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

Please make a dumb car

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

361–370 of 671 posts

Re: Please make a dumb car

#361

Post by mavhc »

sho_hn wrote: post #292
dntrkv wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> these unwanted smart features Only within the niche HN-type tech crowd. Most people outside of this group want these features, even other techies, including myself. It's the same discussion on any thread involving smart devices. People want this stuff, that's why there have been over 200M standalone smart speakers sold. As far as why these things get bundled, that’s just how auto manufacturing works. Every unique c…

I'm always surprised how defeatist and negative the tech community's attitude towards computerized UX in cars is. Often the opinions are simplistic and dismissive instead of zooming into the details. It's similar to when onscreen keyboards in phones where "obviously never going to work" when now, most people probably wouldn't want to give up the screen real estate for a hardware keyboard, except even more one-note. I…

The problem is hardware people can't write software, nor can they put in decent hardware so the software is fast. Nor make it secure.

That's why people buy Teslas, they're a software company that makes hardware on the side. And participates in hacker challenges, offering cars to the winners.

No one actually wants cars with no computers, they just think they do because they don't realise how much computers do, like reduce the amount of wires by 10x, and output error messages on the level of a crappy microcontroller instead of maybe a flashing light if you're lucky

Re: Please make a dumb car

#363

Post by spinitch »

inimino wrote: post #189
Eji1700 wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Glad i'm not the only one who thinks this is insane. I could maybe see a yolk, but dear god get me AWAY from touch screen style buttons in any serious process, let alone ones that can wind up in different orientations. And why in the hell does a yolk need to have the horn on a button rather than the center of the yolk as anyone would expect? Maybe there's some technical reason i'm unaware of, but this seems actively…

> yoke Used to turn the plane. Also put on oxen to pull a plow. > yolk Yellow part of an egg.

Yeah I was thinking, "a yolk steering wheel does sound pretty dangerous."

Re: Please make a dumb car

#364

Post by olyjohn »

waynesonfire wrote: post #325
loudthing wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My subaru has a tiny screen built in to the rear view. Its great. Anything else would be a downgrade.

Actual rear visibility would be an upgrade. Cars don't seem to come with that anymore.

Re: Please make a dumb car

#365

Post by Vrondi »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #239
causi wrote: post #227

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.

When I added a modern stereo with Android Auto/CarPlay to my 2003 vehicle, I found that many modern car stereos are designed to never be turned off. There was no off switch. So, if you start the car to let it warm while you shovel the driveway, you couldn't listen to your phone with bluetooth headphones, as it would connect to the car stereo, that you couldn't turn off with the car running.

I fixed it by wiring a simple toggle switch into the the power line for the stereo and mounting it in the dash. Problem fixed. "Off" shuts off the stereo instantly.

You might be able to read up on your model/package and do this, or consult a car stereo installation shop to do this.

Re: Please make a dumb car

#366

Post by ngngngng »

JasonFruit wrote: post #360
ngngngng wrote: post #304

https://vanderhallusa.com Here you go. I see this companies cars driving around sometimes.

I was very happy until I saw that they're not street-legal.

I've fixed the link, the one car I had linked previously was a new offering of theirs that was only for off road use.

Re: Please make a dumb car

#367

Post by olyjohn »

fingerlocks wrote: post #272
stillsut wrote: post #179

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…

Did you look into Subaru? They are still using physical controls for all car functionality. You can get heated seats, heated steering, stereoscopic lane keep assist & adaptive cruise control, etc. There is a touch screen, but I only use it for Apple Car Play.

My mom's Subaru has all the heating and seat heating controls on the touch screen. It's a 2022 model, so either it's changed to that, or it's part of a certain package. Also, it's one of the worst touch screen systems I have ever seen.

Re: Please make a dumb car

#368

Post by csours »

pavon wrote: post #323
AnimalMuppet wrote: post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Both my cars have that misfeature, but vary in details. Both take just long enough to start playing that they usually start blaring music as I'm backup up. Nor have I found any way to disable the feature on either. It took months for me to get into the habit of sitting and waiting for it to boot so I could turn it off before I start driving. The Honda CR-V is like you say, it will only turn on if you had the radio on…

For the Bolt - was it connected to Bluetooth when the car turned off?

Re: Please make a dumb car

#369

Post by fleddr »

Hear hear. And stop messing with the steering wheel. I don't want 17 trillion buttons on a steering wheel. The "safe" area seems to be getting smaller and smaller.

As for worst car UI experience ever, it has to be the Seat I'm driving. It has a large touch screen. So you decide you're going to touch an option and your finger is under way to the surface. During this movement, the UI detects you're going to press something and tries to "help" you by moving some sticky menu out of the way or the opposite: revealing some hover menu. So now the thing you were planning to touch has moved during the 0.5s travel.

The car is also in constant paranoia mode it seems. I'm parking forwards at about 1mph, slowly approaching the end of the lot, a boundary of shrubs. The car apparently thinks I'm close to dying. Everything is flashing and buzzing.

It also has a helpful planning system. I'm in the middle of a huge traffic jam and then it tells me "busy traffic ahead".

It has a navigation system where you can pick from 3 routes: fastest, easiest and some mysterious in-between option. Yet all routes lead to the exact same navigation instructions, it feels like somebody just made up the 10 minute "difference" in the UI.

When driving this car, I sometimes have this feeling that the makers are laughing at me as I drive it, to see how much you can mess with somebody before they understand they're the subject of a joke.

But this is no joke. I'm really quite sure that crappy car UI leads to injury and death. A car is not a Battlefield game that needs 2 years of bugfixing before it's usable.

Re: Please make a dumb car

#370

Post by llbeansandrice »

viburnum wrote: post #68
tsujp wrote: post #41

One thing I was flabbergasted at recently was Tesla offering, and the government allowing, regular drivers to use a yoke steering wheel like F1 drivers. Not only is it harder for the average person to handle but their firmware hadn't accounted for the fact that if you steer fully left or right the yoke is upside down and if you try and indicate it ends up indicating on the wrong side. What is wrong with a wheel and f…

The steering wheel in an F1 car only goes about 220 degrees in either direction (drivers have to keep their hands on the wheel and their arms aren't made of rubber). The steering in a regular car goes about 540 degrees in either direction (one and a half times around). When parallel parking you often have to turn the wheel three whole revolutions. F1 steering https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVz6IW_wegs&t=45s Tesla st…

That second video is horrifying. Horn and signal inputs as touch buttons on a steering wheel and no clear gear selection? What absolute madness by Tesla.
Post reply on HN