'.

Click to expand...

I'm with your dad on this one... I think that they are extremely uncomfortable after a few hours and need far more support.

maby said:

Has anyone has any issues with the sat nav? IMO it's very slow and dim-witted. I've set around half a dozen known routes and it's only got two correct.

Click to expand...

Not sure it's any better or worse than other at getting routes right, but it certainly is slow and dim witted...

phevmike said:

The satnav certainly does not attract many compliments - hopefully it will be updated on a future service pack!

Click to expand...

Hopefully they can make massive memory improvements, otherwise it'll be tom tom on the iPhone for me.

phevmike said:

And the seats will be fine, it just takes some time to soften them up a bit, depending on your weight and shape of your behind.

Click to expand...

Not sure how many k's you've done, but I've now hit just over 10, and they're no better... I'll give it a few more, but I can see it being reupholstered sooner rather than later. They are far worse than the ones we had in our cx7.

thegurio said:

maby said:

Dad constantly moans about the driving position and the seats for being 'rock hard'.

Click to expand...

I'm with your dad on this one... I think that they are extremely uncomfortable after a few hours and need far more support.

maby said:

Has anyone has any issues with the sat nav? IMO it's very slow and dim-witted. I've set around half a dozen known routes and it's only got two correct.

Click to expand...

Not sure it's any better or worse than other at getting routes right, but it certainly is slow and dim witted...

phevmike said:

The satnav certainly does not attract many compliments - hopefully it will be updated on a future service pack!

Click to expand...

Hopefully they can make massive memory improvements, otherwise it'll be tom tom on the iPhone for me.

phevmike said:

And the seats will be fine, it just takes some time to soften them up a bit, depending on your weight and shape of your behind.

Click to expand...

Not sure how many k's you've done, but I've now hit just over 10, and they're no better... I'll give it a few more, but I can see it being reupholstered sooner rather than later. They are far worse than the ones we had in our cx7.

Click to expand...

I don't think I wrote either of the quotes ascribed to me!