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Ask HN: Best cars without too much digitalization?

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Re: Ask HN: Best cars without too much digitalization?

#241

Post by grzm »

4cao wrote: post #239
ntoeunteohu wrote: post #51

What you want is a "driver's car". They typically have fewer bells and whistles and provide a more connected driving experience. You're expected to expend effort to pilot the car. There are actually quite a few these days, but I'm partial to Japanese cars, myself. 1) Mazda MX-5 Miata I own one. It's awesome to drive. Has few features and a simple dash. It's quite economical to operate (inexpensive to insure, gets ove…

I vouched for this comment. Perhaps it's not exactly what the question is asking for but is well-formulated (if a bit subjective), and comes from a newly-registered user (welcome to HN!), so I don't think it deserves to be "dead."

Just as the guidelines ask us "If you flag, please don't also comment that you did", just vouch: don't also mention you did.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

If you think a commenter's comments are dead in error, you can email the mods via the Contact link in the footer so they can take appropriate action.

Re: Ask HN: Best cars without too much digitalization?

#242

Post by malshe »

fletchowns wrote: post #56
kgermino wrote: post #15

They don't sell them in the US anymore, but I drive a 2019 Honda Fit and it's great. Very versatile (holds four adults, 8ft lumber, 36" doors, etc). The base trim is very tech-lite: bluetooth radio but nothing fancier than that, physically controlled hvac and chair controls, traditional key, basic LTMS (no dedicated chips in the tires, just a calculation based on different angular velocity across the wheels), etc. It…

> It's a dying breed though, complicated "driver assist" systems are becoming standard or even mandated :(. I'm on the opposite side of this. All the new safety & driver assist features are the best part about getting a new car. I wouldn't buy a new daily driver that doesn't have blind spot monitoring, collision avoidance, lane keep assist, etc. Once you have these features and you are accustomed to how they work, yo…

In Texas all these are must have features given how terrible we drive!

Re: Ask HN: Best cars without too much digitalization?

#243

Post by aidenn0 »

fletchowns wrote: post #56
kgermino wrote: post #15

They don't sell them in the US anymore, but I drive a 2019 Honda Fit and it's great. Very versatile (holds four adults, 8ft lumber, 36" doors, etc). The base trim is very tech-lite: bluetooth radio but nothing fancier than that, physically controlled hvac and chair controls, traditional key, basic LTMS (no dedicated chips in the tires, just a calculation based on different angular velocity across the wheels), etc. It…

> It's a dying breed though, complicated "driver assist" systems are becoming standard or even mandated :(. I'm on the opposite side of this. All the new safety & driver assist features are the best part about getting a new car. I wouldn't buy a new daily driver that doesn't have blind spot monitoring, collision avoidance, lane keep assist, etc. Once you have these features and you are accustomed to how they work, yo…

The blind spot monitoring on my car is useless. I call it "the thing that beeps every time I turn on my signal"

Unfortunately the rear-cross-traffic is very useful and I can't turn off one without the other.

Re: Ask HN: Best cars without too much digitalization?

#244

Post by aidenn0 »

screye wrote: post #182

I would recommend Mazda vehicles. Their entire lineup offers a small set of effective and minimally intrusive digital/smart features. But, outside of that, they keep it simple. The no-touchscreen is a much safer way to interact with the vehicle, and afaik they have stuck to the traditional 'car' formula. Most of their cars can be purchased in manual and have pretty good driving mechanics for a honda/toyota competitor…

I love my Mazda 3 hatch. Only thing I wish I could do is turn off blind-spot alerts without turning off rear-cross-traffic.

There's enough traffic where I live that former beeps every time I put my signal on before 11pm, while the latter is extremely useful.

Re: Ask HN: Best cars without too much digitalization?

#245

Post by karaterobot »

spookthesunset wrote: post #217
karaterobot wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right direction, true. Touch screens are cheaper to design and build for, compared to physical controls, but do they benefit the safety or convenience of the driver? I don't think so. However, apart from the touch screen being optional, I think Mazda has a fairly driver-hostile user experience with their controls. I have a 2020 CX-5, and it's still very opinionated about how I should be driving. For example, it w…

You just ignore those disclaimers and they go away. Blame the sue happy society we live in for that… it is pure CYA.

Sure, you don't have to press it, but it blocks the UI until it goes away. The worst part of it is that it doesn't matter how many times you say "I agree", it will continue asking you every time you start the car.

You're also right that it's pure CYA. However, since you don't actually have to agree with it to use the vehicle, I wonder whether it actually covers anything, or if it's just a meaningless hurdle you have to jump through. In any case, it's not for my benefit as the owner.

Re: Ask HN: Best cars without too much digitalization?

#246

Post by the_pwner224 »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #141

Annoyingly, I want an electric car without "digitilization". No distracting central touch screen, no "autopilot" nonsense, proper gauges and indicators, tactile feel. A focus on the driving and safety and ergonomics, not on "we don't need an instrument cluster because iPads are cool, people like their phones and buttons are expensive and break"... A Saab 900 with an electric motor. Please make it.

The newly announced (today) Genesis GV70 Electrified seems to fit the bill. Genesis is Hyundai's somewhat new luxury brand - Hyundai really screwed up the launch so almost nobody knows about it, but they make some pretty decent luxury cars at good prices and haven't deleted all the buttons like in current Mercedes/Audis and BMW's new products. Infotainment system has a knob; the screens are touchscreen but they're placed pretty far back in the dash and so the knob is the primary control method. Physical buttons for media controls and on the steering wheel. The new gen products have moved a few of the climate controls to a small touchscreen, but the commonly used function are still physical. Overall, way better than all of the competitors at keeping the car usable.

Genesis announced earlier this year that they plan to be all electric by 2025. And unlike most of these statements from most manufacturers, this one is actually believable. Hyundai/Kia have been pretty successful at selling electric cars in Europe; they have the engineering resources built up for EVs and Genesis should be able to take advantage of that.

The GV70 is expected to have around 250 miles of range. In addition to that I think they're also going to be releasing the electrified G80 (midsize luxury sedan) pretty soon.

Re: Ask HN: Best cars without too much digitalization?

#247

Post by Gigachad »

olyjohn wrote: post #116
Gigachad wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buttons and dials, sure. But no sane person is longing to buy a car without reverse cameras or collision avoidance.

I must be insane. But I could care less about either of those things.

Which is why the government mandates it because drivers should not get to pick the safety features that stop them killing others.

Re: Ask HN: Best cars without too much digitalization?

#248

Post by 4cao »

grzm wrote: post #241
4cao wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I vouched for this comment. Perhaps it's not exactly what the question is asking for but is well-formulated (if a bit subjective), and comes from a newly-registered user (welcome to HN!), so I don't think it deserves to be "dead."

Just as the guidelines ask us "If you flag, please don't also comment that you did" , just vouch: don't also mention you did. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html If you think a commenter's comments are dead in error, you can email the mods via the Contact link in the footer so they can take appropriate action.

The guidelines only say so about flagging, clearly to discourage low-quality comments from getting attention and obscuring more interesting discussion.

For this reason, I don't think there is any obvious parallel to vouching that you're trying to draw here. However, perhaps I am wrong. Can you point to a comment by @dang that would substantiate your opinion?

Re: Ask HN: Best cars without too much digitalization?

#249

Post by jjav »

willis936 wrote: post #133
HWR_14 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wouldn't buy a new daily driver that doesn't have blind spot monitoring, collision avoidance, lane keep assist, etc. Once you have these features and you are accustomed to how they work, you can't go back. And I don't like them. But only one of us has the government taking away our choice by making them mandatory. I wouldn't mind them if it wasn't for the fact that they universally seem to be points of failure th…

They're not there for you to like them. They're there so you don't kill someone and someone else doesn't kill you. Society collectively fails to give a single ass of a rat about how people feel about their ubiquitous 2-ton death machine.

This assumes that these systems have no drawbacks, which is highly optimistic.

The automatic braking seems to be the most dangerous one so far, at least on Teslas. Countless incidents of the car slamming on the brakes at highway speeds for no reason whatsover. Brake checking people at highway speeds is highly dangerous road rager action, now cars are automating behaving like this.

Things like auto lane control seem more benign, but they do suffer the same dangers as the so-called autopilots, in that they lull the driver into paying less attention which will always be more dangerous until true AI level 5 self-driving exists.

Re: Ask HN: Best cars without too much digitalization?

#250

Post by runjake »

kgermino wrote: post #53
runjake wrote: post #50

They don't make them for the US anymore. The best you can do is buy a "fleet model" truck or something, but its still going to have a host of electronics and probably a GPS and cellular radio inside. Fleet models are designed to last, as not to anger large-scale fleet customers. Yeah, you can find cars with more knobs and less touch screens, but in most cases, those analog-appearing knobs are just digital input devic…

I'm pretty sure my 2019 Honda's HVAC knobs are physically connected to the flaps they control. You can feel/hear the dampers moving with the knobs.

The dampers might be, but the system is still controlled by Android running on a puny OMAP processor in the 2019 Fit.

I'd paste the link to the technician's manual, but it's not public, though you can find it on less than ethical places.

A fun practice is to pull the fuse on the Android unit and try using your car. It will work, but it's... unpleasant.

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