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Please make a dumb car

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Re: Please make a dumb car

#601

Post by jlg23 »

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…

> 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,

You can have all that when you buy a "good" base and get your features on the aftermarket. For the definition of "good" also consult your mechanic, he should know which cars are easy/nice to work with. I've been looking at reliable 4x4s that I can trust for daily off-road use in the outskirts of the Sahara and I currently favor a UAZ (20k Euro) base and modifications for 5k Euro (more gas tanks, proper seats, navigation and entertainment system).

Re: Please make a dumb car

#602

Post by chakintosh »

jbl wrote: post #242
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…

Re the odometers, in my 2018 Volvo and my Wife's 2019 XC40. They are all accurate, but for different purposes. 1. The standard "life of the car" odometer is permanently on the left gauge, top reading 2. There is one (two?) manually resettable trip odometers 3. There is an auto-resetting trip odometer - it resets when the car has been off for four hours. You can configure which of the second two are displayed by going…

It's quite telling the fact I needed a 3 paragraph reply from a user on HN to explain to me how to use the odometers and lights in my car.

I had a Tucson before this Volvo and it was just so intuitive and easy to use. It's something that needs to be standardized, they are tools that no car would be street legal without and thus, should have identical interactions no matter the manufacturer.

Re: Please make a dumb car

#603

Post by chakintosh »

NoSorryCannot wrote: post #277
salawat wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At that point, the driver really is to blame though. Manufacturer's job is to make things affordably; not to save himanity from themselves despite the ongoing insistance by governments that somehow the industrial sector should take on the onus for technically enforcing whatever measures that some bureaucrat sets their sights on today. This mentality that the car should make up for fundamental defects in safe driving…

Horrifying? People always have made and always will make mistakes and we've been using technology to avoid accidents or minimize the consequences of them for a long time. Technology preventing accidents is not horrifying. The trouble of regulatory bureaucracy or liability is adjacent but separate.

Exactly, not sure what OP is on about.

This Volvo like I said, is absolutely wonderful on the road, and the safety features it's got even in the base model are a godsend and make the car feel like it has a mind of its own, in a good way. It saved my butt from so many accidents that I never even noticed, it sees danger before it even happens, it's amazing.

So my point from the beginning was, if a car is capable of detecting/anticipating and dealing with danger at 100Kmh, it sure as hell should be able to prevent dumbass me from reversing into another car by mistake.

Re: Please make a dumb car

#604

Post by t0bia_s »

kunai wrote: post #234
rascul wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They used to. Do they still?

yes, if you want to watch broadcast channels on a monitor you will need a tuner/amplifier converter box to do so

Are those tuners full of bloatware, ads and telemetry like Samsung's or android TV's?

Re: Please make a dumb car

#605

Post by chakintosh »

klyrs wrote: post #319
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…

> it shouldn't have let me reverse any more as it was seeing a clear obstacle behind me or at least make me double check by beeping My backup camera frequently loses its shit because it gets obstructed by rain or snow, or sometimes paint on the ground fakes it out. If the only sensor is a camera, that must not override the driver. Beeping is fine. I might feel differently about lidar. On that topic, though... I reall…

I honestly don't think my volvo bases its rear detection on the camera itself, pretty sure it's the sensors because on the camera it tells you in segments exactly how far each obstacle is and doing that using video + ML would be overkill for a simple feature that could use lidar.

Re: Please make a dumb car

#606

Post by pja »

da_chicken wrote: post #470
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 re…

This is pretty much what the US did to itself in the first place - bulldozed half the cities in the country to make them car centric. There’s no reason you can’t do the same thing in reverse. Buildings are not actually all that permanent (especially in the US where in most of the country they appear to be made out of wood & plaster).

Re: Please make a dumb car

#607

Post by avidphantasm »

asdff wrote: post #524
avidphantasm wrote: post #441

It should be illegal to make cars with high latency UIs. It routinely takes 1+ seconds for touchscreen button presses to be registered on my 2015 and 2018 Toyotas. This leads to erroneous actions being performed, which is not safe. If I were a software engineer on these teams I would quit if these systems were released on my watch.

Seriously. Computing hardware is an order of magnitude more powerful than in the early 2000s, but the latency bar has never been raised the entire time. You could buy a $1000 TV and it has the same lag while changing channels as the gen 1 720p flatscreen you had in 2005. Manufacturers collectively realized they can get away with substandard products since consumers have no real choice in the marketplace for a lot of…

Good point. The Toshiba Amazon Fire 4k TV we inherited from my MIL also has atrocious lag. Oh yeah, it also sometimes forgets to do HiHDPI scaling and the UI is consigned to the upper left corner of the screen until a reboot. Utter garbage.

Re: Please make a dumb car

#608

Post by grapescheesee »

bluGill wrote: post #413
grapescheesee wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Am in the only one who turns and looks back, out the window? I had 20 plus rental cars last year and very few had tech features I would ever pay for. Lane assist with adaptive cruise are the only notable features for long drives. I did enjoy the red dash notification Toyota has. Totally caught me off guard the first time however, I tried out the ABS.

That is actually not as good as it sounds. Your body cannot twist a full 180 degrees, so while you can see right behind you and out the passenger side, anything coming from the drivers side is not possible to see. It takes some getting used to, but once you learn to back via mirrors you won't want to twist around anymore. You do need to check behind the car beforehand because you cannot see directly behind you and th…

Yes, I can see this. If I was ever home to drive my car, I would get used to it I guess. Just turns into a habit and a tool over time.

Re: Please make a dumb car

#610

Post by mavhc »

throwawayboise wrote: post #395
mavhc wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 re…

No, I really want a car with no computers. I want analog gauges, a real gear selector lever, and switches and knobs for other accessories. A tactile environment that doesn't demand my visual focus to use is what I want. I have no need for a computer in my car, and to the extent I do, my phone is perfectly capable.

No engine control, no brake control, no airbags, no power steering, no engine starter, no automatic windows, no intermittent wipers, no central locking, no alarm system, no automatic lights
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