Software is eating the car

Post by dzhiurgis » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 9:33 PM UTC

jrwoodruff wrote: post #91

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…

Those mid 90s Japanese sedans were awesome. Relatively compact overall, zippy little 4 cylinders engines and manual transmissions. I had an Accord from that era, and loved driving my dads nerdy-as-hell Nissan Sentra. That car was shockingly fun to drive.

Post by dzhiurgis » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 9:36 PM UTC

clairity wrote: post #170

azornathogron wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-circuiti…

Post by dzhiurgis » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 9:41 PM UTC

wyre wrote: post #234

rootusrootus wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If electric cars ever become widespread Exclude Tesla and most all EVs on the road today are just normal cars that happen to be electric.

Why is special about Tesla that makes them not a “normal” car that happens to be electric?

Post by judge2020 » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 9:48 PM UTC

cyrks wrote: post #283

jacquesm wrote: post #181

Nothing worse than automotive software. Buggy, slow, terrible user interfaces, outright dangerous and in many ways much worse than the systems they replace or augment. The automotive industry has a long long way to come - assuming it will happen at all - before they can be said to be responsible software vendors. Case in point: my - former - C class Mercedes that made two pretty good attempts to kill me by slamming o…

One of the main problems is that we have many different software teams trying to solve the same safety feature driven functions in many different ways with many different solutions, outcomes, and decisions along the way. This leads to a very fragmented base of software with varying levels of safety, none of which is tested to the same standards. The result is that consumers don't know of the car they are buying is tr…

Post by randcraw » Thu, Jun 10, 2021, 9:50 PM UTC

GuB-42 wrote: post #194

vannevar wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

So you want a mechanical door lock, manual windows, no car stereo, no power steering, no thermostat, no cruise control, etc... The problem with that dumb car is that it is missing that very convenient feature. So you want a dumb car but with feature X, because feature X is really great. But the other guy will not care about X and will think it is bloat, but Y is really important, while for someone else, it will be al…