[HN Gopher] Please make a dumb car
___________________________________________________________________
Please make a dumb car
Author : wrycoder
Score : 459 points
Date : 2022-01-31 03:24 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
| [deleted]
| robin_reala wrote:
| The original VW Up dispensed with a screen beyond a small radio
| display, and just came with a mount for the smartphone you were
| bound to have with you. Cabin shot:
| https://cdn1.buyacar.co.uk/sites/buyacar/files/styles/galler...
| wazoox wrote:
| This is what Dacia proposes in their cars. They know it's
| better to have a basic system with a radio, bluetooth and a
| place to store your phone, that will stay up-to-date and usable
| for years to come (check early-2000s high-end cars GPS and
| entertainment systems for a laugh).
| coder543 wrote:
| Apple CarPlay and Android Auto serve the same purpose these
| days, since they're effectively acting as an external monitor
| for your phone. The OEM doesn't have to keep anything up to
| date.
|
| Just providing a "dumb" head unit with as close to zero
| features besides CarPlay and Android Auto would be sufficient
| to have a good user experience at this point, at least in the
| context of a "dumb car".
|
| Last time I was on Android (~5 years ago), you could actually
| run Android Auto as an app on your phone, so a phone mount
| like that would be _fine_ (even if not amazing), but Apple
| doesn 't let you run CarPlay directly on your phone -- it
| only works with an external display designed for CarPlay, so
| a phone mount like this is notably worse for iPhone users.
| CarPlay's interface is much better designed for use in a
| vehicle than the regular iOS interface.
|
| Phone mounts like that have the additional problem that
| smartphones have continued to grow and grow, and a lot of
| cars from 5 or 10 years ago that offer any kind of phone
| charging spot or phone mount can't fit most modern
| smartphones in the allocated spot... so phone mounts like
| that can become obsolete even without any electrical
| components whatsoever.
| ralphhughes wrote:
| That is a genuinely nice user interface. I can see what
| virtually everything is from a distance in the picture.
|
| I especially like the larger fuel gauge; I drove a car once
| that had a handful of little LCD rectangles like a coarse bar
| graph. I struggled to tell if I had 50% or 75% left!
| [deleted]
| rektide wrote:
| I'm sympathetic to the pleas here. But I'm a luddite. A real
| luddite, not, as this article is, a simple petty reactionary: the
| problem is not technology, it's who owns it[1], it's how we are
| puppet-ed along via technology (Ursala Franklin would call this
| example of the car a prescriptivist instead of a holistic
| technology[2]). Technology is good when it empowers folks
| broadly, when it is soft. But the car systems of today are all
| prebaked in a hard, demeaning way- unsoft in extreme- and their
| systems don't entirely align with the people's interest, & even
| more rarely align with the power-users interest. Ideally, to me,
| the car has some built-ins but is a tabula rasa, a blank slate:
| it presents a robust & thorough API for the car systems,
| including the main interfaces.
|
| Basically I just want a Chrysler with the infamous "Jeep
| Cherokee" hack[3]. Those cars were a modern miracle of amazingly
| well designed, consistent API engineering. Users gaining access
| to those systems, remotely, was shunned as a horrible vile thing,
| but it was an act of beauty & amazingness, a revelation of
| wonderfully good engineering. The coverage focused on the
| malicious acts, & that FUD far out-shined the amazing limitless
| potential of letting the world try to enrich themselves, make
| better. Tragic miscarriage against potential: the press murdered
| any hope of possibility in it's cradle. These cars were/are
| amazing. QNX OS running DBus protocols to expose all the car's
| systems: an easy to interface with, exploratory inter-system API
| for the whole car. We could have built anything here, it feels
| like. Instead, we damned & cursed the makers for having left some
| portal open to this computer: we parroted out terror.
|
| I guess my gravy-on-top nee-plus-ultra ask atop having access to
| a car via DBus- the FreeDesktop standard IPC system- would be for
| the buttons to be more software defined, independent of their
| subsystems, which I think still wasn't entirely the case. I'd
| love to have a phone or console app running which can read from
| the big giant volume knob, for example, as I adjust some windows
| or the sunroof or the temperature. Infinite flexibility, please.
| I've said this before[4].
|
| It's disappeared quickly, but Webinos was a very very interesting
| decade old attempt to define a user-empowering IoT architecture,
| & had significant interest from BMW/Land Rover. It's basically
| bitrotted off the internet, last seen early 2021[5], but was a
| really interesting user-centric system, where devices were linked
| not to corporate cloud services but to systems of users choice,
| exposing their capabilities & offerings generally. We need more
| holistic potentials in the world. We need to stop consigning away
| possibility, choosing retro-minimalism because we can't imagine
| any other possibilities than the vice, than the authoritarian,
| restrained systems of control most technology imposes upon us. We
| need personal computing to be possible again, broadly in the
| world, across devices, we need choice, we need agency, we need to
| stop being damned by computers & start being served by them: this
| is only possible if we let the users back in, re-open the
| frontiers.
|
| In the end, I think the Chromecast model is basically right. The
| car should have a pre-baked system, but present some HTML capable
| interfaces, which themselves expose a couple additional above-
| and-beyond Web IoT apis to adjust windows, sunroofs, hvac. There
| should be decoupling (which I think Webinos was an early &
| technically successful contendor for).
|
| [1] https://twitter.com/doctorow/status/1478387800542224392
|
| [2]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ursula_Franklin#Holistic_and_p...
|
| [3] https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-
| hig...
|
| [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27463898
|
| [5]
| http://web.archive.org/web/20210115211241/http://webinos.org...
| salawat wrote:
| I'm with you except for one thing.
|
| No web connectivity. Either you're plugged in through CAN, or
| F-OFF. There is no logical reason for an internet exposed
| portal to physical car systems. Period.
| d--b wrote:
| Even Dacia, which was the only one making really dumb cars a few
| years ago stopped doing the electronic-less cars. It's a shame.
|
| There apparently isn't much of a market for dumb cars.
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| "No screens" is too harsh. My 2012 Civic EX has a colour screen.
| It supplements the traditional controls in just the right way,
| for example, with hierarchical menus for things like bluetooth
| pairing, rarely used configuration items (autolock) and
| maintenance reminders. It also puts all the visual information -
| trip computer, radio display and such - in one place. Speedo and
| tach are still where they belong. Perfect.
| russellbeattie wrote:
| > Not to mention the privacy and security concerns.
|
| Heh. That ship has sailed.
|
| Wait until electronic license plates using eInk roll out and
| update automatically. First they'll just change if you haven't
| paid your registration, then later if your insurance lapses, or
| maybe it'll light up with yellow LEDs when there's a kidnapping.
| It'll be integrated into Fast Pass toll-payment systems, why not?
| And over the next decade, as the taxes from gasoline disappear,
| the plates will have integrated travel tracking so you
| automatically pay $0.02 per mile road usage taxes. It'll be the
| most fair way to pay for the roads.
|
| Yep, this is all coming. First, they'll be add-on plates, but
| then they'll be integrated into all new cars. Personal
| transportation is going to look completely different by the end
| of the century, anyways. Worrying about the number of knobs on
| your dashboard is like worrying about the color of your horse's
| blinders or whether your cart's wheels were made out of oak or
| cedar.
| prox wrote:
| So basically all things we think is shit on the internet will
| be on the road :(
| dbeley wrote:
| There is the Citroen Ami that has already been talked on HN
| before:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22438418
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24856541
| tragomaskhalos wrote:
| We have a 2008 Lexus, with the standard big screen on the dash;
| its UI is objectively _terrible_ - it is like the thing has gone
| through zero user testing on any of its functions. The sat nav
| interface is probably the worst - we usually spend 5 mins out of
| sheer bloody-mindedness trying to program a destination in before
| giving up and plugging in a smartphone instead.
| julian_t wrote:
| My Renault EV, while excellent in many respects, does suffer from
| Smart Car Syndrome (or is it Dumb Designer Syndrome?)
|
| The "please make sure you observe local road laws!" popup
| obscures the whole touchscreen for over a minute when you start
| off. It's been showing me this each time I've driven off for
| three years. I've got the message.
|
| The intermittent windscreen wipers are supposed to respond to the
| rain on the screen, but vary in their response from nothing to
| double speed, uncorrelated to the actual weather. Can I just have
| an adjustable "once every few seconds" control?
|
| And the best one - timed charging doesn't work over Saturday
| night/Sunday morning. Every other night, fine, but not then.
| Completely reproducible. I suspect some sort of date roll-over
| bug, but Renault have given up trying to find a problem.
| johnboiles wrote:
| My 1999 Honda CR-V I bought in college still runs and I love the
| simplicity of the interface. Air controls are a three evenly
| spaced knobs and a few buttons. The instrument cluster has
| everything you need with easy to read physical gauges (though I
| do wish it had battery voltage like my 92 Jeep did). The
| interface has aged super well because of its simplicity -- it
| doesn't feel outdated.
|
| I replaced the stereo with the cheapest CarPlay unit I can find
| for navigation, phone charging, and media playback. I love this
| too since my only screen-based ui in the car gets updates with
| every new iOS.
| iRobbery wrote:
| techcrunch leading me through 'https://guce.advertising.com' when
| i open links or their site directly... weird
| aembleton wrote:
| It's been like that for years if you haven't set the cookies.
| dshpala wrote:
| I have 2018 Chevy, and it's sufficiently dumb :)
|
| I have physical controls for climate, and even a dedicated
| defroster button. The car supports Android Auto / CarPlay, so I
| don't have to interact with its horrendous navigation (my
| favorite part is that it announces route changes in backwards
| manner, e.g. "Turn left ... in half a mile").
|
| The card was cheap, and has been running without issues. It's not
| a luxury car for sure, but it does its job.
| ab_testing wrote:
| I think a lot of the smart car features have to do with
| legislation.
|
| All new cars require a back up camera due to legislation. But a
| backup camera with a huge 8" screen is only useful for backing
| up. So the manufacturers try to use that screen real estate for
| infotainment when the car is moving forward.
| etskinner wrote:
| 8" backup camera screen aren't required. I've seen some as
| small as about 4". The standard requires only that a certain
| spacing/size of objects behind the car is at least a certain
| visual angle. Screens in rear view mirrors and just below the
| bottom edge of the windscreen abound.
| missedthecue wrote:
| This is a great point. It's only logical. After all, a customer
| who doesn't want to use the infotainment system can ignore it,
| but the customers who want one will reject your automobile
| offering out of hand if you don't include one.
| garyfirestorm wrote:
| Mechanical things break and require lot of design, testing
| and validation. A screen solves that problem more efficiently
| and eliminates 100's of other parts and wires that go to
| other buttons.
| salawat wrote:
| Says the bean counter overseeing a software project or
| industrial offering who has never grasped why those pesky
| customers assume they factor into a product offering
| anyway.
| gnicholas wrote:
| The screen in my Ford CMAX goes out on a regular basis. It
| appears to be trying to update its software, and hanging in
| the process. Eventually it comes back, but it could be
| weeks later. In the meantime, I have no backup camera,
| navigation, or radio.
|
| Fortunately the HVAC is controlled via physical buttons.
| theodric wrote:
| Counterpoint: it locks all functionality behind a single
| point of failure, rendering all cabin controls useless
| simultaneously in the event of a failure of the screen or
| the upstream chain to the computer driving it (to say
| nothing of the distraction caused by a system you can't
| operate by feel with your eyes still on the road)
| theodric wrote:
| Small LCD screens embedded behind double glass in the rear-view
| mirror are common in the aftermarket backup camera sets. Any
| sufficiently-motivated car manufacturer could design something
| similar to meet regs without moving their controls to a central
| screen.
| datavirtue wrote:
| I had a F-250 with the backup camera screen in the rear view
| mirror. It was a factory option and it worked perfectly. Kept
| my eyes on the mirrors with additional feedback from the
| camera. It was most useful when hitching trailers.
|
| My last two trucks have been lower trim packages to avoid the
| distracting screens and other "features" I don't need.
| lkozma wrote:
| Who is pushing/lobbying for that type of legislation? Isn't it
| a case of regulation helping the incumbents?
| checker wrote:
| I imagine this organization and similar orgs. It would be
| interesting to see if the new legislation has helped decrease
| the number of backover accidents.
|
| This appears to be an example of technology solving a design
| flaw rather than rent-seeking capitalism.
|
| http://www.kidsandcars.org/wp-
| content/uploads/2018/03/Backov...
| com2kid wrote:
| There are multiple long standing "Project 0" efforts in the
| US that aim to get pedestrian fatalities down to 0.
|
| They have a range of goals including reducing Urban speed
| limits to 20-25mph and adding more safety features to cars.
|
| Sad fact is modern giant SUVs have very poor rear visibility
| and children are just _not_ visible if they are behind the
| vehicle. Backup cameras are the only reasonable option aside
| from "stop driving obscenely oversized vehicles."
|
| (Another solution would be changing current laws so that 3
| row station wagons were legal again, right now SUVs and
| Minivans fill a need that the 3 row station wagon used to,
| but it was legislated away long ago.)
| roland35 wrote:
| If you want a dumb car, you should really consider the Nissan
| Frontier. The truck hasn't changed very much since the mid 2000s.
| I drove one as a rental for a while and it feels like a blast
| from the past.
| Grazester wrote:
| The Frontier just got a completely new remake.
| symlinkk wrote:
| The 370Z was like that too and it was universally shit on for
| having a "dated interior". People just love being contrarians
| makach wrote:
| Please don't, unless you can replace the dumb driver. Dumb cars
| usually involved in dumb accidents because dumb driver drives
| dumb.
| incomplete wrote:
| the answer is always miata.
| galdosdi wrote:
| How are the latest new ND miatas with regards to this sort of
| thing, anyway, if you know? The old NB and NA generation miatas
| (no idea on NC) were just wonderful perfect "dumb cars." Is it
| still good in the 2022 model year or has it been slightly
| ruined yet to any degree?
| incomplete wrote:
| the ND miata is about as close to 'dumb' as you're gonna get
| these days. aka it's nearly perfect. :D
| fleddr wrote:
| Hear hear. And stop messing with the steering wheel. I don't want
| 17 trillion buttons on a steering wheel. The "safe" area seems to
| be getting smaller and smaller.
|
| As for worst car UI experience ever, it has to be the Seat I'm
| driving. It has a large touch screen. So you decide you're going
| to touch an option and your finger is under way to the surface.
| During this movement, the UI detects you're going to press
| something and tries to "help" you by moving some sticky menu out
| of the way or the opposite: revealing some hover menu. So now the
| thing you were planning to touch has moved during the 0.5s
| travel.
|
| The car is also in constant paranoia mode it seems. I'm parking
| forwards at about 1mph, slowly approaching the end of the lot, a
| boundary of shrubs. The car apparently thinks I'm close to dying.
| Everything is flashing and buzzing.
|
| It also has a helpful planning system. I'm in the middle of a
| huge traffic jam and then it tells me "busy traffic ahead".
|
| It has a navigation system where you can pick from 3 routes:
| fastest, easiest and some mysterious in-between option. Yet all
| routes lead to the exact same navigation instructions, it feels
| like somebody just made up the 10 minute "difference" in the UI.
|
| When driving this car, I sometimes have this feeling that the
| makers are laughing at me as I drive it, to see how much you can
| mess with somebody before they understand they're the subject of
| a joke.
|
| But this is no joke. I'm really quite sure that crappy car UI
| leads to injury and death. A car is not a Battlefield game that
| needs 2 years of bugfixing before it's usable.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Small dumb electric car is all I want, 4x4 preferred.
| divbzero wrote:
| This is a major reason I'll probably never buy a Tesla. I do not
| want my car to connect to the manufacturer via Internet nor have
| anything complex enough to justify over-the-air updates. (I also
| feel similarly about most home appliances.)
| [deleted]
| raspyberr wrote:
| The link says techcrunch.com but uMatrix is stopping me from
| getting to it because it's trying to go through
| guce.advertising.com first. Weird.
| aembleton wrote:
| Yep, Techcrunch redirects through advertising.com if you don't
| have cookies set.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Aren't dumb cars going to completely go away once the transition
| from ICE to EV is finished? I could see them being like antiques
| or something, but they wouldn't really be economically viable to
| produce anymore. And of course, the fact that dumb cars would be
| more expensive to produce is just a side effect of digital being
| cheaper than analogue after a certain about of development.
| reidjs wrote:
| Maybe, but that will take many decades
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| I guess in some countries and states? Many countries have
| deadlines of 2025 (Norway), 2030 (Netherlands), 2035, or 2040
| [1], I don't think the hold outs will be able to keep up with
| ICE production and infrastructure for long after the richer
| states and countries transition.
|
| And once the writing is seen on the wall, no one will want to
| be the last person to buy an ICE. Things will change pretty
| rapidly.
|
| [1] https://electrek.co/2021/11/10/countries-automakers-
| agree-go...
| bdamm wrote:
| Dumb cars aren't more expensive to produce. And EVs don't have
| to be "tech". It's just that is what people want.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| > Dumb cars aren't more expensive to produce.
|
| Increasingly they are. Analog connections and dials, for
| example, are already more expensive than digital ones. It is
| like...if you wanted to buy a car without power steering you
| really couldn't.
|
| I guess if you want a golf cart you can buy a dumb EV. I
| don't know how that translates into a real car, however.
| peanut-walrus wrote:
| My 2019 Kia Stinger has physical gauges and every single thing I
| need for actually driving is a physical button, knob or dial.
| Yes, there is a touchscreen, however that is 99% of the time I am
| in the car connected to my phone, so basically just an external
| screen for my phone (which I would otherwise have to dangle in
| some phone holder somewhere). Also, all of the driving "aids"
| remember the last setting they were set to, so I don't have to
| disable them every time I sit into the car, which is a common
| problem with new cars.
| geocrasher wrote:
| The culmination of luxury, reliability, and beautiful stupidity:
|
| The 1991 Chevrolet Suburban with a 5.7L engine and the 700r4
| automatic trans. Comfortable, analogue, and great looking. Easily
| updated with a backup camera, a modern sound system and remote
| start, etc. Heated seats are possible, as is any luxury you'd
| want.
|
| Even the engine could be updated to an OBDII compliant LS, and
| the drivetrain is already as stout as can be. With more modern
| spring technology, even leaf springs can be made to ride nicely.
|
| There are already companies doing restomods like these and
| selling them, and I doubt they can keep them in stock.
| junon wrote:
| Same with TVs, please. I can't find a single OLED on the market
| that doesn't have Android or some shitty Samsung OS installed on
| it.
| spydr wrote:
| What's your gripe with android tvs? I hate Samsung for their
| ads but I own an android and have found it to be nothing less
| or more than what I need.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| They're constantly collecting data on anything you do on the
| TV, and that data is being sold to whoever wants it?
| junon wrote:
| Collecting data, sometimes spamming the network with faulty
| code, some of them have cameras a lot of people don't even
| know about (since they blend in with the frame), and of
| course showing advertisements in your menu bars and sometimes
| when you start the TV.
|
| Since when have we become complacent in subsidizing our
| product purchases with... more ads for other products? It's
| absolutely ludicrous.
| akeck wrote:
| Have you looked at NEC commercial displays? For example:
|
| https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1629170-REG/nec_e438_...
| kunai wrote:
| I've considered getting a monitor-style dumb display for my
| next TV, but the issue is that none of them have an inbuilt
| TV tuner. I get pretty fantastic reception at my current
| place in Queens and I'd hate to give up all my OTA channels
| and switch to something like Sling or YouTube TV, which again
| just brings back around all of the same pitfalls of a smart
| TV.
|
| edit: just saw that the one you linked does have a tuner and
| remote! Brilliant! Might actually end up buying the 32 inch
| one, it's very reasonably priced.
| pjmlp wrote:
| I went with WebOS, so far the best of them, meaning the less
| painfull one.
| boobsbr wrote:
| I have an LG TV with WebOS. The OS is fine, but the CPU is
| underpowered and has difficulty streaming video.
| soylentcola wrote:
| I usually describe my "smart" TV (and all of them, really)
| as a bargain basement smartphone with an incredibly nice
| screen. All of the same issues - bare minimum specs to
| operate the thing in a typical fashion, lack of software
| patches and bundled "apps" that stop getting updates after
| a couple of years, questionable privacy policies, etc.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Yeah that is definitely noticeable.
| qsort wrote:
| WebOS is by far the least painful, but by no means good. You
| can disable some of the crap, but still it occasionally
| injects ads and other crap on top of the broadcast.
|
| Nothing a well-configured pihole can't handle, but when I
| found out a $1700 TV is that awful I was _livid_.
| pjmlp wrote:
| I learned to live with it, considering how bad the Android
| TV alternative is.
|
| It has become really hard to get a proper dumb TV, if they
| aren't using the well known OSes, they bundle some custom
| firmware that also pretends to be smart anyway, most likely
| using some FOSS POSIX OS.
| zanzibar735 wrote:
| Agreed. I recommend Roku TVs - at least the UX is simple and it
| doesn't spy on you or show you ads.
| dev_throw wrote:
| If you have a Roku TV, I would urge you to set up a pi hole
| to see how many queries it sends out. Mine blocks upwards of
| 10 per minute.
| throwawaysea wrote:
| Doesn't the Roku software spy on you and don't they track
| what you are watching?
| tomlong wrote:
| My pi hole's top blocked domain by some margin is is
| scribe.logs.roku.com, who knows what else it might be
| blocking or missing in addition to this.
| Fezzik wrote:
| I highly recommend TCL TVs. The remotes are super simple (with
| just the buttons you need), the UI is straightforward and you
| never have to connect to the internet. I'm on my second panel,
| only because I wanted to downsize from 65" to a 55" when I
| moved, and connected to an AppleTV it is a dream to use.
|
| Edit, to add: the OLEDs aren't to market yet... but they're on
| the way!
| junon wrote:
| All of their products appear to be "smart". Why can't they
| just make a TV that is... a TV?
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| Because society wants smart TVs. You and a lot of people
| here don't, but collectively, people like the idea of
| having Netflix/Hulu/etc right on their TVs. The cat's out
| of the bag now. If you/me want a dumb TV, don't look at
| consumer TVs in BestBuy, but expect to be spending over
| $1000.
| emptyparadise wrote:
| Does society really want that or does it not realize that
| it doesn't have to be this way?
| colejohnson66 wrote:
| The alternative is a separate box (or something like a
| Fire Stick). But those became less of a thing once TV
| manufacturers started implementing them inside the box.
| And with that, it's one less thing to buy (which
| consumers like).
|
| If you tell customers that two TVs are identical except
| one doesn't need a dongle for Netflix _and is cheaper_ ,
| they'll choose the smart one.
| prasadjoglekar wrote:
| That may be true, but you only need a ~10% share of the
| market to want a privacy-first (i.e. dumb) TV, and
| that'll at least keep the others in line. Sort of like
| the role Mozilla ought to play in the browser market.
| Fezzik wrote:
| They may be labeled as smart, but they're not nerfed at all
| if you don't connect to the internet. And there are no
| notifications or interruptions trying to get you to
| connect. You can even just hook it up to a set of rabbit
| ears and set 'antenna TV' is your default mode and every
| time you turn the TV on it'll go right to over-the-air
| programs. I'm a big fan, obviously, as I hate smart
| devices.
|
| Edit: grammar.
| t0bia_s wrote:
| They do... It is called "monitor".
| junon wrote:
| Monitors and TV encode signals much, much differently.
| rascul wrote:
| They used to. Do they still?
| kunai wrote:
| yes, if you want to watch broadcast channels on a monitor
| you will need a tuner/amplifier converter box to do so
| t0bia_s wrote:
| Please, explain.
| herbst wrote:
| I am just looking for a low tech TV for my grandmum as those
| boxes we need to run older TVs with modern TV signal always
| break.
|
| The reality is, simple is only available in the luxury segment.
|
| I am prolly going with a 'OK' brand one. Even thought I hated
| their ugly OS it is the only I've found so far that somewhat
| acts as a 'classic' TV.
| infamia wrote:
| Try Sceptre. They make TVs without the "smart" features (i.e.
| it's just a simple TV).
| devchix wrote:
| There was a previous HN thread where someone said they were
| attempting to make a dumb TV (a commercial endeavor) and others
| here said they were interested in working on that. I wonder
| where that effort is. Feels like there is a ready market for
| this product. I can't turn on my Vizio without it taking 10
| minutes to check for updates, changing inputs take a minute.
| The Samsung keeps trying to update YouTube and some other apps
| which I've deleted hundreds of times before, there's probably
| 30MB of internal memory left. Nothing turns on instantly. More
| and more I feel like nothing I buy is ever the thing I really
| want, it's always a devil's bargain with the least-bad thing I
| can live with. Consumer-focused software, is that even a thing
| we make anymore.
| prasadjoglekar wrote:
| Per chance, do you have a link to the thread?
| devchix wrote:
| I'm searching for it myself. There's been plenty of venting
| about "smart" TVs on HN in the past year. The fellow who
| wanted to start the project said he had a background in
| electronics, I should have stickied that thread.
| matty22 wrote:
| Check out Spectre. Decent enough screens, come in lots of
| sizes, all entirely dumb panels. Love mine and wouldn't trade
| it for any 'smart' TV.
| ComradePhil wrote:
| Samsung has TVs with the "smartness" in a separate box outside
| the TV and the display is just a display with one connector.
| Something like this should be a standard.
| rPlayer6554 wrote:
| Do you by chance know the models?
| ComradePhil wrote:
| Their high end premium TVs have had it since 2019
| https://www.techradar.com/news/samsung-one-connect-box
|
| The One Connect Box has all the ports including power,
| HDMI, ethernet, USB etc. and the TV has just one
| proprietary port where you connect the One Connect Box.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| > the TV has just one proprietary port where you connect
| the One Connect Box.
|
| That is not a step forward.
| MagnumOpus wrote:
| It is - at least you can then exchange the box with the
| ARM CPU when the new versions of Netfix and Youtube apps
| start requiring 16GB of memory and a teraflop CPU,
| without having to chuck a screen that works perfectly
| fine.
|
| Of course you can also just by an external Nvidia Shield
| unit and connect it by HDMI, like you can now.
| raxxorrax wrote:
| Does the display have a HDMI ports or only the connector
| box? If the screen has some, it would be awesome. If it
| is only the box it would be crap.
| saithir wrote:
| So it's the regular smart TV just its smartness - any any
| useful ports you'd want from a TV - comes in two parts?
|
| I'm not sure that's what the parent commenter was asking
| for.
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| You can get some pretty nice non-smart cars and they will put a
| massive grin on your face!
|
| Proper old school stuff. 9ff https://youtu.be/P-BTTquGvAw?t=628
|
| Von Schmidt Resto-Mod built to your spec
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dzVr4cpNC58
|
| Ruf CTR https://youtu.be/ZJwF1BX5uQc?t=1147
|
| Personally though, I'd like to see the knobs for the essentials
| like fan speed and temperature as these get changed all the time,
| radio channels, mp3/disc selection, and then the less likely
| things to be fiddled with can go on screen and activated with
| maybe a few buttons.
|
| For example, the roads in the UK are full of potholes, the state
| use this to keep the speed down on the road, but when driving in
| Germany on the autobahns (or the continent in general), the roads
| are better made so being able to setup on the touch screen
| different car setups which control suspension, ride height,
| steering input, engine tuning which can then be activated by
| pushing a button to cycle through comfort mode and sports, would
| seem to be a better bet, a more efficient way of setting up a
| car.
|
| I hope the car companies log all the buttons pushed and
| touchscreen settings so that they can optimise their "UX" within
| the cars better because what I hate about the touchscreen is even
| on dark mode, at night it still interferes with your night vision
| a bit, and I'd like to turn it off like I think Saab used to do
| with their console display at night.
|
| Bluetooth, GPS sat nav and all that sort of stuff, its handy in
| my opinion, but I'm also aware of how you can hack satnav to make
| a target take routes the satnav wouldnt normally select. The way
| to do that is to make your targets satnav think there are massive
| delays on the road, and then it reroutes. I havent heard of
| anyone who has reported this in the media, but its a doable form
| of hacking.
|
| For the speed freaks, if you havent seen a car doing 259mph
| (417kph) on the unrestricted German autobahn, this is the link.
| https://youtu.be/7pg1hhW5qhM?t=153
|
| The Countach that killed the Cannonball, but it shows you need
| technology if you want to drive fast.
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8b7erU_DOfE
| trimal wrote:
| While we are at it, please make dumb TVs too.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| spandrew wrote:
| Personally I don't buy this argument to the degree the journalist
| is spinning it. "No screens anywhere!" is an extreme stance. I
| enjoy how well CarPlay merges my phone with the display screen
| (and I enjoy easy music control and turn-by-turn for distance
| trips).
|
| I do overall agree that the controls of modern cars just don't
| feel 'balanced'. But I don't think an extreme stance like this is
| going to improve car UX.
| zestyping wrote:
| What's extreme about it? When you're driving a vehicle _you
| need to keep your eyes on the road_.
|
| Putting a screen in the vehicle seems like an extreme stance.
| It's borderline nuts, even -- we have massive campaigns trying
| to get people to stop looking at their phones while driving.
| protomyth wrote:
| I'm fine with a touch screen for things like rear camera and
| plugging in a smart phone, but I want actual volume, temperature,
| and fan speed knobs.
|
| I also want all of the information about the car I can get. For
| example, I don't want a "tire low light", I want an air pressure
| in each tire with an flashing indicator that its out of safe
| range. I don't want an "overheat", I want the temperature and big
| flashing when its out of range.
|
| I do wish for a HUD just because I want my eyes on the road, but
| I think that's a lost dream.
|
| I dearly wish someone would design a car for easy repairs, but we
| all know that isn't a profit positive thing.
| olyjohn wrote:
| My 1992 Miata came with an honest-to-god oil pressure gauge in
| it, that gave you real oil pressure readings. The pressure
| gauge moves back and forth with engine RPMs, because the oil
| pump is driven off of the engine. More RPM = more oil pressure.
| That's how cars work.
|
| In 1994, Mazda removed it, and put in a "Dumb" gauge. It looks
| like a gauge, but really is either on above a certain PSI or
| off below that. They did this because so many people were
| bringing in their cars for service because they didn't
| understand how the real pressure gauge worked, and thought
| something was wrong.
|
| There are actually lots of cars like this. My Ford Explorer has
| a dumb oil pressure gauge. My Honda Fit doesn't even have a
| coolant temp gauge. So I only know when the thing gets too hot,
| or if the coolant is too cold. Can't tell if the car starts
| running hotter than normal to catch a problem before it
| destroys something.
| wkjagt wrote:
| I have a 93 Miata and I love those kinds of things about it.
| Even the odometer is mechanical. I love how real and direct
| cars from that era feel. In contrast, I'm always discouraged
| when for example I try to figure out how to even make the
| radio work in my girlfriend's 2017 Odyssey.
| mdavidn wrote:
| Lexus has models with a HUD. It was far less useful than I
| expected. It displays just a compass, digital speedometer, and
| indicators for cruise control and lane assist.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| No directions for the route finder? That sounds really lame.
| The BMW HUD is much more useful, if you have a route going
| on, the turn instructions appear on the windshield.
| alanchen wrote:
| Checkout Mazda3. Hud with navigation is awesome to use.
| SamuelAdams wrote:
| My 2016 Honda CR-V has everything in your first paragraph. I
| think Honda and Mazda are doing a good job of balancing
| physical controls versus touchscreen.
| pjerem wrote:
| There is something we could have on cars since at least a decade
| or more and that I don't understand we don't have : HUDs.
|
| I already saw one in a top-end car and it's absolutely practical.
| I can't imagine that it costs anything to embed that in a car
| (it's just a monochrome, really bright LED screen) so I assume
| manufacturers just want to keep them as high prices options.
| voakbasda wrote:
| I am guessing patents are the limiting factor. The holders
| might not want or be able to license the tech more broadly.
| DevKoala wrote:
| I think Mazda fills this space perfectly. I recently purchased a
| CX-5, and I am incredibly happy with the balance of smart and non
| smart features. Everything else felt smart to the point of taking
| control away from me.
| yencabulator wrote:
| My Jeep Wrangler is the kind of a vehicle you can leave out in
| the rain without the top, exposed to the elements. Floors have
| drain plugs, and there's very little electronics where water
| could intrude. The car stereo is visibly not worth stealing, and
| if it breaks at most I would take it out to have a new storage
| cubby.
|
| It's very refreshing to own.
| random_savv wrote:
| > For media, an aux input does it all. Doubles as a charging
| cable, and you could easily swap it out for different and new
| devices
|
| I thought aux only carries analog sound, is charging a new
| feature? Did I miss Aux-C? What does the author mean?
| jve wrote:
| Some more:
|
| > Not to mention the privacy and security concerns. I was
| dubious the first time I saw a GPS in a car, my mom's old
| RX300, about 20 years ago. "Yeah... that's how they get you," I
| thought
|
| Well, that reasoning was flawed 20 years ago - GPS means YOU
| know where you are, not the other way around. There has to be
| other communication channel for that data to "escape". If your
| car is data-enabled with SIM card, only then it is a concern.
| the_biot wrote:
| Yup, and anyone with a heartbeat figured that out at some
| point in the last 20 years. Yet the article also says
|
| > Not having GPS or data (or hidden microphones or cameras)
| also makes your vehicle feel more private, obviously.
|
| I can't exclude the possibility that the author is a moron,
| but I suspect it's just outrage-bait. Like that whole
| article.
| kunai wrote:
| For vehicles with an inbuilt cellular connection like
| OnStar or Starlink or any of the myriad of other systems
| like them, the vehicle _will_ regularly phone home your GPS
| fix from time to time and there is no way to turn it off. I
| think this is what the author was trying to get at but
| phrased it poorly due to it being sort of a technicality.
| jve wrote:
| How?
|
| Escape channel is called internet, not GPS. Obviously if
| your car has Internet and GPS, it can do it.
|
| But if you had only starlink dish on your car, without
| GPS, I wouldn't be surprised if it was technically
| possible to track location to some degree of accuracy.
| dTal wrote:
| Aux-PD (power delivery) is definitely not a thing, and now I'm
| mad I didn't think of it.
| Gigachad wrote:
| The iPod nano used aux for data and charging. But not at the
| same time as audio.
| Fatnino wrote:
| He means a typical usb data connection.
|
| Friend of mine called me from his rental car asking why his
| phone notifications were still coming through the car despite
| having Bluetooth turned off.
|
| Of course he was charging his phone from the built in USB port
| and it was actually a data port.
| raxxorrax wrote:
| There are some devices that are charged with aux cables,
| although it is rare. I think that is a bad solution because
| they almost always cause a short circuit when
| connecting/disconnecting. Usually that is neglected for audio
| signals because the power is quite low and devices have
| respective protections, but if you would use it for charging...
| stillsut wrote:
| I went car shopping this year in the new market and found that
| that if you want more a "dumb" car (UX occurs primarily outside
| of a touchscreen, no internet, no geolocation) you lose all
| potential for any nice non-smart features. So no heated/powered
| seats, no power windows, the material of the interior is
| refurbished from a spirit airlines airplane, etc.
|
| I think manufacturers are hoping that certain aspects of the
| modern auto become "can't live withouts", e.g. bluetooth, which
| helps them smuggle all the other more marginally useful, security
| and ux intrusive features into your model. Now as others have
| mentioned, these unwanted smart features might actually be
| required by law/regulation/tax-credit/legal-dept, so it's not bad
| programming/design but "design by committee" that's dooming our
| chances of a good dumb car.
|
| I wonder how well my car will age when miscellaneous sensor all
| over the car start failing. It used to just show a light on your
| dashboard, now I wonder if I'll be grounded - stuck in park - or
| hounded by incessant bells repeating the same spurious warning
| over and over again.
| fingerlocks wrote:
| Did you look into Subaru? They are still using physical
| controls for all car functionality. You can get heated seats,
| heated steering, stereoscopic lane keep assist & adaptive
| cruise control, etc. There is a touch screen, but I only use it
| for Apple Car Play.
| CodeAndCuffs wrote:
| Same for our 2021 Mazda crossover. Lcd screen but no touch
| screen. Just a spin/tilt/press knob for media/settings.
| Climate control is a dedicated physical panel. It was a big
| selling point fornus
| kenhwang wrote:
| Mazda is the only major auto manufacturer that seriously
| prioritizes driving ergonomics over tech gimmicks/cost
| savings. But gimmicks sell better.
| olyjohn wrote:
| My mom's Subaru has all the heating and seat heating controls
| on the touch screen. It's a 2022 model, so either it's
| changed to that, or it's part of a certain package. Also,
| it's one of the worst touch screen systems I have ever seen.
| frankgrimesjr wrote:
| Sadly, Subaru are also starting to slowly move controls onto
| a touchscreen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFbZ3nkhcRQ
| asdff wrote:
| I was a fan of subarus until around 2007-2008 when the
| interiors took a nosedive and never really recovered. A 35k
| car like a wrx shouldn't have panel rattle like a 14k economy
| car, but it does. Also the paint on the knobs tends to wear
| off fast.
| acheron wrote:
| Sounds like this varies based on model and year? My 2020
| Ascent is like this, with the touchscreen only for
| radio/CarPlay (and backup camera), though there is a physical
| volume knob (yikes, touchscreen volume control would be a
| nightmare). But I've heard other Subaru owners say more
| things are integrated. I'm not sure it's strictly increasing
| by model year either, maybe they added some and then went
| back to physical controls later in some models?
|
| Anyway, yes, Subaru should be a possibility, but obviously
| research the specific model first.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > I wonder how well my car will age when miscellaneous sensor
| all over the car start failing.
|
| That's just it, the tech is making the cars less reliable. Will
| all of these bespoke parts be available in 10, 15, 20 years? I
| would hate to have to dispose of a working car because the dead
| now obsolete chip on the bespoke LCD dash module shaped like
| the cars dashboard is no longer in production. I had cars who's
| odometers didn't roll 100k miles until they hit 15 years. I
| have a 2002 van that has 102k miles on it.
|
| > Now as others have mentioned, these unwanted smart features
| might actually be required by law/regulation/tax-credit/legal-
| dept, so it's not bad programming/design but "design by
| committee" that's dooming our chances of a good dumb car.
|
| None of that requires LCD dash boards, tablets, touch screens,
| phone home, internet, subscriptions, etc. Everyone is just high
| on the concept of rent seeking and perpetual cash flows. They
| hate the fact that you buy something and walk away from them.
| They want you on a leash like a dog and they've been doing a
| damn fine job leash training you and your children.
|
| Opinion: Mandated lane keeping and other lane keeping/self
| driving safety garbage is papering over the failure of the
| human race to govern itself. The people who I see swerving all
| over the road are either selfish assholes who insist on playing
| with phones/speeding while piloting a 3000+ lb machine or
| people who should not be driving at all. Now we have TV
| commercials that show people diddling touch screens while
| driving. We have failed.
| sho_hn wrote:
| Note that "cars are getting less reliable" is a gut feeling
| that many people have, but largely isn't backed by real
| metrics.
|
| When's the last time you saw a broken-down car by the side of
| the road, and is this happening more or less often than 20
| years ago?
|
| Do you think cars require more or less upkeep and maintenance
| than 20 years ago?
|
| Yes, cars do have some new components that have introduced
| new failure modes, and some of those may be doing worse than
| others. But as a whole, cars have improved.
| antod wrote:
| _> When 's the last time you saw a broken-down car by the
| side of the road, and is this happening more or less often
| than 20 years ago?_
|
| The same? Cars 20yrs ago were already very reliable
| compared to say 30-40yrs ago. And breakdowns observed 20
| yrs ago were mostly cars that were aleady old then.
|
| If I see a broken down car now (which is rare anyway), it
| could almost be age from 30+yrs old to new. There doesn't
| seem to be a pattern with age. Adjusting for 20yr old cars
| having 20yrs more wear and tear, you would expect a pattern
| correlating with age. I wonder what todays cars are going
| to seem like in 20yrs?
|
| Note: I'm not in the US or Europe, so my observations of
| the car population may be different to those that are. My
| cars have usually been 15-20 yrs old Japanese models,
| bought cheaply 2nd hand, mostly neglected, but still very
| reliable machines.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| I think overall you're right but I suspect the
| proliferation of luxury electronic features has subjected
| higher class slices of the population to more failures than
| they saw before. In 2004 these people bought Camrys and
| drove them uneventfully. The base car hasn't changed but
| now that car has half a dozen switches and motors in both
| front seats the failure of any one of which requires it to
| be fixed. If the lever in your '04 was finicky you just
| pulled/pushed slightly harder and were not the wiser.
| greedo wrote:
| Backup cameras are mandated in the US now, so that requires
| an LCD screen on the dash.
| grapescheesee wrote:
| Am in the only one who turns and looks back, out the
| window?
|
| I had 20 plus rental cars last year and very few had tech
| features I would ever pay for.
|
| Lane assist with adaptive cruise are the only notable
| features for long drives. I did enjoy the red dash
| notification Toyota has. Totally caught me off guard the
| first time however, I tried out the ABS.
| bluGill wrote:
| That is actually not as good as it sounds. Your body
| cannot twist a full 180 degrees, so while you can see
| right behind you and out the passenger side, anything
| coming from the drivers side is not possible to see.
|
| It takes some getting used to, but once you learn to back
| via mirrors you won't want to twist around anymore. You
| do need to check behind the car beforehand because you
| cannot see directly behind you and thus might hit
| something on the ground. However you get much better
| visibility to things that are moving from the side to
| behind you, and that in my experience is where the danger
| is most of the time.
|
| I do favor backup cameras though. They show you things
| you would miss either twisting to look backwards, or
| looking in the mirror.
| vel0city wrote:
| A child can stand behind my car and looking out the rear
| window I would not be able to see them. I get _more_
| visibility from my backup cameras and radar sensors on my
| modern cars than I did on my 2000 Accord.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| Once I got my first real backup cam, I was instantly
| sold. I don't blame the regulators from requiring it,
| because it's such a huge, obvious win. Especially in
| parking lots, the camera has a vantage point at the back
| edge of the car that no mirror will give me, so I can see
| someone walking or driving down the aisle before I start
| to pull out.
|
| The other thing I'd like to see more or less mandated is
| blind spot warning. I especially like the kind that is
| visible to other drivers. I don't even have it on any of
| my cars, LOL. I just like to see it on other cars that
| I'm passing.
|
| Lane assist I am ambivalent about. I had AP, it was okay.
| It does not drive as defensively as I do, however, which
| meant that it increased my tension on long drives rather
| than reduce it. I do like _good_ adaptive cruise however.
| That means no phantom braking :).
| waynesonfire wrote:
| No it doesnt. My subaru has it in the rear view, where it
| belongs.
| greedo wrote:
| Toyota had that when I looked at the Tundra in 2012. The
| image is far too small (postage stamp size) to really see
| what's there.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| It's nice if you don't want a touch screen, but a bigger
| screen makes a very noticeable difference in how usable
| the camera feed is.
| Vrondi wrote:
| Already, around 5 years ago, I had a small repair (tranny
| fluid filler tube replacement) done at a transmission shop.
| When I arrived, I walked in to hear the owner cursing Ford,
| because the part required for a 10-year-old Mustang was no
| longer made by Ford, but also not yet made by any
| aftermarket. The shop had to custom-fabricate the part
| themselves.
|
| This will only get worse. Look at how many smartphones don't
| get security patches after 2 years.
| bdamm wrote:
| That's a bit much.
|
| Not everyone has the aptitude for good, calm driving. That
| might make them excel in other areas of life, just not at
| driving safely in traffic. Has humanity failed because we
| provided them transportation? No, but we have an open
| challenge to provide transport and allow these (really, all)
| people the freedom to mentally engage with something else
| that they deem more important than the chore of driving
| safely.
| dntrkv wrote:
| > these unwanted smart features
|
| Only within the niche HN-type tech crowd. Most people outside
| of this group want these features, even other techies,
| including myself.
|
| It's the same discussion on any thread involving smart devices.
| People want this stuff, that's why there have been over 200M
| standalone smart speakers sold.
|
| As far as why these things get bundled, that's just how auto
| manufacturing works. Every unique configuration costs an
| additional overhead to the OEM. Bundling allows them to reduce
| this overhead.
| adamrezich wrote:
| my dad has been trading his truck in every few years for as
| long as I've been alive. every time he would get new bells
| and whistles to play around with and it made him happy. his
| last truck trade-in, two years ago, was miserable. the new
| Ford truck had all kinds of shit he'd never use like a wi-fi
| hotspot and such, but with all these new doodads came more
| points of failure--he took it to the shop to get something
| fixed multiple times per week for a few weeks before selling
| the truck and getting a more simple & reliable SUV instead.
|
| people want fancy bells & whistles in their vehicles right up
| until it makes them a maintenance nightmare--you want your
| car to _just work_ , like they largely used to.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| I do like bluetooth, power seat memory, 360 cameras, etc. But
| please, for the love of usability, don't bury all of the HVAC
| and Audio controls in a touchscreen menu. I want real knobs
| and buttons for all of that stuff. Even Volvo, a company
| focused on safety, moved nearly all of the HVAC controls to
| their touchscreen.
| kspacewalk2 wrote:
| Nah. Most non-techies I've talked to about this are very
| frustrated with the move to touch screens and "smart"
| features they never use. This is particularly true, basically
| universal, among people over 50.
| klyrs wrote:
| As a techie, I _hate_ touch screens replacing what should
| be tactile buttons /knobs/switches that can be used without
| taking my eyes off the road. I don't mind them for a nav
| system. But, in many cars, they've stripped the radio and
| A/C controls and put them behind menus in a touch screen
| which has a dozen other screens that I never use. I don't
| care about all that garbage. I _need_ to be able to adjust
| the A /C and the radio without taking my eyes off the road.
| And I don't need a default-always-bright screen in the
| cabin messing up my night vision. I was glad to find _that_
| setting buried in a menu somewhere, but holy crap.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > Most people outside of this group want these features
|
| Most people have little idea what features they have, besides
| the obvious ones. Read through some of the features listed
| for a car - some aren't even explained.
| sho_hn wrote:
| I'm always surprised how defeatist and negative the tech
| community's attitude towards computerized UX in cars is.
| Often the opinions are simplistic and dismissive instead of
| zooming into the details. It's similar to when onscreen
| keyboards in phones where "obviously never going to work"
| when now, most people probably wouldn't want to give up the
| screen real estate for a hardware keyboard, except even more
| one-note.
|
| I find it much more true that most car software simply isn't
| very good yet on average. Let's say most existing
| implementations of touch UIs in cars don't add value and are
| cumbersome to use, for example - but that just means they're
| individually badly realized, not that it's not worth trying.
| And in reality, it's also a much more nuanced "depending on
| the use case and the situation" or "impacted by bad
| performance".
|
| There are quality differences out there. And there's plenty
| of use cases in cars that benefit from a thorough software
| approach. This is an area with interesting problems to solve
| and plenty of innovation left to happen, and where hard and
| good work makes a mark.
| chucksta wrote:
| Then they are charging their buyers 30k to beta test, and
| leaving buyers with no other option, which, I don't think
| most people are comfortable with. I think it's easily
| identifiable to the HN crowd, because most readers are very
| familiar with this process and the discomfort it can cause.
|
| Then you add on the argument of what they are doing with
| the information, and if they can be trusted..
| sho_hn wrote:
| everdrive wrote:
| > It's similar to when onscreen keyboards in phones where
| "obviously never going to work" when now, most people
| probably wouldn't want to give up the screen real estate
| for a hardware keyboard, except even more one-note.
|
| I absolutely hate my screens keyboard, and wish I could
| just buy a phone with a real physical keyboard. I get so
| angry trying to use this thing. It's far less useful than a
| regular keyboard.
| bonestamp2 wrote:
| The big difference between cars and smartphones is that you
| can focus all of your attention on your smartphone screen
| to use it. That's not true for the driver of an automobile.
|
| The best automobile interfaces use knobs of different sizes
| and with different textures so that you can find them
| without looking. Buttons should be arranged in rows, so
| they are easy to find with a short look. Extremely common
| buttons should be located on the steering wheel. Etc.
|
| Until screens can offer some kind of dynamic tactile
| experience, where you can feel what you're about to
| control, they can't be better than real tactile buttons and
| knobs.
|
| Don't get me wrong, I love a big screen in my car for
| advanced features (360 camera, vehicle settings,
| navigation, music, etc). But the basics need to be tactile.
| sho_hn wrote:
| That's kind of what I mean: The discussion always starts
| and too often ends there. A couple of thoughts:
|
| - Already in the pre-touchscreen, button-dominated area,
| plenty of more complicated use cases had terrible UX, and
| in many cases touchscreens have made them much easier.
| For example, do you remember how difficult it often was
| to program radio presets in 80s head-units? There were a
| lot of real clunkers there.
|
| - There's plenty of newer use cases that would be hard or
| impossible to make easy with traditional hardware button
| UX, such as route and EV charge planning.
|
| - Good software offers many possibilities to avoid
| interactions altogether, or make them single-step instead
| of multi-step. A good screen-based system will now often
| suggest interactions pro-actively and situationally at
| the top-level of the system and reduce interaction to a
| single multi-modal (touch/gesture/speech) confirmation on
| what used to be multi-step processes.
|
| - Screens _can_ offer tactile experiences - most recently
| with the introduction of screens that can do permanent
| haptic feedback via electrostatic friction coefficient
| modulation, emulating different surface feels as the
| finger moves.
|
| - You already mentioned features such as 360 degree
| cameras: If nothing else, screens are great for _showing
| information_. Interactions aside, this alone has a lot of
| legs left and there 's absolutely quality differences
| between good and bad implementations.
|
| - There's absolutely nothing wrong with a good physical
| button (on the contrary - few things are more satisfying
| than a good, solid, weighty button) and having both for
| use in the appropriate situation. It doesn't mean there's
| no possible benefits from further investment into good
| car software.
|
| I feel a lot of this is rooted in first-hand experience
| with bad systems - which I agree are plentiful, and just
| as awful as a bad, clunky, unrefined phone onscreen
| keyboard. Dare to imagine a good one.
|
| Working on car systems means getting to own the form
| factor and the entire surroundings of a user, much more
| than working on software targeting rarely-changing phone
| and PC devices. It's an open field for software and
| hardware innovation and deserves a little more
| professional excitement and ambition to do it well.
| bahmboo wrote:
| I think that's the point and also what sho_hn is saying.
| There's nothing inherently wrong with screens and touch
| controls it's that the car companies have done a truly
| terrible job in implementation. We have lots of tech
| including haptics and other feedback to make these
| interfaces work far better for humans that isn't being
| taken advantage of. On the other hand a great
| counterpoint is the story of the Mac Touch Bar. (I'm a
| software person who also works on cars)
| mavhc wrote:
| The problem is hardware people can't write software, nor
| can they put in decent hardware so the software is fast.
| Nor make it secure.
|
| That's why people buy Teslas, they're a software company
| that makes hardware on the side. And participates in hacker
| challenges, offering cars to the winners.
|
| No one actually wants cars with no computers, they just
| think they do because they don't realise how much computers
| do, like reduce the amount of wires by 10x, and output
| error messages on the level of a crappy microcontroller
| instead of maybe a flashing light if you're lucky
| throwawayboise wrote:
| No, I really want a car with no computers. I want analog
| gauges, a real gear selector lever, and switches and
| knobs for other accessories. A tactile environment that
| doesn't demand my visual focus to use is what I want. I
| have no need for a computer in my car, and to the extent
| I do, my phone is perfectly capable.
| karaterobot wrote:
| The only data I have is anecdotal, but I ask people about
| this all the time. Some people seem to like the _idea_ of an
| infotainment system, or rely on it for car trips with kids,
| but I have not heard any _drivers_ who prefer touchscreens to
| physical controls.
|
| I know that I, personally, love having a backup camera, but
| don't need or a screen for anything else, and would prefer
| physical controls for most things. Unfortunately that's not
| an option in most vehicles, so I am kind of coming to the
| conclusion that my next car will be an older model that's
| "dumb", since this is an overall better experience.
|
| I don't think you could use the number of sales of cars with
| this kind of UI as evidence that people like it, since (the
| article mentions this) car manufacturers want to put it
| everywhere, regardless of popularity. It's got so many
| benefits from their side. It's not that I think they forced
| it on people, I think it was originally a cool novelty that
| people were excited about. But, after the novelty wore off,
| and a lot of people stopped wanting it in their cars, the
| industry had so fully committed to it that people just don't
| have the option to do without it these days.
| prova_modena wrote:
| I'm going to push back on this statement, as I spend my day-
| to-day more immersed in the non-techy car world than in the
| HN tech world. I see a lot of frustration with new tech
| features among car reviewers and enthusiasts. You can read
| almost any car-related social media forums and see ire
| directed at stuff like complicated touchscreen-driven
| interfaces and flaky emergency braking systems. I also know
| many older folks who simply ignore and avoid all these tech
| features that now come standard on luxury vehicles. Anecdotal
| evidence, I know, but I don't think there's widespread
| acceptance of this stuff as you imply.
| leetcrew wrote:
| the world of car reviewers and enthusiasts is also a bubble
| that's pretty far removed from what typical car owners care
| about. I care about hard buttons, analog tachs, manual
| transmissions, etc., but most people I know really don't.
| they are somewhere between complete apathy and genuine
| appreciation for all the new tech features. mainly they
| just want some form of awd crossover that makes them feel
| safe.
| sklargh wrote:
| There are a fair number of reviewers out there
| (Catchpole, Savagegeese) who are starting to savage some
| of this stuff. Physical buttons are a safety feature.
| NikolaNovak wrote:
| It's an interesting differentiation strategy though, and while
| cars are becoming more and more similar along some axis, there
| is a distinct different segmentation between manufacturers.
|
| When shopping for minivans, they all "have" comparable
| features. But
|
| Manufacturer A base model has no advanced safety features; you
| need to buy $10k of leather seats and chrome highlights to get
| them.
|
| Manufacturer B offers a $2k safety pack to any and all levels.
|
| Manufacturer C simply has those same safety features across all
| levels.
|
| Similarly, features such as Android/Apple Car/Auto play; or
| Sirius XM; etc. The bundling strategy is completely different
| across manufacturers.
|
| For us, the last three practical family cars we bought (as
| opposed to cars of desire:), were hugely influenced by which
| manufacturer had a bundling/segmentation/feature strategy that
| worked for us.
| tessierashpool wrote:
| adding a backup cam is like $20, dude. it cost me a little more
| to put Bluetooth, Apple CarPlay, front and rear dashcams, and a
| touchscreen into my 97 Honda, but it still wasn't an
| unreasonable amount. my other car's a 97 BMW (with far less
| miles on it, well under 100K) and I'll do a slightly more
| deluxe version of all the same upgrades once the weather gets
| nice.
|
| of course both my cars have power windows. the Honda interior
| is nothing to write home about but the BMW's all leather and
| wood. neither has heated seats, but I don't really need them
| where I live, and if I did, I'd just buy them on eBay.
|
| it'll get harder in future, of course, but for now, if you want
| to skip all the excess computation in modern cars, all you have
| to do is know a little bit about cars. it's not rocket science.
|
| what I'm really looking forward to is when electric vehicle
| aftermarket conversion kits become more common. you can find
| them for certain models already but it's very early days.
| loudthing wrote:
| In the US in May of 2018, a federal law went into effect saying
| all new cars require a backup camera. This means that there
| needs to be an LCD screen visible to the driver for the camera.
| This is sort of a slippery slope as far as feature creep. Now
| that you have this screen, aren't drivers going to expect to
| see something on it 99% of the time when they aren't backing
| up?
|
| Actually this leads me to realize why some automakers like Ford
| integrate the screen into the rear view mirror, so when it
| isn't on, it disappears behind a one way mirror.
| ctf1er wrote:
| I bought an aftermarket camera that's like ford's, but it
| just slips over the old mirror. Thing is great, shoots 4k and
| is not integrated to the car's system. Also has voice
| commands, so its super easy to use the real mirror or any
| other functions. Screen in the mirror is the way.
| culopatin wrote:
| Are you saying that you're watching 4K video from your rear
| view camera in a 1.5in screen or it's a dash cam?
| giantrobot wrote:
| > In the US in May of 2018, a federal law went into effect
| saying all new cars require a backup camera.
|
| This law actually says that if a car can't meet a prescribed
| rear visibility threshold it needs a backup camera. Instead
| of make safer designs manufacturers just install cameras.
|
| But I don't disagree manufacturers are using screens as an
| excuse to add superfluous bullshit they'll then use for data
| mining. See USC 2342 Unintended Consequences, Law of.
|
| My favorite part of backup camera is manufacturers that put a
| warning overlay on the video telling you to watch your
| surroundings. An overlay that eats up some significant
| percentage of the screen occulting potential hazards you
| might otherwise see. I for one can't wait for the backup
| camera to display ads in the lower third. If they take up
| enough space manufacturers could make a mint selling personal
| injury and insurance ads.
| i_am_proteus wrote:
| note: 'proscribe' means to prohibit and 'prescribe' means
| to require
| giantrobot wrote:
| Thanks, fixed it. Don't want a misspelling to affect the
| effect of my statement.
| zepto wrote:
| My 2012 volvo has a reasonably large LCD that is used for the
| backup camera, and infotainment etc.
|
| However, I have it set to screen saver mode, and it is
| completely powered down until I put the car in reverse. It
| also wakes for certain things like displaying the temperature
| if I change it with the real knobs.
|
| The Speedometer and Rev counter are physical needles. Newer
| models have replaced these with a central LCD, which means I
| will hang onto this one as long as I can.
|
| There is no reason a car can't have a display _and_ be
| humane, other than stupid corporate design sensibilities.
| julianz wrote:
| Yep, my 2009 Volvo has a popup screen that can be pushed
| down into the dash. I like it because I almost never use
| the reversing camera, but on the rare occasion I want to
| it's available. The rest of the car is all physical
| controls.
| waynesonfire wrote:
| My subaru has a tiny screen built in to the rear view. Its
| great. Anything else would be a downgrade.
| olyjohn wrote:
| Actual rear visibility would be an upgrade. Cars don't seem
| to come with that anymore.
| throwawayboise wrote:
| Wind tunnel engineering.
|
| Cars do not have large upright rear windows anymore
| because a sloping "fastback" design with a higher rear
| deck is more aerodynamic and gets an extra fraction of an
| MPG on the fuel economy rating.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| I'm not so sure this is entirely due to fuel. A
| Volkswagen Golf with great fuel economy still has a big
| rear window and an FJ Cruiser has a tiny one and chugs
| gasoline. Many of the cars don't actually have dramatic
| tapering roof lines, what they have is rising belt lines
| which cut into the window space.
| secabeen wrote:
| Large pillars to hold airbags are also a big consumer of
| window space.
| asdff wrote:
| Not all cars have such high beltlines that make you feel
| like you are driving a sherman tank. American cars seem
| to have these issues more than imports. Maybe its a way
| to shirk around some crash testing metrics by deferring
| to less visibility than to offer more visibility and
| potentially spend more engineering something just as
| strong?
| adhesive_wombat wrote:
| My theory with the XC60 refresh with its huge, high,
| flat-top, snub-nosed bonnet compared to the old sloping
| one is that all that extra volume is for the fancy
| double/hybrid engines and so on.
|
| Or maybe people just like to feel like their car is a
| rhino, but the same refresh also slightly lowered the
| roofline and the driving position feels lower too.
|
| The other down side is that my wife always shouts that
| I'm going to crash when parking nose-in because the
| bonnet feels twice as long as it really is.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Larger windows mean more cooling and heating needed, and
| high window sills especially on sedans are needed because
| of how insanely high SUVs and trucks are these days,
| because people need to overcompensate.
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| While you're not wrong, that's just the current trend of
| people preferring SUVs to cars.
|
| The "slope" back design seems to hit this sweet spot.
| Ease of entry, versatility, and capability while not
| appearing to be a "beast" of a vehicle.
| asdff wrote:
| The prius has this fuel efficient design and opted to
| just give you more window on the back of the car anyhow.
| vb6sp6 wrote:
| symlinkk wrote:
| It's not some grand conspiracy lol, it's just that they bundle
| features together to save on costs. Henry Ford did this a
| century ago by only offering the color black.
| starwind wrote:
| I looked at new Audi's last year, and my main thing was I want
| physical gauges on the dashboard. The sales guy looked at me
| like I was from Mars and then showed me the stripped versions
| (which were, I gotta say, pretty nice)
|
| I wonder how much all the screens have contributed to the
| increase in accidents in the last couple years
| giantg2 wrote:
| I did sort of miss losing blue tooth when switching to a newer
| work truck from a muscle car that had it. But it hasn't been an
| issue. I don't miss any of the other feature enough to pay for
| them (no key fob, no power seats, etc; but it has power windows
| and locks, so that's nice).
|
| The quality of tactile representation and response on the
| knobs/buttons are not as good as my old 89 caprice was. But
| that's true of all cars today.
| Vrondi wrote:
| Pretty easy to add this aftermarket.
| giantg2 wrote:
| I don't care enough to add Bluetooth. If I do anything,
| I'll add a backup camera.
| JoshuaDavid wrote:
| If you have a cigarette lighter that you use as a USB
| charger, they make cigarette lighter bluetooth-to-radio
| adapters which also have usb slots for about $20. Set your
| car radio and the adapter to the same frequency, and your car
| now has bluetooth.
| soylentcola wrote:
| Mine's on a used Fit. Lighter port has a little 2x USB port
| permanently plugged in. One USB to phone's charging cable,
| the second powers a little BT receiver (and that has a
| 3.5mm audio out to the front input of the basic "dumb"
| factory stereo).
|
| I did have to spend 5 min setting up some little adhesive
| wire straps to bundle the little cables out of the way, but
| total cost was maybe $25-35 for the USB power adapter and
| Bluetooth rx. Granted, it wouldn't have been necessary if
| so many phones didn't ditch the dedicated audio output, but
| at least it wasn't an expensive workaround.
| ArtemZ wrote:
| krnlpnc wrote:
| There are many cases where aftermarket versions of these
| features will perform as good or better than the OEM version.
| Granted, it's extra work to research and install them, but the
| end result can be great.
|
| Personally, I will research used cars with top end factory trim
| packages, looking for models with either a DIN sized radio slot
| or readily available aftermarket upgrades.
|
| By double checking for compatibility ahead of time you can then
| retrofit carplay, bluetooth, etc. into a "basic" car, for
| example: https://gromaudio.com/vline/index.html
|
| I also prefer to shop for used cars because I see them as more
| "stable" than new cars.
|
| What I mean by that is, major flaws in the model/year have been
| reported and ideally fixed (but are at least known) in the
| years since release. Common issues/symptoms and repair details
| are much easier to find online via forums, etc. after a car has
| been around for a few years.
| buscoquadnary wrote:
| So I wanted something like this when we were looking for a
| minivan I don't trust smart devices or vehicles as that's just
| one more thing that will break.
|
| So we found a van didn't have those things but my wife insisted
| on BT and a backup cam. So we negotiated with the dealer and
| they were able to make a deal with us to have their shop
| install a backup cam and Bluetooth for cost, and we love the
| van ever since.
|
| My point is that a lot of features can be put in the car after
| market and you don't have to deal with having to buy the whole
| upgraded package.
| Vrondi wrote:
| You can aftermarket this with a simple replacement rear-view
| mirror/camera kit. Easy-peasy. Or an aftermarket car stereo/
| camera kit.
| jjav wrote:
| > I wonder how well my car will age when miscellaneous sensor
| all over the car start failing.
|
| I predict that 50 years from now there will be more functioning
| cars from the 1960s than from the 2020s. With the combination
| of quickly obsoleting technology that won't be fixable and
| overly interconnected electronics that become impossible to
| diagnose after a while, there's not much hope for current and
| future cars to be anything but disposable.
|
| Old mechanical cars though, can be kept running essentialy
| forever by just someone with access to a machine shop and some
| patience.
| beerandt wrote:
| It's really ashame that we'll never see versions of those
| mechanical cars combined with the manufacturing precision and
| quality control available today.
|
| Sure there are one-offs and some drop-ins available, but
| they'll never get dialed in the way cars do after a year or
| two of mass production.
| jjav wrote:
| > It's really ashame that we'll never see versions of those
| mechanical cars combined with the manufacturing precision
| and quality control available today.
|
| The car that makes me cry a little every time on the what-
| could-have-been topic is the Honda CRX HF. 54 MPG in 1988.
| Most cars can't match that today over 30 years later.
|
| If Honda was allowed to do a modern version with some use
| of carbon fiber for even more lightness and all the
| advances in fuel injection tuning and engine manufacturing,
| surely we could have a ~70+ MPG CRX by now.
| pengaru wrote:
| Well-built cars are fundamentally durable, long-lasting
| machines.
|
| So of course manufacturers are eager to sneak in anything to
| make a car seem "worn out" and in need of replacement sooner
| than later.
|
| What's frustrating is there seems to be no shortage of willing
| buyers eating this crap up, apparently looking forward to
| replacing their vehicles in lockstep with their other consumer
| electronics.
| tablespoon wrote:
| > I think manufacturers are hoping that certain aspects of the
| modern auto become "can't live withouts", e.g. bluetooth, which
| helps them smuggle all the other more marginally useful,
| security and ux intrusive features into your model.
|
| I think that implies nefariousness that probably isn't there.
| It's more likely a combination of:
|
| 1. Marketing/sales wanting whiz-bang features to use in their
| pitches.
|
| 2. Copycatting competitors, also for marketing/sales pitches.
|
| 3. Customers that are often not aware of the downsides, have
| been conditioned to accept them (e.g. they'll all like that
| now), or are uncritically enthusiastic about shiny new things.
|
| 4. Lazy design thinking, of the kind that causes Mozilla to
| drop good features from Firefox.
|
| 5. Cost cutting, of the kind that causes almost all companies
| to consistently choose to make their products marginally worse
| over time (e.g. lets not pay for feature X, since the users can
| use a cheaper awkward workaround instead).
|
| Personally, I think we should have some federal standards for
| car UX: a required set of standard physical controls for
| commonly used standard functions (e.g. car operation, climate
| control, audio entertainment) and plus minimum standards for
| screen UIs (e.g. touch sensitivity & accuracy, UX latency,
| etc.).
|
| While I'm wishing, cell modems and other data transmitters
| should be required to be separately fused, and that the car
| should be required to operate without annoying error messages
| if that fuse is pulled.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Coupling bluetooth to all sorts of unnecessary stuff as part
| of a "technology package" was the mantra for Euro car
| manufacturers for a decade or so until bluetooth became
| something people expected, no matter what.
| LeifCarrotson wrote:
| It definitely fails Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to
| malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." As
| long as you assume "stupidity" to include stupid things about
| the mathematics of our universe like coordination problems,
| design by committee, and the tragedy of the commons...
|
| There's a very slow, very week feedback loop that may be too
| weak at the moment to fight against this trend: the customers
| who are dealing with and worry about perpetual sensor
| failures and computer issues at 150,000 miles are not the
| same customers who are buying the car off the dealership lot.
| Meanwhile, the people with brand new vehicles are not worried
| about those problems, they're only slightly (and only long
| after it's too late) worried about the eventual resale value.
| I trust that my old Toyota and Subaru will still be
| dependable and repairable for many years, but I won't buy an
| old BMW or Mercedes because my family and coworkers have too
| many horror stories of expensive, exotic gadgets that have
| gone bad in mysterious ways.
|
| But we're 40 years removed from the bad old days of the 80s
| and 90s when those imports were decimating the lethargic Big
| 3 in quality and cost, which is more like the time scale on
| which consumer attitudes like that began to be formed. 2018
| laws regarding rearview cameras are really new in comparison
| to a cultural thing like that.
| nerdponx wrote:
| I can only imagine that there is some financial interest here.
| By forcing people to bundle in high-margin techno-junk, they
| can raise the overall profit margins cars relative to cost of
| living / inflation. That, and/or maybe there are high-value
| corporate partnerships involved.
| prova_modena wrote:
| You're right, car dealers/manufacturers do use options
| packages to increase profit margins by bundling less popular
| high margin features with more popular ones. The number of
| brands that let you spec out a new car using a truly a-la-
| carte selection of options has shrunk, and is now mostly
| confined to the ultra high end brands (which make huge
| margins on everything anyway).
|
| However, it's not a new phenomenon, manufacturers and dealers
| have done this with "luxury" or "sport" features for a long
| time. This has usually meant adding stuff like alloy wheels,
| different interior trims, better speakers etc. The difference
| now is the huge amount of complexity that modern "smart"
| features bring.
| asdff wrote:
| The old notion that sensors always go bad in cars was never
| really accurate. People would see a check engine light, get the
| code read and see it says "O2 sensor" and replace the O2
| sensor. Then the code happens again, they say "That damned O2
| sensor on this stupid car" and replace the O2 sensor again.
| Rinse and repeat until you get a new car.
|
| However, I'm willing to bet the O2 sensor was actually giving
| the correct read and was working fine, and the source of the
| issue is probably well upstream of the O2 sensor.
| Tade0 wrote:
| I saw an O2 sensor go bad in my car. Only difference
| comparing to a brand new one was that the reading was
| changing very slowly.
|
| No check engine light though.
| amelius wrote:
| > And besides being non-functional, these interfaces are even
| ugly! The type, the layouts, and animations scream "designed by
| committee and approved by someone who doesn't have to use it."
|
| The main problem is that the car manufacturer has a monopoly on
| selling you features and updates after you have bought the car.
| hoppla wrote:
| I see this problem in other things too. I wanted to buy a radio,
| but the only option I have is an boxed in android phone running
| apps and a DAB receiver.
|
| I only need two functions, a knob to change channels and one to
| adjust volume. If I need to play music, some aux input would be
| nice - that's it!
| benlumen wrote:
| Here you go: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Panasonic-2400DEB-K-
| Portable-Radio-...
| bdamm wrote:
| There are some very cheap handheld FM radios. What's the
| problem?
| hoppla wrote:
| FM has mostly been replaced by DAB where I live. But that is
| not the point. The point is that the industry is incapable of
| making a simple and good DAB radio. As the only (afaik)
| country in the world who have transitioned to DAB, there are
| little incentive for radio manufacturers to create decent
| radios.
| arealaccount wrote:
| Get a motorcycle and be one with your vehicle!
| rabuse wrote:
| This is exactly what I did recently. No more "you need to take
| this to the dealer to fix for thousands with their
| machine(tm)", and I can replace every single component on the
| thing my damn self. The less parts, the less that can fail.
| suyash wrote:
| Modern sports bikes are marching towards the same future - self
| balancing bikes, fancy dashboards, electric bikes with no motor
| etc.
| bobthebuilders wrote:
| How can the bike not have a motor? Or like no motor in the
| engine sense.
| suyash wrote:
| Just like electric cars don't have a motor, another word
| for motor is transmission in the common parlance.
| vetinari wrote:
| Electric cars do have motor; "motor" is literally
| "engine", the thing that converts energy to motion.
|
| If your parlance uses it for the transmission, your
| parlance is wrong. It is like calling square a circle.
| hardolaf wrote:
| You also get to become one with the road in case of an
| accident.
| [deleted]
| blamestross wrote:
| Low end pickup trucks targeted for commerical use are pretty
| dumb.
|
| Mine is a 2016 Nissan Frontier and it only has a backup camera
| (which is honestly needed with a camper top).
|
| It has 1 door-key-hole, no power windows or power locks, and an
| aftermarket stereo.
|
| As a software engineer, I feel much safer in it than a car with
| more sophisticated computer controls XD
| devoutsalsa wrote:
| I'm currently driving a Fiant Panda w/ a manual transmission. It
| has basically no features. Bluetooth, cruise control, and that's
| about it. I'm loving it. The only thing I wish it had was four
| wheel drive, and maybe a holder for my cell phone when using
| Google Maps.
| herbst wrote:
| I hate my panda mostly because the built in radio is only
| displaying directory names for the far majority of my music
| collection.
|
| I wasn't aware that 16000$ worth of car comes with the music
| hardware straight out of the 90s
|
| Mine is 4 wheel and came with a mobile holder. So there is that
| :)
| maxdo wrote:
| Typical retrograde article with a narrative I wish everything be
| like in good old days with no connection to reality.
|
| The main message is super pathetic.
|
| It claim simplicity but yet targets ICE car. The amount of parts
| in ICE vs any complicated EV is at least 3 times less. Sometimes
| more. So you just shift the complexity of running and driving
| super complex combustion engine towards your safety and comfort
| in EV and still car is 3 times simpler.
|
| 1. So one of points was no GPS. Who want to rely on your phone to
| know if you able to make to the charging station? What if you
| forget your phone and you're in the middle of highway deep in the
| forest?
|
| 2. Music. That's not even fun. Aux oh, yeah, how about ~1 billion
| people with iphone that doesn't have Aux. What if I want to play
| my music from my apple watch? And good luck managing several
| bluetooth devices with no screen. And what if some people doesn't
| want to rely on their device for such a basic thing as music?
| Really wiring your car with cords to charge your phone, connect
| aux, mount the phone is the way to make your car simple???? Are
| you serious?
|
| 3. Manual seat control. It seems like every argument in article
| is a denial of " i hate opinion and need of other people, I want
| my particular car". If 2 people or more own the same car, they
| want to adjust it automatically, including mirrors. I bet most of
| them will be happy to seat in a car, it read their profile from
| phone in the pocket, adjust seats temp etc including while
| driving out from drive way. That's already done in tesla
| including doors. No clicks at all. Screen is used when you need
| to change predefine settings. Even that can be altered via voice.
| Btw using voice is also more safe.
|
| 4. Climate control zoning. Same thing. How about people want it
| blow differently with different temp not for a different average
| temp in the cabin but for different feeling.
| quattrofan wrote:
| lbriner wrote:
| I didn't think it bothered me until I read this and then thought
| of the biggest gripe with my Skoda Octavia and that is when the
| auto-start doesn't start in traffic and I end up on the receiving
| end of the beeping of obstructed drivers!
|
| The specialist garage doesn't know what's wrong and I don't hold
| out much more hope for the main dealer who _should_ know best but
| I 've met people who work at main dealers.
|
| What is annoying is that it seems to try to start and sometimes
| immediately stops like a stall. If you press the brake and let
| ago, it will try again but after this it tells you to restart the
| car so you have to move the transmission back to park, turn the
| key with your foot on the brake and then move back to drive to
| pull away. As you can imagine, this takes longer than it takes
| for the person behind to beep their horn. It makes it worse
| because I am usually looking down when it all kicks off so the
| people think I am not paying attention.
|
| I can disable the auto-stop but it gets enabled when you go into
| Eco-mode so you have to remember this in traffic before the panic
| begins.
| lgvln wrote:
| You can try shifting the steering wheel a little right before
| you're about to go. The car will sense it and attempt to
| restart the engine. That might give you a little more time to
| restart the whole car if it fails to restart automatically.
|
| On another note, are you seeing significant gains in fuel
| economy while running on Eco-mode?
| Grustaf wrote:
| 100% agree, I hate smart cars, touchscreens, beeping all the time
| for inscrutable reasons and taking over the steering wheel when
| you cross a line on the highway without using the indicators.
|
| As soon as I can afford it, I'm getting one of these. Electric
| and no-nonsense:
|
| https://bollingermotors.com
|
| EDIT: Oh no, they are changing directions and will focus on
| trucks instead!
| thatfrenchguy wrote:
| I think the author is just becoming old? Like who mounts their
| phone on the car anymore on a new car?
|
| My 2020 Kona Electric has a pretty intuitive and responsive
| touchscreen, buttons for climate control, and CarPlay is nice to
| use? All the smart driving features like emergency braking and
| lane centering have saved my butt multiple times as well.
| lukemunn wrote:
| Interesting to see a few posts on HN recently advocating for
| 'dumb' and 'boring' tech. I'd actually been working on an article
| on 'dumb technology' along the same lines. Comments welcome.
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/358248465_Dumb_Tech...
| throwaway946513 wrote:
| I bought a 2022 Subaru Impreza Sport Hatchback last year in
| September.
|
| 5 Speed Manual Transmission Heated Seats Cruise Control SXM Radio
| All-wheel drive
|
| No turbo to consume oil, no software to control the car. The
| Radio has Android Auto, and some software updates available for
| some nice 'radio features', like showing you the news, weather,
| sports information, etc. Never used it.
|
| I still own a 1999 Isuzu Rodeo, safety and gas mileage were my
| reasons for getting the Subaru, as well as my desire to modify
| the Isuzu.
| tbdenney wrote:
| The last vehicle I owned about 15 years ago was a late 90's
| model Rodeo and I absolutely loved it. I hope you take yours
| out for a spin every now and then!
| throwaway946513 wrote:
| I love mine, and refused to trade it for the Subie.
| Unfortunately, the transmission is leaking, and the engine
| burns oil pretty excessively. Plan is to swap the engine and
| transmission out of a manual Subaru Outback or Forester and
| make it a more weekend oriented SUV.
| clvx wrote:
| More than making a dumb car, make the right to
| repair/replace/upgrade in case the car maker stops supporting the
| service; otherwise, this calls for planned obsolescence.
| mab122 wrote:
| I would recommend checking out Dacia and Lada (coincidentally now
| both are now under Renault group)
|
| https://www.renaultgroup.com/en/our-company/our-brands/dacia...
| https://www.renaultgroup.com/en/our-company/our-brands/lada/
| otherme123 wrote:
| Lada is known for its low reliability. Dacia seems to be in a
| more gray area, sometimes scoring well above average, sometimes
| below.
|
| I know someone who had a Lada Niva, and he got stranded because
| a low quality pipe joint blew. True, the repair was extremely
| cheap, and it could probably be temporarily repaired with a
| hose and two zippers. Are you a mechanic that can locate and
| fix those kind of failures? Then Ladas are for you. You can't
| tell apart the windscreen fluid from the blinker fluid? Your
| Lada will spend more time in the repairshop than on the road.
| mab122 wrote:
| My opinion so far is that a lot of people buy Ladas (Niva to
| be exact) with expectation of it being an offroader. It is
| not. It is a SUV and when used like usually SUVs are - it
| isnt as unreliable as some people make it.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| I picked up a Dacia Sandero a year back, seems pretty well-
| made. Very low-tech too, even has crank windows in back.
| mab122 wrote:
| I think they are around the "good-tech" level, similar to
| late 90's / early 2000 cars. Just enough to get you going
| economically and comfortably but without tech intruding
| your ride with some infotainment, updates or window slide
| button in some weird place or with touch control.
| kunai wrote:
| That's quite interesting, as many of my friends in post-
| Soviet countries all rave about how you can run Ladas into
| the dirt and they'll keep running. Luck of the draw perhaps?
| [deleted]
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| Dacias have gotten surprisingly good, yes. The initial models
| were... dubious, to say the least, but the recent offerings
| have had an amazing cost/quality ratio. Hell, their EV
| offerings are some of the best on the market.
| jhoechtl wrote:
| I wonder how much weight we could save by leaving out exactly the
| things the author mentions.
|
| BTW budget cars sold in Europe like certain Dacia models are
| still pretty basic, yet with efficient and modern (ICE) engines.
|
| I have even head Dacia does not in EVs.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| I don't mind having a smart car, in fact, I like most of the
| "smart" features - lane centering, adaptive cruise, emergency
| braking, TPMS, lane change cameras, auto headlights, auto wipers,
| etc.
|
| But I want buttons and knobs for everything I use while driving.
|
| I probably wouldn't pay extra for built-in navigation (it
| generally comes with other options that I do want), but I've
| found it useful a few times when I was outside of cellular
| coverage.
| temporallobe wrote:
| Mercedes and Mazda have this in many of their models -
| mechanical rotary dials and real buttons for common controls.
| pcurve wrote:
| Mercedes 'had' this. But their newer models are going in
| wrong direction.
| drivers99 wrote:
| > But I want buttons and knobs for everything I use while
| driving.
|
| My Subaru Impreza has a physical power/volume knob but it won't
| do anything when you start the car and then shift to reverse
| (to back out of the garage). It's like it's dedicating its
| resources to the rear view camera and doesn't have any cycles
| to handle the input events on the control knob. Also it decides
| to turn on the radio even if you weren't using the radio when
| you turned off the car. So, you have to listen to the radio
| blasting (at whatever the volume was when I got there, which
| might have been different media with lower volume such as a
| podcast) while you back up (might be a good time to be able to
| hear instead) until a few seconds after you shift to D. At that
| point, it processes the queued up inputs from the knob and will
| suddenly turn down or off depending on the inputs.
|
| I would prefer it to be a variable (logarithmic, because that's
| how audio perception works) resistor directly controlling the
| amplifier or whatever, like radios used to be.
|
| I love adaptive cruise. I use it 90%+ of the time. But this is
| also one more reason that I hate cars and will probably sell it
| soon. But I'll still have to deal with similar issues if I rent
| a ZipCar or something.
|
| It falls into a larger category I've been thinking about a lot
| lately about how a lot of problems with technology these days
| is due to the difference in how the desires of software
| creators and those of users diverges and creates those
| problems. I'm leaning towards suggesting that everyone needs to
| write their own software, using shared knowledge, not just use
| software that other people wrote for you.
| rcpt wrote:
| ACC and LKAS on our 2019 Honda is so awful I simply can't use
| it.
|
| When someone crosses 3 lanes in front of me ACC will hit the
| brakes hard to maintain the correct distance. It's jolting and
| scary.
|
| LKAS only sees about 80% of the lanes. Rather than just driving
| like normal which I'm experienced with I have to sit there
| paranoid that something will go wrong and I'll need to react to
| a surprise event.
|
| I don't know if it's the idea or the just the implementation
| that I hate. Am considering comma.ai
| Johnny555 wrote:
| I love ACC in my 2020 accord (which is the same generation as
| your 2019). I've never had it hit the brakes hard enough to
| be jolting, even when a car changes into my lane.
|
| The LKAS is hit and miss, like you said, unless the lines are
| very clearly visible, it can't stay in the lane. I wish it
| looked at the car ahead to help with lanekeeping. But it's
| never surprising when it loses sight of the lane markers
| (though it does tend to drift to the right at exits, but it
| doesn't make a sharp move). But even in its current state,
| LKAS is great for long freeway drives.
| cmil15 wrote:
| Surprised to hear that. The ACC on my 2019 CR-V is the best
| adaptive cruise control I've used, a lot smoother than ACC
| I've tried in substantially more expensive cars. I agree the
| LKAS is pretty crappy (off of highways, it seems closer to
| 60% of lanes), but I've never experienced anything with it
| that's caused actual problems. The crappiness just comes from
| it frequently not knowing where the lane is, but I leave it
| on at all times for the times where it does recognize them.
| rcpt wrote:
| I've never tried other ACC so it might just be me.
|
| The specific situation is this: I live in Los Angeles and
| set ACC for max following distance on the freeway.
| Inevitably this means that someone will use that space to
| cut across 3 lanes and, as soon as do, ACC will rapidly
| slow me down to put distance between me and the new lead
| car. I'll find myself suddenly under 50 on the freeway as a
| result. maybe that's just how ACC is but imo the PID
| controller or whatever could be toned down a bit.
| enigma20 wrote:
| If all smart features would work perfectly, I wouldn't mind
| either. But. - lane centering - in some cars for whatever
| reason drives to close to middle of the lane - emergency
| breaking - false positives sometimes. I was overtaking a
| cyclist, and although I kept lots of distance as the opposite
| lane was completely free, it made my car slow down a lot.
| Luckily nobody was behind me - tmps, it's fine till sensors
| work or detected properly - auto headlights - sometimes they
| are late, and drivers coming from opposite side are made.
| Hopefully matrix led will be better - auto wipers - the worst
| of the worst! Either too slow or too fast. Or not detecting the
| drizzle. WTF. Really, the best was the old school knob, which
| just turned right/left and allowed full control over the
| interval
| rsync wrote:
| See my response to your parent, upthread - and the
| accompanying ( _and very compelling_ ) seminar about
| automation dependency in airline accidents.
|
| _Please_ drive your car.
| marstall wrote:
| yes. totally agree. I LOVE adaptive cruise control, but also
| love/need the ability to work the music and environment
| selection buttons - switch stations, switch cds, change
| sources, turn heat up down etc - with just an instantaneous
| glance followed by touch only.
| tessierashpool wrote:
| yeah, touch controls are wildly underrated right now.
| there'll be a comeback sooner or later.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| My Honda Accord is pretty good with this -- it has a lot of
| smart features, but also has buttons for pretty much
| everything I need (real clickable buttons or knobs, not touch
| sensitive buttons that give no tactile feedback)
|
| The voice response system is horrible, if I have to use the
| Honda navigation, I almost always need to stop so I can type
| in my destination. But since I use Android Auto 99% of the
| time, it doesn't really bother me.
| [deleted]
| deltree7 wrote:
| https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/03/23/strategy-letter-iv...
| shawn-butler wrote:
| Smart cars will most likely go the way of intrusive
| surveillance smart TVs.
|
| Are the features worth it?
| rsync wrote:
| "I like most of the "smart" features - lane centering, adaptive
| cruise, emergency braking ..."
|
| _Please_ drive your car.
|
| I don't care what choices you make wrt bluetooth or heated
| seats or iphone integration ... but if you can't be bothered to
| _drive the car_ then perhaps a different transport option would
| be a better choice for you.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ESJH1NLMLs
|
| "... as we look at this accident history what we find is that
| in 68% of these accidents, automation dependency plays a
| significant part ..."
|
| "... automation dependent pilots allowed their airplanes to get
| much closer to the edge of the envelope than they should have
| ..."
| Johnny555 wrote:
| I'm not sure that aviation automation is directly comparable
| to the current state of driver assistance features.
|
| You should be more concerned with what I'm doing bluetooth
| than whether or not I let the car keep a safe following
| distance from the car in front of me since if I'm in a heated
| discussion with my ex on the phone, I'm paying a lot less
| attention to the road than I should be, and I'd be better off
| letting the car do most of the driving.
|
| None of the driver assistance features I listed above allow
| hands-off driving, if ACC fails, my car will slow down, or
| maybe get too close to the car in front of me, but since I've
| already got my hands on the wheel and looking ahead, it's not
| a big deal.
|
| The poor state of automation for most cars actually ensures
| better driver attention -- LKAS works around 80% of the time
| on the freeways. If it worked 99% of the time, I'd be less
| focused on driving.
|
| But even looking at airplanes, even if automation is
| implicated in some portion of accidents, is that worse than
| if pilots have to actively fly the entire time and end up
| exhausted by the end of a cross country flight when it comes
| time to land and they need to be at their best.
| ngngngng wrote:
| https://vanderhallusa.com
|
| Here you go. I see this companies cars driving around sometimes.
| mdturnerphys wrote:
| Thanks! I wonder how I haven't heard of this before.
|
| Edit: Just saw that the Brawley is off-road only. It doesn't
| meet DOT standards. That would probably explain why I haven't
| heard of it.
| ngngngng wrote:
| The company makes a few other cars, most of them extremely
| quirky with only a windshield to protect you from the
| elements. But depending on the climate you live in, they do
| indeed make some street legal "dumb cars"
| JasonFruit wrote:
| I was very happy until I saw that they're not street-legal.
| ngngngng wrote:
| I've fixed the link, the one car I had linked previously was
| a new offering of theirs that was only for off road use.
| tsujp wrote:
| One thing I was flabbergasted at recently was Tesla offering, and
| the government allowing, regular drivers to use a yoke steering
| wheel like F1 drivers. Not only is it harder for the average
| person to handle but their firmware hadn't accounted for the fact
| that if you steer fully left or right the yoke is upside down and
| if you try and indicate it ends up indicating on the wrong side.
|
| What is wrong with a wheel and function stalks?
|
| Gimmicks like this, and they are gimmicks, are dangerous and it's
| concerning no regulator seems to care enough to stop it.
| baxuz wrote:
| And all the buttons on the yoke are touch sensitive. That makes
| absolutely no sense for a control device.
| raxxorrax wrote:
| You rarely need to reverse F1 cars and if you do you probably
| have bigger problems. A round wheel does make so much more
| sense and is far more comfortable to handle.
| viburnum wrote:
| The steering wheel in an F1 car only goes about 220 degrees in
| either direction (drivers have to keep their hands on the wheel
| and their arms aren't made of rubber). The steering in a
| regular car goes about 540 degrees in either direction (one and
| a half times around). When parallel parking you often have to
| turn the wheel three whole revolutions.
|
| F1 steering https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVz6IW_wegs&t=45s
|
| Tesla steering
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWtJu0q3sBQ&t=44s
| yakshaving_jgt wrote:
| I am stunned. I am _never_ buying a car that decides for me
| if I should be going forwards or in reverse. How did this
| anti-feature go through so many supposedly smart people? Does
| PHB work there also?
| laputan_machine wrote:
| Touch-based buttons feels like a huge step backwards. Have we
| learned nothing from having to use touch phones for the last
| 12 years, either that or everyone is much better than me at
| not missing touch inputs
| iforgotpassword wrote:
| And everyone wants to be part of that cool touch movement
| too, by using capacitive touch buttons. So modern! And
| cheaper too, but that doesn't stop you from marketing it as
| premium. Try buying a stove with induction and normal
| knobs. Nope, it's touch. Cheap touch buttons, that don't
| work if your hands are wet, or greasy. Which totally never
| happens when you're cooking. So you're handling three pots,
| one starts boiling over. With knobs it would take me half a
| second to turn it off. With my awesome induction stove I'm
| stuck on mashing the button to select the proper field with
| my greasy hand which doesn't work, but at least when
| finally half the pot's content flows onto the touch
| controls the stove turns off entirely and starts beeping
| like crazy. But at least it's easier to clean than haptic
| controls.
| yellowapple wrote:
| Not to mention that if you're wearing gloves you're
| screwed.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Touch controls on stoves are mostly about making cleaning
| easier. You just wipe a flat surface.
| tpxl wrote:
| I'd like to introduce you to my grandmother's flat
| surface stove from the 70s with 0 touch controls. It's
| easy, just decouple the controls from the heating
| element.
|
| 3/4 of the reason they're touch is being 'cool' and none
| of the designers ever cooking a meal in their life.
| vel0city wrote:
| Messes go further than just the heating element. Things
| splatter, run over. Even with controls on the face of the
| range (not always practical) you may need to clean them
| from messes.
|
| Its definitely easy to clean my entire range being a flat
| piece of glass, and personally I've never had any
| problems with sensitivity on the buttons. Plus, that
| whole cook top is then still useful as a counter top as
| even the glass is only slightly raised over the rest of
| the counter surface. In my experience the glass top range
| I have has been wonderful, and I was originally planning
| on tearing it out and putting in a gas unit. I've since
| second guessed those plans and will probably keep the
| range for a while longer, no knobs has actually been
| pretty nice.
| izolate wrote:
| They can be done well, think about the Haptic Touch home
| button in the iPhone 7/8. I'd be happy with something like
| that on the steering wheel.
| asdff wrote:
| I'd rather have an actual button. The haptic touch
| doesn't always trigger e.g. if your finger is sweaty or
| wet. The button on the other hand always works. I've
| broken just about everything on old iphones but never
| that home button. When it comes to driving a car the
| buttons should always work, not just under ideal
| situations.
| asdff wrote:
| I literally grew up along side ios and I still struggle to
| select text, copy, and paste. It's just a fundamentally
| crappy interface.
| k3liutZu wrote:
| Really seems Tesla is regressing a lot of _important_
| controls :(
| llbeansandrice wrote:
| That second video is horrifying. Horn and signal inputs as
| touch buttons on a steering wheel and no clear gear
| selection? What absolute madness by Tesla.
| flavius29663 wrote:
| how is that Tesla even legal?
| esalman wrote:
| it makes a mockery of so many absurd rules other
| manufacturers in the US have to follow. Really raises
| question how Tesla get away with these.
| function_seven wrote:
| Your second video _horrified_ me. What the hell are they
| thinking with the touch-sensitive inputs on the steering
| wheel? Nevermind the weird shape and the issues with
| orientation when signaling during a steering maneuver. Those
| aren 't actual buttons, they're no better than a touch
| screen.
|
| When I drive, my hands aren't always in the exact same
| position on the wheel. Muscle-memory won't reliably have my
| thumb landing on the correct signal direction. If I have to
| honk the horn, I need to be able to do that instantly,
| without thinking. Some cutesy icon located away from the edge
| of the steering wheel will guarantee that the horn sounds
| simultaneously with the "crunch" of another car backing into
| me.
|
| My proposed rule-of-thumb: If a video game company wouldn't
| design their controllers this way, you shouldn't do it either
| for the most common--or most urgent--functions. Turn signals,
| wipers, horn, and hazard lights should all be real buttons
| that are in a consistent location. Horn should be in the hub
| of the steering wheel.
| Eji1700 wrote:
| Glad i'm not the only one who thinks this is insane. I
| could maybe see a yolk, but dear god get me AWAY from touch
| screen style buttons in any serious process, let alone ones
| that can wind up in different orientations.
|
| And why in the hell does a yolk need to have the horn on a
| button rather than the center of the yolk as anyone would
| expect? Maybe there's some technical reason i'm unaware of,
| but this seems actively dangerous for no gain. I can think
| of several better ways to do this that aren't actively
| confusing and hostile to the driver.
| unityByFreedom wrote:
| > And why in the hell does a yolk need to have the horn
| on a button rather than the center of the yolk as anyone
| would expect? Maybe there's some technical reason i'm
| unaware of
|
| No you're right, it's change for the sake of change. It
| is now a status symbol to show off how well you drive a
| vehicle whose management is more challenging than other
| cars.
| rand49an wrote:
| I feel like that is a cost decision. Instead of making
| the whole centre of the wheel a button you assign it to
| some capacitive button on the side.
|
| But I agree, that second video is insane.
| inimino wrote:
| > yoke
|
| Used to turn the plane.
|
| Also put on oxen to pull a plow.
|
| > yolk
|
| Yellow part of an egg.
| spinitch wrote:
| Yeah I was thinking, "a yolk steering wheel does sound
| pretty dangerous."
| awhitby wrote:
| The horn thing doesn't seem like that big a deal
| actually. I've never used the horn in a potential
| accident situation because there's always something
| better I could be focusing on to avoid the accident. As
| pilot say: aviate, navigate, then communicate. [0] Some
| studies seems to support that [1].
|
| The only accidents I can imagine the horn preventing are
| ones where you are stationary, which almost always means
| the other car is moving slowly - like somebody backing
| into you in a parking lot. Overall pretty low consequence
| incidents.
|
| So to the extent that horn use is nearly all elective
| rather than emergency, is antisocial and has few
| benefits: make it a small, hard-to-reach button.
|
| (With important exceptions like heavy vehicles that can't
| maneuver well and non-Western driving cultures that rely
| on routine horn use to communicate intentions.)
|
| [0] Granted aircraft have an extra dimension to play in
| for collision-avoidance. [1]
| https://slate.com/technology/2008/11/honk-if-you-know-
| why-yo...
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| They don't give you a massive "hey WTF, stop doing that!"
| button for you to not use it in blind religious adherence
| to a shallow rule of thumb or misguided attempt at
| politeness.
|
| People with your attitude toward horn use likely cause
| substantial harm to society through fender benders,
| delays, frustration, etc, etc.
|
| I think I can maybe count on one hand the number of times
| I've had to move out of a lane lest someone merge into
| me. The times that situation has been prevented through
| horn use are innumerable. And that's just one example.
| CaptainZapp wrote:
| > Those aren't actual buttons, they're no better than a
| touch screen.
|
| Your comment fondly reminded me of my very first computer,
| which was a Sinclair ZX81.
|
| Let's just say that it wasn't ideal for text processing.
|
| About the same as this "steering console" doesn't look
| quite ideal for driving a fucking car.
|
| I concur with your horrification.
| function_seven wrote:
| And you just reminded me of my first computer. An Atari
| 400.
|
| The 800 had real keys, but the 400 was just a membrane
| keyboard. Didn't matter; we only used it to play video
| games anyway.
|
| I can't imagine having to type on that thing.
| darksaints wrote:
| Holy shit, everything about that Tesla experience is a
| nightmare.
| noduerme wrote:
| I think these gimmicks and the new touchscreen UI serve a
| purpose for Tesla. Their goal is to make the car so divorced
| from human input that (1) it becomes increasingly reasonable to
| claim that an unfinished self-driving system is no more
| dangerous than a human in the loop, and (2) their fan base is
| conditioned to accept the eventuality of having no meaningful
| input (or feedback) at all. As for part two, I noticed it a
| couple years ago with a relative who bought a Tesla and was
| still just awed by its features. But all the ones he was awed
| by were the ones that took power away from the driver. I
| wondered then, why would anyone want to own this car once it
| really does all the driving for you? No one will actually _own_
| a Tesla at that point, they 'll just call one on an app. Except
| for maybe a few silly people who want to feel like they're
| telling it what to do with a joystick.
| [deleted]
| esalman wrote:
| Tesla is basically the 2000s prius. It is cool now, but in near
| future won't be anymore.
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Pretty much everyone who clogged up the left lane in the '00s
| in their Prius is still doing the same thing today but in a
| Tacoma or 4Runner. The specific model of blind adoration may
| have changed but the fanboys still line the same pockets. If
| that is any indication Tesla will do just fine.
| esalman wrote:
| Toyota are doing fine because of their reliability. Can the
| same be said about Tesla?
| throwaway0a5e wrote:
| Toyota has a brand image and they design, market and sell
| to that image.
|
| Tesla has established a brand image based around a
| different set of attributes and they design, market and
| sell to it.
| esalman wrote:
| I like that. It will be interesting to see how
| sustainable their brand image is in future given those
| attributes.
| cultofmetatron wrote:
| I have an early 200s Prius. Its seen better days but the
| battery works and I can't argue with the fuel savings. it
| costs me about $30 to fill up and that lasts me for about a
| month.
| esalman wrote:
| I own two Toyotas myself ;) An 8 year old Corolla that I
| only occasionally drive, but it never fails to take me from
| point A to B; another is a new and exciting Highlander
| hybrid which I only need to fill once every 500 miles.
| throwaway_4ever wrote:
| You've got that backwards. Prius weren't cool all the way
| until 2014, around the time environmental status symbol
| transferred to EV's and the used Prius started becoming very
| economical. Certain half of the political spectrum wouldn't
| be caught dead in them before hand and every other Hollywood
| movie had a cringy joke lambasting or praising them. Now
| they're just seen as a reliable financially savvy vehicles,
| not very "cool", but more popular now that regular people
| would have no problem driving them.
| esalman wrote:
| I am referring to the early 2000s when half the Hollywood
| celebs were driving Prius [1]. Prius carried the hype about
| hybrid cars back then the same way Tesla is doing now for
| EVs.
|
| [1] https://www.autoweek.com/news/a2082556/starring-role-
| hollywo...
| asdff wrote:
| 2000s priuses were very cool amongst the aging boomer-hippy
| population. When they first came out it was a big deal to
| be in the school pickup line with your prius. You probably
| also shopped at organic grocery stores like whole foods
| (before the AMZN purchase), and just transitioned from
| pilates to yoga. Southpark even made an episode about the
| phenomenon.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| Just like everything done by Tesla: they have absolutely no
| experience in making cars, and it shows really badly. Terrible
| construction quality that I don't even experience on a 10k EUR
| Dacia, touch screens everywhere (it's already bad enough when
| it's just the radio or Android Auto, but a bunch of critical
| features are on the touch screen), the yoke having no physical
| feedback and clearly no thought other than "wow futuristic"
| behind it.
|
| Smoke and mirrors is Tesla's way of operating. Look at the
| coverage they got out of the yoke. Out of FSD. It doesn't
| matter that they are terrible: there'll be 100 articles about
| it releasing and 2 about it being a bad idea.
| alexvoda wrote:
| Tesla should really stick to making electric drivetrains and
| branding and let someone else design and build the rest if
| the car.
| asdff wrote:
| Honestly a lot of cars are ugly. Look at what they've been
| doing to BMWs lately. Safety features combined with an
| unwillingness to look very different from the rest of the
| pack anymore have created these designs by committee that
| are not truly terrible where they won't sell but also not
| very good where people will look to them as a piece of art
| like an old aircooled porsche.
| quartesixte wrote:
| Elon is weirdly good at getting regulators to just let him do
| things.
|
| FSD beta. The yoke steering wheel. Like a quarter of everything
| SpaceX does.
|
| Does he just have really good lobbyists? Is his force of
| personality just that good? It's kind of fascinating.
| bengale wrote:
| I'm interested to know how he's going to get away with that
| truck that looks like its designed to cut pedestrians in
| half.
| darkstar999 wrote:
| I don't understand why this is an argument against Tesla -
| how is it different than any other large truck?
| throwaway946513 wrote:
| Front bumpers of most cars/truck are generally plastic
| and can at least absorb energy of an impact with a
| pedestrian (albeit the hood is often near neck high and
| can snap their neck)
|
| Tesla paraded their new truck with 'stainless steel body
| panels all around'. I don't know about you, but I've
| banged my shin into a steel tow hitch. I don't want
| anything remotely close to that on the road.
| darkstar999 wrote:
| That doesn't make sense to me. I watched some pedestrian
| crash test videos, there is no energy absorption by the
| bumper. It's bad news to be hit by any car. (I'm no Tesla
| fanboy)
| throwaway946513 wrote:
| Most pedestrian crash tests are at low enough speed that
| there isn't visible energy absorption, plus most dummies
| aren't equivalent to most human scales. They tend to be
| modeled after a 6' adult male at around 200lbs.
|
| The bigger issue with larger vehicles is their height
| around people current full size or even mid-size SUVs and
| trucks have gotten larger than their former variants.
| You're much more likely as a pedestrian to get run over
| than to be hit by a car and land on the hood or the
| windshield (which is by far the better position to be in
| during an accident). The crash bar behind the bumper on
| all cars have a thick layer of foam that contributes to
| the 'softness' of a bumper.
| Isinlor wrote:
| He does not have good lobbyists.
|
| Have you seen Tesla being the only company not invited on
| electric car day in white house?
|
| https://www.autoweek.com/news/green-cars/a37244461/elon-
| musk...
|
| Do you know that Tesla will be excluded from tax credits for
| EVs?
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/29/energy-secretary-defends-
| tes...
|
| Do you know that Texas where Tesla is building its next
| factory does not allow to sell Teslas?
|
| https://cbsaustin.com/news/local/texas-law-keeps-teslas-
| made...
| noduerme wrote:
| Eh, he just needs to touch up his PR when it comes to labor
| relations.
|
| > Do you know that Texas where Tesla is building its next
| factory does not allow to sell Teslas?
|
| You think you can't buy a Tesla in Texas? What planet are
| you on?
| vel0city wrote:
| > What planet are you on?
|
| Uhh, Texas?
|
| You cannot buy a Tesla _in_ Texas. Technically speaking,
| the transaction happens out of state and the car is
| shipped to you in Texas. Legally speaking Tesla has never
| sold a car _in Texas_. They have Tesla "galleries" where
| you can look at cars, take test drives, customize your
| order, and they'll help with the paperwork for you to buy
| it out of state.
|
| I don't think Texas is alone in their dealer franchise
| laws.
| Isinlor wrote:
| Yes, Texas does not allow direct sale of cars.
|
| You have to buy your Tesla out of the state and Tesla
| will deliver the car to Texas.
|
| https://cbsaustin.com/news/local/texas-law-keeps-teslas-
| made...
|
| https://insideevs.com/news/510302/tesla-no-sales-allowed-
| tex...
|
| Biden administration is explicitly designing laws to prop
| up other car companies and exclude Tesla.
|
| It's not just about labor PR, they want to force Tesla to
| unionize.
|
| But Tesla will not unionize and they will be the only
| ones without subsidies. Extremely shitty lobbing.
|
| https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/29/energy-secretary-defends-
| tes...
| tsujp wrote:
| > it's kind of fascinating.
|
| For me I'd replace that with: scary. Full size A4 paper and
| bigger screens in cars you can stream movies on while driving
| (distraction leading to accidents); the Las Vegas Loop which
| is just a tunnel for only one type of car (waste of
| infrastructure space); pushing untested AI (crashing and
| killing people). These aren't fascinating things.
| rektide wrote:
| I don't like the pedestrian killing murder-machine aspect
| of their vast In Vehicle Entertainment systems at all. The
| Vegas Loop tells such a strong tale though, to me, of
| control over infrastructure itself, in a vulgar & horrific
| way.
|
| Just like Tesla's charging infrastructure! Can you imagine
| if you had to find a Ford or a Toyota gas station to fill
| up at? This world used to be able to get along, to find
| general welfare. Cooperation used to exist. Tesla keeps
| being more and more an example of anti-cooperative anti-
| civil market-capture horseshit. A car no one else can
| repair, with it's own charging infrastructure, it's own
| roads: this screams "THE ENEMY" to me. It's the most
| capitalist-lowlife Lawful Evil behaviors writ large here,
| on display: vulgar & primitive exercises in dominance, with
| no pretense that there's space for anyone else in the
| world, no sense in leaving any room for any one else on the
| planet.
| ggreer wrote:
| Tesla's charging is different because they created their
| charging infrastructure before anyone else. The first
| supercharger was built in 2012. Despite Tesla open
| sourcing their patents[1], other EV manufacturers used
| different standards. Also Tesla is starting to let non-
| Teslas use their superchargers.[2] All Teslas can use
| other charging stations, though they'll charge slowly.
| Newer Teslas (since late 2019) have support for the high
| speed Combined Charging System standard and Tesla is
| rolling out CCS adapters.[3] Lastly, most EV charging
| happens at home using level 1 or level 2 systems, which
| are standard NEMA plugs that Tesla sells adapters for.
|
| If Tesla's goal was to lock-in their customers and
| exclude other vehicles, they seem to be doing all the
| wrong things.
|
| 1. https://www.tesla.com/legal/additional-
| resources#patent-pled...
|
| 2. https://www.tesla.com/support/non-tesla-supercharging
|
| 3. https://driveteslacanada.ca/model-y/tesla-ccs-adapter-
| activa...
| ggreer wrote:
| > Full size A4 paper and bigger screens in cars you can
| stream movies on while driving (distraction leading to
| accidents);
|
| Teslas will only let you watch videos if you're in park.
| This has always been the case.
|
| > the Las Vegas Loop which is just a tunnel for only one
| type of car (waste of infrastructure space)
|
| It cost $50m to construct, which is 1/5th the cost of
| similarly-specced people movers or trains. The second-
| cheapest bid was by Doppelmayr/Garaventa Group and would
| have cost $215m. The loop has met or exceeded all of the
| benchmarks set by the Las Vega Convention & Visitors
| Authority.[1] The program has been so successful that LVCVA
| purchased the Las Vegas Monorail system just so they could
| get rid of the monorail's noncompete clause and allow a
| larger Vegas Loop to be constructed.[2] Later, Clark county
| unanimously approved construction of the Vegas Loop, which
| is planned to have 51 stations and 29 miles of tunnel.[3]
|
| > pushing untested AI (crashing and killing people)
|
| No vehicle running the FSD beta has been involved in a
| death. You're talking about the autopilot features, which
| are a form of traffic aware cruise control. Many of the
| claimed fatalities turned out to be reckless drivers. For
| example: a fatal crash in Texas last April originally
| blamed autopilot and claimed that it was "100 percent
| certain" that no one was in the driver seat at the time of
| the crash.[4] The preliminary NHTSA investigation found
| that the driver was in the driver's seat, had not buckled
| his seat belt, and had pressed the accelerator to as high
| as 98.8%. (This was in a 778 horsepower Model S that could
| go from 0-60mph in 2.4 seconds.) NHTSA investigators could
| not engage autopilot on the road where the crash happened,
| since that road had no lane markings.[4] Also the owner of
| the vehicle had not purchased the the option to allow
| autopilot on surface streets.
|
| There are many legitimate criticisms that one can level at
| Musk & his companies, but you haven't made them.
|
| 1. https://www.reviewjournal.com/business/tourism/boring-
| co-s-t...
|
| 2. https://www.reviewjournal.com/business/tourism/lvcva-
| expecte...
|
| 3. https://twitter.com/ClarkCountyNV/status/145087718777979
| 6992
|
| 4. https://www.theverge.com/2021/4/19/22391890/tesla-
| driverless...
|
| 5. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/driver-was-behind-
| wheel...
| parkingrift wrote:
| I've not seen any evidence that the yoke steering wheel is
| dangerous. The downside that you're describing can only happen
| at zero or near to zero speed. BMW doesn't even install turn
| signals at all so I think the occasional errant turn signal is
| fine. The reason the NHTSA hasn't "forbid" the yoke is
| because... it isn't unsafe, it's just stupid.
|
| It would be significantly less stupid if it had physical
| buttons on the steering wheel.
| otterley wrote:
| > BMW doesn't even install turn signals at all
|
| I realize there's a joke in Germany about this, but to be
| clear, all passenger vehicles sold in the U.S. must have
| working turn signals. See https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg
| /CFR-2004-title49-vol5/xm...
| aetherspawn wrote:
| I generally didn't agree with the article.
|
| I have found that my Toyota Corolla Hybrid has about the right
| mix of smart and dumb (in terms of dials and knobs), and again in
| disagreement to the article .. I love my digital speedo! It's
| high up on the dash and closer to the road, compared to my old
| space-wasting meters that were more difficult to read.
|
| And the concern about the GPS in our cars invading our privacy..
| this would really only concern a certain type of paranoid person.
| Most people don't care. I certainly prefer the fully integrated
| GPS, that dims the radio and such whenever I need to do
| something. Removing it certainly won't make any car fly off the
| shelves! Bad analysis.
| KennyBlanken wrote:
| Most people have no idea that their car with telematics
| features (ie Onstar or similar) is almost constantly reporting
| their location and a slew of parameters back to the
| manufacturer.
|
| This is true _regardless of whether you have a telematics
| subscription._ The subscription just enables the stuff you can
| actually use.
|
| Manufacturers are monetizing that information, selling it to
| anyone who wants to buy it. I know someone that worked for a
| company using said data to try and enhance weather reporting
| (the data reported back includes outside air temperature,
| headlights, windshield wiper status, etc.) They were receiving
| data from multiple manufacturers.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| My country's market is dominated by second-hand Japanese
| imports, a lot of the integrated navigation / entertainment
| systems are entirely useless if you're not driving in Japan, or
| can't read Japanese.
|
| When my 2005 Mazda MPV suffered a flat battery, the centre
| console screen which was the navigation / radio / clock / DVD
| player (yes, really) was bricked, and to this day displays a
| message in Japanese asking you to please insert the
| manufacturer's navigation data CD to continue using it.
|
| Which no-one has access to, not even in Japan (my brother has
| been living there for about ten years, and is very helpful for
| obscure parts requests), so now my radio and clock don't work,
| because I don't have a CD with data needed for a 16 year old
| navigation system that, when working, was thoroughly convinced
| I was driving long distances on the bottom of Tokyo Bay and was
| desperate for me to turn right and get back on dry land.
| deadlyllama wrote:
| New Zealand?
|
| My Dad's old Subaru Legacy used its display to show Japan
| rotating around as we turned corners, us always in the sea.
|
| I'm onto my second 2005 Mazda MPV (they're great cars). This
| time I've replaced the head unit with one of those nasty
| cheap Android things. Basically a confused tablet with some
| extra hardware, running any mapping or other app you want.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| Haha, yep, NZ, and the 2005 MPV :D
|
| That's not a bad idea at all on the head.
| deadlyllama wrote:
| There's a good Geekzone thread on head unit installation.
| Especially useful if you want to keep the factory reverse
| camera operating. Note the camera needs 6V. Voltage
| conversion boards are ultra cheap on aliexpress or if
| you're in Wellington you could have one from my stash :)
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| Thank you for the kind offer :)
|
| I don't have a factory camera, but would be worth doing a
| third party one, the visibility while reversing is rather
| poor as soon as you get teenagers sitting in the back.
| BrandoElFollito wrote:
| I am in the group of people who think the more electronics, the
| better (alone in my family). I do not drive much so if the
| electronics break then never mind (I did not have this happening
| for 25 years and I was always looking for the most electronics-
| packed car).
|
| The situation I have today (in France at least) is that I have
| cars that are full of electronics but the UI is done by the car
| manufacturer and is horrible.
|
| My dream is to have a car where I would configure my display. In
| my case that would be a large speed indicator, the distance I can
| drive with the current gas I have, and a display where bad things
| would be displayed, as they come.
|
| What I have is a display full of things I completely do not care
| about. Temperature of the engine? The engine RPM? I completely do
| not care about these so I would like to get rid of them.
|
| I think however we are very far from that state of bliss.
| hit8run wrote:
| Author hasn't heard about car play?
| theodric wrote:
| The author's list of demands describe my 2011 Renault Kangoo II,
| a model they only stopped producing in 2021, very well. Knobs,
| analog gauges, but also a factory-installed reverse parking
| sensor. It's down-market and inexpensive, It's a very simple car,
| and also very simple to work on, as a consequence. 15000-page
| service manual, as well. Utilitarian (ex-)fleet vehicles (mine
| was a Swiss Post delivery van) might still check these boxes for
| folks.
| niklasmerz wrote:
| That's exactly why I love my ten year old BMW 1 series as someone
| who works with computers all day. It's not that old that it's
| terribly unreliable, ugly and drives bad. It's just a modern car
| with no extras and awesome driving performance. No screens
| besides two, small, orange LCDs, analogue gauges, a stick shift,
| a big not too powerful engine for such a small car and the best
| steering I ever experienced.
|
| My mountain bike is even better. Nothing electronic at all and
| only mechanical things I can fix myself. I love working on it
| more than on code sometimes.
| khazhoux wrote:
| Our Volvo doesn't let you adjust the volume when you're in
| reverse. That means if you're backing out of the garage and the
| music is blaring -- _you can 't turn it off!_
|
| The Volvo UI pops up an almost full-display warning when it can't
| connect to the phone over bluetooth on startup. This UI _takes
| priority over the rear camera_. So I guess it 's better to hit
| Timmy and his puppy when I'm backing out, so long as I know my
| phone's not connected!
|
| The Volvo's headlights have "smart" auto-adjustments. That means
| I can't leave the high beams on, or force it to stay on low
| beams. It will decide for me! I think maybe I can disable this...
| somehow.
|
| _So smart._
| chakintosh wrote:
| I'm a UX designer and I've taken delivery of an XC40 Recharge
| two months ago, and I've never felt dumber in my life.
|
| Don't get me wrong, the car is absolutely wonderful, but the UX
| is so badly designed it makes me question myself.
|
| For starters, I have absolutely no clue how to use the lights,
| fans and wipers. Just last Saturday, a design oversight (and
| idiocy from my part) caused me to reverse into another car
| parked behind me, I reversed to leave the parking spot, then
| instead of switching to D, I forgot it on R all while the
| rearview camera is showing red lines. For a car equipped with
| driving assists (collision avoidance and line assists), it
| shouldn't have let me reverse any more as it was seeing a clear
| obstacle behind me or at least make me double check by beeping
| the rearview camera, it only beeps for 5 seconds when it sees
| an obstacle then stops, same for the open door and seatbelts.
|
| There is also the odometer, there are 3 different odometers in
| the car and all of them are showing different values, one with
| a TM next to it, another one with this symbol O and a third one
| in the "Driver performance" tab. So which one is the real
| distance and what's the difference? Only the norse gods know.
|
| Also, the charge and fuel left gauges adapt to your driving by
| going up or down instead of showing you the real amount of
| fuel/charge left. And it already nearly left me stranded on the
| highway with 5km left of fuel.
|
| This car is amazing but there are a lot of design oversights
| when it comes to UX.
| jbl wrote:
| Re the odometers, in my 2018 Volvo and my Wife's 2019 XC40.
| They are all accurate, but for different purposes.
|
| 1. The standard "life of the car" odometer is permanently on
| the left gauge, top reading
|
| 2. There is one (two?) manually resettable trip odometers
|
| 3. There is an auto-resetting trip odometer - it resets when
| the car has been off for four hours.
|
| You can configure which of the second two are displayed by
| going to in-dash "app" menu and selecting what you want in
| the "Trip" tab. On my car, this configures the lower displays
| on the left and right gauges.
|
| Update Re: your high beams - It sounds like you have them on
| auto. There's a spring loaded ring on the left-hand stalk
| that engages auto vs. manual high beam. Twist it and the
| light-with-an-A sign on your dash should change to a normal
| light symbol. You can then use the twist knob with detents to
| select parking light vs. low beam and whether you want auto-
| on or manual on. High beams are engaged by pushing the lever
| (or you can pull to flash).
| tpxl wrote:
| > O or [?] is sometimes also used as a symbol for average
| value, particularly in German-speaking countries. ("Average"
| in German is Durchschnitt, directly translated as cut-
| through.)
|
| From wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%98
|
| My 2002 VW has the same and it means average over multiple
| trips. TM probably means this trip? You may have distance of
| the current trip and average consumption of the current trip
| (eg 40km, 6.3l/100km), then the last few trips with a
| combined average for those (eg 1500km, 5.4l/100km).
| iso8859-1 wrote:
| It's not necessarily typeset the same as the letter:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diameter#Encodings
| klyrs wrote:
| > it shouldn't have let me reverse any more as it was seeing
| a clear obstacle behind me or at least make me double check
| by beeping
|
| My backup camera frequently loses its shit because it gets
| obstructed by rain or snow, or sometimes paint on the ground
| fakes it out. If the only sensor is a camera, that _must not_
| override the driver. Beeping is fine. I might feel
| differently about lidar.
|
| On that topic, though... I really wish backup cameras had
| some sort of wiper.
| mwint wrote:
| I'm having a hard time understanding how "I forgot to change
| gears and then hit the gas" can be classed a UX problem.
| Sounds like PEBKAC.
| fragmede wrote:
| If there were _zero_ UX feedback as to which gear the car
| is in, it seems entirely possible for the problem to be the
| software and not pebkac. In a thread discussing that the
| manufacturer 's UX is horrible, blaming the user seems out
| of place. Of course the user bares _some_ level of
| responsibility but the UX of a vehicle clearly affects
| drivability of a car. Eg BMW 's widely derided iDrive UI.
| lacogubik wrote:
| I think what they are implying is that car with so many
| safety features should be able to handle this situation.
| Volvo has lot of "collision avoidance" safety features, so
| one would expect that they could handle this as well.
|
| This is common feature in other cars - I rented mazda few
| years back and it did automatically stop when I almost
| reversed into another car.
| salawat wrote:
| At that point, the driver really is to blame though.
| Manufacturer's job is to make things affordably; not to
| save himanity from themselves despite the ongoing
| insistance by governments that somehow the industrial
| sector should take on the onus for technically enforcing
| whatever measures that some bureaucrat sets their sights
| on today.
|
| This mentality that the car should make up for
| fundamental defects in safe driving is horrifying.
| NoSorryCannot wrote:
| Horrifying?
|
| People always have made and always will make mistakes and
| we've been using technology to avoid accidents or
| minimize the consequences of them for a long time.
|
| Technology preventing accidents is not horrifying.
|
| The trouble of regulatory bureaucracy or liability is
| adjacent but separate.
| lacogubik wrote:
| > the driver really is to blame though
|
| Yes, I know I'm responsible. I do not want/need
| car/manufacturer to be responsible, I just want
| technology to help where it could.
|
| > Manufacturer's job is to make things affordably
|
| This maybe is your opinion, but that's not how it works.
| There is plenty of manufacturer's who manufacture things
| which are not affordable and plenty of people buy it.
| Pretty much any industry has luxury segment which also
| tends to be most profitable
|
| > This mentality that the car should make up for
| fundamental defects in safe driving is horrifying
|
| Humans are imperfect. Stress, distractions, tiredness etc
| could make anyone to make mistake, even yourself. Why
| would adding safety features be horrifying?
| asdff wrote:
| Its' not some impossible ask here. My 16k yaris beeps
| then brakes the car when going forwards into an obstacle.
| Why cant a 56k volvo do the same in reverse? It
| definitely has this technology, I think its mandated now,
| but seems to me OP is saying volvo didn't bother putting
| it on the reverse side of the car. Which is a little
| bewildering that a car manufacturer might consider a
| reverse collision impossible, and makes you wonder what
| other common sense safety things they've screwed up as
| well, or opted to knowingly not include to improve their
| bottom line.
| Fatnino wrote:
| And yet, airbags are a thing.
| chakintosh wrote:
| That's actually what I meant. It's unfortunate because
| the car already has everything it needs to handle this
| situation. I admit it was an idiotic thing from my part
| to do, but still, you gotta expect better from a 56K car
| whose main selling point is safety.
| rsync wrote:
| "I'm having a hard time understanding how "I forgot to
| change gears and then hit the gas" can be classed a UX
| problem. Sounds like PEBKAC."
|
| On the one hand, it is easy to point to this as user error
| and you're not wrong.
|
| But older cars have a _significant tactile difference_ in
| operating different systems in the car. Shifting a gear is
| _very, very different_ physically than pushing the button
| for your hazards. Your body moves in very different and
| _operates_ these controls very differently.
|
| This distinction was made clear to me years ago when we
| bought a 2013 Mercedes wagon - the physical action to:
| shift to park, turn the car on, turn the radio on were all
| _nearly identical_ - just a button press. In fact, the
| buttons themselves were almost identical.
|
| So, although I never actually did this, there were a number
| of times when I got relatively overloaded, cognitively, and
| I pressed the power off on the radio in an attempt to shift
| to park. Or I pressed the park button a second time in an
| attempt to turn the car off.
|
| I believe that different subsystems in the car - especially
| life safety / critical driving systems - should have
| _vastly different_ controls that force different physical
| interactions.
| multiplegeorges wrote:
| > I believe that different subsystems in the car -
| especially life safety / critical driving systems -
| should have vastly different controls that force
| different physical interactions.
|
| Absolutely.
|
| For example, in a manual VW/Audi, you have to push the
| stick down, then way over into R.
|
| It's one of the nicest feeling gestures, makes your
| intent extremely clear, and is impossible to do by
| accident.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| It's really a hardware/ergonomics problem. The gear
| selector in these vehicles goes back to it's original
| position after you select a gear. One major problem with
| these new shifters is that it's very easy to select the
| wrong gear. Likely what happened is the driver was trying
| to go into reverse but pressed a little to hard on the gear
| shifter and caused it to go into drive instead.
|
| These shift-by-wire shifters have been the biggest step
| back in automotive design in my opinion. Used to you can
| hop in, shift gears and you can tell which gear you are by
| where the shifter is (or can at least tell if you are in D
| or R), with these new shifters there's no way to get that
| sort of feedback so you are there having to carefully
| select a gear every single time. I rented a Jaguar that had
| the same thing and it took me a few tries to get the thing
| to go into reverse because you had to hit it just right or
| else it would go into P.
| SyzygistSix wrote:
| I find this hilarious, especially since they brag about
| having "Google inside", which already sounded more like a
| confirmation to me of a dystopian timeline rather than a
| feature.
| rjsw wrote:
| The odometer problem is really strange. I have done some work
| with Volvo and they used to take a lot of care over
| preserving odometer readings across any repair work done on
| the car electronics.
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I had a rental V90 last year, and it was easily the dumbest
| smart car I've ever had the displeasure of driving. Comically
| bad in some cases. Death by a thousand cuts. Little things like
| you say, or the fact that it would blare about the front
| parking sensor detecting the wall when I put the car in
| reverse, etc. I ended up spending a few minutes going through
| all the menus turning stuff off.
| aitchnyu wrote:
| My Toyota's head unit bulldozes to reverse mode and if I was in
| reverse for 10 seconds, the song resumes 10 seconds as if its
| been playing in the background.
| asdff wrote:
| My Toyotas head unit has similar behavior issues. It will
| connect to bluetooth and start playing the song as soon as
| you turn on the car, only no music will come out of the
| speakers until you pause the song, then press play. Why do I
| have to manually "wake up" the speakers instead of the head
| unit? Probably because this software took one engineer no
| more than a week to write before it was shipped out full of
| these annoyances that would have been avoided had you, you
| know, tested out connecting a blutooth device to the head
| unit before production even just once.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Weird! My older (2007) Volvo doesn't let me change the station
| in reverse, but I can adjust the volume via a knob, or turn off
| the radio by pushing the knob/button.
|
| Hopefully the system on your Volvo can be updated to fix what
| are presumably bugs in the system!
| badwolf wrote:
| Same - I've a 2021 XC60. I can turn the volume knob, press
| the pause button, or use the volume controls on the steering
| wheel while in reverse. Just not use the touchscreen controls
| unless I press the "home" button which closes out the rear
| camera.
| xbryanx wrote:
| I get why, but my Volvo (2017) WILL NOT let me lock the keys in
| the car. Which is annoying if I'm trying to safely warm it up
| on a -15 Minnesota day and have the spare keys in the house.
| There's lots of forums detailing tricks involving rolling the
| windows down or locking the car from the back seat. I love all
| the tech automation and safety features, but at times I find
| myself befuddled by the designers choices.
| pitaj wrote:
| My 2004 Ford Escape won't let me lock or unlock the car with
| the key fob if the engine is running. So I can't warm it up
| in the morning without either risking it being driven away or
| having an extra door key for just that purpose. Ugh.
| quickthrowman wrote:
| I'm also unable to lock my 2019 Toyota if it is running and
| I'm not in the car. It's implemented this way so they can
| sell you remote start. Pity about all the car thefts that
| happen as a result of auto manufacturer greed.
| jbl wrote:
| Odd. I believe my 2018 model year Volvo allows me to start
| the car, take the key with me, and lock the doors (so long as
| I take my key fob with me).
| throwaway946513 wrote:
| I'm guessing that the parent has a physical key and the fob
| won't let them lock it.
|
| My '05 Nissan Altima let me start the engine with a
| physical key, and then lock the car with the fob.
| semi-extrinsic wrote:
| I had a rental Camaro a couple years ago that would pop up a
| notification if you were driving a bit spirited that said
| "Sport Shifting Mode Engaged" or something to that effect.
| Which was prominently displayed _on top of the speedometer_.
| artpi wrote:
| 4 years ago I bought Dacia Duster - it is a Renault-made car on
| the chassis of Nissan Quashqai. It costs $10k new, straight from
| the dealer. Mine costed 13k because I added powered mirrors,
| electric windows, A/C, and aluminum rims.
|
| When I travelled to Mexico, I've seen it very popular there under
| Renault brand.
|
| The car feels cheap, cramped, and has no discernible acceleration
| :D. It also gets the job done, is dirt cheap to repair, and has
| so much clearance you can build a whole lean startup under the
| floor.
| 0xbadcafebee wrote:
| The Bluetooth in my 2102 Scion xB's stock calculator-display
| headunit works great.
|
| I turn on the car, my phone auto-connects, and my last podcast
| immediately starts playing where it left off. I don't even know
| how it does that. I receive a phone call, and my music is paused
| and I can hit the green "pick up phone" button on the headunit,
| and I'm talking. Call ends, and my music resumes. I can pause the
| music with the "1" button, skip within a track, skip tracks, even
| thumbs-up or thumbs-down in music apps, all with a handful of
| manual buttons on a stock headunit. No "flipping menus", the
| existing buttons just work.
|
| It's amazing. It _just works._ All without any god damn embedded
| mobile operating system or fancy graphics. ... oh, and because
| this headunit has a CDROM bay, it holds my magnetic phone mount
| better than any of the stick-on or vent-grippy ones. Thanks, dumb
| car!
| account4mypc wrote:
| my car from 2010 had a screen that felt really outdated. i
| removed it and installed a bluetooth system that just has an
| on/off/volume knob. this feels a lot more modern and has made
| night driving a lot easier on my eyes.
| sinab wrote:
| What I hate about "car discourse" like this is the apparent
| blindness to public transportation. Trains, bikes, buses, and
| street cars solve almost every problem that the author complains
| about.
|
| The only outstanding problem, however, is that American
| infrastructure has been deliberately designed solely around the
| car. Those who suggest alternative modes of public transportation
| are immediately written off as "impractical". Discourse ought to
| be centered around democratizing and diversifying the ways people
| can get around, not on how one ought to "make dumb cars".
| mattlondon wrote:
| I live on London where we have "good" public transport.
|
| Yes a bus or the tube "solves" these problems of not having a
| crap UI, but they also introduce so many more and worse
| problems that don't make up for it. Expensive, inconvenient,
| dirty, late and/or slow, uncomfortable. And at least a car with
| crap Aircon controls _actually has Aircon at all_!
| loudtieblahblah wrote:
| Trains, bikes, buses, and street cars only solve urban
| problems.
|
| And I know urban environments are overall better for the
| environment, but they're not better for people's psyche.
| They're crime ridden. Theyre smog ridden. Theyre awful
| environments to live in during a pandemic.
|
| People were moving into cities until a pandemic struck and
| riots became commonplace. Then they started to leave with the
| speed in which they arrived.
| multiplegeorges wrote:
| > They're crime ridden. Theyre smog ridden. ... riots became
| commonplace
|
| Where do you live?
| throwaway946513 wrote:
| I don't know about which city or urban environment, but my
| downtown area (largest city in our state), isn't crime
| ridden, has no smog, sure there's likely more pollution, but
| with the layout of our highways and the location of traffic,
| that's all further from houses and offices than led to
| believe.
|
| The 'riots' you're thinking of took place in a rather
| racially segregated and historically significant part of my
| city that isn't downtown... Urban environments have existed
| for centuries, even millennia. Ancient cities were dense and
| had many a people within their walls.
| tinversenorm wrote:
| I think they can also solve quite a few suburban problems.
| There are many examples of other countries whose suburbs are
| connected via public transit. And many trips can be done via
| bike instead of car.
| ectopod wrote:
| Yes, but American suburbs aren't like other countries'
| suburbs. British suburbs, for example, are much denser and
| usually very walkable.
| throwaway946513 wrote:
| There are a few American suburbs that are well-walkable
| and still support automobile transport. They're just not
| engineered to _only_ support automotive transport. We've
| had them, then destroyed them.
| pessimizer wrote:
| So we should redesign all streets and revitalize and redesign
| all public transportation systems before we can even talk about
| not making all cars operate like iPads (i.e. like they operated
| 10 years ago)?
|
| If I complain that beef from a small oligopoly of suppliers is
| contaminated with E. Coli, will you recommend that we talk
| about turning the entire world vegan first?
|
| edit: I do not own a car and have never had a driver's license.
| Your values are laudable, but are unrelated to the story.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Also people on HN do not know or turn a blind eye that
| millions of people drive cars in EU that has really good
| public transportation.
|
| There are 292 million registered cars in the EU (2019 data).
| mminer237 wrote:
| Most people in America want to live in low-traffic suburbs,
| where public transport absolutely is impractical. The first
| step to get most people to stop having cars is to convince
| people that they're wrong for not wanting to raise a family in
| the inner city.
| milkytron wrote:
| > Most people in America want to live in low-traffic suburbs
|
| Most people in America also don't know of alternatives
| because they've been taken away. We don't have to make people
| want to live in the inner city. We have to show them that
| driving isn't the only solution to transportation problems.
|
| If you could have a small market in a neighborhood that
| provides basic necessities, we could probably eliminate a lot
| of vehicular traffic. But zoning and parking minimums don't
| allow for that.
| afloyd wrote:
| I would absolutely love to ride a bike or say, roller skate to
| work, but as i live in a stroad infested car dependent mess of
| a town, that is sadly impractical at best and outright deadly
| at worst.
| kiki_vh wrote:
| Agree not safe to ride bikes...
| sinab wrote:
| I share the same sentiment. Something I've realized recently
| is that people who complain about car-centrism (myself) often
| fail to identify ways to start solving these problems. To
| remedy this, I've been thinking of writing a set of practical
| posts, sort of a how-to, in which I explore ways to solve
| these problems. Is that something that would interest you?
| milkytron wrote:
| I would be interested.
|
| I've also been contemplating how to use my skill set to
| further decrease our dependence on car centric
| infrastructure, or help others engage in reducing it.
|
| There seems to be a very large community of people in the
| US who are opposed to more cars. /r/fuckcars has gained a
| large following rather quickly. Clearly there is demand,
| but how do we enable people to start making change? Money
| and NIMBYs are hard to challenge single handedly.
| zestyping wrote:
| I'm quite curious to see what you would have to say! If you
| do this, please consider commenting again here so I can
| find it.
| jhoechtl wrote:
| I do not like to ride a bike at 0 degC. Buses are fine,
| waiting for the bus at 0 degC not so. But yeah, owning a car
| which is only used 1% of it's lifetime is pretty laughable
| and actually prohibitive.
| hahamrfunnyguy wrote:
| What's wrong with riding a bike in 0 degC weather? When
| dressed for the weather riding in the cold weather can be
| quite enjoyable as long as the roads are clear or your bike
| has appropriate tires.
| jhoechtl wrote:
| > When dressed for the weather riding in the cold weather
| can be quite enjoyable
|
| Not my sense of comfort.
|
| > as long as the roads are clear or your bike has
| appropriate tires.
|
| I live in a country where we have snow in winter, at
| least casually. I think driving safety is severely
| affected when driving single-track? Wouldn't ride my
| motorcycle in winter either.
| reddog wrote:
| > When dressed for the weather riding in the cold weather
| can be quite enjoyable
|
| Not as enjoyable as sitting on my heated leather seat,
| sipping coffee, listning to an audiobook and moving my
| right foot back and forth between the the accelerator and
| brake while my wipers and heater keep the sleet off the
| windshield.
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Good gear can make it perfectly doable, but icy roads are
| no fun regardless how warm you are.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| You need some pretty thick gloves at 0degC.
|
| Also, if you're traveling by bike in freezing weather,
| you have to be dressed for freezing weather, and you'll
| be stuck with that during the entire time you spend at
| your destination.
| jraph wrote:
| Nah. Just dress normally and then put warm clothes on top
| (gloves, hat, a good coat, possibly some overtrousers for
| the rain) that you can remove at your destination.
|
| Gloves needed at 0degC are reasonable. Sure, don't take
| gloves that let the wind go through.
|
| I used to bike without gloves and a hat when freezing.
| Because I always lose them. The hands hurt, you end up
| being very cold. With appropriate clothes it's night and
| day, biking becomes enjoyable in winter.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Just dress normally and then put warm clothes on top
| (gloves, hat, a good coat, possibly some overtrousers for
| the rain) that you can remove at your destination.
|
| Great. I'm going to the mall. How do I remove my clothes
| while I'm there?
| jraph wrote:
| You put them in your backpack (or around your hips for
| the coat?).
|
| Yes, you need a backpack or some sort of bag. Is it a big
| issue? If it's not raining you don't even need the
| overtrousers and the coat might as well be the one you
| usually wear when it's cold. This coat probably has
| pockets big enough that you can put the gloves and the
| hat in them.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| What!? I have friends that live in Switzerland and value having
| a car. Wait until people realize that Europe has millions of
| cars. It's not to downplay PT, which is awesome as well but
| this is just a delusion.
|
| If anything, this is a distraction from real UX issues with
| cars. Classic switcheroo - "Lets not focus on improving cars
| because public transportation". Infuriating, as if car UI/UX
| wasn't infuriating enough!
| tinversenorm wrote:
| Agreed, the best way to fix our problems with cars is to invest
| in public transportation and shifting car users to use
| bikes/e-bikes.
| da_chicken wrote:
| > The only outstanding problem, however, is that American
| infrastructure has been deliberately designed solely around the
| car.
|
| The problem is that "infrastructure" doesn't just mean roads.
| It's where houses are. Where schools are. Where food is
| transported. It's where water and electrical service runs. It's
| how property is zoned. It's how police, fire, and hospitals are
| located. It's how municipalities design snow removal and
| garbage pickup. It's where shops and services are.
|
| In many ways, fixing the infrastructure problem in the US means
| _razing the whole continent and starting over_.
| titzer wrote:
| > In many ways, fixing the infrastructure problem in the US
| means razing the whole continent and starting over.
|
| In some places, particularly cities designed around cars
| (i.e. the last 100 years). Other cities just need things to
| be _upgraded_. E.g. I recently moved to Pittsburgh. It 's
| pretty dense in terms of housing and infrastructure--not
| suburban with big lawns. That's partly because it's hilly.
| Around here the investment needs to be in fixing bridges and
| roads, adding some trams (they used to have them!), and maybe
| tunnels. Also, burying the power lines wouldn't be a bad
| idea.
|
| On most days I like the idea of razing things to the ground,
| but probably not around here. We need to actually look to the
| past in some areas and add the appropriate future, as opposed
| to nuking and paving.
| voakbasda wrote:
| One problem with implementing all of those upgrades is that
| they will be unaffordable for the City, unless they take
| tax revenues from other areas. But those other areas have
| their own crumbling infrastructure, so "upgrade" is not a
| solution that can be applied everywhere equally.
| ericmay wrote:
| And they're in this predicament precisely because they
| built unaffordable car-first infrastructure in the first
| place. Saying that they can't afford the more cost-
| effective option (walk, bike, tram) is just icing on the
| cake.
| throwaway946513 wrote:
| > Unaffordable for the City
|
| Isn't this the city that gave a few hundred million away
| from it's earmarked infrastructure and maintenance budge
| to the police department over the past half decade?
| titzer wrote:
| One thing I've learned over the years is that fixing or
| upgrading something is an order of magnitude more time
| but an order of magnitude cheaper in materials/energy.
| This applies at many scales. Time means jobs and
| expertise. Upgrading doesn't _scale_ , which is awesome.
| This is because fixing or upgrading stuff is essentially
| always a custom job. You can't outsource the maintenance
| of the Golden Gate bridge to China. It's gotta be done
| locally.
|
| Fixing requires people to assess and evaluate the
| specific needs of a situation, _engineer and design
| solutions_ , and then deploy them. That drives an
| engineering and problem-solving, educated populace full
| of professionals, rather than a machine that cranks out
| endless, throwaway garbage. America has strayed from
| engineering and fixing towards "scale"--but mostly
| scaling the last part, the deployment. It's short-term
| thinking. It's a pervasive baseline mindset shift that
| has happened because of bad accounting centered around
| dollar costs and not societal costs.
| adlorger wrote:
| where do i sign up?
| snth wrote:
| I wish America had more bikeable cities and better public
| transport too, but I don't see what that has to do with the
| linked article. I would also really like a dumbcar.
| speedgoose wrote:
| Dumb cars are on the market. You can buy a brand new Dacia with
| little options. They sell well.
|
| You can also buy a Caterham if you really want something simple
| and fun to drive (but unsafe).
| jacknews wrote:
| Haha, the 'smart' cat is well and truly out of the bag now, and
| the sad thing is we kind of did it to ourselves by demanding, or
| at least, buying, these features.
|
| 'Smart' means manufacturers can put ads on everything, sell your
| usage data, and of course all the smarts become obsolete or break
| easily after just a couple of years, often turning otherwise
| perfectly good hardware into a doorstop.
|
| As part of 'right to repair' we should also demand 'right to own
| UI'; appliances have some standard (electronic/data) interfaces,
| and you can add off-the-shelf, or even custom UI of your choice.
| stonepresto wrote:
| > the sad thing is we kind of did it to ourselves by demanding,
| or at least, buying, these features.
|
| Even more sad is it's not like people looking for a new car
| have much of a choice.
| aembleton wrote:
| My 2008 Prius doesn't have Bluetooth and I have to use a dongle.
| Its one of the biggest issues I have with the car. The dongle
| needs power, which is fine - I've got it plugged into a USB
| socket but everytime I start up the car I have to switch it on;
| otherwise I've got no audio. When I stop the car, the dongle has
| a small battery so my podcast continues playing if I don't pause
| it - I then miss part of it.
|
| I rented a car a few years ago that had Bluetooth for the audio
| and it was wonderful. Stop the car and my music paused, start it
| and it got going again.
|
| I test drove a few new cars recently and of course they all had
| Bluetooth, but the Dacia Sandero Stepway had wireless Android
| Auto. You set it up over Bluetooth but after that you no longer
| needed to plug the wire in to have Android Auto on the screen.
| Really impressed me, and being a Dacia was the cheapest car I
| looked at. The Toyota dealership claimed it didn't exist when I
| asked about getting that on the Yaris.
| schwartzworld wrote:
| My 2014 Xterra has Bluetooth, but it's an old Bluetooth that
| works for calls and not music. I also had to get a dongle,
| since my phone lacks a headphone jack (another spectacular
| engineering decision).
|
| You should get a better BT dongle though. Mine switches on when
| the power turns on.
| JoeJonathan wrote:
| If you can, I strongly recommend spending $300-500 on a
| receiver with CarPlay/Android Auto support. The install kits
| are so good they often look like they're stock installations. I
| even was able to replace my cigarette lighter with a USB port,
| so there are no unsightly cables sticking out of my dash or
| anything.
| rhacker wrote:
| Knobs for everything I just want power windows and a NO BEEP
| remote lock/unlock.
| nicbou wrote:
| I have an old Renault Kangoo. It's a box on wheels. Big enough to
| fit a bicycle or a bed, small enough to drive like a car. I'm
| going on a road trip today.
|
| This car is a breeze to work on. It's a bog standard car. If
| something breaks, it can be fixed. The only things that can break
| are the things that make the car run. You don't need a specially
| trained technician. You don't need to remove a layer of plastic
| to get to the engine. There is no touch screen.
| pjmorris wrote:
| Toyota should introduce the brand new 1999 Corolla.
| bdamm wrote:
| Right! If this "dumb car" aesthetic is really such a hit, then
| there are a lot of cars from the 90's that are ready to buy and
| plenty of shops that are eager to overhaul your old clunker
| into a hot new legendary UI of a car!
|
| Of course, it isn't a hit. The fact is most people want smart
| cars.
| gorjusborg wrote:
| I had the same thought recently, as I was considering the
| purchase of a new car.
|
| Even the 'base models' are loaded with touch-screens, assistive
| driving and loads of other stuff I don't want.
|
| I understand there are people out there that do want this stuff.
| I would hazard a guess there are many like me that would opt for
| another car without this stuff if it were available.
|
| Brand it 'security-hardened' or whatever, I just don't want to be
| driving around your IT security nightmare. I also don't want you
| remotely hot-fixing my ride to make up for it.
|
| I think there are people that care about this stuff enough that
| you could create a brand around the concept of 'just enough tech
| to make it work'.
| jaclaz wrote:
| There is also an issue with "standardization" of commands.
|
| I have been driving since a lot of time, what happened to me
| lately a couple of times was that renting a car it takes me some
| time (I mean 10-15 minutes) to get a minimal confidence with
| commands and features of the UI, besides the most basic ones that
| thankfully remain the same, there are lots of them that are, in
| different make/models, completely different, and I am always
| scared that I can by mistake enable or disable this or that
| "smart" thing.
| dgudkov wrote:
| I can totally relate, but I'm afraid that "smart" cars will push
| out "dumb" cars in dealerships just like "smart" TVs pushed out
| "dumb" TVs in big box stores. Why? Because people like feeling
| they have more for less money.
|
| Wait until you get bombarded with ads in your "smart" car. It's
| coming, have no doubts.
| mperham wrote:
| Also, consider an e-bike? It's a shame that the US continues to
| invest in sprawl, roads and parking lots everywhere. Cities could
| be so much more green and vibrant.
| llamajams wrote:
| I had a frank conversation with an SSE in infotainment about all
| this not so long ago; he generally agreed with this drift , but
| when I asked why? Said that what the customers(focus groups) want
| =\
| vannevar wrote:
| I wonder how they assemble those groups. I'm guessing there is
| some significant selection bias in the process.
| mikewarot wrote:
| It wouldn't be that hard to come up with a standard set of
| controls, buttons, knobs, sliders, that could be used everywhere,
| but conform to a standard data bus protocol, so that you wouldn't
| have to have miles of wire in every vehicle.
|
| Such components would allow for the cost savings of control by
| wire, without the danger of control by screen.
| causi wrote:
| I love having a dumb car. My wife has a modern car and my
| experience is superior in almost every way. She has to select a
| temperature and then her AC system blasts her with freezing or
| burning air until it decides the car is at the desired
| temperature. Since the selector only goes down to 65, it's
| impossible to get medium-temperature air on a nippy day. My dash,
| on the other hand, has a dial that goes from cold to hot, and I
| can make the air come out at exactly the temperature I want. She
| has a button to select where the air comes out and has to cycle
| through the head/foot/defrost/etc options and then wait for a
| motor to get what she wants. Mine is a mechanical dial I can turn
| to any setting instantly with no motor to break later on.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > I love having a dumb car.
|
| Did you find a newish one?
| causi wrote:
| Nope, mine's a 2007. Still going strong.
| driverdan wrote:
| Automatic climate control has been around for about 40 years
| and common for 20 years. There is no excuse for not getting it
| right in 2022. I had cars 20 years ago that had great auto
| climate control.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| My top gripe about my wife's smart car: She sometimes leaves it
| with the radio on. A few seconds after bootup (starting the
| car), the radio starts playing. _But it won 't listen to the
| on/off button yet,_ not for several more seconds. So if I don't
| want the radio on, I have _no_ way to shut it off until it will
| let me.
| pavon wrote:
| Both my cars have that misfeature, but vary in details. Both
| take just long enough to start playing that they usually
| start blaring music as I'm backup up. Nor have I found any
| way to disable the feature on either. It took months for me
| to get into the habit of sitting and waiting for it to boot
| so I could turn it off before I start driving.
|
| The Honda CR-V is like you say, it will only turn on if you
| had the radio on when the car was shut off (makes sense), but
| turns on long before it is capable of responding to the off
| button.
|
| The Chevy Bolt infuriatingly turns on (almost) every time you
| get in the car regardless of whether the radio was on or not
| when you last used it. For the life of me I cannot figure out
| what heuristics cause it to (very rarely) not turn on. At
| least its off button is functional at the time it starts
| playing.
| csours wrote:
| For the Bolt - was it connected to Bluetooth when the car
| turned off?
| Vrondi wrote:
| When I added a modern stereo with Android Auto/CarPlay to my
| 2003 vehicle, I found that many modern car stereos are
| designed to never be turned off. There was no off switch. So,
| if you start the car to let it warm while you shovel the
| driveway, you couldn't listen to your phone with bluetooth
| headphones, as it would connect to the car stereo, that you
| couldn't turn off with the car running.
|
| I fixed it by wiring a simple toggle switch into the the
| power line for the stereo and mounting it in the dash.
| Problem fixed. "Off" shuts off the stereo instantly.
|
| You might be able to read up on your model/package and do
| this, or consult a car stereo installation shop to do this.
| vel0city wrote:
| Its too bad your experience with automatic climate control
| systems is so terrible. I'm of the exact opposite experience. I
| recently had to have my car in the shop and as a rental they
| gave me a mid-tier level Nissan Sentra with manual climate
| controls. I absolutely hated having to manually adjust the
| climate, usually 2-3 times every trip. Why would I _want_ to
| fiddle with climate controls when it could be entirely
| automated?
|
| I haven't really had to adjust the climate controls in my
| current car since I bought it, aside from pressing the defrost
| button a few times. During that time outside temperatures have
| ranged from 15F to 110F, and my car is always comfortable
| inside. Even the heated steering wheel and heated seats are
| automatic, I haven't had to manually control those either.
| Automatic climate control has worked very well for me across 4
| different models of cars ranging from a 2000 Honda Accord, a
| 2012 Ford Focus, a 2017 Hyundai Santa Fe, and a 2021 Mustang
| Mache E. All of them pretty much never required me to adjust it
| day to day, and I would go weeks to months without needing to
| do anything.
|
| Given that you're talking about only being able to set the
| temperature selector down to 65, it sounds like you're doing
| automatic climate control wrong. You're going to have a bad
| experience if you're always setting it to max cold or max heat
| instead of just picking a comfortable temperature in the middle
| and letting the car get to that temp. Sure, it'll take a minute
| or two before it starts blowing air, because usually the AC
| needs to really start cranking before its doing anything or it
| takes a bit for the heater core to warm. During that time
| you're not really doing much blowing around the air, in fact
| you might make the experience in the car _worse_ blowing non-
| conditioned air around.
|
| Just like in your house, setting your AC unit to 60F isn't
| going to make your AC unit run harder. Do you go to your home
| thermostat and drag it all the way one way when you're warm,
| then drag it all the way to the other direction when you're
| cold? No, you set it for a comfortable temperature and let the
| system hold it there.
| causi wrote:
| _You 're going to have a bad experience if you're always
| setting it to max cold or max heat instead of just picking a
| comfortable temperature in the middle and letting the car get
| to that temp._
|
| That's the issue. Suppose the car is at an ambient
| temperature of 50 degrees. I get in and start it up. I want
| air that's just slightly warmer than ambient but I can't get
| it. If I set it to 65, I get hit with air that's probably 90
| degrees until the whole car hits 65, meanwhile I'm sweating
| like it's high summer. If I set it to Low, the only setting
| below 65, it turns me into a frozen dinner. Generally I'm
| forced to keep the AC off and just be slightly cold because I
| have no direct control of the air that's hitting me. There's
| no way to tell the car to blow slightly warm air if the
| ambient temperature is below 65 degrees.
| vel0city wrote:
| Your car's automatic climate control system seems terribly
| designed and not like any one I've ever experienced. The
| climate control system on my Accord came out in 1996 and it
| behaved far superior to that. It doesn't just blow max
| heat/cold until the target temperature, it does a
| reasonable gradient of temperature differences until its
| the target temp keeping in mind some kind of comfort
| profile. This has been the way every other automatic
| climate control system I've used has behaved, I've never
| experienced it blasting heat/cold as hard as can be full
| bore, unless it legitimately needed that to keep up with
| the losses (having the windows open).
|
| I'm sorry your experiences suck and you have to manually
| adjust your AC system dozens of times per drive to make
| your car comfortable. Personally though I see that as a
| massive step _back_ , not an improvement. Would you mind
| sharing the make of car so I can be sure to avoid it?
|
| Also, when talking about automatic climate control, do you
| also have it set to automatic fan speed as well, or just
| temperature? Maybe your system would perform better if you
| let it also control the fan speed if you aren't already.
| For my experiences I pretty much always let directionality,
| fan speed, and temperature set to be automatically
| controlled.
| causi wrote:
| I'm glad to hear they're improving. Maybe by the time I
| have to replace my car I won't have any complaints.
| joshxyz wrote:
| I like this, reminds me of how much shitty experience HN has on
| smart TV's.
| bborud wrote:
| If you have never driven an old car (35 years or older) you
| should try. Especially if you can find one with a carburetor
| engine and a bit of power. It is gloriously relaxing.
| jdhn wrote:
| One of the reasons that there's not really a "dumb" car anymore
| is that backup cameras are federally mandated. So you have a
| camera for backing up, and you need a way to display that. So
| auto manufacturers say "Hey, we have this screen, people are used
| to touchscreens due to their phone, and it makes manufacturing
| easier if we put everything on a screen as it means we can just
| put a flat piece of plastic where all the buttons used to be, so
| lets make it a touchscreen!"
| kurthr wrote:
| And once you have a computer with an operating system, UI, and
| (wireless) serial connections most of those features become
| almost "free". As a result, from the automaker's position
| adding all those features someone might pay for is "cheaper"
| for total income than not. You can always disable the features
| in software and keep the SKU# constant.
| geenew wrote:
| Some of the original backup camera models (in ford cars at
| least) were integrated into the rear view mirror. Worked fine
| for its purpose and didn't involve a central dash monitor.
| ubu7737 wrote:
| harlanlewis wrote:
| More than works fine - I prefer this spot so that I always
| look in the same place to see what's behind me whether I'm
| going forward or backward. Taking your eyes far away from any
| windows to focus on a tiny rearview camera view while
| reversing makes it hard to see other motion with peripheral
| vision.
|
| Lots of after market mirrors support this, but admittedly
| I've only put them in cars that didn't have a camera to begin
| with.
| pavon wrote:
| My car has both options. I think the idea is you'd use the
| rearview mirror display primarily at night as an always-on
| display in place of the anti-glare polarization toggle that
| some rearview mirrors have, while using the center console
| for backing-up.
|
| I prefer the center console. The rearview mirror is shaped
| and sized to display the small sliver that you can see out
| of the rear window which are tiny these days due to
| increased pillar width, and rounded back to improved crash
| safety and aerodynamics. The size and aspect ratio of the
| center console makes it much easier to see details, and
| doesn't have to compete with bright back-lighting from the
| sun. Increasing the size of the rearview mirror would be an
| option - don't know how big you can get before it starts
| impeding forward view (again, because the front roof slopes
| down more for aerodynamics than they did in the past).
| rabuse wrote:
| "Then we can charge them for our optional (mandatory, if you
| want even basic modern functionality, such as remote start)
| monthly/yearly subscription services! We'll call it Car+!"
| Vrondi wrote:
| You can add remote start to a basic vehicle as an aftermarket
| upgrade.
| everdrive wrote:
| The easy solution here would be to eschew such features.
| Remote start seems like it provides no benefit except to
| waste slightly more gas, and also to occasionally suffocate
| the elderly or otherwise forgetful.
| sdrabing wrote:
| You obviously don't live in a place with harsh winters.
| everdrive wrote:
| I live in the northern us. It was -3 F this morning
| greedo wrote:
| If you live in a place with cold winters, it's pretty handy
| to be able to start your car as you leave the office. By
| the time you've walked to your car, it's nice and warm and
| the engine is running optimally.[1]
|
| 1. I know modern engines claim not to need to be warmed up,
| but I think that's a load of crap. Oil and other lubricants
| at very cold temperatures need to warm up and there's no
| evidence that it hurts anything. And it only uses a little
| sip of gas.
| asdff wrote:
| If you think oil and lubricants need to be warmed to a
| certain point to not harm the engine, why would it be any
| different if you were idling cold or putting it under
| light load cold? It wouldn't really. Old cars needed to
| be warm for the carburetor to provide the correct air and
| fuel mixture. It didn't have anything to do with
| lubricants. Once cars became fuel injected it became a
| waste of gas to warm up the car idling. The engine
| actually warms up faster being driven.
| yencabulator wrote:
| If you live in a place with cold winters, a block heater
| is a lot better.
| greedo wrote:
| That requires an outlet near your car. My office (back
| when I had to go into the office) has parking lots that
| don't have any outlets.
| jjav wrote:
| A block heater won't get the interior warmer for you to
| get in and block heaters require plugging in which won't
| be an option at the office parking lot for most people.
| rsj_hn wrote:
| You can get aftermarket camera kits for ~$150 that handle that
| for older model cars.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Vehicle-Backup-Cameras/b?ie=UTF8&node...
|
| The backup camera genuinely is a great feature, but the
| touchscreen is itself awful. I agree with Mazda on this (and
| the US Navy, which is also replacing touchscreens with knobs).
|
| I'm hoping we start seeing a renaissance of car customization
| -- for example I know that kit cars, almost all of which are
| pretty dumb - are gaining in popularity. One of the nice things
| about electric vehicles is the greatly simplified powertrain is
| going to create a lot of opportunities for customization and
| DIY, and I hope our regulatory environment is reformed to
| support that more. In the czech republic, everyone works on
| their own car and we have a friend who built his own car from
| scratch, but in the U.S. we see a lot less of that type of
| autonomy.
| wesleywt wrote:
| I love my dumb VW Golf MK1. The radio got stolen, so I don't even
| have that.
| joeman1000 wrote:
| How about a GT86? This is about as analog as you can get for a
| mainstream car.
| selimnairb wrote:
| It should be illegal to make cars with high latency UIs. It
| routinely takes 1+ seconds for touchscreen button presses to be
| registered on my 2015 and 2018 Toyotas. This leads to erroneous
| actions being performed, which is not safe. If I were a software
| engineer on these teams I would quit if these systems were
| released on my watch.
| asdff wrote:
| Seriously. Computing hardware is an order of magnitude more
| powerful than in the early 2000s, but the latency bar has never
| been raised the entire time. You could buy a $1000 TV and it
| has the same lag while changing channels as the gen 1 720p
| flatscreen you had in 2005. Manufacturers collectively realized
| they can get away with substandard products since consumers
| have no real choice in the marketplace for a lot of products
| beyond the competitors who have already raced down to the
| bottom years ago.
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| It's worse than "erroneous actions being performed". It leads
| to the driver watching the UI for a second, which, unless
| you're stopped, is much too long.
| jb1991 wrote:
| > Teslas with missed payments drive themselves to be impounded.
| Welcome to the future.
|
| Is this real? That sounds like a terrible terrible idea, can't
| imagine any government body allowing this.
| dasKrokodil wrote:
| Yeah I can't imagine it either. With the current state of its
| "self-driving" technology, the Tesla would probably cause
| several accidents on the way to the impound lot.
| godot wrote:
| There are things I agree and things I disagree, which leads me to
| think this is a pretty opinionated topic.
|
| For example with navigation, I thought the phone does it the same
| but having experienced a Tesla I honestly vastly prefer the Tesla
| navigation. The bigger screen makes it much easier to glance
| where on the map I am. You can mount a phone anywhere and it
| won't be nearly as easily visible. (The GPS screens on my older
| cars are definitely worse than the phone though)
|
| For climate control I agree fully that the older dials and
| buttons work better. The problem with temperature control is your
| body is human and you don't always want a constant temperature. I
| remember in my very old cars from the 90s and early 00s there's
| way less I have to adjust for temperature. There's a position on
| the dial that is pretty much always right to use for the entire
| season. Nowadays if I set it at 68 it's too cold on some days and
| too hot on some days, depending on what I'm wearing, how I'm
| feeling that day, etc. I have to adjust it up or down, and then
| next time I drive I have to adjust it again.
| nikolay wrote:
| The article describes my own vision 100%. To me, a car is a
| vehicle, i.e., it needs to transport me from point A to point B
| most safely and reliably. I don't listen to music when I drive, I
| don't text or make calls - I enjoy driving, and I focus 100% on
| this and, thank God, I've never been in an accident, not even a
| fender bender, and I have over half a million miles behind the
| wheel. When I'm in Bulgaria, I drive a 2003 Audi A4 1.9 TDI with
| a stick shift, and I enjoy it much more than my US AT car.
| noduerme wrote:
| I'd have a very hard time not playing some music if I were
| driving an A4 through Bulgaria. But the laser focus between you
| and the road is the most important thing.
| nikolay wrote:
| Why would I want to play music? I enjoy driving more than
| listening to music. I don't get bored even when I'm driving
| thru heavy traffic on I-5 or I-405, so, why would I need
| music not being in a traffic jam and having beautiful
| scenery?!
| dagw wrote:
| Music while driving seems to be one those divisive
| subjects. Some people basically need music while driving
| and some people find it pointless or annoying.
| nikolay wrote:
| Yeah, some need country music, others - techno. I
| personally like to be able to hear the engine. I then
| wonder why race drivers don't listen to music if it has
| benefits to some people.
| t0bia_s wrote:
| I like to know how to repair things that I use. Phone, PC,
| washing machine... Same is for car.
|
| If we let big tech/companies sorround us by things that we don't
| know how actually works or how to fix them, then we are screwed
| and completely dependent on their rules and trends. For example
| imagine that car will be manufactured without opening windows,
| like modern trains. Or they have implemented CO2 meters that
| collect data and limit traveling based on regulations made by
| gonverments.
| porknubbins wrote:
| Power seats are not a pointless luxury. I'm pretty sure they are
| continuously adjustable which is much better than trying to pull
| on some lever and get the seat to pop into approximately the
| right place. To say nothing of mulitple drivers with memorized
| positions etc.
| rabuse wrote:
| Until the motor fails, or the tracks became "crusted", and you
| have no ability to adjust it anymore.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > Power seats are not a pointless luxury. I'm pretty sure they
| are continuously adjustable which is much better than trying to
| pull on some lever and get the seat to pop into approximately
| the right place. To say nothing of mulitple drivers with
| memorized positions etc.
|
| YMMV, but I have no problem using mechanical adjustments. Power
| is no advantage for me.
| linux-user wrote:
| Are all your chairs at home and office also powered?
| jaclaz wrote:
| ... and at the restaurant, cinema, etc.?
| Zababa wrote:
| Chairs at home and office aren't fixed in place to a vehicle
| that has a battery.
| jaclaz wrote:
| Ok, what about airplane or bus and train seats?
|
| They are fixed in place to a vehicle with a battery, still
| you don't have them powered.
|
| Not that car ones (powered, heating, massaging, etc.) are
| not nice and comfortable, only that they remain a form of
| luxury.
| realityking wrote:
| > what about airplane [...] seats?
|
| Modern business and first class seats are indeed powered.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| I don't drive planes nor busses. I'm a passenger: The
| back seat(s) of passenger cars are often fixed too. I
| wouldn't be surprised to find that the bus _driver 's_
| seat is powered.
|
| I do drive cars, though, and sometimes other people's
| cars. I'd much rather be able to adjust while driving so
| that I can have better control over the car than have to
| fumble with levers, which might propel me back far enough
| that I cannot brake. Heck, I might have been having to
| adjust because I didn't realize how far i needed to press
| the brake in the first place.
| jaclaz wrote:
| Well, you shouldn't start driving before having verified
| that you can reach all commands, and that brakes work,
| the standard checklist, JFYI:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29603532
|
| Direct link:
|
| https://www.thesamba.com/vw/archives/manuals/71bus/page1.
| jpg
| saiya-jin wrote:
| Exactly, plus movement in more directions (up & down, didn't
| see a single car with manual adjustment that allowed this),
| very useful for us blessed with non-standard body dimensions
| (ie I am quite tall). It changes default-settings car where I
| touch roof with my head into one where there is more than
| 5cm/2" clearance.
|
| Adjustable tightness of part of the seat above your hips which
| keeps you better in tight/fast curves. Heating for cold starts.
| Massage for luxury. My BMW has it all apart from massage and
| its makes longer drives much more pleasant.
| bengale wrote:
| My mercedes has manual seats and it can go up and down, its
| got like a pump lever on the side.
| Broken_Hippo wrote:
| I used to have a Neon many years ago that had the up-and-down
| adjustments for the seats - and it was all manual. You just
| turned a knob on the side at the base of the lever that
| allowed you to recline.
|
| EDIT: It was still a tight fit for tall folks, though. In
| that particular car, the adjustment mostly helped short folks
| see better.
| LegitShady wrote:
| I recently accidentally moved my seat waaaay up without
| realizing it when I was cleaning my car. I spent a week
| worrying about my weight because suddenly the seat belt
| seemed to have a lot less slack, and my stomach seemed closer
| to the wheel. Went to weigh myself an no increase.
|
| when I figured out what I had done I laughed at myself for a
| solid 10 minutes
| com2kid wrote:
| > (up & down, didn't see a single car with manual adjustment
| that allowed this),
|
| My 2010 Kia Soul has manual seats that can go up and down.
|
| Although when the Kia Soul was first introduced, Kia threw
| almost every feature they could in it to win market share!
| kube-system wrote:
| Try your favorite image search engine and query "manual seat
| height adjustment" and you'll find dozens of brands that have
| this. Most use a lever that you pump up or down to adjust the
| height. Some use a dial.
| it wrote:
| The things I dislike about my car are all fancy "smart" features.
| A keyed ignition would have been fine, but they replaced it with
| a push button. I can stay in my lane just fine, but every time I
| turn on the car it turns on lane assist and I have to do a button
| sequence to turn it off.
| deltree7 wrote:
| Sure, people want simple, but simple is very subjective.
|
| I want simple, +Bluetooth Audio
|
| I want simple, +rear Camera
|
| I want simple, +Cruise Control
|
| I want simple, ....
|
| https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2001/03/23/strategy-letter-iv...
| Spivak wrote:
| It's really not that subjective. Take the feature set of mass-
| market cars from 2000 - 2008 and then just ... stop. That's
| your baseline. There's nothing magic about the 2000s it's just
| happens to be the era juuuust before people started complaining
| about smart features in cars.
|
| * Media controls are handled by swappble receivers that can
| handle anything from tapes to Bluetooth and satellite radio
| depending on your preference. Everything else is physical nobs
| and buttons.
|
| * Cars have cruise control, hydraulic power steering, probably
| power windows, push to start as an aftermarket add-on, and
| probably remote lock/unlock.
|
| Broke teenagers in the early 2000s were able to figure out
| "basic car with add-ons." It's amazing that huge corporations
| can't manage.
| deltree7 wrote:
| It's like you completely missed the point of Joel's blog
| Spivak wrote:
| No I just disagree that it applies here. Because these
| mass-market cars really existed (you can still buy most of
| them) -- they all had basically the same feature sets, the
| same options packages by different names, sold like
| hotcakes, and nobody complained about bloat.
|
| In the car market you actually can get 80% of the sales
| with 80% of the features in defiance of Joel. That's Honda
| and Toyota's bread and butter.
| noduerme wrote:
| Strongly agree with this article. The car I love is my 1980
| Datsun, but it just isn't good in the rain. My daily car is a
| Fiat 124 Spider. Reason I bought it was it was the least
| complicated, most direct driver-to-pavement, latest, fastest ride
| I could get for $20k with a stick shift. I won't buy an
| automatic. To Fiat's credit, I think they're the last
| manufacturer selling cars in America whose standard price is for
| a manual transmission and who charge extra for an automatic.
| (Which, let's be honest, only an idiot would buy an automatic on
| a 1.4L turbo that has to be kept revved to a sweet spot smaller
| than 1500 RPMs per gear).
|
| There are four things that piss me off about the Spider. 1: Touch
| screen which I don't want lit up most of the time, but which
| doesn't respond to touch to turn it off while you're driving. 2:
| Stupid as hell autobrake comes on for 2 seconds if you clutch and
| brake on a hill over 8% grade. You have to toggle the emergency
| brake or do a heel-toe to not be pushing against your brakes when
| you start up off a hill. 3: It's beyond me how they could sell
| this car with a touch screen but without a boost gauge. 4: No
| ashtray.
| throwaway946513 wrote:
| While not under $20k, the Subaru Impreza and Crosstrek are
| currently offered with a stick shift on the base trim, and for
| the Impreza Sport ($23k) it's offered standard with a stick,
| and an auto optional.
|
| This may change soon to only be the WRX and BRZ with a stick
| shift next year, but currently their lineup is rather
| competitive for AWD compact cars.
| q1w2 wrote:
| Similarly, I'm making sure I get ever mile out of my 1993 Jeep
| Wrangler. It's rusting in places, but I absolutely love that I
| can service the car myself. It has never broken down in almost
| 30 years!
| asdff wrote:
| Were you ever comparing with a miata? I'm curious how they
| compare since its the same platform.
| aunty_helen wrote:
| >It's beyond me how they could sell this car with a touch
| screen but without a boost gauge.
|
| Back in the days of our 80's datsuns, when upping the boost you
| definitely need to keep an eye on it. These days, ECUs have
| that under control, there will be a MAP sensor that monitors
| pressure and boost cut / limp mode will follow any overboost
| situation.
|
| My late 2000s BMW for example had a weird compound turbo setup
| that, to its credit, could build 23psi in a second but if any
| of the actuators failed could be disasterous for the baby
| turbo. The ECU was smart enough to measure the normal boost
| profile and would throw a fault code if it was over/under
| spooling. The control logic was impressive, I was happy with
| the response and the intake was kept FOD free, even on the day
| one of the actuators failed open.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| Reading this made me happy I recently purchased a SUV with big,
| boring, rubberized knobs that I find myself adjusting without
| having to look while driving.
|
| One addition to the smart tech a dumb car could benefit from -
| radar cruise control. Increasingly offered on new models and
| reduces cognitive workload of highway driving.
| temporallobe wrote:
| My favorite car, ever, was a '96 Tercel my mother gave me (she
| was literally going to junk it). It was completely mechanical and
| analog, and I absolutely loved it. It was fun, reliable, and dead
| simple to maintain and operate. Only things I did to upgrade it
| was to install an aftermarket audio system so I could use my
| smartphone with it, and I installed slightly wider tires to give
| it a bit more stability. It reliably got 36-40 mpg on regular
| gas, and since everything was mechanical (even down to the rack-
| and-pinion steering), nothing ever broke, ever. That thing had
| about 400,000 miles on the odo before I sold it. Good times.
| lobsterboix wrote:
| I agree with the sentiment, I recently bought a new 2021 prius
| prime XLE. It has this massive screen in the center dash that
| everything is on, and i bought it because it was supposed to
| support android auto. Turns out the lower end (and by lower end i
| mean the exact same car/engine/body but with a smaller screen and
| physical controls) was the one that support android auto! i love
| the car for the most part, but the screen is a huge miss. GPS
| system on it requires a perfect address and is so slow, its a
| Japanese car yet the software cant display Japanese on it via
| song titles. its really a death by 1000 cuts kind of issue.
| chungy wrote:
| > Power seat adjustment, though, that's a luxury even today. Use
| the lever.
|
| Probably the one thing I disagree with the article on. Power seat
| adjustment is a heck of a lot safer in the driver seat than
| manual levers, and it's not even close.
|
| If a passenger accidentally adjusts the seat too far forward or
| too far back while the car is in motion, fine, it's an
| inconvenience. If the driver does this, they become a road
| hazard.
| xd1936 wrote:
| Same could be said for adjusting wheel height. Don't do it
| while driving, problem solved.
| tdesilva wrote:
| It's not even a safety thing. Power seats with memory
| functionality are a must-have for anyone that shares their car
| with someone else. It's so much less annoying to press one
| button and have the car revert to your preferred seating
| position with side mirrors angle perfectly vs doing it manually
| every time.
| 6LLvveMx2koXfwn wrote:
| What on earth is the driver doing adjusting their seat fore and
| aft whilst driving?
| gitowiec wrote:
| In my Mercedes C180, year 2011 the AC zones really work and I
| have the knobs! With automatic gear (unusual in my country) and
| turbo, it really feels premium! And I bought it really cheap, as
| a second owner.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| I would kill for Ye Olde Manually Wound windows. Electric windows
| struggle in temperature extremes, and seem to break down far more
| often than my old hand-cranked windows ever did.
|
| Also, I had more precise control with the hand-crank.
| burnt_toast wrote:
| The only thing I don't like about crank windows is it's hard to
| roll down the passenger window while driving.
|
| I've actually got 2 cars with crank windows and am in the
| process of converting one of them to power windows just because
| it doesn't have AC and I want an easier way to manage the
| windows.
| giardini wrote:
| Knew a fellow whose car flipped into a shallow lake on a dark
| rainy night. The warning signs for a turn beside the lake had
| been removed. He was trapped in the car and drowned. Perhaps
| with hand-crank windows he'd have survived.
|
| I buy only vehicles with hand-cranked windows.
| bdamm wrote:
| Hopefully the crank doesn't snap off. I've seen that, too. It
| is also possible for the door handle mechanism to fracture.
| Sorry for your trauma. Upside down in water is generally a
| very difficult scenario to survive, no matter what vehicle
| you're in.
| anitil wrote:
| I have an entirely unreasonable fear of getting stuck in my car
| as it slowly sinks, unable to open the windows. It makes me
| want to get hand-cranked windows.
| mylonov wrote:
| According to Mythbusters [1] it's almost impossible to wind
| down the windows in a sinking car after it reaches a certain
| depth. Much better is to have a window breaker tool. You can
| have one which doubles as a seat belt slicer too. [1]
| https://mythresults.com/episode72
| raxxorrax wrote:
| Time is running out for those. I have a car that is now over 20
| years old (awesome car, I will miss it once it fails) and even
| that had electric windows in the most basic variant. Of course
| they will fail in winter regularly...
|
| Bought it 7 years ago for less than a modern GPU currently
| costs. If you have a mechanic as a friend it can be extremely
| cheap to own a car. I wonder how the used market will look in
| the future, I guess prices will be a lot higher and many not
| security related features will be broken.
|
| Buying a car > $15,000 is always idiotic if you do in any way
| care about losing $15,000 in my opinion. If you don't care
| about the money, a happy spending to you. Otherwise get a
| company car that is financed by other tax payers.
| the_gipsy wrote:
| Oh no you don't want them
| tsujp wrote:
| I've had cars with electric and manual windows. I'm 27 (so
| you don't think I have been biased by a lifetime of manual)
| and I prefer manual crank in all but a single use case: the
| situation where I want to wind up or down the passenger side
| window.
| test1235 wrote:
| the feature to have the window open itself fully after a
| long-pull of the button feels safer to me in certain
| situations - means I don't have to spend a few seconds with
| my dominant hand off the wheel
|
| (and also more convenient in other situations where I need
| to quickly open the window and actively drive at the same
| time, e.g. toll booths, drive thru's)
| tsujp wrote:
| I wait until I'm stopped to wind up or down the passenger
| side window, having an electric equivalent would save
| me.. actually 0 time. You have to stop at a toll booth to
| pay the toll, you have to stop at a drive thru to pay and
| collect your order. It's purely a convenience mechanism
| to save perhaps 3 seconds of time in the event it's
| really super hyper critical it's rolled down before
| stopping (for whatever arbitrary reason).
| rad_gruchalski wrote:
| Oh yes, I do. Like I want wipers working at a constant
| interval.
| rabuse wrote:
| Me and my family members have had multiple window motors fail,
| due to leaves falling in between the window and the gasket, on
| completely different car manufacturers.
| zqna wrote:
| The saddenning part that the majority of the drivers are very
| proud and enjoy their electronic windows. I guess potentially
| manual windows could be an option in the new cars, but I'm
| afraid the most of the new car buyers prefer as much of
| gimmicks in their cars, about which they could boast right
| after their purchase. The adults are really just children with
| the thicker wallets.
| user-the-name wrote:
| Why is it sad that people enjoy a thing? They enjoy it
| because it works and is less of a pain in the vast majority
| of cases. That is not sad, that is a good thing.
| zqna wrote:
| It's sad because there are people who also hate it while
| they don't really have an option to use a product that fits
| them. Unless of course one is advised to buy Lada or
| Mustang 69. People generally like apps that switch on the
| lights in the living room. Also they like to keep still on
| slowly moving escalator (yes even down), because it looks
| that a biggest joy for a consumer is to be able to lose any
| tactile and physical agency, presumably to conserve their
| energy that they so badly lack.
|
| For the record, I hate electric windows, because of
| insensitivity of the button, it's almost impossible to open
| the window by few millimeters only (just to allow air
| circulation to avoid condensation on windows). Or in winter
| if it freezes to the frame, I want to be able to open
| without a need of warming it up first. Or not to buy the
| entire lifting mechanism because a 2$ plastic piece brakes
| inside. I understand the few uses of electrical window, but
| those can simply be fixed by avoiding farting inside a car,
| or politely asking the culprit to open their window
| themselves.
| mikestew wrote:
| _The saddenning part that the majority of the drivers are
| very proud and enjoy their electronic windows._
|
| Much like I enjoy the electric starter on the car, such that
| I do not need to crank it by hand to start it. I'm "proud and
| enjoy" my electric starter and windows, and make absolutely
| no apology for doing so. You want to warm your house with a
| fire started by flint and tinder, have at it; I'll be over
| here with my gimmicky heat pump.
| Digory wrote:
| Familiar complaints in Dan Neil's WSJ review of the VW Golf R
| this weekend:
|
| > After a week of fun and wild-eyed frustration with the 2022
| Volkswagen Golf R ... I was ready to scold VW's product planners.
| Never has so good a car been so let down by its touchscreen,
| software and switchgear.
|
| > But I just don't have the heart. It's not like the R's deciders
| wanted to put a one-eyed, lowest-bidder monstrosity smack in the
| middle of their flagship Golf R .... But they had a number to
| hit, a belt to tighten, and nobody was going home until they did.
|
| > ... The VW system's boot-up is interminable; operators must
| wait many long seconds in the morning before they can adjust
| simple things like fan speed and seat heaters. The touchscreen
| response is like an ATM from the 1990s. The thin horizontal
| sliders for volume and cabin temperature are not illuminated so
| they are hard to see at night.
|
| wsj.com/articles/2022-vw-golf-r-sporty-stylish-not-the-best-
| ux-11643317829
| alanchen wrote:
| That's why I love my 2019 Mazda3. Modern enough, but not bloated.
| JoeJonathan wrote:
| While I agree with most of this article, I think having one
| screen for CarPlay is a huge bonus. I replaced the receiver on my
| old Mazda, and having just that screen for GPS, music, etc. is
| great.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| >Still, all I want is a car that isn't as overbearing as all the
| rest of the devices I already own, sending me notifications,
| dinging, reporting errors, asking permissions, needing updates --
| my god!
|
| No dings or errors also means no airbag, no ABS, and no way of
| knowing if your tire pressure suddenly drops. And good luck if
| you have any issues whatsoever while on a roadtrip. You did
| expect all mechanics to give a fair and honest price to get you
| back on the roadway, right?
| 71a54xd wrote:
| Unfortunately the government is imminently planning on requiring
| "smart" features like a law enforcement lowjack for "hot cars"[0]
| and a remote "kill switch" [1]. Granted, I'd be more than okay
| building a ranch vehicle or purchasing an old car and deleting
| these features as willful non-compliance.
|
| [0] https://hothardware.com/news/bidens-infrastructure-bill-
| mand...
|
| (hot hardware is an oddly good source of electrical engineering
| news too!)
|
| [1] https://miami.cbslocal.com/2021/12/29/new-federal-
| regulation....
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29427068 for a
| discussion about that, from the top comment:
|
| > This is a terrible description of what the law actually does.
| Let's shine some light on the FUD. The law, H.R. 3684 (as
| enrolled), defines an "advanced drunk and impaired driving
| prevention technology" as a system which can do /one/ of the
| following: 1. "passively monitor the performance of a driver...
| to accurately identify whether that driver may be impaired...
| and prevent or limit [car] operation if an impairment is
| detected."
|
| 2. "passively and accurately" detect whether someone's BAC
| exceeds the Federal limit, and prevent or limit car operation
| if it's detected.
|
| 3. Both.
|
| This will apply only after the DOT finalizes a rule describing
| what all those things actually mean in terms of manufacture.
| The law requires that the Secretary publish this rule within
| the next three years, unless they think it can't be done, in
| which case they can push it out another three years. That rule
| must give car manufactures at least another two years to
| implement the requirement. It also gives the DOT an out to say
| that it can't be done, in which case in 2031, they need to
| write a report to Congress to say why it can't be done.
|
| In software terms, this is a user story that was just submitted
| for development. It's Congress asking the executive branch to
| do some work, but not actually forcing them to do so.
|
| (But in the far-right wing press, "request to explore tech that
| keeps drunk people from driving" becomes "bill will mandate
| kill switch!" because of the click bait sound of it)
| azinman2 wrote:
| I just want CarPlay (mostly for maps) and everything else simple
| manual knobs. The CarPlay screen can double as the backup camera.
| breakpointalpha wrote:
| Bought a Mazda CX5 a few months ago.
|
| Thank god Mazda currently has the "driver first" mentality.
|
| NO Touchscreen!
|
| Main input is through a comfortable knob in front of the arm
| rest, where your hand naturally lands when resting.
|
| Gauge cluster is digital, but analog type dials for spedo, etc.
|
| AC, Power Cool/heated seats, driver assists, auto-park, all
| controlled via BUTTONS!
|
| It's a modern miracle and one of the big reasons I chose to buy
| it over a new Tesla Model 3.
|
| "Horse and rider" is truly a wonderful concept... Go Mazda!
| darkstar999 wrote:
| My 2018 CX5 has a touchscreen, but it's entirely disabled while
| the car is moving. So I've never used it. I just wish they
| saved the time and money not developing it, but I guess it's
| one of those marketing bullet points.
| drdaeman wrote:
| > but analog type dials for spedo
|
| Why is this considered an upside?
|
| When I shopped for a car, I've specifically looked for one with
| a simple (uncluttered) large digital number-only speedometer.
| Ended up buying 2013 Civic, which is still bad in other regards
| but got this one right, with a large digital speedometer
| conveniently located not behind the steering wheel but right
| below the windshield (less eye travel; and still in peripheral
| vision even when looking at the road).
| https://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Honda...
|
| I can read a number in a few milliseconds, ending up with an
| exact reading. So, I instantly know e.g. if I'm at, below, or
| above the speed limit (or desired/safe speed).
|
| All those analog gauges take me - personally - at least an
| order of magnitude longer to mentally process. I can get a
| rough idea (+-5 or +-10 {mph,km/h} depending on the dials)
| relatively quick - but still much longer than it takes for me
| to digest a readily spelled out number. Or I can spend an
| eternity (2+ seconds) to get a more precise reading.
|
| And it's not as if acceleration rate normally matters, so
| unlike some other instruments, ability to watch the speedometer
| needle moving doesn't make much sense to me.
|
| ---
|
| Oh, and I can't say I want a "smart" car, I just have a pet
| peeve about an awful (IMHO) designs of instrument clusters in
| most cars. It's either a bunch of round analogue gauges
| straight from grandpa's dream car (with special love for a huge
| engine rpm indicator, no matter the type of transmission - I
| really don't get this) or cyberpunk neon all the way with so
| much visual clutter and total absence of any sane color coding,
| and pray to manufacturer they don't decide all that stuff goes
| onto that giant iPad strapped somewhere next to your knee
| (thanks, Elon! Although, to be fair, at least it's plain, large
| and black on white)
| ghostpepper wrote:
| > Why is this considered an upside?
|
| I agree with all the reasons given in the article - namely
| that it's easier to tell with your peripheral vision if a
| needle has moved a small amount or a big amount than it is
| for your brain to register the difference between 69 and 71
| and then think about whether that's significant, compare it
| to the limit, etc.
| jjav wrote:
| Digital readouts are the best choice when you need to know an
| exact value. Like the radio frequency display, since 89.7 is
| a different station from 89.9.
|
| The downside of digital readouts is that they take mental
| processing to actively look, read and interpret. You can't
| notice in peripheral vision if 89.9 suddenly changed to 89.7
| (ok bad example since you'd hear the radio progam change, but
| assuming we're talking about visual display only here).
|
| Rate of change and peripheral vision of approximate values is
| where analog gauges shine. I don't care to know if speed is
| 36 or 37, it's more valuable to know the approximate spot
| where the needle is without ever having to look at it
| directly. Same for tachometer, there I care about rate of
| change and will definitely never look at it directly since as
| I approach redline my eyes are far ahead on the road.
| asdff wrote:
| It makes it easy to glance at your speed. Straight up is
| 60mph on my car. 9 o clock is 35mph or so. Split the
| difference and I'm at 45 without having to actually look out
| from my peripheral vision and take my eyes off the road.
| kunai wrote:
| Honda has been moving in a similar direction as well it seems.
| Most of the Japanese marques besides Subaru have ditched all-
| touch layouts in favor of physical buttons due to poor focus
| group and customer response. The new Ford Maverick and Bronco
| also both come with extremely tactile interior layouts, which
| is a pleasant sight for touchscreen-sore eyes.
|
| I really hope this is just another fad/trend in automotive
| design like 6-disc trunk CD changers or phosphor display
| gauges.
| tobyjsullivan wrote:
| Bought a 2016 mazda this year for exactly the same reason.
| Perfect combination of nice, big, well positioned LED display
| but no touch screen. (Maybe you can use touch screen when
| parked? Never tried.) It's a little slow and the media units
| can fail, but I'd say all the tradeoffs are very well balanced.
| codyogden wrote:
| I have a 2019 CX-3 (dealer's loaner bought in 2020). Prior to
| the 2021 models, you can use Touch Screen when stopped or
| parked. 2021+ they disabled touchscreen completely on all
| models stopped or moving. I really agree with this decision.
| Johnny555 wrote:
| I hated that knob interface in my Mazda, and it seems less safe
| since I need to scroll and watch the screen to see when the
| item I want to click is highlighted. A touch screen seems less
| distracting. It's been a few years since I had it, but using it
| with Android Auto was super frustrating.
| codyogden wrote:
| I grew to love the Mazda "Commander Knob" or the combo-
| joystick/click rotator. It felt clumsy at first, but once I
| got used to CarPlay's interfaces muscle memory really started
| kicking in and I became accustomed to feeling the number of
| 'clicks' to rotate to get where I needed. I primarily
| interact with CarPlay using Siri though.
| fungiblecog wrote:
| couldn't agree more
| paxys wrote:
| > Enough already. Make a car that's pretty much all dumb and
| watch it sell
|
| That's all that you need to know that the author is a tech
| blogger and not a car salesman.
| throw10920 wrote:
| Yup - I don't think they know much about what car purchasers
| actually pay attention to.
|
| People will continue to buy "smart" cars until both of the
| following happen: (1) they pull themselves out of purchase
| apathy and start caring about the quality of their purchases
| and (2) the information asymmetry favoring automakers is
| substantially reduced.
|
| Incidentally, if both of these things happen, the consumer
| market in general will massively improve.
| geff82 wrote:
| In 2017 I bought a new Renault Twingo in the basic version to
| commute. It was great in an unexpected way: it didn't distract at
| all from driving. It had one great simple feature: you could put
| your smartphone at the place usual GPS screens are mounted. That
| is it. So you could use a Renault provided App on your phone or
| use Google Maps. I missed nothing.
| jet_32951 wrote:
| Needed to be said. I will not buy a post-2012 car because of the
| invasion of nanny features and telemetry. Current rides: 2003
| Tacoma truck, 2005 Subaru wagon.
| giantg2 wrote:
| "Carmakers have always struggled with user interfaces, but until
| recently the biggest problem we had was "too many knobs.""
|
| My 89 Caprice was awesome and didn't even have this problem. You
| could operate it by feel, even counting the clicks on the radio
| tuning dial to know how far you were tuning.
| furyg3 wrote:
| Hear hear. I sold my old 2004 Skoda Fabia (which for Americans
| has the technology of a 2000 VW golf), since repairs were costing
| more and the car sharing here in Amsterdam is really becoming
| reliable for the few times I need a car. Recently I rented a car
| for a ski trip, a recent Jeep Renegade, oh my lord.
|
| It was constantly trying to take the controls from me (god forbid
| you change lanes without signaling on a totally empty road!), the
| dashboard screen was constantly changing, and dynamically listed
| the speed limit in two places, but often it was completely wrong
| and sometimes it didn't even agree with itself. I am still not
| clear what it was trying to tell me. The console screen was
| 'dumb' in the bad way, and would lose connection with my phone
| constantly, but you couldn't re-connect it because you're not
| allowed to do that while driving. The interface was of course
| badly designed and slow to respond, so changing radio stations
| was a nightmare (which I had to do because my phone wouldn't
| connect. In the end I just used my ear-free headphones since it
| was easier.
|
| My old Skoda had none of this. Real dials / gauges, simple
| physical climate controls, and a hole which you can put a stereo
| head unit in (I put the dumbest one I could find with bluetooth
| in for EUR40). I had a strong magsafe mount for my phone and
| done.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| > dynamically listed the speed limit in two places, but often
| it was completely wrong and sometimes it didn't even agree with
| itself
|
| I had a rental car last year that did this. One speed limit is
| the (often outdated) speed limit it picks up from the
| navigation system's maps, and the second in the most recent
| speed limit sign the cameras OCR'd.
|
| The speed limit from the maps is invariably wrong as soon as
| you turn off a major road, and the cameras seem to miss about
| every 3rd speed limit sign...
| komadori wrote:
| I can see why you might feel silly indicating on an empty road,
| but personally I find indicating to be such an integral and
| effortless part of turning or changing lane that I always
| indicate even if I can't see anyone about. By comparison, when
| drivers are making judgement calls about whether it's necessary
| to indicate, I'm often suprised by their unexpected movements.
| This is particularly true as a pedestrian as some drivers seem
| prone to not indicating if there isn't another vehicle behind
| them.
| furyg3 wrote:
| I totally agree with you... but I disagree that the car
| should be the enforcer of this behavior (unless there is
| actual danger of hitting a barrier, other car, etc). Drivers
| should not have an adversarial relationship with their cars.
|
| On a winding two lane (same direction) mountain road with
| light snow and no traffic, it's silly to tell the car 'I am
| going to cross this stripe now' to avoid the car trying to
| steer me into the barrier. I am constantly driving on top of
| the lane lines to avoid snow, ice, minimize breaking, and
| generally drive smoothly so as not to put unneeded forces on
| a car in icy conditions. Edge case? Yes, but there are tons
| of them.
|
| Examples (imagine snowy conditions at night):
|
| https://goo.gl/maps/bs6wRGZNywz39RgD8
|
| https://goo.gl/maps/XHHkGx9xtg8y9UWt6
| EliRivers wrote:
| "I always indicate even if I can't see anyone about."
|
| Well of course. "Nobody else is here" looks the same to you
| (and me) as "I haven't seen that other road user", and in the
| event that you haven't seen the other road user, the only
| chance they have is for them to take action and they really,
| really need the warning of your indicator lights.
| ohgodplsno wrote:
| Absolutely. Indicate all the time, even when not needed. It
| trains you to indicate when it is definitely needed, and
| prevents me from having to yell at you because you suddenly
| jerked to the lane I was on without any warnings.
| noduerme wrote:
| I've had this experience with rental cars recently. It's
| terrifying! I usually spend half an hour in the parking lot
| sifting through menus turning off all the warnings I can find.
|
| I like Skodas. Although a Czech friend told me that Skoda in
| Czech is a car name, a common surname, and a casual term for
| "idiot".
| strzibny wrote:
| The translation is not idiot, but misfortune, damage or pity
| (Schade for German friends). Funny name for sure.
| dagw wrote:
| I love my 2014 Skoda. It is the most boring car I have ever
| owned. It just does exactly what I want every time without
| fail and is never 'surprising' or 'interesting' or 'fun'.
| saki709 wrote:
| So basically you want golf mk2
| Ralo wrote:
| I've always taken the stance of cars being nothing more than a
| product to transport me. I've always found it hard to justify
| spending $30k more because that one has a nice leather interior,
| touch screens, and looks prettier. They both do the same job,
| we'll both arrive at the office at the same time.
|
| A $50 used deck with bluetooth is all the tech I need.
| throwaway22032 wrote:
| The solution is to just buy old cars.
|
| I drive a 20 year old car. It's perfect. It has a CD player and
| you can use one of those 12 volt bluetooth / aux bongles if you
| want more.
|
| Eventually my local area will probably ban them because they're
| obsessed with health metrics (cars a few years older are now
| effectively taxed out of existence). Then I'll have to make do
| with the log burner.
|
| Until one of my neighbours dob me in for that, then I guess I
| move to the countryside or Eastern Europe or something and leave
| my house to a VR headset wonk.
| smitty1e wrote:
| Fascinating that, in a purportedly capitalistic economy, there is
| product demand going unserviced.
|
| We argue on good grounds, and the author mentions, that we need
| standards for safety and reliability, sure.
|
| But at what point do we admit that Regulatory Capture[1] destroys
| innovation to the benefit of only the major players?
|
| [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture
| thrower123 wrote:
| When the latest car we bought came pre-loaded with 2048 on the
| absurdly large central touchscreen control, but had no physical
| knobs to control the heater, I resolved to never buy another new
| vehicle again.
| Jaruzel wrote:
| After years of driving a several Mercedes E-Class cars, I now
| drive a 2004 Jeep Cherokee (not the 'Grand Cherokee'... In the US
| my Jeep is called the Liberty).
|
| It's very basic compared to my Mercs, but oddly I enjoy driving
| it more - and I'm _not_ one of those 'love cars, love to drive'
| people.
|
| I relate to the point in the article about fancy screens; In my
| Jeep I fitted a very cheap (PS30) Chinese radio head unit. It has
| almost no display, or useful functions, but it does have
| Bluetooth, so my phone does all the heavy lifting - internet
| radio, music, GPS etc. I can upgrade my phone at any point, and
| my jeeps infotainment system gets a bump-up at the same time.
| shimonabi wrote:
| I once bought such a Bluetooth radio.
|
| It cost me over 300EUR (new starter, new battery) to finally
| figure out myself that the cheap Chinese radio was draining my
| battery and preventing my car to start. Sometimes I had to turn
| the key 30 times (with a full battery) to start the car.
| badrabbit wrote:
| We need an eco friendly lada and peugeot 404.
| squarefoot wrote:
| I'd be generally fine with "smart" cars, provided they can be
| kept disconnected 24/7, that is, no phoning home to report where
| I am going or at what speed, and no ads. Otherwise, then thanks
| but no thanks.
| 400thecat wrote:
| do the dashboards in smart cars display ads?
| aembleton wrote:
| Not yet; but it wouldn't surprise me to see that in the next
| few years.
| raxxorrax wrote:
| Sadly the trend is that new shitty cars will come with
| preinstalled eSims to phone home "diagnostic" data.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2022-01-31 23:02 UTC)