321–330 of 671 posts
It's very refreshing to own.
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 out…
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 ho…
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
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 m…
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 a…
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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.
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…
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.
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.
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.
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> 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…
Backup cameras are mandated in the US now, so that requires an LCD screen on the dash.
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 m…
I wonder how much all the screens have contributed to the increase in accidents in the last couple years