[HN Gopher] Software is eating the car
___________________________________________________________________
Software is eating the car
Author : avonmach
Score : 173 points
Date : 2021-06-10 16:02 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
| jrsj wrote:
| This is the opposite of what I want, guess I should buy a low
| mileage used Tacoma and hope it lasts for the rest of my life
| Shadonototro wrote:
| the problem will be bad developers who write bad code that
| results in need of more powerful and powerhungry chips wich
| results in chip shortage
|
| the curse of the tech-age is capitalism needing cheap labor, wich
| results in stupid choices being made
|
| we seen this during the Web 2.0 era, bad/cheap programmers made
| everything slow, sluggish and resource hungry, bad code, always
| bad code
|
| it still continues today
| waiseristy wrote:
| This is true to some extent, but the biggest burden on
| automotive computer performance is actually safety compliance.
| Most modern automotive ECU's have an entire core dedicated to
| cross-checking the validity of the other cores execution.
| Protection against an extremely hostile EM environment ends up
| resulting in very low clock rates (150-300MHZ). And software
| safety mechanisms mean, at some times, 50% of core allocation
| could be consumed by safety related code.
| kmote00 wrote:
| Someday in your future, you will jump in your car for an
| emergency drive, and the screen will say, "Updating. Please
| wait..."
| eaa wrote:
| And then trying to apply downloaded update and rebooting... in
| a loop. Or segfaulting. SW should make everything easier and
| more flexible, right? ;)
| _benj wrote:
| This makes me think of aeronautical industry. It is possible to
| get a J-3 Cub with just a stick that pulls on the control
| surfaces or it is possible to get a Cessna private jet with
| thousands (if not millions) of lines of code in it. They are just
| different.
|
| My fear is that we'd get to a point in which dumb cars will be
| something that is no longer a mainstream option. Maybe then we'll
| need to have our own EAA but with cars.
| peter303 wrote:
| Peter Hubers tome The Bottomless Well considers software as the
| apex of the energy pyramid. Each level of the pyramid- animal,
| wood, coal, gas, electricity, nuclear, software- (I may have
| recollected the order not entirely correct) is more usable and
| powerful than the one below it.
|
| You can see this pyramid in the evolution of the automobile:
| mostly petro-mechanical, then a growing fraction electrical, then
| an increasing fraction software.
|
| I was not fully convinced by the book is that computing is a type
| of refined energy, but can agree with some of arguments for it.
| Other computer utilization like mass data centers and crypto
| currency support computing as the new wave of industrialization.
|
| As an aside: Hubers thesis is the world will never run out of
| energy because we are constantly improving it, for example with
| or as software. Furthermore the amount of work per capita has
| grown with the quality of energy, and shall continue to increase
| in future.
| adamc wrote:
| This terrifies me.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| What worries me the most is the usage of flash storage backing
| huge swaths of the functionality in the car. I suspect 10 years
| from now we will have cars where everything between the dashboard
| and glove-box does not work because the flash has worn out.
| waiseristy wrote:
| Luckily the only dynamic part of most of these ECU's are their
| diagnostics and logging mechanisms, nowhere near "huge swaths
| of functionality". Every other bit of flash is written once at
| the factory and is never touched again. Now that we are seeing
| widespread adoption of OTA, it'll increase the amount of writes
| to program flash maybe 100 times over the life of the vehicle,
| but still within reasonable bounds.
|
| The issue is if OEM's ignore this limitation and tie mission
| critical portions of their systems to the memory partitions
| their diagnostic and logging mechanisms use (e.g Tesla).
|
| In reality if we are deploying OTA capabilities to these
| vehicles, there is absolutely no reason to be hammering your
| flash with logs, just upload them to the borg cube and be done
| with it.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Many cars use eMMC to back the infotainment system.
|
| Recent non-tesla rentals I've driven have definitely had
| functionality that could only be accessed through the touch-
| screen. e.g. a Chrysler my mom rented a couple weeks ago had
| just temperature and fan control on knobs; everything else
| for climate was touch-screen only. What happens when the eMMC
| gives up the ghost in this car? I don't know, but I suspect
| you won't be able to e.g. manually put the defogger on...
| waiseristy wrote:
| Good point, you are totally right. I don't drive a car
| which uses the infotainment system for mission-critical
| functionality. I've actually run it without the
| infotainment system in the car at all. Tesla's would
| effectively be bricked without the head unit functioning.
|
| Ford and the rest of the reputable OEMs know a thing or two
| about flash degradation though. It was actually a huge
| sticking point in one of my infotainment projects with
| them. So I don't expect all the OEMs to make the same bone-
| headed mistakes Tesla has
| aidenn0 wrote:
| If you are allowed to share, what is the typical OEM
| specified lifetime for the infotainment flash part? I
| guessed 10 years in my original comment, but that was a
| gut instinct and completely uninformed.
| waiseristy wrote:
| Your guess would be nearly as good as mine, I worked as a
| vendor and never actually had to abide by the
| requirements the integrators over at the OEMs had to
| stick to.
|
| Usually when talking with them they would throw around
| "lifetime of the vehicle" requirements. For typical OEMs
| I think they consider that 15-20 years. Tesla, probably
| 10 lol!
|
| Though, in reality, if you baby your flash to last 15-20
| years. You've probably designed it in a way that it has a
| chance to live a whole lot longer.
| cyrks wrote:
| already happening in tesla cars
| prova_modena wrote:
| As someone in the industry of supplying parts to keep older cars
| running, I view the increase of automotive software and
| electronic complexity as ensuring a future crisis of
| maintainability.
|
| Availability of parts and service information has always been an
| issue for aftermarket repair/modification of vehicles. However,
| as long as there are enough vehicles and committed owners around
| to create a small market for repair parts and services,
| independent companies have grown to provide what the original
| manufacturer will not. This even applies for very niche vehicles
| where some devoted old fellow runs essentially a hobby business
| keeps the flame alive.
|
| Even relatively recent vehicles with considerable electronic
| sophistication can be supported this way. I have worked with
| specialist companies that will modify, repair and re-engineer
| some of the more complex control units and electronic subsystems
| used on 2000s and 2010s vehicles (i.e. suspension control ECUs,
| digital dashboards etc).
|
| However, the trend described in this article has the potential to
| upend the status quo described above, simply due to the
| escalating complexity involved. It's sort of a tradition that
| auto enthusiasts and aftermarket industry initially distrust new
| tech in automobiles- fuel injection, ABS, traction control
| systems, emissions controls such as EGR etc all got that
| reception initially. Expertise with all those systems was
| eventually absorbed throughout the industry and resistance
| decreased as the benefits were better understood. However, as
| complexity increases there is a gradual increase in costs
| (engineering, training, manufacturing, install/service labor) to
| deal with all these sophisticated systems. Without other
| unforeseeable changes, there are almost certainly various
| inflection points where increases in complexity will result
| aftermarket support collapsing for particular models (or specific
| subsystems). This is something that already happens, but mostly
| for relatively rare models as until recently automotive
| complexity increases were constrained by the slower pace of ICE
| and chassis development.
|
| As these costs rise, fewer and fewer models of cars will have a
| healthy enough aftermarket to support investment by independent
| companies to analyze, repair and replace these complex systems.
| For sure, it will result in more models of cars becoming
| unmaintainable and fewer cars staying in operation beyond their
| warranty expiration dates. However, also I think this will result
| in a market space opening up not for repairs and replacements,
| but for various kinds of bypasses and defeat devices ("deletes"
| in industry terms) that will either remove complex subsystems
| entirely or allow replacement with more generic components. This
| is already occurring in some sectors of the automotive industry,
| particularly around diesel truck emissions control systems, where
| EPA has pursued aggressive enforcement actions against companies
| selling delete kits[1]. However I think where it will get really
| interesting is when we start getting widespread delete kits that
| aren't primarily mechanical in nature, but attempt to lock out or
| spoof entire software/electronic subsystems.
|
| [1] https://www.epa.gov/enforcement/performance-diesel-inc-
| clean...
| iso1210 wrote:
| I have to admit I was unnerved the first time I got in a car with
| an electronic hand brake - certainly something I would not want
| if I were buying a car. Especially as there was a "Microsoft"
| logo next to it (presumably for the terrible in car entertainment
| system which was touch screen only)
|
| The encroaching of software into cars does remind me of the old
| joke though.
|
| At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly
| compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated
| "if GM had kept up with the technology like the computer industry
| has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to
| the gallon."
|
| In response to Bill's comments, General Motors issued the
| following press release -
|
| If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be
| driving cars with the following characteristics -
|
| 1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.
|
| 2. Every time they repainted the lines in the road, you would
| have to buy a new car.
|
| 3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason.
| You would have to pull over to the side of the road, close all of
| the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows
| before you could continue. For some reason you would simply
| accept this.
|
| 4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would
| cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case
| you would have to reinstall the engine.
|
| 5. Only one person at a time could use the car unless you bought
| "car NT", but then you would have to buy more seats.
|
| 6. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was
| reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive - but
| would only run on five percent of the roads.
|
| 7. The oil, water temperature, and alternator warning lights
| would all be replaced by a single "General Protection Fault"
| warning light.
|
| 8. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock
| you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted
| the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the radio
| antenna.
|
| 9. Every time a new car was introduced car buyers would have to
| learn how to drive all over again because none of the controls
| would operate in the same manner as the old car.
|
| 10. You'd have to press the "Start" button to turn the engine
| off.
| beckingz wrote:
| That last one is true for most cars now...
| panopticon wrote:
| Number 7 is also already true in some cars. You have almost
| zero gauges and just get an engine light when something's
| amiss. Then you need to use an OBDII reader to know what's
| wrong.
| dalbasal wrote:
| 5 & 10 are already here... the rest aren't far.
| SavantIdiot wrote:
| Short answer to the lede: no, the industry cannot cope. Or
| rather, it will limp along with bloatware, bugs, and malware
| exactly the same way we see desktop OSes bloat, or the way we see
| routers and set-top boxes hacked to become botnets.
|
| In my 40+ years in the industry I've yet to see code get SMALLER.
| With the exception of Linux kernel 1.0 in the 90's which was a
| step backwards into smaller, more compact code, code has always
| bloated.
|
| Damn. I just want a car with as FEW knobs/buttons/levers as
| necessary. Literally: make it as simple as possible. Like an golf
| cart! Is anyone else out there with me? I feel like Walter from
| The Big Lebowski regarding this: has everyone just gone crazy?
| LinuxBender wrote:
| I'm with you. I will not buy a vehicle of any kind that is
| sending telemetry or tracking without my express written
| consent. This includes ICE cars made after 2018 that may have
| ODB3 and send GPS, emission, speed and other data to 3rd
| parties. I accept that I will be paying a premium to keep older
| vehicles running. I am about to donate my old truck to a
| charity and will get a less old truck after I leave California.
| e40 wrote:
| > This includes ICE cars made after 2018 that have ODB3 and
| send GPS, emission, speed and other data to 3rd parties.
|
| I googled for this and could find no info. Please give a
| reference for this claim.
| LinuxBender wrote:
| In fact all the links to forums discussing this appear to
| have been wiped from Google and Bing. Perhaps this topic is
| off limits for now. I can still find the older articles
| talking about privacy concerns, but the forums where people
| were explaining how to disable it have vanished.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| > > This includes ICE cars made after 2018 that have ODB3
| and send GPS, emission, speed and other data to 3rd
| parties.
|
| > I googled for this and could find no info. Please give a
| reference for this claim.
|
| I can't even seem to find any reference to odb 3 existing
| at all in the first place. So yeah any link would be very
| much appreciated
| xxpor wrote:
| I'd assume they meant OBD3
|
| http://straighttalkautomotive.com/articles/have-you-
| heard-of...
|
| It's mostly about surfacing the codes via a screen in the
| car instead of having a generic check engine light and
| needing an external scanner.
|
| As far as I can tell, it was never mandated. Most posts
| about it are from ~2011.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| _" Software is a gas; it expands to fill its container."_ -
| Nathan Myhrvold
| tima101 wrote:
| "Has the whole world gone CRAZY?"
| sharkweek wrote:
| I would prefer a car that is almost entirely mechanical because
| mechanics make way more sense to me than software.
|
| The old crusty mechanic I take my 20+ year old 4Runner to for
| service complains about this a lot. Cars don't make nearly as
| much sense to him as they used to.
|
| Just to be clear, I appreciate improved safety that technology
| brings to cars, and I know I can't have it both ways.
| smolder wrote:
| You can't have high tech safety features without high tech,
| but you can limit the complexity of electronics, software,
| and in-car networking to a bare minimum, which is arguably
| not even being attempted, at least in some markets.
| bob1029 wrote:
| The biggest thing for me is user input latency. It doesnt
| matter if its a computer, a microwave, or a car. I want to
| feel like the machine is not a lazy piece of shit and
| actually wants to help me.
|
| I know it sounds like a pedantic annoyance, but that little
| bit of step-wise discrete behavior I get out of my electronic
| throttle body right at the threshold of activation is one of
| the most infuriating things about owning an otherwise
| "sporty" car. It's not defective either. This is the cost of
| doing business with a totally-unnecessary software control
| loop.
|
| I find that mechanical linkages usually have _zero fucking
| latency_ , infinite resolution, and are much preferable to my
| monkey brain. Fly-by-wire is a huge mistake.
| ggreer wrote:
| Are you sure that's not something else like inertia in
| various mechanical parts or engine tuning? Maybe it
| sacrifices responsiveness at low RPM for better emissions
| or better performance at high revs. There's certainly no
| need for the software side of things to be laggy or
| discrete.
|
| Also have you tried an electric car? You might be
| impressed. EVs may have more software, but they don't have
| nearly as many physical constraints on responsiveness. They
| don't have to wait for an engine to suck in more air. They
| don't have to overcome the inertia of pistons and rods and
| flywheels and clutch discs and long driveshafts. It's just
| instant torque. Compared to my Model 3, every internal
| combustion vehicle feels like it has turbo lag.
| madengr wrote:
| Here here. I was looking just yesterday to see if a John Deere
| Gator (or equivalent) is street legal. The answer is yes, with
| a few parts.
|
| https://www.sidebysidestuff.com/john-deere-gator-utility-str...
|
| I want my 87' Toyota pickup back with it's solid state ignition
| and carburetor. It's been down hill since then.
| jrwoodruff wrote:
| I'm pretty sure the TJ-era wranglers (1997-2006), and the
| Cherokee of the same period hit a sweet spot. Dead simple, no
| frills, durable as hell, utilitarian but not uncomfortable.
| Everything after that is continual bloat - bigger overall size,
| more luxury options, more technology in general. But that's
| what people want - luxury, comfort, safety... I get it, but I
| love the experience of my TJ.
| cbHXBY1D wrote:
| I love my '99 Cherokee (XJ) for this reason. Hopefully it
| never dies.
|
| Doug DeMuro explains why people love the XJ for its
| simplicity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3STMfI_PS4Q
| [deleted]
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| I'd like if the entire car "computer" was socketed and could
| easily be tinkered with, upgraded, or left empty.
| [deleted]
| temporallobe wrote:
| Car guy here. Yeah, I'm with you. My favorite car was a '96
| Tercel with mechanical steering and a 4-speed manual. It even
| had manual roll-up windows. It had less than 100 HP, but it was
| simple as hell to operate, very fun to drive, cheap to
| maintain, and extremely reliable up until I sold it with nearly
| 400k miles on the odo. I put an aftermarket stereo and speakers
| in it and I was set. Only reason I sold it was because my wife
| hated it and a friend needed a cheap reliable car for his idiot
| son who proceeded to neglect and destroy it quickly after
| taking possession.
|
| Modern cars are absolutely terrible in the UX department, but
| they are a hell of a lot safer, so there's that.
| potta_coffee wrote:
| I have a 97 Miata and a 95 4Runner. Both high mileage, both
| amazing cars mechanically. They both have power steering and
| power windows but everything works on both cars: every knob,
| button, window, still works. I've had several newer cars that
| have degraded much more quickly than these two. Both cars are
| much better to drive IMO than newer cars, with some caveats.
| You can't drive like a dummy and expect these older cars to
| kick in computerized traction control systems to save you
| from yourself. I personally like a car that lets me be the
| driver.
| jrwoodruff wrote:
| Those mid 90s Japanese sedans were awesome. Relatively
| compact overall, zippy little 4 cylinders engines and manual
| transmissions. I had an Accord from that era, and loved
| driving my dads nerdy-as-hell Nissan Sentra. That car was
| shockingly fun to drive.
| GeorgeTirebiter wrote:
| I still drive my '94 Lexus. California is kind in that way.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Just sold my 1990 Bluebird. Didn't pass warrant of fitness,
| but otherwise drove amazingly well.
| beckingz wrote:
| Mid 90s Accords were incredibly long lasting.
| throaway46546 wrote:
| 92 Civic owner here. Love my car.
| clairity wrote:
| > "Modern cars are absolutely terrible in the UX department,
| but they are a hell of a lot safer, so there's that."
|
| tangentially, "safety" is highly cargo-culted. things that
| seem so obviously safer are taken without question as better,
| but in many cases, such features really only provide a false
| sense of security along with substantive unintended
| consequences.
|
| most safety features in cars (e.g., lane-keeping) allow
| people to be less skilled and less attentive at driving,
| rather than lowering crash/injury/death rates. the better
| solution is to make people better and more attentive at
| driving through more rigorous training/testing, more
| thoughtful design, and importantly, culture, rather than just
| technology for its own sake.
| crooked-v wrote:
| > rather than lowering crash/injury/death rates.
|
| Motor vehicle deaths per 100,000 have been on a consistent
| downward trend since the 70s (1.53 per 100,000 in 2000,
| 1.11 per 100,000 in 2019), so, no, death rates have in fact
| been lowered.
| lazide wrote:
| Those are two different stats - parent was referring to
| if those features lower death rates. You are looking at
| total death rates regardless of features.
|
| It's also possible better road maintenance, or airbags,
| or better crumple zones (but not lane help) are driving
| it down. It's possible for lane help to be driving it up,
| just not as much as say better crumple zones, and it will
| still be trending down.
| azornathogron wrote:
| Modern cars have more design features that improve crash
| survivability (better airbags, better crumple zones, tested
| with more realistic crash tests, etc). Those seem like a
| pretty unalloyed improvement to me.
|
| I'm not saying you're wrong about the things you mentioned,
| but cars really have got safer, in important ways.
| clairity wrote:
| yes, airbags and crumple zones do improve safety, but
| even those are not without negative consequences, like
| bigger, heavier vehicles (which is more dangerous to
| others) and higher sense of psychological safety leading
| to being less considerate, less attentive, and more
| reckless.
|
| that's not to argue that those tradeoffs aren't net
| positive, but that they're still tradeoffs to be
| considered, rather than short-circuiting to "of course
| it's better!".
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| I'd argue feeling safe when I drive is net positive for
| actual safety. Stressed drivers going to make way more
| errors.
| clairity wrote:
| if you're prone to being overwhelmed by stress while
| driving a machine that can potentially kill you, that's a
| sign to get more training, not to mollify oneself with an
| illusion of safety. ignorance is not bliss in this case.
| notJim wrote:
| Do you have any evidence for these claims? This just
| feels like luddism to me.
| pille wrote:
| The "bigger, heavier" part does indeed seem to be a
| tradeoff. It's been blamed for a significanted rise in
| pedestrian fatalities, even as vehicles get safer for the
| people inside.
|
| One source, just after a quick search:
| https://www.ghsa.org/resources/Pedestrians20
| IgorPartola wrote:
| For anyone wondering what progress in terms of safety looks
| like, give this 77 second video a view:
| https://youtu.be/xtxd27jlZ_g
| notJim wrote:
| > things that seem so obviously safer are taken without
| question as better, but in many cases, such features really
| only provide a false sense of security along with
| substantive unintended consequences
|
| This is not true at all. There is definitely testing of
| cars by groups like the NHTSA and Insurance Institute for
| Highway Safety. For example, they've found crash rates were
| 14% lower on cars with blind-spot monitoring. Modern cars
| are far safer than older cars.
| duped wrote:
| Counterpoint, I'm not a car guy and I think too many people
| own them. But when I'm in a car my priorities are safety,
| mileage, seat comfort, climate control, sound quality, and
| smartphone support. I don't really care how much it costs to
| maintain, and I haven't changed my own oil in over a decade.
|
| Modern cars are fine in the UX for what I do. I'd rather not
| own a car than drive manual, and even vehicles from 10 years
| ago aren't competitive in creature comforts or gasoline
| consumption.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _My favorite car was a '96 Tercel with mechanical steering
| and a 4-speed manual. It even had manual roll-up windows._
|
| I had a 1993 Tercel, same gearbox, manual windows, vinyl
| interior. It had a leaking head gasket when I bought it, and
| I drove it for 150,000 km without putting a dime into it
| outside of oil changes and tires, filling the coolant as
| needed. Simple cars are basically indestructible.
| olivermarks wrote:
| https://www.evwest.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=40 - convert a
| sturdy long lasting pre connectivity/phone home car as asap
| while you still can!
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| I guess Renault Zoe or Wuling Hong Guang Mini EV mostly ticks
| your boxes
| rm445 wrote:
| Well that's two different things. Intrinsic versus extrinsic
| complexity.
|
| The user experience may get simpler again, but the technology
| inside is likely to get more complex. Electrification might
| mean simpler mechanisms and fewer moving parts, but the
| software will get ever more complicated.
|
| Now in a way it's usually a good thing, if all the complexity
| of something is hidden and users can treat it as though it's
| simple. But we'd probably all agree that extra complexity in
| software that can kill us if it goes wrong is worrying. The
| only way we know to write safe software is to make it as simple
| as possible, and write it slowly and expensively. SIL-rated
| software has already reached the automotive sector. But it
| seems like the sheer demand to make cars more complex
| (especially for self-driving) will outrun our ability to make
| them safe.
| cylon13 wrote:
| I agree with you about wanting a car without pointless stuff
| bolted on. When it comes to the things required to actually
| move the car, there's an interesting inverse relationship
| between visible levers and internal complexity though. Each
| lever removed is moving complexity from your brain to some
| physical system. Like an automatic transmission removes the
| gear shift and adds the more complex automatic transmission. In
| the limit, one can imagine the "simplest" interface of a
| virtually empty self-driving pod, which of course is actually
| an extremely complex system.
| notjes wrote:
| Having a cheap, dumb car that you can repair yourself would
| destroy like 100m jobs.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| So what are the odds of some car pieces moving towards dark
| mirror episode where a car had a modular solar panel charger?
|
| I know what the tendency is now ( lock everything up and sell
| any telemetry ), but could that happen?
| Swizec wrote:
| You should get a Catheram, exactly the kind of car you're
| talking about.
| cmurf wrote:
| It's what every industry does. It thinks it's creating value by
| having more features, when in reality it's just creating more
| jobs. More middle people who each want a cut.
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| Cars like Microsoft Word have a broad feature set because needs
| are broad. For those of us who want reliable, inexpensive, self
| service-able transportation there are fewer choices. My guess
| is because the majority are entranced by sexier things: smart
| features, driver assist, and safety features of dubious
| quality.
| mulmen wrote:
| What safety features are of dubious quality? Do you have some
| examples?
| paulryanrogers wrote:
| I was thinking of Tesla's not full "full self driving" and
| things like auto park.
| Pokepokalypse wrote:
| THREE, Takata airbag recalls on a single vehicle.
| germinalphrase wrote:
| For what it's worth, my base model Honda ticks those boxes.
| wyager wrote:
| Cars are legally required to have infotainment systems (for the
| backup camera) by NHTSA safety regulations. We're fucked.
| vannevar wrote:
| Glad to hear I'm not the only one who wants a dumb car.
| Unfortunately, the idea of electric cars has become bound up
| with the notion of software-driven cars. I want an electric car
| with analog controls, no touch screens or over-the-air updates,
| and minimal software. A car that I feel like I own, rather than
| one I'm getting a click-through license to use.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| Same here. The automakers are trying to pull a fast one by
| conflating battery power with tons of licensed software with
| an attack on independent mechanics and serviceability. But I
| suspect that there is a huge market for low end EVs that can
| be easily serviced and don't have a lot of software.
| zippergz wrote:
| 1000% agree. I do not want a car that is a smartphone on
| wheels and I have no idea why so many people find this
| attractive.
| randcraw wrote:
| I understand why buyers like digital novelties in cars:
| they're flashy and sexy, and they make your 4 year old car
| look old by comparison.
|
| I also understand why car makers like digital flash: your 4
| year old car doesn't support your latest iPhone, network,
| or peripherals, so you're motivated to buy a new one every
| few years.
|
| (And of course, old car tech distracts your driving LESS,
| however that fits into the picture.)
|
| I think we will never see cars with modular digital tech
| that can be updated. A car with replaceable digital
| hardware and software won't rapidly go out-of-date the way
| current cars do. They would cost far less to update than
| replace. So nobody wants it... except perhaps grownups.
| arpyzo wrote:
| I own a 2014 Subaru Impreza and my brother in-law a 2017.
| I've driven both extensively. Sometime during those years,
| Subaru switched from knobs and levers to a touchscreen and
| the controls are so much worse!
|
| 1. The controls on the 2014 are obvious, easy to find, and
| my choices are readily apparent. In the 2017 I have to
| search for them and often guess their meanings. If I'm
| actively driving, I just give up because it's too
| distracting.
|
| 2. The controls are not as responsive. Sometimes there's a
| lag. Sometimes they don't respond at all.
|
| 3. There are bugs with the digital controls that simply
| don't exist in the analog versions. As an example in the
| 2017 the radio turns on every time the car gets started
| regardless of if it was on when the car was turned off.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| Worse, in the 2015 Toyota and 2019 Honda that we now have
| - if one of us listened to heavy metal on volume 30; and
| the other one is more of a mellow pop on volume15;
| they'll have to wait until the car turns on, boots, and
| timeouts the warning/license messages, before car will
| accept the volume down / turn radio off input and kill
| the cacophone.
|
| _UN_ acceptable.
|
| And yet now the norm.
|
| I'll do you one better - I'm hanging on to my 2004 Subaru
| WRX for these and similar reasons too :). I go through
| dealerships every year or two looking for replacement...
| and keep my WRX with happiness in my heart.
| numpad0 wrote:
| OT but since there seems to be multiple Subaru owners --
| if you are experiencing an issue with the clock on
| MFD(the small display on top of the dashboard) being too
| fast, probably depends on models but the causes are,
|
| 1) that there's no CAN bus messages in Subaru cars that
| offer GPS time, and
|
| 2) that at least older models of MFD counts time by
| dividing 125kHz CAN bus crystal, where a sane choice
| would be to use 32.768kHz one.
|
| It's not just your car, the issue is in design. To
| hypothetically fix it a firmware hack would need to be
| built. I learned this when a friend of mine told his is
| always way too fast and often makes him upset for a
| moment that he might be late to work -- don't know he
| meant it justify flooring it but sounded like he was
| genuinely annoyed.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| I have a 2015 Crosstrek. It is a great car.
|
| The console is awful. Truly awful. Push the volume button
| within a few seconds of turning the car on to turn the
| radio off? Doesn't even register. Even if you give it a
| minute to warm up, it is half a second of lag on a
| physical switch. The touch screen has a half second of
| lag and requires several presses to do something as
| simple as switch from the radio to bluetooth.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Re (3):
|
| It's still an issue in the 2018 Impreza. I've gotten used
| to it now, but it's still frustrating. Especially if I
| ended the drive with a phone call. On phone calls I have
| to really crank up the volume (nearly max) whereas for
| music and other things I have it very low (10-15? The
| numbers mean nothing to me, not loud). So when I turn it
| on after a call I get blasted by NPR for about 5-10
| seconds before the audio volume dial actually responds
| (sometimes it takes the early attempted dialing down but
| delayed, other times I have to try and dial it down
| again).
|
| Other than audio controls, though, everything else is
| responsive, I don't notice any lag. It really seems to be
| an issue with their stereo system. Either it's not fully
| booted (and can't respond to controls yet) or there's
| some mediating system that transmits the controls which
| isn't booted up as quickly.
| drivers99 wrote:
| I have the same problems with my 2019 Impreza. It
| responds sooner if I'm not in reverse, but I am usually
| in reverse first because I need to back out of my garage.
| It usually doesn't respond to the volume knob messages
| until a second after shifting into forward. I say
| "messages" because the turns of the knob appear to be
| queued up somewhere, but it doesn't have as much time to
| process those while it's displaying the rear-view camera
| on the screen.
| jfengel wrote:
| Huh. My 2020 Impreza has lots of knobs and levers.
|
| About the only time I interact with the touch screen is
| to control the apps I use (mostly maps and podcasts).
| Even the podcasts app rarely requires me to touch the
| touch screen; there are volume and back/forward switches
| right on the steering wheel. (And also on the console
| below the touch screen.)
|
| Maybe that's switching back after 2017, or perhaps you
| use more of the controls than I do.
| gilbetron wrote:
| I have a 2016 Outback and love nearly everything about
| the car, except the stupid console. Just horrible in the
| ways you describe. Laggy, unintuitive, and just
| irritating to use. I only ever use the actual buttons on
| the steering wheel. Not only is the console touch screen
| bad, but the actual buttons for the HVAC system are weird
| and unintuitive. 4 years of owning it and I still push
| the wrong buttons.
| patpending wrote:
| I have a similar problem with my 2017 Pacifica that
| replaced my 2005 Voyager. Using the touch screen to
| control the heat and air-conditioning is extremely slow
| in the Pacifica, and you can't do it without looking at
| the screen which can't be used with gloves.
|
| There are physical buttons and knobs for a few of the
| controls, but it seems that they're just talking to the
| same software as the touch-screen, so they're just as
| slow to respond. Adjusting the heat without looking at
| the touch-screen is pretty much impossible.
|
| IMO the touch screen should not be used to control any
| aspect of the car's operation. It should only be for
| phone, navigation, backup camera, and entertainment.
| organsnyder wrote:
| I also have a 2017 Pacifica, and for the most part I
| don't mind the controls (the physical buttons are
| responsive enough that it doesn't bother me), but there
| are definitely a few functions (heated/cooled seats,
| mainly) that I wish I didn't have to dig through menus to
| find. Such a contrast from my 2009 Civic (albeit no
| heated/cooled seats on that vehicle).
| bayindirh wrote:
| I drive a 2002 Focus MK-I, and I can use all controls
| _rather blindly_ , just by feeling them.
|
| I hope to buy a similarly ergonomic vehicle when this one
| becomes unmaintainable.
| hughrr wrote:
| 2009-2016 Citroen c3 is a winner. Not sure about newer
| ones. Only computation it has is Bluetooth.
| jonplackett wrote:
| Controls you can feel for seems to be a lost art.
| (Looking at you, Touch Bar.)
| bayindirh wrote:
| Isn't touch bar is at the edge of vision, so
| theoretically isn't that distracting?
|
| Neither of my Macs have one of these. This is why I'm
| asking.
| jonplackett wrote:
| It's not that it's visually distracting that's the
| problem - it's that you can't feel where the buttons are
| without looking.
|
| And if you aren't looking you'll accidentally do things
| you didn't mean to, like press escape, or turn your mac
| off when trying to hit back space.
| judge2020 wrote:
| To be fair, I don't use my function keys on my laptop
| enough to where it became muscle memory, especially for
| the alternative functions they provide (screen
| brightness, media, etc).
| jonplackett wrote:
| Apple had those keys in the same place for ages, and
| they're all set to the the action rather than function by
| default. Volume up and down is useful, as is escape and
| the power button. Key brightness is handy, play/pause I
| used to use a lot. So looking forward to finally getting
| a new laptop when the M1 Macbook Pro comes out.
| lazide wrote:
| Kinda not really - yes you can kinda see it - but you
| need to look at it most of the time to hit a button
| correctly. Which you didn't always/usually have to do
| with physical buttons. It also switches any time there is
| a context switch, which depending on what is going on can
| be insanely distracting (especially when it is using it
| to display autocomplete, autocorrect suggestions as you
| type fast)
| sunshineforever wrote:
| I still remember how to operate the stock radio of the
| Volvo 240 by touch and I haven't touched one in ten
| years.
|
| (You kind of make an Ohm gesture around the volume knob
| with ring and middle for up down channel)
|
| I am glad to see other's desire for analog cars align
| with my own views.
|
| I have told everyone who will listen for a long time that
| I will never buy a new car because of these silly digital
| features that often include surveillance capability.
| Minor49er wrote:
| The only smart aspect that I might want in a car is a GPS
| so I can leave my phone at home. But I'm not sure I would
| even want that since the car could be tracked at any time.
| crooked-v wrote:
| Mazda has been actively removing touch screens in new models.
| The screens are still there, but the touch part is replaced
| with physical controls for cabin features/radio and a puck
| controller for other stuff.
| judge2020 wrote:
| Note that backup cameras are now a mandate for US cars:
| https://www.autotrader.com/car-news/new-backup-camera-
| rule-c...
| randcraw wrote:
| My 2019 pickup has a backup camera and it's dumb as a
| post, even though the rest of the truck fairly bristles
| with sensors. The camera's view appears when I shift into
| reverse and goes away when I exit reverse.
|
| I think nobody who prefers simplicity objects to that
| kind of tech. It's overcomplicated interfaces to basic
| services that we despise, like a volume slider that
| requires you to look away from the road and that's too
| easy to mishandle.
| grahamburger wrote:
| I know HN loves to hate on touchscreens in cars but I don't
| really get it. Both cars I own and almost every car I've
| rented in the last few years (that's quite a few) has had a
| touchscreen. This is pretty much always how it works: 1)
| The most used functions have physical buttons and knobs,
| often on both the steering wheel and the center console 2)
| Touchscreen is used for uncommonly done things, like adding
| new Bluetooth connections and adjusting radio settings 3)
| If the vehicle is moving there are limits on touchscreen
| use (like the touchscreen will refuse to work after X
| clicks, or disallow some functions, or both.)
|
| This seems ... fine.
| p_l wrote:
| Some vendors and models went a bit beyond that (hell,
| Tesla is even the poster kid for this - coupled with
| arrogant use of non-automotive screen in early cars that
| broke from heat).
|
| What GP is talking is return to the design you described,
| possibly with more focus on car-equivalent of HOTAS and
| tactile controls.
| pleb_nz wrote:
| A few manufacturers, expensive ones included, are reverting
| to screens and physical controls.
|
| I think there is proof your eyes spend more time off the
| road when using a touch screen compared to physical
| controls
| bluefirebrand wrote:
| This seems obvious, really. When you're using a
| touchscreen you cannot "see" with your hand the same way
| you can with physical analog controls.
|
| Touchscreens force us to look at them with our eyes to
| use them.
| judge2020 wrote:
| The 'commercial-oriented' F150 Electric is slated to have a
| smaller 8 inch touch screen on the base model with dials
| underneath it, probably similar to the current gen models:
| https://www.wheelsjoint.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2020/06/2021-...
| GuB-42 wrote:
| So you want a mechanical door lock, manual windows, no car
| stereo, no power steering, no thermostat, no cruise control,
| etc...
|
| The problem with that dumb car is that it is missing that
| very convenient feature. So you want a dumb car _but_ with
| feature X, because feature X is really great. But the other
| guy will not care about X and will think it is bloat, but Y
| is really important, while for someone else, it will be all
| about Z.
|
| In the end, to satisfy everyone, you will need X+Y+Z,
| everyone will think it is bloated but you can't remove a
| single feature without someone complaining... As in, I want
| things light but don't remove _my_ feature.
|
| Unless it is custom made bloat is almost inevitable.
| northwest65 wrote:
| > mechanical door lock
|
| Power central locking doesn't need a microcontroller, code,
| or a touch screen, or updates.
|
| > manual windows
|
| Electric windows doesn't need a microcontroller, code, or a
| touch screen, or updates.
|
| > no car stereo
|
| Car stereos do not need a microcontroller, code, or a touch
| screen, or updates.
|
| > no power steering
|
| Power steering doesn't need a microcontroller, code, or a
| touch screen, or updates. Hell it doesn't even require
| electronics.
|
| > no thermostat
|
| Thermostats are mechanical...
|
| > no cruise control
|
| Cruise control doesn't need a microcontroller, code, or a
| touch screen, or updates.
| worik wrote:
| I do not mind having computer controlled running gear.
| But I want to own it. No live updates. No wireless
| network interface to the system software of any sort. GPL
| software only.
|
| I do not expect to get that soon.
| randcraw wrote:
| The features you mention aren't any more "smart" than an
| intermittent wiper is, which was invented long before
| electronics appeared in cars, much less digital logic.
|
| US luxury cars in 1965 had all the features you mention.
| They were delightfully dumb and simple to operate. That's
| what I want now: knobs, sliders, and buttons that move and
| click when my finger pushes them.
| mavhc wrote:
| Do you want to pay more for them?
| potta_coffee wrote:
| Since when is power steering a "smart" feature? Power locks
| and windows are mechanical devices, solenoids powered by
| the car battery. The only computerized feature you listed
| is cruise control and we've had that for years and years. I
| don't think that this is an "either / or" proposition where
| we have either a car running off bloated software or a car
| limited to 1950's features. As far as I'm concerned, cars
| from the mid 1990's to mid 2000's are peak.
| judge2020 wrote:
| This is missing the point - Person A wants their next car
| to have certain features, but person B also wants their
| next car to have certain features which person A doesn't
| want. Car companies aren't going to make 200 car variants
| with different features combinations, they're just going
| to group all the features people want into new cars and
| ship it to everyone. To stay competitive they just put
| out whatever it going to sell and 90%+ of people are fine
| with the increasing level of touchscreen controls, so
| they'll keep moving towards that since it also ends up
| reducing COGS and simplifies assembly of the dashboard,
| increasing margin. Person A can not buy the car if it
| doesn't suit them.
| jjav wrote:
| > The only computerized feature you listed is cruise
| control
|
| Cruise control doesn't have to have any electronics at
| all either, earlier cars had vacuum actuated cruise
| control.
| ok123456 wrote:
| It's not inevitable. At one point we made a 6th gen Honda
| Civic.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| This was literally the pinnacle of dumb cars. Everything
| could be manual or automatic, but you still got OBDII,
| warning lights, and of course ABS and air bags. Adding a
| new DIN head unit, you could have HD radio and Bluetooth
| completely disconnected from the ECU. I think the
| automotive industry forgot how to engineer. All the
| features, all we ever needed in a car, was right there in
| the late 90s.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| > So you want a mechanical door lock, manual windows, no
| car stereo, no power steering, no thermostat, no cruise
| control, etc...
|
| I think an extremely small minority of people who want a
| "dumb" car don't want those features. I feel like you're
| just making up a strawman here. It's pretty clear (at least
| to me), that the people who want a dumb car are talking
| about things integrating with your phone or being displayed
| on a touch screen. I think anything that existed 20 years
| ago is not regarded as dumb by basically anybody.
| drdavid wrote:
| It has been a long time since you could get a truly
| bespoke car from a major manufacturer in a reasonable
| price segment.
|
| But, you used to be able to order all sorts of stuff - or
| not order it. For example, you could save a few hundred
| bucks by not having a rear bumper, not having a radio,
| opting for manual windows and transmission, opting for no
| cruise control, etc...
|
| There were a multitude of options and you could
| add/delete most anything you wanted.
|
| These days, it's down to packages and colors. Often, you
| can't even mix packages and trying to get manually
| controlled windows will usually get you laughed at.
| slg wrote:
| I think you are missing the point. The problem is what do
| those features mean?
|
| Is the stereo just an AM/FM radio? Does it have a CD
| player? A CD changer (how many people even buy CDs
| anymore)? Does it get satellite radio? Does it have AUX
| input? Does it have Bluetooth? Is there an interface to
| communicate to the the Bluetooth device (people driving
| around controlling their stereo from their phone is more
| dangerous than people doing the same on their car's
| touchscreen)? Can it stream music without a Bluetooth
| connection? Does it have Spotify? What about Apple Music?
| Does it offer handsfree control? And so on.
|
| There simply isn't a universal definition of what a "dumb
| car" would be and not everyone is going to desire the
| same set of features.
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| No I think you're missing the point. I never said there
| was universal definition. I just said that very few
| people complaining about smart cars are against features
| like "mechanical door lock, manual windows, no car
| stereo, no power steering, no thermostat, no cruise
| control"...
| slg wrote:
| I can't speak directly for OP, but I think the specific
| part you are quoting was being facetious. No one would
| consider power windows as a "smart" feature. But where is
| the line between a smart power window and a dumb power
| window? For example, are they just simple windows with an
| up and down button? Are there options for disabling the
| window buttons in the back seat for child safety? Are
| there options for the back seat windows to only go down
| halfway? Will the windows go down completely with one
| touch or do you have to hold the button? Can you set the
| windows to close when you turn off the ignition or lock
| the car? You might not care about any of those features,
| but some people will. That is what leads to bloat.
| bingidingi wrote:
| I'd actually like manual windows and no cruise control,
| I've had both fail on me many times.
| Goronmon wrote:
| _I feel like you 're just making up a strawman here. It's
| pretty clear (at least to me), that the people who want a
| dumb car are talking about things integrating with your
| phone or being displayed on a touch screen._
|
| Personally, I really enjoy that with our new van I can
| listen to a podcast/music through Bluetooth and
| pause/resume playback through a simple touchscreen
| without having to fiddle with my phone directly.
| holoduke wrote:
| Attach your phone to a holder. Buy a Bluetooth adapter
| from AliExpress and your good to go with any car
| CogitoCogito wrote:
| > Personally, I really enjoy that with our new van I can
| listen to a podcast/music through Bluetooth and
| pause/resume playback through a simple touchscreen
| without having to fiddle with my phone directly.
|
| I'm not sure what your point is. I never said that no one
| wants these features. Obviously there are many that do.
| Jill_the_Pill wrote:
| Electric windows and power steering are unlikely to be
| tracking your location.
| jjav wrote:
| Not sure how it is today (haven't bought a new car in many
| years) but all of these things used to be selectable
| options a la carte.
|
| It's not particularly difficult for the manufacturer. All
| the cars had the wiring for all the features since that's
| the hardest part to do after the factory, but doesn't cost
| much. Control modules and actuators can be added very late
| in the assembly line (sometimes even at the dealer prep) so
| you only get the ones you want to pay for.
| holoduke wrote:
| Post 2000 and pre 2010 cars are essentially Just like
| modern cars except without the bloated infotainment crap.
| [deleted]
| henrikschroder wrote:
| Audi's 2022 e-tron GT moved back to more physical buttons,
| and only has one infotainment touch-screen, unlike a bunch of
| their 2021 models where there's at least two different
| infotainment screens.
| tyingq wrote:
| I really miss "real buttons", meaning not just something
| tactile. Things like a power button that actually opens a
| circuit. Or a volume dial that doesn't lag because it's
| actually a potentiometer and not a rotary encoder. Too late
| for all that, I suppose.
| garaetjjte wrote:
| Though there's nothing preventing electronically
| controlled buttons working with imperceptible delay
| except crap software.
| tyingq wrote:
| Well, and sometimes "deliberately crap". Like power
| buttons. I don't want to have to count to 10 while
| holding a button to "really turn it off".
| myshoesareblue wrote:
| You might like the VW e-up!/Skoda Citigo-e. Bare bones
| electric cars -- even the battery meter is an analog needle!
| Just has a plastic mount for your smartphone above the center
| console and a USB port. No giant touchscreens! Real knobs!
| worik wrote:
| Yes I want one of those.
|
| I did not know till you said how much effort Skoda is
| putting in.
|
| My next car is in that line up...
|
| (Prefer level II to level III automation tho)
| yurishimo wrote:
| Sounds like something that will never come to the USA
| unfortunately. All new cars are required to have backup
| cameras as a standard safety feature, so at that point, the
| car company will ship the whole CarOS anyway.
| iso1210 wrote:
| I've driven rentals in Europe with reversing cameras, in
| fact my current car had it as an option (I didn't
| bother). They still had physical controls. Sure the
| screen is a touch screen too (so when the phone rings you
| can press green or red on the screen), but the button to
| select radio, or bluetooth, or whatever is physical, the
| volume (and off key) is physical, the radio selection is
| physical (both centre console and on the steering wheel).
| The dashboard is multiple different guages - there's an
| LED screen with selectable stats like 'time driving,
| average fuel consumption, current speed', but there's an
| nice analog speedo, fuel needle and temperature needle,
| and several warning lights.
|
| I think the only car I've driven without physical volume
| controls was a Ford, and that was nearly a decade ago, I
| get the feeling there's been a bit of a push back, at
| least in the UK.
| JulianMorrison wrote:
| Physical controls are vastly more useful - when the
| control you want available can be planned ahead of time.
| You get touch feedback when you're operating it, of where
| it is and what state it's in. You don't have to look.
| Missing it with your finger is obvious.
|
| Glass controls are optimal for precisely only one
| scenario, and that is when you don't know ahead of time
| what will need to be on the screen. That's why
| smartphones use them.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| You know the dark pattern of presenting a license agreement
| over and over until it's accepted? I predict one day someone
| will make the argument in court that they always declined the
| EULA (perhaps the one in their car) hundreds of times, but
| one day accidentally brushed "accept" with their finger, and
| that doesn't constitute legal acceptance, especially since
| they've demonstrated an effort to decline the EULA, but
| because of dark patterns, they never can permanently reject
| the license.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| Fun fact - if you buy the car new, you may have the
| "option" of being presented with these choices before
| purchase. And you can actually refuse! The dealer will be
| confused as hell, but they are _hell-bent_ on selling a new
| car, and will actually void it if possible. I know because
| I 've done it. You don't want the weird spyware (OnStar,
| Carnet, etcetera)? After agreeing to buy the car, refuse to
| accept the terms (they legally require your signature for
| this), and they'll find a way to get around it. If they
| refuse then go buy a different car, because fuck those
| guys.
|
| Obviously this will vary by manufacturer and feature, and
| it's getting harder as time goes on to remove this shit
| from your vehicle.
| moron4hire wrote:
| Uhhh, you don't click through a EULA in the car. You do it
| when you sign the purchase agreement. Do you not read those
| things?
| joshribakoff wrote:
| Activating certain features in Tesla does in fact prompt
| a EULA (enabling autopilot, full self driving, and
| ludicrous mode all involve disclaimers which are legally
| EULA agreements. These pop up after you already bought
| the car, when you activate them under the settings menu
| for the first time)
| ajross wrote:
| Those are liability releases, not agreements over
| software licensing. In fact those features actually _are_
| sold legally as "parts" on the car you bought, there's
| no licensing scheme from Tesla yet. Though there is noise
| being made about offering a monthly license for FSD given
| that it's at $10k now and lots of people who would want
| to try it are priced out.
| worik wrote:
| I thought (IANAL) that EULA with screeds of text and a
| "Accept" button have been ruled invalid (as in not
| enforceable in a court) many ties in most jurisdictions.
|
| Am I wrong?
| duped wrote:
| If I'm the dark pattern developer I'm not logging when the
| EULA is accepted or how many times they declined it.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _If I 'm the dark pattern developer I'm not logging
| when the EULA is accepted or how many times they declined
| it_
|
| This cuts both ways. If the user can show one case of
| their rejecting the EULA without it being logged, they
| can then make the claim--correctly or not--that they
| repeatedly rejected it. If the car refuses to work
| without the EULA being accepted or rejected, proof of its
| movement would be sufficient to show repeated rejection.
|
| More pointedly, willfully hiding information like this
| could backfire massively with the courts or law
| enforcement.
| duped wrote:
| There is hiding information and not collecting it to
| begin with. void handleEula() {
| auto eulaAccepted = readEulaAcceptedFile(); if
| (!eulaAccepted) eulaAccepted =
| promptForEulaAcceptance();
| writeEulaFile(eulaAccepted); }
|
| This function reads a file from disk and writes back to
| it every time. If filesystem write audits aren't enabled
| there is no way to determine if the most recent write of
| "true" was the only write.
|
| > If the car refuses to work without the EULA being
| accepted or rejected, proof of its movement would be
| sufficient to show repeated rejection.
|
| If the car refuses to work without the EULA being
| accepted then it wouldn't move. If some functionality was
| enabled or disabled by accepting the EULA then you would
| have to show that the functionality was never enabled
| based on secondhand sources... which would be difficult.
| Proving something _didn 't_ happen is infinitely more
| difficult than proving something _did_. Many systems are
| not designed to handle that level of introspection.
|
| All I'm saying is that the cute legal theory of "I
| rejected this N times therefore that one time I accepted
| it is invalid" falls apart for me when I consider that
| the user would have to prove they never did something,
| except that one time. Good luck.
| majormajor wrote:
| You probably wouldn't need a log of declines if you had
| the car for a year and the acceptance was recorded only
| on day 300. Especially since there will be miles on the
| car showing that it was driven before day 300...
| _jal wrote:
| Lawyers tend to love it when their opponents think
| they've found a cute legal hack.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| IANAL, but I'm curious if you are. In my experience,
| lawyers tend to get a lot done by intimidation. Remember
| all those ridiculous lawsuits from the RIAA over
| downloading illegal music? Well, it turns out when people
| actually took them to court they won every time. But
| people settled out of fear.
|
| Sure, if the lawyers are actually trying to do things
| legally first and adhering to the letter of the law, I'm
| sure they're happy to have their efforts challenged. But
| I have never, ever, in my life encountered a lawyer who
| worked this way (and I have lawyers in my family, I've
| been to court, I've personally hired several, blah blah
| blah). I am not saying they don't know the law, but they
| use their greater knowledge of the law to their
| advantage. Their goal isn't transparency, it's
| submission.
| kiba wrote:
| Actually people lost. But it doesn't matter anyway
| because the RIAA can't collect it, and the debt was
| basically the lowest priority.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| Do you have a link? I'm trying to dig up stories on it,
| but it's so stale. As far as I can tell almost everybody
| settled, and the few that fought in court eventually won.
|
| https://www.wired.com/2010/05/riaa-bump/
| mentalpiracy wrote:
| This woman did.
|
| https://www.wired.com/2007/10/riaa-jury-finds/
| majormajor wrote:
| > Remember all those ridiculous lawsuits from the RIAA
| over downloading illegal music? Well, it turns out when
| people actually took them to court they won every time.
| But people settled out of fear.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitol_Records,_Inc._v._Th
| oma...
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_BMG_v._Tenenbaum
|
| These were widely covered because most people just
| settled, and there were high hopes for something putting
| a damper on the lawsuits... from the page about the
| second case " It was only the second file-sharing case
| (after Capitol v. Thomas) to go to verdict in the
| Recording Industry Association of America's (RIAA) anti-
| downloading litigation campaign"
|
| So 2 for 2 there were found in favor of the RIAA, for
| huge damages even after appeal.
|
| More recently, even ISPs are getting hit hard:
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/06/1-billion-
| piracy...
| _jal wrote:
| I am not. I work with lots of them.
|
| I think we're talking about two different things. Yes,
| the RIAA was running an intimidation campaign. By and
| large they didn't care about any particular case.
|
| That's quite different than a plaintiff coming at a car
| manufacturer over sketchy click-wrap agreements.
| Judgmentality wrote:
| Your comment was about lawyers. I gave a random anecdote.
| We're not talking about different things at all, unless
| your comment was only about specific lawyers which you
| failed to mention.
|
| Anyway, I don't care enough to comment anymore.
| [deleted]
| _jal wrote:
| I'll remember not to care to reply in the first place.
| lamontcg wrote:
| Most people don't seem to understand that the laws are
| interpreted by human beings that have spent their entire
| lives studying and applying the law.
|
| Particularly us geeky folk often seem to think that you
| can find a buffer overflow exploit in the literal wording
| of the law and the judge will have to let you go. That
| usually isn't how it works (although the odd case where
| someone successfully exploits the actual verbiage in the
| law tends to make headlines and make it seem like that is
| how it works).
| jasonwatkinspdx wrote:
| So much this. Judges tend to respond very poorly to "but
| you didn't say Simon Says" style arguments.
| brewdad wrote:
| I should think that owning a car for more than a few
| weeks without accepting the EULA could serve as
| reasonable "proof" that you had no intention of accepting
| it regardless of what is logged. Especially if the EULA
| is presented at every startup.
| duped wrote:
| Prove that you didn't accept the EULA when you drove it
| off the lot, if the system was never designed to log when
| the acceptance was made.
| MereInterest wrote:
| > It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted
| once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical
| thought -- that is, a thought diverging from the
| principles of Ingsoc -- should be literally unthinkable,
| at least so far as thought is dependent on words. Its
| vocabulary was so constructed as to give exact and often
| very subtle expression to every meaning that a Party
| member could properly wish to express, while excluding
| all other meanings and also the possibility of arriving
| at them by indirect methods. This was done ... chiefly by
| eliminating undesirable words and by stripping such words
| as remained of unorthodox meanings, and so far as
| possible of all secondary meanings whatever.
|
| I think consent dialogs are one of the closest things to
| Newspeak that exist. In any spoken language, new words
| can be coined to express a desired meaning. In consent
| dialogs, there is no longer "Accept" and "Decline",
| instead there is "Accept" and "Ask me later". When
| presented with an upsell, the choices are not "Yes" and
| "No", but "Yes, sign me up!" and "No, I don't want to
| save money."
| Buttons840 wrote:
| You mean you'll only log that it has been accepted and
| nothing more?
|
| I guess it becomes their word against... well, nothing,
| you don't know what they did or didn't do.
|
| For those who care enough to reject EULAs, they should
| take a few videos of rejecting the license and hopefully
| that would be enough to shift the onus to the
| manufacturer, who, as you said, has next to nothing.
| jonpurdy wrote:
| I recently bought a used 2016 Spark EV (having a baby and
| needed something other than my motorbike). It does have a
| touchscreen, but mostly for extraneous information and radio
| functions. Everything else has dedicated knobs and buttons.
| (The one dumb thing is that the fan speed updates on the
| screen, rather than just having ticks above the knob.)
|
| It is a California "compliance car", which means it was just
| a modified petrol Spark, so it didn't have product managers
| trying to jam in unnecessary touch-based interfaces.
|
| I just hope that all companies building electric cars don't
| move in the all-touch direction of Tesla.
| jonplackett wrote:
| This is the exact same stupid thing that happened with DSLR
| cameras.
|
| Old SLR cameras had a ring around the lens for f-stop and
| another dial on top for shutter speed.
|
| New DSLR cameras even now hide all that stuff in a menu on
| the touch screen, as if it isn't something you want to
| change ALL THE TIME - and develop instant muscle memory
| for.
| jjav wrote:
| > New DSLR cameras even now hide all that stuff in a menu
| on the touch screen
|
| Don't approximately all DSLR have separate physical knobs
| for aperture and shutter speed?
|
| Agreed that a DSLR without these would be nearly useless.
| Pokepokalypse wrote:
| never mind that when I'm taking a photo outdoors on a
| bright sunny day, there's no way in fuck I'm going to be
| able read your LCD screen.
|
| Never mind us older folks, who often have vision problems
| with up-close viewing, which is a solved problem when you
| can spin a shutter or aperture wheel by touch. But not
| when you need no-glasses to view the objective, but
| reading glasses to view the fine print on the screen.
| mike00632 wrote:
| I think backlit E-ink screens would be great for cars. I
| too want something I can see well in the day.
| smolder wrote:
| E-ink is slow/inefficient to react, so probably not
| suitable for speedometer and tachometer type gauges.
| Apart from that, I agree.
| lamontcg wrote:
| my truck still has a physical dial for the speedo and
| tach.
|
| (although i've never understood why it has a tach since
| its a manual anyway... but i guess i can close my eyes
| and imagine my V6 ranger is a corvette...)
| dylan604 wrote:
| Which DSLR no longer has an aperture and shutter speed
| knob? I know the MFT mirrorless lost most of the
| controls, but did the latest Canon/Nikon really do this?
| My DSLR is eons old, so this is just baffling to me.
| jonplackett wrote:
| I haven't used one for a while so this may have been
| fixed. But I've never seen a DSLR with the same type of
| touch manual controls as an old SLR.
|
| Someone correct me if I'm wrong and tell me where to buy
| one!
| KineticLensman wrote:
| My Nikon D850 (DSLR) and Z6 (mirrorless) both have
| separate physical dials for shutter speed and aperture.
| The D850 has buttons that allow the physical command
| dials to be used to control ISO, white balance,
| bracketing intervals and load of other things. Important
| settings are shown in the viewfinder and top panel and I
| only really use the rear monitor to check the histogram
| for over exposure. I almost never need to use the menu
| system / touchscreen to alter a shooting setting.
| dylan604 wrote:
| I have an older Canon 5Dmkii, and it has a dial for
| shutter speed near the shutter release and also has a
| dial ring for aperture control on the back. I'm pretty
| sure the mkiii and mkiv do as well. I know the 1D I used
| in the past also had the same configuration of dials.
|
| As with anything camera related, where to buy could be
| B&H, Adorama, Sammy's, or your local camera shop (if they
| still exist in your area).
| r00fus wrote:
| Could be they want you to buy their Pro item where the
| actually offer reasonable affordances?
|
| Most "pro-sumers" wouldn't bother to adjust what the
| auto-focus calculates anyway.
| jonplackett wrote:
| I'm not convinced about that.
|
| I was using those dials all the time as a 16 year old
| learning to use a camera. It's really easy - especially
| when you can set one of them to auto and just control the
| one you care about - plus so quick when they're on a
| dial.
|
| But I can believe no one wants to do it now, it's amazing
| how much a bit of tactile feedback can make a task 100X
| easier, and something you can do instinctively.
| azalemeth wrote:
| Tactile feedback and consistent UIs are great and a
| common feature (if not a defining one). I've got a Pentax
| dSLR -- it's got an excellent UI (better than canon's,
| imo) and their manual tweak focus adjustment & focus hold
| system does just work very well. It also has an excellent
| set of manual controls. A pity that nobody else has heard
| of them...
| justaguy88 wrote:
| I'm guessing that all-touch is just cheaper these days, no
| QA testing for all the little mechanical bits
| jrwoodruff wrote:
| Less design and engineering, sourcing and manufacturing
| of all that hardware too.
| fuzzer37 wrote:
| I actually used to work as a test driver for FCA, and we
| were specifically told to report on knobs/dials not
| working or wiggling too much. Our training had us touch
| literally everything in the car that moved. Albeit, I'm
| not sure how much of that feedback was actually acted
| upon, based on the quality of some of those cars.
| iso1210 wrote:
| It annoys me about capitalism. There's a massive
| incentive for manufacturers to cut corners to save $100
| on a $30k car, as they sell 10,000 cars and use the $1m
| to pay themselves a bonus about how great they are.
|
| Almost everyone will want to pay $30,100 for the better
| product though, but the market can't differentiate on
| that.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| Especially when the most famous electric car maker is
| marketing so heavily on self-driving, it's just going to get
| more and more software.
| atweiden wrote:
| I drove an Electra Meccanica Solo in Victoria BC a few years
| ago, and it was exactly this. The founder of the company
| wanted to design the air cooled Porsche of EVs. All analog,
| minimal electronics, incredibly nimble. One of my favourite
| aspects of it was the sound it made under acceleration,
| think: Star Wars Landspeeder.
|
| (You can faintly hear it over annoying background music in
| this video [1].)
|
| It felt better to drive than a Tesla, even though it was
| orders of magnitude slower. Unfortunately, last I heard they
| were trying to tone down the Landspeeder-esque "cabin noise".
| I'm not sure if the current executive team at Electra
| Meccanica even realizes what they have.
|
| [1]: https://youtu.be/0eUlPeXL8wc?t=40
| rootusrootus wrote:
| There are compliance cars that are just electric versions of
| the normal ICE cars that preceded them. That's probably as
| close as you can get. I currently dive a Bolt and it's a bog
| standard car, just electric. Yes, it has a touchscreen, but
| that's for infotainment.
| neilpanchal wrote:
| Check out Bollinger motors [1]. Electric chassis, all analog,
| no screens. Here is a shot of the interior:
| https://bollingermotors.com/wp-
| content/uploads/2019/10/CLOSE...
|
| [1] https://bollingermotors.com/
| Animats wrote:
| On the other hand, a row of 15 or so identical toggle
| switches isn't the right answer either.
| giantrobot wrote:
| I'm definitely in the same boat wrt complexity. My pickup has
| _just_ enough extra electronics to be a quality of life
| improvement over a model that lacked those features. It doesn
| 't try to drive for me and second guess my actions in
| unexpected ways. It doesn't give me unfathomable warning beeps
| that only serve as a distraction trying to figure out what's
| causing the beep.
|
| At the same time it's important to recognize there's a
| difference between software _bloat_ and growth. Security fixes
| often cause code to grow (checks, verifications, etc). That
| growth isn 't bloat. The previous version of the software was
| exploitable because it lacked the checks that were added.
| Adding drivers or better handling edge cases in drivers grows
| code but isn't bloat.
|
| Even "bloat" that's only added on-disk size (a secret Tetris
| game in some code) that doesn't affect normal code flow isn't
| the same as bloat as adding some advertising telemetry in the
| middle of a critical code path.
|
| Not all code growth is bloat and not all bloat is equal.
| carlosf wrote:
| I used to have a car before moving closer to a metro area and
| going full Uber.
|
| It was a cheap Renault. Malfunctioned twice in ten years.
| Repair was trivial both times.
|
| Sometimes I think about having a car again, but the sort of
| stuff you described makes me super nervous.
| nogridbag wrote:
| I used to live in NYC and bought a disposable car. It was a
| used rental car that was rear ended, but otherwise brand new
| with less than 1000 miles on it. I owned it for 5 years with
| zero issues and I just traded it in for almost the same price
| I paid for it.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| Check out Bollinger electric trucks. No screens at all; even
| the battery gauge is analogue.
| i80and wrote:
| Bollinger is extremely cool and I watched them with great
| interest for a while, but their initial estimates of ~$60k
| turned into $125,000 along with the short highway range puts
| it solidly into the "wealthy person's weekend toy" category.
| colordrops wrote:
| The range is the death of these vehicles. Otherwise they
| look great.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| I was quite impressed with how bare-bones the B1 looks, and
| figured it must be priced competitively.
|
| I was less impressed to see it starts at three times the base
| price of the Cybertruck.
| Pokepokalypse wrote:
| some of us do not trust automatic transmissions.
| Dumblydorr wrote:
| I wouldn't want anything resembling a golf cart, but in
| principle yes! Tesla has an OK idea of minimal dashboard, but
| then a less OK idea of tons of features on the screen. I don't
| know if automaticity or app based control or minimized function
| is the answer, but less is more to my eyes.
| cosmodisk wrote:
| As in one the Top Gear episodes, where the user manual for S
| class Mercedes is thicker than a book on English History...
| geocrasher wrote:
| This is the very reason I drive a 1988 Suburban. The mileage
| isn't good, but it's not worse than most modern SUV's.
| BigTuna wrote:
| I don't mind complexity but what I can't stand is having to
| access that complexity through touchscreens. Without the
| tactile feedback of a knob or button I have to take my
| attention off the road to see where I need to press on the
| screen. That's a major step backwards in auto safety, IMO.
|
| And don't get me started on the lazy manufacturer design trend
| of bolting a tablet to the dashboard and calling it a day.
| MengerSponge wrote:
| Mazda doesn't get nearly enough respect for their work
| identifying and correcting this issue.
|
| https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1121372_why-mazda-is-
| pur...
|
| Touchscreens/touch panels are shiny, futuristic, dangerous,
| dumb, and cheap. Manufacturers use them because they lower
| BOM costs, at the expense of usability and safety. Vote with
| your wallet folks.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Mazda would make a great EV, but that is sadly not on their
| roadmap for the foreseeable future. I have been told this
| is probably an influence from Toyota's large share
| ownership, not wanting competition in that space.
| jude- wrote:
| The guy who designs Tesla vehicles actually used to work
| for Mazda as chief of design:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franz_von_Holzhausen
| jsight wrote:
| I feel like in the old days, Mazda would have been the
| one to introduce a Maverick sized truck, and they likely
| would have been leading the way with electric.
|
| Its too bad that the Ford partnership fell apart.
| abawany wrote:
| Ford has chosen to grant your wish:
| https://www.ford.com/trucks/maverick/2022/ - a real
| compact pickup with hybrid technology available at the
| base price of $20k.
| jsight wrote:
| That was the vehicle I was referencing. I was saying that
| this vehicle would have been a joint effort if the
| partnership were still alive. I could see Mazda owning
| the small EV segment for Ford too.
| [deleted]
| fighterpilot wrote:
| That's not smart by Toyota (unless they own a very small
| stake), is it? Mazda competing with Toyota is indeed bad
| for Toyota but it's also bad for all the other auto
| manufacturers too. The benefit of that competition goes
| exclusively to Toyota (among other shareholders) but the
| cost is shared among all automakers roughly in proportion
| to their EV market share.
| InitialBP wrote:
| Mazda has been focused on continuing to improve internal
| combustion engines over the past couple of decades.
| Specifically, the "Skyactiv" technology they developed
| was built to help improve efficiency and emissions of
| modern ICE engines. It's likely Toyota wanted to have
| some group/company (like Mazda) continue working on
| improving ICE engines while also investing in EVs.
|
| I think ICE vehicles will continue to have a market,
| especially in very remote areas of the world where power
| grids are non-existent or not very reliable.
| abawany wrote:
| There is one coming apparently but the range is fairly
| sad: https://www.mazda.com/en/new-generation/mx-30/ .
| iagovar wrote:
| Does mazdas use rotary engines for ll their cars?
| InitialBP wrote:
| Mazda hasn't sold a production car with a rotary engine
| in a while, I believe since the RX-8 went out of
| production. Due to the nature of rotary engines they
| inherently have worse emissions (more like a 2-stroke
| than a 4-stroke) and while people have been hoping for
| another production rotary from Mazda it's unclear if they
| will build another one or not.
| bruce343434 wrote:
| Just looked at the mazda website and what are you talking
| about? They removed almost all the buttons from the
| interior to some sort of tablet.
| jsight wrote:
| Exactly, they replaced the separate buttons with a knob.
| Great that that physical controls might be needed, but
| this approach isn't better than the touchscreen. In some
| respects, its actually worse.
| Aunche wrote:
| The tablet can only be controlled by the knob (which is
| honestly kind of annoying) and is only used for
| infotainment purposes. Most things are controlled by a
| knob, switch, or button.
| AshamedCaptain wrote:
| I am old enough to remember "Gorilla arm syndrome" talks.
|
| People just love these big tablets even tough they are an
| ergonomical non-sense and they have always been for
| decades. Resistance is futile. Voting with your wallet is
| useless unless you enjoy the hermit lifestyle.
| politelemon wrote:
| Hey I'm with you. Not just in cars but for gadgets around the
| home. Coffee makers, microwaves, fridges, thermostats. Please
| give me as few moving parts as possible, the consequences of
| decisions made outside my control are a huge unknown with
| potentially large impacts.
| holoduke wrote:
| Buy a 15 year old car. Our family car is a 2003 Infiniti fx35.
| Got everything we need. Bluetooth aftermarket adapter from
| AliExpress and i feel modern as any other car.
| ghostpepper wrote:
| As an embedded software person who is also into cars, I am
| definitely going to be looking for something older for my next
| car. I have the luxury of not needing to drive it every day,
| but I like the idea of something I have at least a hope of
| repairing myself when it breaks.
| jrsj wrote:
| No you're not crazy at all; my preference for a vehicle would
| be analog everything with as few electronic components as
| possible. Even if it were an EV.
| muxator wrote:
| Digital components may well be more reliable than
| corresponding analog ones. They can also be purely hw, with
| no sw or just a simple firmware. There is a middle ground
| between analog circuits and a general purpose programmable
| computer with windows 10 on it. :)
| andrewia wrote:
| If you want the simplest car possible, you can look at models
| designed to sell in volume worldwide. I'm talking the Hyundai
| Venue crossover, Hyundai Accent subcompact sedan, Honda
| Fit/Jazz hatchback (recently discontinued for the US), Ford
| EcoSport crossover, etc. They are designed to be serviced in
| poor conditions. They will tolerate removal of electronics like
| the infotainment because some countries' base models have
| simpler configurations. In the case of the Honda Fit, the
| climate control dials physically move the ducts! And repair
| documentation and parts will be plentiful because there's a
| large market for parts suppliers to compete. Also look at body-
| on-frame fleet vehicles like a base Ford Ranger or F-150, but
| be ready to forgo stuff like cruise control.
|
| There are EV equivalents too, like the Chevy Bolt and Hyundai
| Kona EV that offer range in the 200s of miles with make driver
| assists as an optional upgrade. Even with complicated
| powertrain electronics, EVs are still more reliable than ICE
| cars because any iffy software is made up for by lack of
| mechanical parts. The repair procedure is the same as mechnical
| parts - just swap the faulty part out for a working one, and
| the "upstream" supplier will probably take the broken module to
| reflash software or frankenstein together half-working PCBs to
| make another refurbished module to sell.
|
| If you're worried about remote compromise, it's pretty easy to
| avoid IMO. Open the dashboard and yank the cellular antenna,
| and never pair the infotainment to Bluetooth or Wi-Fi (or just
| yank the 2.4 GHz antenna). Those are basically the only avenues
| for wireless attacks into a vehicle unless you count the TPMS
| and key fob radios, which seem too simple and low-bandwidth to
| offer an attack surface. And if an attacker can access your
| car's physical ports, they could already attack you in other
| ways like by weakening the brake lines. Other new electronics,
| like MOSFETS instead of relays in the BCM, have actually made
| the car more reliable so they should be fine. Other newly
| standard features like blind spot monitoring are (1) solid
| state, so they won't fail often and (2) tolerate failure or
| complete removal.
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| > Hyundai Kona EV that offer range in the 200s of miles with
| make driver assists as an optional upgrade
|
| I have a base model Kona EV and it has a ton of driver
| assists. And they're pretty great frankly.
| numpad0 wrote:
| It's so wrong that tech inclined wants cheapest models for
| the reason that those are objectively better. The entire car
| industry is going to go iPhone all over again.
| notJim wrote:
| It's true, there are no tech people driving Teslas or late
| model luxury cars. As you say, there is universal agreement
| with you, because your opinion is the objective truth.
| jfengel wrote:
| They're not objectively better. They're more suited to what
| they want: a device with fewer features but more direct
| control.
|
| Lots of people want a car with more features, and don't
| wish to control it directly. They would rather have a
| solid-state device that can't be repaired, but doesn't need
| to be. They don't want to upgrade it themselves; ideally,
| they don't want it to need upgrades until they buy another
| one.
|
| But you've got it exactly right: many consumers want the
| car industry to go iPhone, for the same reason they want
| iPhones. That's neither objectively worse nor objectively
| better. The only objective thing is that a ton of consumers
| want it, because it suits their needs. And part of that is
| achieved by avoiding development by the kinds of techies
| who think that their preferences are objectively better.
| gilbetron wrote:
| One of our cars is a 2004 Toyota Tacoma with everything analog
| except the radio, and I vastly prefer it. If it just had a usb
| plug so I could play music from my phone, it would be ideal.
| Oh, and oddly, the radio doesn't have a clock. Bizarre.
|
| It I can 100% everything better than our 2016 Subaru Outback
| with it's annoying touch screen console.
|
| Plus my nieces and nephews are amused by the actual manual
| window openers.
| toyyodas82727 wrote:
| Try popping in an aftermarket radio/stereo - you can get a
| nice Pioneer with a USB fast-charge port and Bluetooth/etc
| for ~$100-150.
| kajecounterhack wrote:
| FWIW Subaru kinda just has crappy digital components.
| Corresponding touch screen console from recent year Toyotas
| are pretty good, especially with CarPlay / Android Auto.
| drivers99 wrote:
| In my recent Subaru Impreza, CarPlay works just fine,
| however when I start the engine and put it in reverse, it
| will mostly ignore the volume control until you finish
| backing up and then a few second after you shift into
| drive/forward, it will then process the volume up/down
| messages it received in the meantime. It's like it
| dedicates all processing to booting up the screen and then
| in displaying the rear-view/backup camera. Also, it
| defaults to playing the radio (even if you had it OFF
| before, I think), so if you had the volume up for a quiet
| podcast or something it will blast the radio which is quite
| annoying, especially if you're in the middle of a phone
| call or something. I want a physical potentiometer which
| directly controls the amplifier to the speakers, like in
| any normal old radio. (This is also one of the exhibits in
| my mental list of reasons that people should write all the
| software they run on their devices. Or at least be able
| to.)
| [deleted]
| bobajeff wrote:
| Yeah, I like the tech behind Tesla but am turned off by. 1) The
| large, distracting screen in the front of the car. 2) The
| subscription model of the car's firmware.
|
| If electric cars ever become widespread I hope I can find a
| used one engineered without that stuff. Otherwise I may have to
| stop buying cars.
| nogridbag wrote:
| I recently purchased a Kia Telluride. Perhaps I'm now biased
| because I love the car, but I think it has an excellent
| combination of tech and usability.
|
| 1. It still has buttons and knobs for the things that should
| be buttons and knobs (e.g. climate control, volume, etc).
|
| 2. The heads up display is the killer feature that should be
| standard on all cars (as is only available on the top speced
| Telluride). It displays speed, speed limit, blind spot
| monitoring, lane departure, automated steering, navigation,
| etc. Unfortunately I don't think Android Auto or Apple
| Carplay's navigation can be displayed on the HUD - only the
| OEM Kia nav.
|
| 3. The "Smart Cruise" aka Highway Drive Assist aka Adaptive
| Cruise Control is essentially self-driving minus lane
| changes. It's engaged with a single button on the wheel and
| presented in the HUD. It takes corners smoother than I'm able
| to. I often feel it's turning too early and fight the auto
| driving but in almost all cases it's correct and my inputs
| are delayed.
|
| Kia's mobile app for remote start, climate control, valet
| mode, etc. is pretty terrible though.
| bozzcl wrote:
| Regarding HUDs... it's the _one_ feature I desperately want
| for my next car. I 've been looking into aftermarket
| options, but all of them are ridiculously cheap and bad or
| vaporware.
| nradov wrote:
| GM had HUDs in many vehicles 20 years ago. It's a shame
| they aren't more widely available.
| drdavid wrote:
| I purchased a new C8 to add to the collection until my
| granddaughter is old enough to drive. The HUD is very,
| very good. I'm not sure how they managed on such a sharp
| windshield, but it's crisp and clear even in the
| brightest of conditions.
|
| With them making so many things mandatory these days, I'd
| not be surprised to see them making HUD mandatory. It
| absolutely is easier and faster to read then just looking
| down. It may only be measured in milliseconds, but it's
| definitely faster.
| crooked-v wrote:
| > Unfortunately I don't think Android Auto or Apple
| Carplay's navigation can be displayed on the HUD - only the
| OEM Kia nav.
|
| From what I understand Android/Apple have software
| capability for second screens/HUDs now, but it's on the car
| manufacturer to support that. There are some BMWs that have
| it.
| Koshkin wrote:
| > _If electric cars ever become widespread_
|
| I have a strong suspicion that soon enough after that we will
| be able to build electric cars from kits, cheap and with no
| frills. We are on a cusp of a new technological revolution.
| wyre wrote:
| A few years ago I found a source selling EV conversion kits
| for vintage vehicles. It's definitely a possibility to DIY
| an electric car.
|
| I could imagine it being like DIY synthesizer kits. Do it
| yourself if you have the skills and time to put it all
| together, or spend a bit more for it to come pre assembled,
| or "some assembly required".
|
| I would be curious about the safety regulations behind
| this.
| itsoktocry wrote:
| > _soon enough after that we will be able to build electric
| cars from kits_
|
| I'm skeptical.
|
| An internal combustion engine is a complicated, engineering
| marvel. But a complete engine, as a unit, isn't difficult
| to remove/insert. It's big, heavy and awkward, sure (so are
| electric motors and batteries), but an experienced person
| can do an engine swap in a couple of hours. And yet there
| aren't many people building ICE cars from kits. Why not?
|
| Because the drivetrain is only one part of what makes a
| good car good.
| [deleted]
| userbinator wrote:
| _And yet there aren 't many people building ICE cars from
| kits. Why not?_
|
| Quite frankly, speaking as someone who is a bit of an
| automotive enthusiast, you'll probably find even less
| EVs, because EVs are sterile and boring. They can
| definitely be fast, but I suspect the average auto
| enthusiast is not only interested in speed. The sounds
| and smells of an ICE are far more appealing to the type
| of people who tend to build custom cars.
| smolder wrote:
| There are relatively simple conversion kits that have good
| motors and controllers and allow for regenerative braking.
| I don't see building an EV getting much simpler than that.
| nerd_light wrote:
| May I ask why you think that? (Sincere question, not meant
| to be snarky). Even assuming electric car assembly is
| simpler than an ICE powered car, there are still a lot of
| large, heavy, and expensive components. And that's setting
| aside all the regulations around it being a "street legal"
| vehicle, which can place odd constraints and vary from
| location to location.
|
| I could see there being ways to build your own, just as you
| could build your own house or laptop if you acquire the
| right parts. What makes you think that people will broadly
| want and use kits? (or am I misinterpreting what you're
| saying?)
| cosmodisk wrote:
| And we all need to pray for HP not to get into the automotive
| industry,or we are all screwed.
| xxpor wrote:
| Subscription model?
| jude- wrote:
| Some of the extra infotainment stuff (read: media content)
| is subscription only. Some functional extras like full
| self-driving or faster acceleration are one-off purchases.
| The rest of the software -- all the things you'd expect the
| car to do -- comes with the vehicle and gets regular OTA
| updates.
| notJim wrote:
| I think with Tesla the only subscription is "premium
| connectivity", which is basically a cell data plan. The
| car works fine without it. Even the nav will still use
| traffic data for routing, it just won't visualize it for
| you.
| distribot wrote:
| If it's really just contained to media content, that's
| like saying Sirus XM means your car operates on a
| subscription model.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > If electric cars ever become widespread
|
| Exclude Tesla and most all EVs on the road today are just
| normal cars that happen to be electric.
| wyre wrote:
| Why is special about Tesla that makes them not a "normal"
| car that happens to be electric?
| crysin wrote:
| Tesla cars have a distinct look and a "prestige" whereas
| something like Ford's new F-150 will look nearly
| identical to its gas guzzling brother. There's an ego
| carried behind Telsa's branding and marketing that other
| car manufacturers don't feed into even in their own EV
| offerings.
| dzhiurgis wrote:
| Musk coming from software they seem to actually adopted
| modern software engineering practices that other
| manufacturers going to struggle with for some time. Being
| vertically integrated helps heaps too.
| _benj wrote:
| I have a more optimist view about the industry being able to
| cope just because we have two more industries that have gone
| the same transitions, aeronautical and aerospace.
|
| Back in the day airplanes where just knobs and levers, and we
| didn't have the reliability that safety that we have today.
|
| With aerospace, I mean, software engineering as a discipline
| started with aerospace!
|
| If we write "starup code" (i.e. CRUD web app) for cars we'd
| still be in huge trouble, but if the automotive industry can
| adopt the redundant systems, enforce VERY high levels of
| software testing, and other practices for those other
| industries I think we could see some interesting things coming
| from the industry
| scarier wrote:
| I'm sure you didn't mean it quite so bluntly, but
| characterizing the history of aviation safety as a triumph of
| computer control systems over analog ones misses the mark by
| a pretty wide margin--even if we're just talking about the
| advances that only computers have provided. Probably the only
| way a modern car is technologically less sophisticated than a
| passenger aircraft is its inability to substantially steer
| itself (and this problem is orders of magnitude more
| difficult for cars than planes).
|
| A lot of the systems we take for granted in our cars (ECU,
| ABS/stability control, adaptive cruise control, steer-by-
| wire, OBD) were pioneered in the aviation industry, and both
| industries' safety records have been massively improved by
| the ability to do digital design/analysis (CAD, FEA, CFD,
| etc). Then once you start talking about advances in computer-
| aided manufacturing and QC/QA processes, training, failure
| analysis, human-machine interaction...
|
| One of my perennial frustrations with current tech is the
| idea that putting a computer in the control loop necessarily
| makes things safer.
| _benj wrote:
| > One of my perennial frustrations with current tech is the
| idea that putting a computer in the control loop
| necessarily makes things safer.
|
| I completely agree with you! A simple electronic component
| is a lot more fragile that a mechanical counterpart that is
| unfazed by ESD, vibrations or whatever other things that
| can kill a electronic component, or a circuit board for
| that matter.
|
| My point is more along the lines that a computer in a
| control loop makes things different, not necessarily safer.
| But with the flexibility that a computer brings to the mix,
| if used properly a computer can add some safety features
| that would be hard to implement with only analog/mechanical
| parts.
|
| It seems to me that we have reaching a ceiling with what we
| can do with mechanical systems, although I do believe that
| we often get lazy and opt for software convenience instead
| of using mechanical reliability where it would be
| beneficial.
|
| So all in all, computer control systems are not safer just
| in themselves, but they can be, if not in reliability, at
| least in monitoring health and providing warnings before
| things are critical (i.e. a temperature reading instead of
| waiting to see smoke coming of the hood of a car)
| varjag wrote:
| > A simple electronic component is a lot more fragile
| that a mechanical counterpart that is unfazed by ESD,
| vibrations or whatever other things that can kill a
| electronic component, or a circuit board for that matter.
|
| No, not really.
| jsight wrote:
| > I have a more optimist view about the industry being able
| to cope
|
| TBH, I have similarly optimistic views, but for completely
| different reasons. The truth is, the worldview has changed
| completely in the past 100 years.
|
| In the old days, if you failed at operating a saw, you hurt
| yourself badly. Now we slowly are starting to expect sawstop
| and other solutions to reduce injury.
|
| The same thing is happening in cars. We no longer expect
| perfection of the human as we augment them in various ways to
| both reduce the frequency and severity of collision. Its the
| early days yet, and its very much the "startup code" mindset
| with cars having way more bugs than its ever but also
| producing safer outcomes.
|
| Car software is getting worse, but we're better off for it.
| numpad0 wrote:
| I don't want to imagine how Program Alarm 1202 looks like on
| a SpaceX Starship running Chromium instances on Intel Atom,
| the latter half of which is how they're planning to do it.
| jaywalk wrote:
| The stuff running inside Chromium on Intel Atom processors
| is not mission critical.
| amelius wrote:
| > I just want a car with as FEW knobs/buttons/levers as
| necessary.
|
| With _more_ software you can have a car with just one button.
| You press it and say the name of the place you want to go to.
| dusted wrote:
| Hear, hear! As a software developer, I'll take a car without a
| computer, or with as little computing as possible any day! I do
| understand that fuel injection and abs are great stuff, but
| those could be ultra low cost asics, and, frankly, computing
| need not apply anywhere else.
| fridif wrote:
| Time to buy up all the engines that dont need ECUs
| waiseristy wrote:
| So we're okay with pollution now?
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| And what, the return of the Choke valve? If you've ever driven
| a car with a choke you won't be so quick to go _that_ far back.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Or just make your own ECU, in which case you can use most any
| engine. But if you really want to go back to carbs, may god
| have mercy on your soul...
| numpad0 wrote:
| EV powertrain is not impossible to build yourself, it's hard
| but not fabricating own IC at home hard
| pjmlp wrote:
| Best of all, it is all written in C and C++, with all the
| security it entails.
| agumonkey wrote:
| oh its funny.. of all the rust trend storm I cannot recall one
| mention of automotive industry usage (not that I imply it's not
| used.. I just don't remember hearing about that).. this is a
| place where I'd really love safer languages.
|
| btw any embedded car ADA shops ?
| waiseristy wrote:
| There's unfortunately no hardware or standards support for
| Rust, nor will there be any time soon. Silicon vendors don't
| provide Rust compatible toolchains, and the standards
| everyone is locked into is C/C++ only
| pjmlp wrote:
| NVidia is using Ada for their automative research.
|
| https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2019/02/05/adacore-secure-
| auto...
| steveklabnik wrote:
| There are some rumblings of Rust in automotive, but nothing I
| can publicly point you to definitively.
| agumonkey wrote:
| come on, let's put more rust onto the metal
| ngrilly wrote:
| Ferrocene, a Rust toolchain for functional safety, is
| explicitly targeting ISO 26262, which is an automotive
| standard.
|
| https://ferrous-systems.com/ferrocene/
| waiseristy wrote:
| Well, sort of. It's all written in MISRA C and a very special
| version of the C++14 standard
|
| https://www.autosar.org/fileadmin/user_upload/standards/adap...
|
| Definitely still possible to write buggy MISRA code, but its
| the best we got unfortunately
| bri3d wrote:
| A lot of modern ECUs are "written" in modeling tools like
| Simulink and then compiled into auto-genned MISRA C which is
| never touched by humans, as well.
|
| I'm certainly not trying to say automotive code is in a good
| place, but it's not the same as a 1+ million line hand-
| written C project like some people think when they see the
| numbers.
| waiseristy wrote:
| You're right, but that code the generator pulls is all hand
| written by some poor shmucks at elektrobit or vector.
|
| And personal experience, OEMs just love to make little
| tweaks to the auto generated code as well. Which is a
| massive pain in the ass
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| Maybe not a "dumb" car, but yes, I would like to see more good
| analog options if the digital alternative is getting screens in
| cars that look utterly _embarrassing_ compared to yesteryear 's
| netbook-sized screen fad.
|
| If you're going to put tech in my car, you better go all the way.
| I'm talking a huge screen, fast multicore processor or redundant
| systems, touchscreen to UI update response times under 5ms.
|
| None of this nonsense where you're getting some baby embedded
| system and the screen updates over 30-50! ms. Shame on these
| manufacturers. In 50 milliseconds at 65 miles per hour, I think
| you've moved like over 4 feet. That's ridiculous.
|
| Say you've got an interaction that takes 150ms. At highway speeds
| you've moved the entire length of a car.
|
| This stuff is simply unacceptable. I mean to the point where I
| want regulations on how slow your crap software can be. If I'm
| moving 4,000 lbs down the road, I don't want to be distracted. I
| want the exact same responsiveness as an analog physical switch
| or knob.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| Is there an established word for the chronic build up in
| annoyance of waiting a few hundred ms each time you click
| something on a smart phone or computer?
| andrewmcwatters wrote:
| Yeah. It drives me nuts that in tech we pay more attention to
| processing power over things like response times and latency.
|
| Who cares if you have hardware that's 15% more powerful than
| last year if nothing has moved meaningfully in my actual
| experience.
| fighterpilot wrote:
| It's why I prefer desktop/local software whenever it's
| available and whenever it's something I need to be using
| often. Cloud software is usually noticeably slower.
|
| Latency should be a UX priority.
| xxpor wrote:
| This is why edge computing + 5g is being pushed so
| heavily.
| ArkanExplorer wrote:
| It seems that 'hardware' is eating the car, too. I want to just
| buy a small, slow, simple EV for picking up groceries and other
| city errands, for $5k-$10k.
|
| It seems like the only companies making that are the Chinese, and
| usually only selling them in China.
|
| Heck, it doesn't even need an Infotainment system - just
| bluetooth for audio and calls, USB-A charger port and phone
| cradle.
| notJim wrote:
| A used Chevy Spark EV may be exactly what you need:
| https://www.edmunds.com/used-chevrolet-spark-ev/. If you can
| boost budget a bit, you can probably a used Leaf or similar.
| dn3500 wrote:
| Yes, something between a $500 bicycle and a $20,000 car. The
| barriers may be as much regulatory as anything else. In the US
| all cars must meet highway safety standards even if they will
| never be driven on the highway. I think it's even illegal to
| sell a car with a top speed of 35 mph.
|
| There are some places, mostly retirement communities, where a
| lot of people get around by golf cart. They do the job and are
| a lot of fun.
| iagovar wrote:
| Dacia has a new car in that bracket, but the range is a bit
| limited.
|
| If you live in the US, Dacia is basically a Romanian company
| under Renaults ownership (which is a famous french brand)
| whith focus on cheap cars with proven tech. The use proven
| engines, parts from Renoult cars, etc.
|
| A pretty good philosophy IMO but until now they had horrible
| designs, now they are improving, in the sense of adressing
| more general-public apetences, which means generic-looking
| SUVs.
| NoSorryCannot wrote:
| There is Arcimoto, an operation based in Oregon. I think in
| some places their vehicles are grouped with motorcycles or
| something along those lines. I've seen them zipping around
| San Diego and other places.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| A few people in my neighborhood have golf carts, not sure how
| its legal but the police don't bother them.
| Pokepokalypse wrote:
| In my neighborhood (AZ), they're actually very common; and
| also offroad "razor" type cars. You see people going to the
| store or even work in them. Fully open, and they have license
| plates, the works.
| wsinks wrote:
| If you're california, it's legal as long as they don't drive
| on a street with a speed limit over 35 mph
|
| https://codes.findlaw.com/ca/vehicle-code/veh-
| sect-21260.htm...
|
| TTG, 5 seconds ;)
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| My aunt moved into an old age home and there is one chap that
| uses a mobility scooter to drive down the road to the local
| convenience store.
|
| He has to cross a rather busy road though.
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| You can get an enclosed mobility scooter for $6k-7k. Many have
| some sort of stereo system and climate controls though I don't
| know if they all have your desired features. But they do exist
| and are for sale in the US and Canada.
| nszceta wrote:
| The Boomerbuggy X! This fully enclosed mobility scooter is
| more spacious and has some cool new features! Travel to get
| your groceries, to your neighbour's or take it just for a
| leisurely joy ride without fear of the weather. The Boomer X
| is fully insulated with heating giving you the warmth and
| comfort that you need on those cold winter days. The Boomer X
| also features built in speakers, windshield wipers, and more.
| Regain your mobility, independence, and sense of freedom with
| the Boomerbuggy X the next generation of covered mobility
| scooters!
|
| https://www.daymak.com/boomerbuggy-x.html
| rerx wrote:
| How about a Renault Twizy?
| dvh wrote:
| Citroen Ami, $6000, 75km range, max speed 40km/h. The car is
| rotationally symmetrical (left and right doors are exactly the
| same, front and back is also the same)
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citro%C3%ABn_Ami_(electric)
| yurishimo wrote:
| Yea, but these cars aren't available or legal to drive in the
| USA. To import one, you need to pay fees and it must be
| registered. To get it registered, it must have safety
| standards on file with the federal government. Unless you
| want to pay the $$$ (millions?) to get that certification for
| your single imported car, you need to wait 25 years for it to
| be imported as a "classic" car so those safety regulations
| don't apply.
|
| I would love to buy a Honda E, but I live in Texas and it
| will never happen. After 25 years, the tech will be so
| outdated that it's likely not worth it. Plus the batteries
| will likely need to be replaced and good luck sourcing parts
| for one stateside without paying $$$ in shipping again.
| josefresco wrote:
| What if cars were like TVs? Some would be smart with integrated
| software, and some would be dumb and require a "stick" to make it
| smart. I'd certainly be tempted to buy the dumb version and have
| the flexibility to try different software experiences.
| throaway46546 wrote:
| It's getting hard to find dumb TVs anymore.
| meowster wrote:
| FYI anyone who is looking: Sceptre makes dumb 4K TVs up to
| 75" (sold at Walmart).
| kumarsw wrote:
| Once again, a plea for moderation from those calling for a return
| to analog gauges. Remember that outside of Tesla, automakers are
| generally pretty conservative and most computing in cars outside
| the head unit is decentralized MCUs that don't connect to the
| internet. And within the head unit, CarPlay/Android Auto has
| moved most of the work to phones.
| eaa wrote:
| Well, actually, with CP & AA there is more work, not less work,
| because they are perceived as an additional cool feature, not
| as a complete substitution to built-in "infotainment".
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| CAAS - Car As A Service.
| eaa wrote:
| Can we have freemium CAAS? )
| geonic wrote:
| 150 million lines of code in a Ford F-150? How is that even
| possible? A Volvo with 100 million lines including 3 million
| functions. This sounds like generated code to me. I can't believe
| this is handwritten or even necessary.
| eaa wrote:
| Easily. There are lots of MCUs, and the "infotainment" unit
| contains big amount of code including an OS like linux or qnx
| or android.
| mthomasmw wrote:
| Serious question - what alternatives are left for those of us who
| want a dumb car? I've spent the last three months finding out I
| can't get solar panels installed without a high-fidelity power-
| monitor tap connected to the provider's cloud, logging every
| appliance I use and what it's doing. Same deal with cars - they
| are on the internet and they generate evidence used to convict,
| and geofencing is coming. Other than stockpiling cars from 2010 -
| will we have alternatives?
|
| https://www.fox13news.com/news/evidence-showing-drivers-spee...
| neilpanchal wrote:
| Kit cars such as https://www.factoryfive.com/. I am sure
| electric chassis will pop up in the future.
| paganel wrote:
| I found the latest model of the Suzuki Jimny the closest to
| what you described, that is when it comes to new cars.
| Unfortunately it has been withdrawn from the European market
| (where I live) because it doesn't meet environmental standards,
| hopes are that it will be re-introduced labeled as a "utility"
| vehicle.
|
| Afaik it is selling like hot-cakes on the markets where it is
| still present (like Australia), maybe if enough future
| potential customers ask for it Suzuki will decide to also sell
| it on the US market.
| arminiusreturns wrote:
| Speaking of Suzuki, the Samurai is ripe for a comeback in the
| US imho.
| vikingerik wrote:
| I bought a new Nissan Kicks last year (the lowest-end crossover
| SUV) and it seems pretty dumb. It has no internet connectivity
| as far as I can tell. It has a touch-screen, but it's pretty
| much just for the backup camera and audio controls, everything
| else has physical controls. It does have a computer that is
| involved in operating the CVT, but besides that it never gets
| in my way. And it does have sensors for the safety features
| (blind spot warning, etc) but that stays out of my way too.
| (The one annoying exception was when I had a bike rack on the
| back. I couldn't drive in reverse, the collision detection kept
| sensing the rack as an obstacle and slamming the brakes.)
|
| Mostly-dumb cars still exist on the lower end of the
| manufacturers' lines. But yeah, who knows how long that
| situation will last, or if you'll be able to get anything
| technologically dumb with premium power and handling.
| cowanon22 wrote:
| > I bought a new Nissan Kicks last year (the lowest-end
| crossover SUV) and it seems pretty dumb.
|
| Not sure about 2020, but 2021 has Automatic breaking,
| pedestrian detection, and collision detection standard. There
| are likely a few hundred thousand to millions lines of code
| in these various systems. Even "dumb" cars today have tons of
| software, it's just hidden since it doesn't require user
| input. Literally every aspect of your driving is fully
| computerized - braking, acceleration, engine spark plug
| ignition, transmission, steering, etc. The infotainment is
| often relatively simple compared to all of the other software
| running internally.
| speedgoose wrote:
| You can buy a Dacia.
| romanovcode wrote:
| You can always get a lada
| slim wrote:
| +1 that car was first produced in 1977 and it's still in full
| production with the exact same design.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| The vast, vast majority of all new cars sold today either don't
| have any kind of uplink to the cloud, or can have that
| capability easily removed (e.g. OnStar from GM). It's really
| only some of the EVs (the non-compliance ones like Tesla,
| really) that are software-heavy and blazing a new anti-privacy
| trail.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Don't they still record and just upload when you go to the
| dealer and they plug in the cable?
| bri3d wrote:
| There is an extremely limited amount of diagnostic data
| recorded by most cars (Tesla aside) - absolute limits,
| performance counters, and freeze-frame diagnostic data.
| There simply isn't much storage, and again, Tesla aside,
| most manufacturers don't want to have to buy high-write
| capable flash of the sort that could cope with constant
| logging.
|
| The most invasive is probably airbag blackbox data, which
| is stored upon deployment and not routinely uploaded
| besides as part of an investigation.
|
| As far as I know based on extensive reverse engineering of
| many modern European vehicles, no location data is
| routinely stored or uploaded to a dealership tool by any of
| them.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Nice, thanks. Maybe I'll look into a newer car then, was
| holding off because of this.
| cmiller1 wrote:
| > Other than stockpiling cars from 2010
|
| As a car enthusiast this sounds laughably new to me. My main
| vehicle rolled off the assembly line in 1991. Unfortunately
| it's a "hobby" and a labor of love because if you're not
| wealthy enough to pay for a shop to handle maintenance of your
| classic cars then you're spending your weekends working on
| them.
| stagger87 wrote:
| I just bought a 2018 Subaru Crosstrek that's surprisingly dumb.
| All mechanical controls and a basic infotainment system that
| isn't required for the car to operate. AFAIK it doesn't have
| any cloud capabilities and isn't connected to the internet. I
| imagine the latest models are the same since they look similar
| inside.
| kart23 wrote:
| Stockpiling used cars sounds good to me honestly. Land Cruisers
| are pretty bulletproof, they're regularly on the road through
| 300,000 miles.
| quacked wrote:
| I don't think there are any. If you got to the point where you
| somehow managed to source the labor, materials, and space to
| manufacture "dumb technology", you'd be sued into oblivion by
| competitors who wouldn't want you to eat into their profit
| margins.
|
| I think the market is huge. Imagine a company that suddenly
| started selling all-metal consumer appliances with minimal
| functionality, controlled by old-fashioned switches, buttons,
| and knobs, designed to be repaired. They'd be insanely popular.
| Of course, that lack of subscription-model pricing and the high
| labor costs of worthwhile designers and manufacturers would
| also destroy the company, but my god, a boy can dream.
| jkepler wrote:
| Won't t 3D-printing metal appliances be more and more widely
| feasible in coming years? And, at least here in the EU,
| right-to-repair [1] labeling gives consumers the ability to
| more efficiently vote with their wallets. Its also happening
| in the US [2]
|
| [1] https://repair.eu/ [2]
| https://fr.ifixit.com/News/8748/right-to-repair
| scythe wrote:
| Liquid steel requires enormously high temperature and
| magnesium/aluminium require an argon atmosphere. Titanium
| requires both. So unless you're going to make everything
| out of zinc (assuming we don't run out of zinc!), this may
| not be the cheap fix you're hoping for -- and zinc isn't
| very strong.
| kube-system wrote:
| There are also many types of steel that have widely
| varying properties.
|
| There are some (expensive) printers that print powdered
| metals (including steel) that is later sintered in an
| oven. They're certainly not large enough to make a car,
| and even if they were the properties of the material are
| likely not ideal, and the process would be prohibitively
| expensive.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| What do you think about the possibility of
| smaller/cheaper/easier 5-axis mills?
| [deleted]
| brundolf wrote:
| They'd be insanely popular _in circles like HN_. I think you
| have a warped perspective of what the typical buyer is
| enticed by.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| > insanely popular in circles like HN
|
| Heck, even then I expect it would just be popular with a
| very small, very loud niche within HN.
| circularfoyers wrote:
| By loud I assume you mean the top comments, which says to
| me this is popular with the many not the few of the HN
| crowd.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I don't think I'm willing to go that far. What
| constitutes 'the HN crowd'? The folks who come here and
| read the stories, but do not read the comments? Or just
| the ones who read the comments? Or only the subset of
| those who read the comments who actually bother to vote.
| Or participate with their own commentary?
|
| It's pretty easy for a small subset of individuals to
| appear as if they accurately represent the wider group.
| covidthrow wrote:
| The key is to hunt for commercial-grade appliances. In some
| cases, they can be found and offer similar form factors to
| consumer devices, and in others you may be out of luck.
|
| Commercial kitchen appliances, washers/dryers, and flat panel
| displays can be sourced to your expectations. Just prepare to
| spend 1.5-3x as much right out of the gate.
| bombcar wrote:
| Note that commercial-grade appliances may have unexpected
| side-effects. I have a speed queen commercial coin-op
| washer and it's highly reliable and easy to work on, but
| you can't do anything but a full cycle on it.
| mthomasmw wrote:
| Vitamix
| quacked wrote:
| Looks great. It reminds me of my microwave, which has two
| dials on it and is better than every other microwave I've
| ever owned.
| yurishimo wrote:
| Now go look up the Thermomix. Apparently pretty popular
| in AUS/NZ but very niche in the States and Europe(?).
|
| Cool idea, but I can't imagine they have a long life if
| being used with any sort of regularity.
| yardie wrote:
| EVs are quite simply and there has been a small, but growing
| base of users using AC induction motors on sailboats. I imagine
| you're going to need a pre-OBDII car and some mechanical skills
| and convert it to electric drive. After that you'll have a car
| that has half the range of a modern EV do to weight
| optimization.
| rightbyte wrote:
| > pre-OBDII car
|
| If you remove the ICE you don't need to "marry"/VIN code
| activate the ECUs likely. Just as long as the steering lock
| is mechanical.
| e40 wrote:
| Why pre-OBDII?
| floren wrote:
| I've got a 1985 Jeep CJ-7 sitting in a shed in another state
| right now. The 4-cylinder engine sucked when it was new, and
| 35 years of entropy have not been kind to it, especially the
| labyrinthine emissions control systems. But I'm holding on to
| it because I think it would be an absolute _hoot_ converted
| to electric... plus, it 's got such a small gas tank and bad
| gas mileage that a 150 mile electric range would be no worse.
| cblconfederate wrote:
| > will add hundreds of millions of lines of code to cars.
|
| Er, no, it will add wheels to tablets.
| [deleted]
| incanus77 wrote:
| I drive a 1985 VW Vanagon. While there have been many, many times
| that I have wished for some comprehensive diagnostics, and am
| considering an engine swap at some point, when I drive and there
| is literally zero distraction from electronics or touch screens,
| it's wonderful. I did add a CarPlay-enabled deck for directions
| and road trip music, but otherwise everything is manual.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| I don't mind having gadgets on my car, but please just allow me
| to have a "bare metal" mode when things will inevitably go wrong.
| elihu wrote:
| I remember back in the early days of Linux how we'd say that
| using a proprietary OS is like owning a car with the hood welded
| shut. It seemed so obviously ridiculous. Yet, that's basically
| where we're headed now.
|
| In some ways that's a good thing: EVs require much less physical
| maintenance. (At least, their drivetrains need less maintenance.
| Whether the rest of the car does depends on the manufacturer.)
| But on the other hand, depending on how heavily locked-down the
| car is, it'll be hard to do third-party modifications and older
| vehicles are going to be at high risk of having security
| vulnerabilities as soon as software maintenance for old vehicles
| stops being a priority for the manufacturer.
| phkahler wrote:
| In an electric car the motor control software can be quite tiny
| compared to traditional engine control. A lot of them are also
| direct drive, so no transmission controller.
|
| Now battery charging is a bitch. The standard communication
| between a Level 2 charger and a vehicle is IMHO designed by
| committee. It uses power-line communication even though it's not
| over the high voltage/current wires in the cable. That means
| special chips, firmware, and TCP/IP. Sounds like a startup
| solution rather than just plain automotive CAN connection.
|
| Anyway, most of the software isn't worse than an ICE car. Also,
| most of it will still be running on micro controllers, not fancy
| Linux systems. Detroit still knows how to do embedded but they're
| starting to get corrupted with ideas from all this autonomous
| stuff.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Nothing worse than automotive software. Buggy, slow, terrible
| user interfaces, outright dangerous and in many ways much worse
| than the systems they replace or augment.
|
| The automotive industry has a long long way to come - assuming it
| will happen at all - before they can be said to be responsible
| software vendors.
|
| Case in point: my - former - C class Mercedes that made two
| pretty good attempts to kill me by slamming on the brakes in a
| situation where that was totally unexpected and caused a
| perfectly safe situation to turn into a critical one. If not for
| playing ping pong for many years I highly doubt I would be
| writing this. After the first instance I had the whole car
| checked out to see if there was any fault in the system, the
| answer was that it was all working perfectly (that time the car
| had braked whilst on a very narrow bridge sending the car into a
| skid which I managed to correct before going over the side).
| Three weeks later it did it again, this time apparently because
| an advertising sign in a turn generated such a strong radar
| return that the car thought I was about to have a frontal
| collision. Again, out of nowhere an emergency stop.
|
| I sold the car and got one where the most complex piece of
| software is the aftermarket radio, it has ABS and an ignition
| control computer but nothing in the way of 'advanced safety
| features'.
|
| My vehicle actively trying to kill me is something I can do
| without.
|
| So: as far as I'm concerned _much_ less software on board of
| cars, open source it all if possible and roll it out much slower
| so we can get the bugs out.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| Frightening. My friend had a similar incident (but he drives
| like a complete nutcase).
|
| Is there no ,,code of conduct" what automotive software must
| not do in any case?
| amelius wrote:
| Probably these companies ignore any existing legislation to
| have more disruption powers. Lawsuits from fatal accidents
| are just the cost of doing business.
| HellDunkel wrote:
| I work in the field and never had this impression. There
| are a ton of standards, safety related procedures and so
| on. But many of those are at least questionable. At the
| same time management is asking for more and more
| ,,features". Many are just gimmicks or diluted by too many
| cooks. No one ever asks for GOOD software. Folks at the top
| have ABSOLUTLY NO idea what that could mean other than the
| absence of bugs.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I would assume incompetence before malice and living in
| some kind of idealized bubble compared to field testing and
| dog fooding their own product in a very large variety of
| circumstances.
|
| One car executive that I've known said this: "The very best
| test drivers are our end users, in the first week after
| release we learn more about a car than we do in the months
| of field testing prior.". I am not going to name the
| individual but it makes good sense and I have seen the same
| with all software products released to the general public.
| liquidise wrote:
| I'll pile on with my own anecdote. Last winter I flew home to
| Maine to visit family. Rented a '21 Nissan Altima. It drove
| well until there was typical New England snow/slush mix.
|
| While driving on a flat straight stretch of road the car
| suddenly... yanked itself sideways. Thank god no oncoming
| traffic was present and I was able to course correct safely. I
| immediately drove home and paid careful attention to the wheel
| response. It kept feeling like it wanted to yank me off the
| road.
|
| Once home i broke open the manual and found 4 different "driver
| assist" and "driver comfort" functions. After disabling them
| all the terrifying behavior ceased.
|
| I've lived my whole life in Maine, Rochester NY and Colorado.
| I've never felt as unsafe in a car as I did with those software
| features enabled in about an inch of snow.
|
| Bonus, it also has collision detection warnings on the side of
| the car. It was convinced every puddle I drove through that
| splashed slush beside the car was an object I was about to
| collide with.
| TeeMassive wrote:
| > Bonus, it also has collision detection warnings on the side
| of the car. It was convinced every puddle I drove through
| that splashed slush beside the car was an object I was about
| to collide with.
|
| That's the problem I have with people who tries to rethink
| our relationship with cars; it's obvious that they live a
| Californian lifestyle. "Just share your car" "Electric and
| solar is the way" "AI safety with cameras is a must"
|
| Yeah, sure.
| at_a_remove wrote:
| I have a stock head unit on my car, based on QnX, I'm told. It
| has some _amazing_ limitations. I will throw out a couple:
|
| First, you cannot delete radio stations. You can overwrite a
| radio station, or you can unplug your car battery, but you
| can't just flat up delete a radio station you have plugged in.
| CRU, I guess.
|
| Second, it sort of recognizes .mp3 files in the USB drive, but
| not .wav, and it certainly doesn't understand .m3u playlists.
| Baffling.
|
| It's just so ... clunky and dumb.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| I bought a car with an aftermarket radio that has a DVD
| player in it, which I've never used. When you turn it on, it
| displays a message warning you not to watch a DVD while
| driving. Sure, whatever. _While the warning message is up,
| you cannot adjust the volume._ I have to make sure to turn
| down the stereo before parking otherwise there 's a solid
| five seconds on startup when it can't be turned down. Insane.
| cyrks wrote:
| One of the main problems is that we have many different
| software teams trying to solve the same safety feature driven
| functions in many different ways with many different solutions,
| outcomes, and decisions along the way. This leads to a very
| fragmented base of software with varying levels of safety, none
| of which is tested to the same standards. The result is that
| consumers don't know of the car they are buying is truly safe
| at all
| judge2020 wrote:
| This is something agencies like NHTSA and/or private
| companies like IIHS are supposed to solve, but most active
| safety technology testing is just 'does it work' in very easy
| scenarios - the test suite needs to include many environments
| and tough conditions if it wants to evaluate these systems
| more broadly (The only issue being when car companies
| optimize for those specific tests, or 'when the measure
| becomes a target').
| Aperocky wrote:
| lol that is crazy.
|
| Just leave the control to the person behind the wheel, but
| somehow that's too stretched of an idea.
|
| I hope the F150 E truck will not have those 'automatic'
| features. but then again, I kind of wanted lane keeping and
| follow so maybe that's just the necessary evil. Maybe 'modes'
| where it gives all controls to me when I wanted it?
| flavius29663 wrote:
| lane keeping is making me dizzy, at least on the rav4 where I
| had it. It's a constant battle between me and the computer
| about where to keep the car in the lane, making it such that
| the car constantly sways: 1. corrected by me, 2. then
| corrected by the computer, goto 1.
|
| If I don't correct at all, the system is getting mad at me
| for not keeping the hand on the steering wheel.
|
| Auto follow is again somewhat risky, you can't really rely on
| it, sometimes it brakes too late.
| finolex1 wrote:
| Counterpoint: My Subaru has averted at least 2 collisions
| till date by applying an emergency brake (admittedly not in
| any life threatening situation, though it did save me a
| considerable amount in potential repairs). Though yes I
| agree, the option to turn off features is certainly helpful.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Holyshit, thanks for the heads up. If I rent a new car, first
| thing I'm doing is disabling all this crap.
|
| As long as pre-2010 cars are available, I'm gonna continue
| driving them.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It couldn't be disabled either without breaking out the wire
| snips and selectively disabling stuff and hoping that that
| would not have further averse affects. That car had a radar
| unit behind the front license plate and a camera mounted in
| the windshield. No idea which of the two was responsible for
| the false triggers.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| > The automotive industry has a long long way to come -
| assuming it will happen at all - before they can be said to be
| responsible software vendors.
|
| It's worse than that. The very best in the software industry
| has a reliability problem. And carmakers are certainly not
| among the best in the software industry.
| johntfella wrote:
| I've been exploring building my own car from scrap. This wsj sort
| of motivated me (1). The ideal would be no electronics at all. An
| issue I have with new cars are monitors, I hate them they are
| distracting. My eyes are pretty sensitive to computer screens
| etc. Maybe, I'd settle for just a radio. "Maybe" because you then
| get looking at a cd player then all the sudden you want the
| further desire to control what you listen to and before you know
| it you are talking about mp3/digital and more
| computerization/softwaring of the car.
|
| The first question is... what do I want? The second is the more
| complicated issue of getting it done. However it has always been
| a dream of mine since being a kid and watching the Home
| Improvement sitcom in the 90s.
|
| (1) https://www.wsj.com/articles/an-odyssey-to-recreate-a-
| rare-j...
| rektide wrote:
| I have this weird feeling that we ought to displace the problem
| somewhat. I feel like the ubiquotous & pervasive computing people
| were onto something. And in some ways, we're already seeing a
| very narrow brand of this future arrive: Apple and Google both
| have systems to allow the phone to control & manipulate some of
| the car's infotainment systems.
|
| Extending that idea further, & removing most of the native
| infotainment from the car, turning it into a bunch of dumb,
| wirelessly controlled displays & buttons, that an external system
| can use, would be interesting. Certainly there's still a large
| maintenance burden. And now we're talking about allowing external
| consumers of the car's services.
|
| There is some precedent for this. Webinos was a very intersting
| ubiquotous computing platform, and one that BMW/Jaguar/Land Rover
| did a bunch of work on[1]. It definitely still kept the car's
| infotainment system, but it also exposed many of the car's
| systems & services externally, over a normalized, secure, webinos
| control system, such that you could manipulate the car's systems,
| or in one demo, look at the radar system, from remote devices. I
| kind of picture the radicalized form of this as, your car has
| some hdmi ports in it, and you plug in a Roku or Chromecast or
| whatever to power the screens, or have your phone wirelessly send
| a video stream. The manufacturer would still need to have an out-
| of-box experience, but in 10 years or whatever, the manufacturer
| might not have to still support it like they do a built in one:
| they still have to maintain some API surface, but that,
| hopefully, can be a simpler, more controlled, known interface,
| with less maintanence burden, & less fancy application
| processors.
|
| I don't really think what I suggest saves all that much trouble.
| It introduces more trouble too. But starting to decouple
| computers, starting to untangle the weave, but it does seem like
| a long term more sustainable course of action. Whatever modern
| computer we carry with us is what we trust, and leaving it to
| provide an up to date experience across all varieties of screens,
| inputs, peripherals we encounter has always been, to me, what the
| ubicomp revolution was about.
|
| [1] http://www.autoconception.com/bmw-group-research-and-
| technol...
| mauvehaus wrote:
| Future headline: "Cars now as reliable as computers. Bicycle
| sales boom"
| jonshariat wrote:
| Link isn't working but Selzered's link does.
|
| What is interesting is that graph half way down: in 2010 the
| software cost of the car was 35% and they project by 2030 it will
| make up 50% the cost of the car.
|
| As a consumer, I don't want anything but Apply Play or Android
| Auto in my car with a display. Why not cut costs and go a
| different direction? Am I really in the minority of consumers?
| mlac wrote:
| I 100% agree with this. I want climate control knobs and
| buttons, a basic AM/FM radio, and a CarPlay/android auto
| screen. Everything else is noise, and as Toyota would put it,
| MUDA (Waste / non-value added).
|
| In my view, there is no reason for an auto manufacturer to
| invest heavily in their infotainment systems anymore - it just
| isn't a competitive advantage for most cars. Almost all users
| who buy the upgraded trims will have a smart phone.
| fmntf wrote:
| I work in the automotive. I think that this is the trend. At
| the begin, smartphone projection was just calls, music and
| navigation. Now such systems are interested in signals coming
| from the car.. guess why!
| seltzered_ wrote:
| bad link, should be: https://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-
| think/transportation/adv...
| tima101 wrote:
| I've been shopping for new tractor and found out that some newer
| tractors have software-controlled regeneration process. Then I
| watched on Youtube how buggy software in those tractors randomly
| kicks in regen process and does not allow owner to use tractor. I
| ended up buying lower HP tractor that has no chip and no regen
| process.
| reader_mode wrote:
| I got the feeling that car companies treat SW like a cost center,
| asses in seats kind of mentality. They don't pay well, you work
| on uninteresting stuff and corporate ladder is likely a dead end.
|
| So I doubt they (traditional car companies) are going to get
| better at software any time soon.
| waiseristy wrote:
| I'm amazed that in this entire article Autosar wasn't mentioned
| once. The giant 2 ton elephant in the room here is automotives
| reliance on god-awful "kitchen sink" style standards. Try reading
| through the various Autosar docs and ask yourself if you expect
| robust bug-free code to be written to comply with it.
|
| There needs to be a complete cleaning-of-house in automotive
| software.
|
| I2C, Flexray, Ethernet, CAN/CANFD & OBD, LIN, what are we even
| doing?
|
| ARXML, FIBEX, DBC, fuckin kill me.
|
| "Unmanaged complexity" a.k.a "we've never thrown away a single
| technology or standard even once"
| obidan wrote:
| I worked in the automotive industry and I can totally confirm.
| The worse thing is, there are now AUTOSAR experts and AUTOSAR
| tools and AUTOSAR Tool Experts and within that tool there's a
| ARXML generator that's generated with another tool ...
|
| There's no way this can ever become safe, robust, software. The
| worse part is, there's so many careers that depend on this
| obscure skillset that I am unsure a change can come from
| existing companies.
| waiseristy wrote:
| Dont even get me started on the tooling. Vectors,
| Elektrobits, Dassaults, Conti's, tools are probably one of
| the biggest drains on collective computation power outside of
| crypto and ML.
|
| Not to mention working in this space is fucking soul
| consuming. I was considered an "AUTOSAR expert" for a time,
| and that essentially meant having enough programming and
| systems knowledge to work on the entire stack. But never
| writing a single line of code, only clicking buttons in these
| god damn tools and watching them crash constantly, loosing
| hours upon hours of work
| jedberg wrote:
| The problem with this is that auto companies are not software
| companies. They may have good engineers there, but they are
| hamstrung with a culture that considers software as an add on
| cost center at best.
|
| Perfect example: I have no way to report software bugs to Honda.
| I've found a few and collected detailed reproduction data. The
| best I can do is give it to a sales rep in the service department
| and hope they send it "up to corporate".
|
| Compare that to Telsa, which has bug reporting built right into
| the software in the car, as well as bug bounty program.
|
| And then there are updates. Honda found a bug where the
| speedometer would just crash and not show your speed anymore.
| This is was pretty bad, but I had no idea about it until I went
| into the dealership. There was apparently a recall but I would
| have had to find that myself, I didn't get a notice. Honda has no
| built in facility to notify people of software updates and
| recalls. And then once I found out, the only way to fix it is for
| a dealership to apply the update. There is no over the air update
| and no way for me to apply it myself.
|
| Car companies need to learn how to be software first, or things
| will get very dangerous.
| ketralnis wrote:
| On the other hand, having seen the software industry I don't
| really want its values applied to cars.
|
| Games used to be shipped on chips to customers with the
| assumption that they could never be updated, but now the
| expectation that that's possible results in multi GB release
| day patches. Games used to be shipped to consoles without
| network access but if Blizzard goes out of business tomorrow,
| Starcraft II will just fail to boot because the software you
| get isn't enough to run the game. Games used to make most of
| their money by selling you a fun game that you wanted to play,
| but now they make most of their money from DLC's or selling in-
| game currency.
|
| I don't want my car to move fast and break things. I don't want
| my car to fail to drive me to the hospital because it has
| updates to install. I don't want my car to drop features it had
| when I paid for it because some PM's bonus depends on me using
| their monetised features instead. I don't want my car to be
| measured by "works on my machine"-level QA. I don't want my car
| reporting telemetry. I don't want my car's UI to become
| unuseable over time because the developers shipping constant
| updates to it are working on the newer hardware instead of the
| hardware I have. I don't want parts of my car to stop working
| because an app developer doesn't support my car anymore. (I've
| lost access to many an iOS game because of this without
| changing any hardware myself.) I don't want my car to stop
| working because it doesn't support TLS 4.0 or 6g and the
| licence server requires it. I don't want my car to stop working
| because it can't find the licence server because Volvo went out
| of business, or even just decided they didn't want to support
| me anymore. I don't want my car to fail to unlock because of a
| network blip. I don't want my car to suggest I go to McDonald's
| instead because of an advertising deal.
|
| That's what embracing the software industry's norms will get
| you. Awful QA, shortsighted dependencies, terrible incentives,
| and the ability to monetise you.
| jedberg wrote:
| Not every company embraces those sorts of worst practices.
| Especially hardware companies. Tesla and Apple are good
| examples of this. They have strong QA policies and make their
| money from hardware so they don't have to do all those "you
| must be connected" tricks. Sure, both still have bugs, but
| not like web apps and games.
|
| Most of what you listed applies to web apps and games, not
| bespoke software for hardware.
| ketralnis wrote:
| Apple and Tesla specifically are not good examples of this
| https://www.zdnet.com/article/tesla-yanks-autopilot-
| features... &
| https://www.npr.org/2020/11/18/936268845/apple-agrees-to-
| pay... These both come from the habit and ability to
| remotely change what's already on my device without my
| knowledge or consent
| eaa wrote:
| Have you tried to contact an official car service center or
| official car dealer on this topic?
|
| They may have no way to "report a bug", but they have to deal
| with customer complaints and issues which need service. It is
| possible that car service will actually report an issue to SW
| vendor.
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