Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Software is eating the car

spectrum.ieee.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 549 posts

Re: Software is eating the car

#161

Post by Pokepokalypse »

galangalalgol wrote: post #29
ArkanExplorer wrote: post #4

It seems that 'hardware' is eating the car, too. I want to just buy a small, slow, simple EV for picking up groceries and other city errands, for $5k-$10k. It seems like the only companies making that are the Chinese, and usually only selling them in China. Heck, it doesn't even need an Infotainment system - just bluetooth for audio and calls, USB-A charger port and phone cradle.

A few people in my neighborhood have golf carts, not sure how its legal but the police don't bother them.

In my neighborhood (AZ), they're actually very common; and also offroad "razor" type cars. You see people going to the store or even work in them. Fully open, and they have license plates, the works.

Re: Software is eating the car

#162

Post by bozzcl »

nogridbag wrote: post #73
bobajeff wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I like the tech behind Tesla but am turned off by. 1) The large, distracting screen in the front of the car. 2) The subscription model of the car's firmware. If electric cars ever become widespread I hope I can find a used one engineered without that stuff. Otherwise I may have to stop buying cars.

I recently purchased a Kia Telluride. Perhaps I'm now biased because I love the car, but I think it has an excellent combination of tech and usability. 1. It still has buttons and knobs for the things that should be buttons and knobs (e.g. climate control, volume, etc). 2. The heads up display is the killer feature that should be standard on all cars (as is only available on the top speced Telluride). It displays spe…

Regarding HUDs... it's the one feature I desperately want for my next car. I've been looking into aftermarket options, but all of them are ridiculously cheap and bad or vaporware.

Re: Software is eating the car

#163

Post by numpad0 »

arpyzo wrote: post #48
zippergz wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1000% agree. I do not want a car that is a smartphone on wheels and I have no idea why so many people find this attractive.

I own a 2014 Subaru Impreza and my brother in-law a 2017. I've driven both extensively. Sometime during those years, Subaru switched from knobs and levers to a touchscreen and the controls are so much worse! 1. The controls on the 2014 are obvious, easy to find, and my choices are readily apparent. In the 2017 I have to search for them and often guess their meanings. If I'm actively driving, I just give up because it…

OT but since there seems to be multiple Subaru owners — if you are experiencing an issue with the clock on MFD(the small display on top of the dashboard) being too fast, probably depends on models but the causes are,

1) that there’s no CAN bus messages in Subaru cars that offer GPS time, and

2) that at least older models of MFD counts time by dividing 125kHz CAN bus crystal, where a sane choice would be to use 32.768kHz one.

It’s not just your car, the issue is in design. To hypothetically fix it a firmware hack would need to be built. I learned this when a friend of mine told his is always way too fast and often makes him upset for a moment that he might be late to work — don’t know he meant it justify flooring it but sounded like he was genuinely annoyed.

Re: Software is eating the car

#164

Post by crooked-v »

clairity wrote: post #125
temporallobe wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Car guy here. Yeah, I’m with you. My favorite car was a ‘96 Tercel with mechanical steering and a 4-speed manual. It even had manual roll-up windows. It had less than 100 HP, but it was simple as hell to operate, very fun to drive, cheap to maintain, and extremely reliable up until I sold it with nearly 400k miles on the odo. I put an aftermarket stereo and speakers in it and I was set. Only reason I sold it was beca…

> "Modern cars are absolutely terrible in the UX department, but they are a hell of a lot safer, so there’s that." tangentially, "safety" is highly cargo-culted. things that seem so obviously safer are taken without question as better, but in many cases, such features really only provide a false sense of security along with substantive unintended consequences. most safety features in cars (e.g., lane-keeping) allow p…

> rather than lowering crash/injury/death rates.

Motor vehicle deaths per 100,000 have been on a consistent downward trend since the 70s (1.53 per 100,000 in 2000, 1.11 per 100,000 in 2019), so, no, death rates have in fact been lowered.

Re: Software is eating the car

#165

Post by speedgoose »

mthomasmw wrote: post #6

Serious question - what alternatives are left for those of us who want a dumb car? I've spent the last three months finding out I can't get solar panels installed without a high-fidelity power-monitor tap connected to the provider's cloud, logging every appliance I use and what it's doing. Same deal with cars - they are on the internet and they generate evidence used to convict, and geofencing is coming. Other than s…

You can buy a Dacia.

Re: Software is eating the car

#166

Post by r00fus »

jonplackett wrote: post #74
jonpurdy wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I recently bought a used 2016 Spark EV (having a baby and needed something other than my motorbike). It does have a touchscreen, but mostly for extraneous information and radio functions. Everything else has dedicated knobs and buttons. (The one dumb thing is that the fan speed updates on the screen, rather than just having ticks above the knob.) It is a California "compliance car", which means it was just a modified…

This is the exact same stupid thing that happened with DSLR cameras. Old SLR cameras had a ring around the lens for f-stop and another dial on top for shutter speed. New DSLR cameras even now hide all that stuff in a menu on the touch screen, as if it isn't something you want to change ALL THE TIME - and develop instant muscle memory for.

Could be they want you to buy their Pro item where the actually offer reasonable affordances?

Most "pro-sumers" wouldn't bother to adjust what the auto-focus calculates anyway.

Re: Software is eating the car

#167

Post by crooked-v »

vannevar wrote: post #7
SavantIdiot wrote: post #3

Short answer to the lede: no, the industry cannot cope. Or rather, it will limp along with bloatware, bugs, and malware exactly the same way we see desktop OSes bloat, or the way we see routers and set-top boxes hacked to become botnets. In my 40+ years in the industry I've yet to see code get SMALLER. With the exception of Linux kernel 1.0 in the 90's which was a step backwards into smaller, more compact code, code…

Glad to hear I'm not the only one who wants a dumb car. Unfortunately, the idea of electric cars has become bound up with the notion of software-driven cars. I want an electric car with analog controls, no touch screens or over-the-air updates, and minimal software. A car that I feel like I own, rather than one I'm getting a click-through license to use.

Mazda has been actively removing touch screens in new models. The screens are still there, but the touch part is replaced with physical controls for cabin features/radio and a puck controller for other stuff.

Re: Software is eating the car

#168

Post by [deleted] »

quacked wrote: post #13
mthomasmw wrote: post #6

Serious question - what alternatives are left for those of us who want a dumb car? I've spent the last three months finding out I can't get solar panels installed without a high-fidelity power-monitor tap connected to the provider's cloud, logging every appliance I use and what it's doing. Same deal with cars - they are on the internet and they generate evidence used to convict, and geofencing is coming. Other than s…

I don't think there are any. If you got to the point where you somehow managed to source the labor, materials, and space to manufacture "dumb technology", you'd be sued into oblivion by competitors who wouldn't want you to eat into their profit margins. I think the market is huge. Imagine a company that suddenly started selling all-metal consumer appliances with minimal functionality, controlled by old-fashioned swit…

[deleted]

Re: Software is eating the car

#169

Post by mixmastamyk »

rootusrootus wrote: post #85
mthomasmw wrote: post #6

Serious question - what alternatives are left for those of us who want a dumb car? I've spent the last three months finding out I can't get solar panels installed without a high-fidelity power-monitor tap connected to the provider's cloud, logging every appliance I use and what it's doing. Same deal with cars - they are on the internet and they generate evidence used to convict, and geofencing is coming. Other than s…

The vast, vast majority of all new cars sold today either don't have any kind of uplink to the cloud, or can have that capability easily removed (e.g. OnStar from GM). It's really only some of the EVs (the non-compliance ones like Tesla, really) that are software-heavy and blazing a new anti-privacy trail.

Don't they still record and just upload when you go to the dealer and they plug in the cable?

Re: Software is eating the car

#170

Post by clairity »

azornathogron wrote: post #146
clairity wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "Modern cars are absolutely terrible in the UX department, but they are a hell of a lot safer, so there’s that." tangentially, "safety" is highly cargo-culted. things that seem so obviously safer are taken without question as better, but in many cases, such features really only provide a false sense of security along with substantive unintended consequences. most safety features in cars (e.g., lane-keeping) allow p…

Modern cars have more design features that improve crash survivability (better airbags, better crumple zones, tested with more realistic crash tests, etc). Those seem like a pretty unalloyed improvement to me. I'm not saying you're wrong about the things you mentioned, but cars really have got safer, in important ways.

yes, airbags and crumple zones do improve safety, but even those are not without negative consequences, like bigger, heavier vehicles (which is more dangerous to others) and higher sense of psychological safety leading to being less considerate, less attentive, and more reckless.

that's not to argue that those tradeoffs aren't net positive, but that they're still tradeoffs to be considered, rather than short-circuiting to "of course it's better!".

Post reply on HN