On Sun, 08 Mar 2015 14:07:58 +0000, N_Cook wrote:

Where self heating of current through the metal of a bimetal strip to a
heater or some other faily current hungry device, switches in and out
some contacts and so gives some sort of an indirect regulator for the
load. They were still to be seen in the dashboards of cars in the 1980s
and just termed regulators in the car repair manuals.

Car companies use their own language.

Japanese car companies use another language still.