Earlier quoted context omitted.
Gauges on the A-pillar would interfere with airbag deployment.
I wonder if you could do e-ink displays with a seam that can tear open
Yeah, even just an A-pillar that changed color if you went over the speed limit.
Apple Car: Bad Idea After All
391–400 of 407 posts
Re: Apple Car: Bad Idea After All
#392Earlier quoted context omitted.
The self-driving thing is still 20 years away.
Like many things, it's a question of definitions. There are already cars on the road operating commercial autonomous services. It's new and immmature, but in a very real sense "self-driving" is already here. L5 or offroad might still be decades out from initial introduction.
Toyota already makes cars that work really well and the company as a whole is undervalued (less than 1/3 of what TSLA is valued at). The point is for Apple to get into a huge market and make a ton of money with a best-in-class product. And no, self-driving is not already here.
Re: Apple Car: Bad Idea After All
#393Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can just get an older car and replace the radio.
With a large screen capable of CarPlay with enough real estate for navigation etc? Most everything is custom OEM sizing/fit/etc these days , gone are the days of interchangeable single-cd headunits
Custom OEM size/fit has been addressed to some degree for a quite a while now by both the "mainstream" car audio manufacturers [1] and, more extensively, by some lesser-known aftermarket brands [2].
YMMV based on just how old your car is and the type of OEM head unit, but there are kits (e.g. this one for a 2016+ Honda Civic [3]) that allow you to install "standard" head units with a fit/style similar to OEM.
[1]: https://www.crutchfield.com/g_462350/Apple-CarPlay-Compatibl...
[2]: https://www.joyingauto.com/head-unit.html
[3]: https://www.crutchfield.com/p_120957812B/Metra-95-7812B-Dash...
Re: Apple Car: Bad Idea After All
#394Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point is Samsung does not control the Android software. Regardless which car do you think has better software and UI than Tesla?
Android is open source (enough), Samsung can and does make changes to Android to support its own hardware with its own UI. I’ll take any car with CarPlay over the Tesla interface.
Yea that was a concern when I bought a Tesla, but now I don’t miss CarPlay at all.
Re: Apple Car: Bad Idea After All
#395Earlier quoted context omitted.
Android is open source (enough), Samsung can and does make changes to Android to support its own hardware with its own UI. I’ll take any car with CarPlay over the Tesla interface.
Yea that was a concern when I bought a Tesla, but now I don’t miss CarPlay at all.
I would really miss running my third party apps - especially Overcast.
Re: Apple Car: Bad Idea After All
#396Earlier quoted context omitted.
I own a relatively early Polestar 2 in the UK. It has been plagued with software problems, including a software update failing and bricking the car, requiring 3 different volvo techs to come and unbrick it. Even with Google helping on the software! Even now I'm stuck on 2.0 for some reason (2.2 is the latest in the UK). No idea why. Cant face the call to Polestar support and the inevitable reply of "Take it to a vovl…
Given the relative simplicity of an electric drivetrain compared to ICE, is all that software absolutely necessary? I'm a bit shocked (pun intended?) to hear that your car got bricked by a software update.
The fun trade-off to the simplicity of the electric drivetrain is that the drivetrain is now almost entirely software defined. In an ICE your torque is a factor of a lot of physics: the physics of the motor, the fuel injector, the gear ratios in the transmission, and so on and so forth. With an EV motor it in theory has 100% torque physically available at all times, if you've got the power stored in your battery for that. You don't actually want to drive that way, though, because that can waste a lot of power, that can be dangerous, and that can cause damage (to tires, if nothing else).
The curves of how much power the car applies to an EV motor become software: everything about the "feel" of the acceleration pedal and even some of the "feel" of the brake pedal (because of regenerative braking) are software-defined curves. That's why EVs often give you multiple "Driving Modes" to explore to find the driving curve that feels the most fun for you to drive, or gives you the most ludicrous performance, or saves you the most battery power, or lets you do everything with a single pedal.
Some of that is that people are just so use to driving ICE vehicles that manufacturers feel the need to make EVs drive like ICE vehicles for comfort and familiarity, even though they don't have to (there's no transmission gears to physically shift).
Modern EVs are software-defined cars.
Re: Apple Car: Bad Idea After All
#397Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There is zero crossover between consumer entertainment devices and the car business, as evidenced by the poor state of tech in cars! That looks similar to the state of MP3 players before the iPod, or smartphones before the iPhone. I think a self-driving car with a car-width display and hifi stereo (or better) could be a huge success, even if the self-driving only works on highways, as with the latest Mercedes. > It…
The reason that Apple is able to sell iPads and iPhones is that they are small computers, something which Apple has made and sold from day 1. This is not true of cars. Apple's entire business model has been predicated on proprietary computer hardware that's smaller and more capable with each iteration. When it became possible to play music, watch videos, and make phone calls on these small computers, Apple started se…
The Verge's auto editor's repeated stance (it's easiest to spot in somewhat recent Ford F-150 Lightning articles) is that any modern EV is "a computer on wheels". Especially as cars trade physical cabin controls for touch screens, the resemblance to phones only increases. But there's also the fact that EV's physically simple drivetrain is augmented by the fact that it is much more than ICE a "software-defined drivetrain" with firmware replacing things that used to be physics (the power/torque curve of the acceleration pedal, for instance).
There's certainly enough people outside of Apple wondering if "cars are just computers now with wheels" that maybe Apple isn't entirely crazy if they think it is an adjacent market they might compete in.
And all of that's before buying into any hype about "self-driving" and "AI cars".
Re: Apple Car: Bad Idea After All
#398Earlier quoted context omitted.
You can just get an older car and replace the radio.
With a large screen capable of CarPlay with enough real estate for navigation etc? Most everything is custom OEM sizing/fit/etc these days , gone are the days of interchangeable single-cd headunits
Yes, I was considering replacing my 2013 Honda Fit but just got a double-height Pioneer radio (AVH-2400NEX iirc) installed by an audio dealer.
It works perfectly, kept the existing car controls and I still have a car that mysteriously fits your entire apartment inside it while also not being subjected to a CVT.
Re: Apple Car: Bad Idea After All
#399Earlier quoted context omitted.
Today I learned that people pick a car based on how well it integrates with a cell phone.
The last few times I’ve rented a car it’s had CarPlay and based on those experiences, the next time I buy a car, it must have CarPlay. The experience without it is just so poor (and don’t get me started on how ridiculously bad the experience of pairing bluetooth is in my parent’s car which requires a mix of voice commands and button presses in a completely undiscoverable way).
CarPlay for rent car is really important because it don't need to learn car original system, and needs navigation than daily use.
Re: Apple Car: Bad Idea After All
#400Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could that have been 2.5 Admins episode 78? They were discussing the incident where a radio station broadcast a corrupted image file that bricked Mazda radios that received it.
I don't think so, I'm not familiar with that particular podcast.
The specific number sounded familiar, but I bet a lot of podcasts were talking about replacement automotive electronic parts in the wake of that Mazda radio news.