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Show HN: Nissan's Leaf app doesn't have a home screen widget so I made my own

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Re: Show HN: Nissan's Leaf app doesn't have a home screen widget so I made my own

#21

Post by jdminhbg »

cyberax wrote: post #20
jdminhbg wrote: post #19

Nobody wants to hear it in 2025 but this is one of the reasons Tesla is still a much better experience than most of the legacy car manufacturers. Car People like to think of apps as a weird Tech People affectation, but in actual day-to-day usage, they're invaluable.

Tesla's UI experience is just about as shitty as of other automakers. And you don't have the escape hatch of CarPlay/AA.

It really just isn't, especially when it comes to the app. I've dealt with Ford in the past and Kia in the present, and it's like having a carrier-supplied dumb phone vs an iPhone in 2007. Completely separate experience.

Re: Show HN: Nissan's Leaf app doesn't have a home screen widget so I made my own

#23

Post by serial_dev »

jdminhbg wrote: post #19

Nobody wants to hear it in 2025 but this is one of the reasons Tesla is still a much better experience than most of the legacy car manufacturers. Car People like to think of apps as a weird Tech People affectation, but in actual day-to-day usage, they're invaluable.

> apps as a weird Tech People affectation

Maybe I never had the right luxury brand car, but I still see it as such.

If I want to have an app for my car, I’m my opinion that car failed me to provide with a simple, convenient driving experience.

I want to get in the car, check if it’s charged / filled up enough, check for errors (as a routine, but there shouldn’t be any), and drive.

If I need to change anything (AC, light, volume) I should be able to do it without having to take my eyes off the road.

What features do you like so much that you consider them “invaluable”?

Re: Show HN: Nissan's Leaf app doesn't have a home screen widget so I made my own

#24

Post by aprilthird2021 »

Cool! I like that it just works ™ and is a lot more resilient to the hostile first party than other approaches.

How often does the scraping of the app running on the RaspPi run and how much is the lag between that job running and the data appearing on your phone?

Re: Show HN: Nissan's Leaf app doesn't have a home screen widget so I made my own

#25

Post by jdminhbg »

serial_dev wrote: post #23
jdminhbg wrote: post #19

Nobody wants to hear it in 2025 but this is one of the reasons Tesla is still a much better experience than most of the legacy car manufacturers. Car People like to think of apps as a weird Tech People affectation, but in actual day-to-day usage, they're invaluable.

> apps as a weird Tech People affectation Maybe I never had the right luxury brand car, but I still see it as such. If I want to have an app for my car, I’m my opinion that car failed me to provide with a simple, convenient driving experience. I want to get in the car, check if it’s charged / filled up enough, check for errors (as a routine, but there shouldn’t be any), and drive. If I need to change anything (AC, li…

I would say the place where I differ is here:

> I want to get in the car,

I don't want to have to get in the car to do any of this. I'm able to get the climate control started in the car by saying out loud "Hey Siri, warm up car" (a shortcut I set up exposed by the Tesla app). The location is always up-to-date so if my wife is driving the kids in it, I can see their current location and ETA. I want to be able to open the door without unlocking the car manually. I want to be able to close the trunk remotely if I carried in a load of groceries. Etc.

None of this is some kind of alien technology that Tesla invented, but rather the vast majority of legacy car manufacturer apps are just total garbage piles that were outsourced to some low-bidder somewhere. It shouldn't be that hard.

Re: Show HN: Nissan's Leaf app doesn't have a home screen widget so I made my own

#26

Post by wizerno »

Does anyone else miss the functionality of the Android WhatsApp widget [1] on iOS? Being able to read messages without sending read receipts via the widget is a great feature. The iOS notification 'peek' is a clumsy substitute.

Is this a fundamental limitation of iOS widgets/APIs, or just something WhatsApp hasn't implemented? Curious if others have found better ways to handle this on iPhone.

[1] https://www.tomsguide.com/how-to/how-to-use-the-WhatsApp-wid...

Re: Show HN: Nissan's Leaf app doesn't have a home screen widget so I made my own

#27

Post by cyberax »

jdminhbg wrote: post #21
cyberax wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla's UI experience is just about as shitty as of other automakers. And you don't have the escape hatch of CarPlay/AA.

It really just isn't, especially when it comes to the app. I've dealt with Ford in the past and Kia in the present, and it's like having a carrier-supplied dumb phone vs an iPhone in 2007. Completely separate experience.

I stopped using the official Tesla app entirely. It's so freaking sluggish and useless. They spent all their effort on drawing a toy car with shiny animations, and neglected everything else.

E.g. if I want to turn on the seat and wheel heaters, I click on it, and then I need to wait 3 seconds to see if it actually turned them on. Or maybe they were already on, and my click turned them off instead.

The service chat section is entirely useless, and was probably written by somebody drinking bong water. And you _have_ to use it. Tesla even sends you freaking text messages with just a link to the app instead of actual text of the updates.

And I once spent 20 minutes trying to find how I can remove a guest driver from my account. Turns out that there's a small gray button "Manage Drivers" at the very bottom of the screen, past the odometer data.

Sorry. But Tesla is as shitty as other automakers. Or even shittier, because other automakers don't force me to talk with their service centers solely through their crapps.

Re: Show HN: Nissan's Leaf app doesn't have a home screen widget so I made my own

#28

Post by kcon »

aprilthird2021 wrote: post #24

Cool! I like that it just works ™ and is a lot more resilient to the hostile first party than other approaches. How often does the scraping of the app running on the RaspPi run and how much is the lag between that job running and the data appearing on your phone?

Thanks! The IFTTT widget can supposedly update within a few seconds of receiving the triggering email since this is a “real-time applet” (https://help.ifttt.com/hc/en-us/articles/4412435510171-What-...), but in practice it seems to update more on the order of several minutes after the scraping workflow runs.

I have been running the scraping workflow once per hour during waking hours the past week, but I reduced that recently because I was starting to feel nervous (but without any real evidence) that pinging the car too often could drain the 12V battery.

The scraping workflow takes between 2-3 minutes to run. You can view the history and duration of runs here if you’re curious: https://github.com/kevincon/nissan-leaf-widget-updater/actio...

Re: Show HN: Nissan's Leaf app doesn't have a home screen widget so I made my own

#29

Post by jdminhbg »

cyberax wrote: post #27
jdminhbg wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really just isn't, especially when it comes to the app. I've dealt with Ford in the past and Kia in the present, and it's like having a carrier-supplied dumb phone vs an iPhone in 2007. Completely separate experience.

I stopped using the official Tesla app entirely. It's so freaking sluggish and useless. They spent all their effort on drawing a toy car with shiny animations, and neglected everything else. E.g. if I want to turn on the seat and wheel heaters, I click on it, and then I need to wait 3 seconds to see if it actually turned them on. Or maybe they were already on, and my click turned them off instead. The service chat se…

> and then I need to wait 3 seconds to see if it actually turned them on

If you want to unlock a Kia with the app, first you need to pay $15/month, and then you need to press and hold for one second the unlock button, after which you have a 30-50% chance of the unlock request going through. To let you know that it went through, you will receive an email. It's the most user-hostile app I still have on my phone.

So no, Tesla is not as shitty as other automakers. The bar is so much lower than you can imagine.

Re: Show HN: Nissan's Leaf app doesn't have a home screen widget so I made my own

#30

Post by cyberax »

jdminhbg wrote: post #29
cyberax wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped using the official Tesla app entirely. It's so freaking sluggish and useless. They spent all their effort on drawing a toy car with shiny animations, and neglected everything else. E.g. if I want to turn on the seat and wheel heaters, I click on it, and then I need to wait 3 seconds to see if it actually turned them on. Or maybe they were already on, and my click turned them off instead. The service chat se…

> and then I need to wait 3 seconds to see if it actually turned them on If you want to unlock a Kia with the app, first you need to pay $15/month, and then you need to press and hold for one second the unlock button, after which you have a 30-50% chance of the unlock request going through. To let you know that it went through, you will receive an email. It's the most user-hostile app I still have on my phone. So no,…

I had remote unlock for my Chevy Volt in 2012. It was as fast as Tesla's.

So yep, Tesla sucks. Other car makers can suck a bit more, but that doesn't make Tesla any better.

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