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Please make a dumb car

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Re: Please make a dumb car

#461

Post by 0xbadcafebee »

The Bluetooth in my 2102 Scion xB's stock calculator-display headunit works great.

I turn on the car, my phone auto-connects, and my last podcast immediately starts playing where it left off. I don't even know how it does that. I receive a phone call, and my music is paused and I can hit the green "pick up phone" button on the headunit, and I'm talking. Call ends, and my music resumes. I can pause the music with the "1" button, skip within a track, skip tracks, even thumbs-up or thumbs-down in music apps, all with a handful of manual buttons on a stock headunit. No "flipping menus", the existing buttons just work.

It's amazing. It just works. All without any god damn embedded mobile operating system or fancy graphics. ... oh, and because this headunit has a CDROM bay, it holds my magnetic phone mount better than any of the stick-on or vent-grippy ones. Thanks, dumb car!

Re: Please make a dumb car

#462

Post by jhoechtl »

afloyd wrote: post #444
sinab wrote: post #440

What I hate about "car discourse" like this is the apparent blindness to public transportation. Trains, bikes, buses, and street cars solve almost every problem that the author complains about. The only outstanding problem, however, is that American infrastructure has been deliberately designed solely around the car. Those who suggest alternative modes of public transportation are immediately written off as "impracti…

I would absolutely love to ride a bike or say, roller skate to work, but as i live in a stroad infested car dependent mess of a town, that is sadly impractical at best and outright deadly at worst.

I do not like to ride a bike at 0 °C. Buses are fine, waiting for the bus at 0 °C not so. But yeah, owning a car which is only used 1% of it's lifetime is pretty laughable and actually prohibitive.

Re: Please make a dumb car

#463

Post by KennyBlanken »

throwawayboise wrote: post #376
olyjohn wrote: post #364

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Wind tunnel engineering. Cars do not have large upright rear windows anymore because a sloping "fastback" design with a higher rear deck is more aerodynamic and gets an extra fraction of an MPG on the fuel economy rating.

Larger windows mean more cooling and heating needed, and high window sills especially on sedans are needed because of how insanely high SUVs and trucks are these days, because people need to overcompensate.

Re: Please make a dumb car

#464

Post by KennyBlanken »

tablespoon wrote: post #418
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…

> I think manufacturers are hoping that certain aspects of the modern auto become "can't live withouts", e.g. bluetooth, which helps them smuggle all the other more marginally useful, security and ux intrusive features into your model. I think that implies nefariousness that probably isn't there. It's more likely a combination of: 1. Marketing/sales wanting whiz-bang features to use in their pitches. 2. Copycatting c…

Coupling bluetooth to all sorts of unnecessary stuff as part of a "technology package" was the mantra for Euro car manufacturers for a decade or so until bluetooth became something people expected, no matter what.

Re: Please make a dumb car

#465

Post by rsync »

mwint wrote: post #161
chakintosh wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a UX designer and I've taken delivery of an XC40 Recharge two months ago, and I've never felt dumber in my life. Don't get me wrong, the car is absolutely wonderful, but the UX is so badly designed it makes me question myself. For starters, I have absolutely no clue how to use the lights, fans and wipers. Just last Saturday, a design oversight (and idiocy from my part) caused me to reverse into another car parked…

I’m having a hard time understanding how “I forgot to change gears and then hit the gas” can be classed a UX problem. Sounds like PEBKAC.

"I’m having a hard time understanding how “I forgot to change gears and then hit the gas” can be classed a UX problem. Sounds like PEBKAC."

On the one hand, it is easy to point to this as user error and you're not wrong.

But older cars have a significant tactile difference in operating different systems in the car. Shifting a gear is very, very different physically than pushing the button for your hazards. Your body moves in very different and operates these controls very differently.

This distinction was made clear to me years ago when we bought a 2013 Mercedes wagon - the physical action to: shift to park, turn the car on, turn the radio on were all nearly identical - just a button press. In fact, the buttons themselves were almost identical.

So, although I never actually did this, there were a number of times when I got relatively overloaded, cognitively, and I pressed the power off on the radio in an attempt to shift to park. Or I pressed the park button a second time in an attempt to turn the car off.

I believe that different subsystems in the car - especially life safety / critical driving systems - should have vastly different controls that force different physical interactions.

Re: Please make a dumb car

#466

Post by causi »

vel0city wrote: post #456
causi wrote: post #442

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're going to have a bad experience if you're always setting it to max cold or max heat instead of just picking a comfortable temperature in the middle and letting the car get to that temp. That's the issue. Suppose the car is at an ambient temperature of 50 degrees. I get in and start it up. I want air that's just slightly warmer than ambient but I can't get it. If I set it to 65, I get hit with air that's probabl…

Your car's automatic climate control system seems terribly designed and not like any one I've ever experienced. The climate control system on my Accord came out in 1996 and it behaved far superior to that. It doesn't just blow max heat/cold until the target temperature, it does a reasonable gradient of temperature differences until its the target temp keeping in mind some kind of comfort profile. This has been the wa…

I'm glad to hear they're improving. Maybe by the time I have to replace my car I won't have any complaints.

Re: Please make a dumb car

#467

Post by kenhwang »

CodeAndCuffs wrote: post #312
fingerlocks wrote: post #272

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Same for our 2021 Mazda crossover. Lcd screen but no touch screen. Just a spin/tilt/press knob for media/settings. Climate control is a dedicated physical panel. It was a big selling point fornus

Mazda is the only major auto manufacturer that seriously prioritizes driving ergonomics over tech gimmicks/cost savings. But gimmicks sell better.

Re: Please make a dumb car

#468

Post by jjav »

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…

> I wonder how well my car will age when miscellaneous sensor all over the car start failing.

I predict that 50 years from now there will be more functioning cars from the 1960s than from the 2020s. With the combination of quickly obsoleting technology that won't be fixable and overly interconnected electronics that become impossible to diagnose after a while, there's not much hope for current and future cars to be anything but disposable.

Old mechanical cars though, can be kept running essentialy forever by just someone with access to a machine shop and some patience.

Re: Please make a dumb car

#469

Post by 1970-01-01 »

>Still, all I want is a car that isn’t as overbearing as all the rest of the devices I already own, sending me notifications, dinging, reporting errors, asking permissions, needing updates — my god!

No dings or errors also means no airbag, no ABS, and no way of knowing if your tire pressure suddenly drops. And good luck if you have any issues whatsoever while on a roadtrip. You did expect all mechanics to give a fair and honest price to get you back on the roadway, right?

Re: Please make a dumb car

#470

Post by da_chicken »

sinab wrote: post #440

What I hate about "car discourse" like this is the apparent blindness to public transportation. Trains, bikes, buses, and street cars solve almost every problem that the author complains about. The only outstanding problem, however, is that American infrastructure has been deliberately designed solely around the car. Those who suggest alternative modes of public transportation are immediately written off as "impracti…

> The only outstanding problem, however, is that American infrastructure has been deliberately designed solely around the car.

The problem is that "infrastructure" doesn't just mean roads. It's where houses are. Where schools are. Where food is transported. It's where water and electrical service runs. It's how property is zoned. It's how police, fire, and hospitals are located. It's how municipalities design snow removal and garbage pickup. It's where shops and services are.

In many ways, fixing the infrastructure problem in the US means razing the whole continent and starting over.

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