Is 2021 a great year? Incorrect! But we did have some posts that got a lot of attention. Take a walk with us through the memory lane as we think back to 2021, a year that looks to be much better this time in 2022.
Last night at Ruby Glow, America’s ninth best taillight enthusiast bar, I tried to break up the fight between some tough guys Altezza punks and a group of belligerents smoke as out of nowhere, a scream of anguish pierces the chaos. A lone figure, an elderly woman, rose from the pile of broken seats and shattered taillight lenses. “The new F-150’s taillights do what no other taillight has done before!” she shouted, her lips quivering with emotion. At that moment, the inherent curiosity of humans overpowered the basic instincts of tribalism and violence, and all eyes turned to the old woman.
She pulled an overhead projector out of her pants and placed it on the bar. She turned it on and on the cracked and stained plaster wall appeared this image:
She then begins to explain what’s going on in the F-150’s taillight image, which I’ll paraphrase here. See the two glowing LEDs in the center of the taillights? It looks like there are four lights in total, with two of them on.
Here’s what those lights indicate: weight. Yes, weight. Ford has a system they introduced earlier this year called Built-in scale. It measures how much weight is being loaded onto the truck and then shows up as a little graph of four parts in the taillights, based on the load of the truck, so you can easily see if you can load more, right in the back of the truck. No external weighing required.
This is how Ford describes it in its press release:
The smart taillight works like a mobile phone battery charge indicator, showing the percentage of load capacity by illuminating LEDs arranged in a built-in vertical bar. When the truck is loaded, all four lights are on, indicating that it is fully loaded. If the vehicle is overloaded, the top light will flash. The maximum payload based on the pickup configuration is programmed into the system. In addition, the truck can be placed in weighing mode, which eliminates existing loads and allows for approximate weighing of additional items stowed in bed.
This is an insanely clever innovation and it looks like it will be quite useful, but what excites me most about it is that it represents one of the first truly new roles for the taillights because it has so much to offer. can, the taillight is used as a indicator of locked/unlocked status to lock the remote control, which began in the 1990s.
The use of taillights for alarm/lock status marked the first significant addition to taillights in decades, where they could perform a communication function. outside in ordinary contexts to refer to the action of the driver or the intended action while the vehicle is in motion.
When this happened, the global taillight community went into re-evaluation and re-evaluation, resulting in The Lansing Accords officially codifying the use of taillights including the ability to notify the vehicle’s status. a restricted object (owner) while stopped.
Ford’s repurposing of taillight components as a dynamic display device to indicate non-driver behavior, non-vehicle status is unprecedented. In the case of Ford, the taillights are used to inform a target audience, either owner or non-owner, of a condition completely unrelated to driving or the vehicle itself: mass. in bed.
I know there are people in the Taillights Community who are more purist than I am and feel that the taillights should not be degraded in such a way. On the other hand, I am a taillight expansionist, and believe that if there is something that can be effectively communicated through the means of taillights for the betterment of humanity, all efforts should be made. made to do so.
I imagine a future where all literature, performance and art will be conveyed through the prism of taillights. We’re not there yet, but a truck that can tell you with a 25% increase in payload capacity you have left is a step in that direction.
Well done, Ford taillight designers and engineers. I look forward to your presentation at the upcoming 2022 Global Rear Lighting Conference in Oslo. If another riot breaks out, I will get your support.
