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Polestar eliminates the rear window in latest electric car

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Re: Polestar eliminates the rear window in latest electric car

#91

Post by dotBen »

afavour wrote: post #83
unixhero wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow youre missing out, car is such a fundamental freedom enabler - of movement

Man, that’s just not true. I live in NYC and the number of things accessible to me and my family via public transit or bike is mind boggling. Then, when we want to leave the city for a few days we rent a car. Costs less than car insurance would be over a year, let alone maintainence, upfront cost, etc. Everyone can live their life in the way of their own choosing, I don’t begrudge anyone who owns a car or anything li…

New York is really the only exception in the US to this - world class public transportation system both within downtown areas and out to the suburbs and beyond (Acella is what all of AmTrak should have been like).

Even here in San Francisco you need a car to get around efficiently (or use Uber which comes to a point where you might as well pay for a car), plus it's impossible to fully enjoy the natural beauty further afield without a car.

Re: Polestar eliminates the rear window in latest electric car

#92

Post by dotBen »

cjk2 wrote: post #67
unixhero wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow youre missing out, car is such a fundamental freedom enabler - of movement

Yeah I hire one if I need it. Which is about 4 times a year max. I live in London UK and have a really damn good public transport system that stops outside my house, a bicycle and a massive airport on my doorstep. Incidentally I'm actually on a bus on the way to pick up a hire Polestar at the moment because I have a funeral to get to on Monday...

(Brit living in SF here) Given that this forum is slanted towards America, you have to appreciate that the quality of public transport in London is nothing like what we have here in the US other than New York City.

You're not wrong about London (I never owned a car when I lived there and that was a decade before Uber) but your worldview is skewed. If you look at American history from the last century, in cities like Los Angeles the car companies actually bought public transport railways and dismantled them in order to promote a car culture. And this is what we have.

Re: Polestar eliminates the rear window in latest electric car

#93

Post by dotBen »

jen20 wrote: post #87
yumraj wrote: post #22

Two comments: 1) Driver's rear view is solved by using a camera, but what about rear passengers. Rear window provides natural light to come in. It might get pretty dark inside without it. 2) How will it impact the DMV driving test? In a recent driving test for a kid, the instructor explicitly said that if the kid reversed by looking at the camera view in the screen, she will fail the kid. With this car, there is no r…

When I did a driving test in the US (which was admittedly a complete joke compared to a UK one I did two decades earlier) I explicitly got told that it was fine to use the camera alone.

Yes America wouldn't have anywhere near the number of drivers that it does if Americans had to pass the British driving test.

Have you ever had to reverse around a corner, since you did the test?

Re: Polestar eliminates the rear window in latest electric car

#94

Post by magicalhippo »

troupo wrote: post #78
paradox460 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My recent model Subaru Ascent came with a "smart mirror". When enabled, the rear view mirror is actually a display, showing a view of what a rear camera, mounted high in the rear window, sees. This is not the backup camera, it's got one of those too, down by the license plate. At first I had a little bit of skepticism. I figured it would be useful when the back is full of cargo or whatever, but limited beyond that. A…

How do you deal with grime, dirt, rain, snow? The rear view cameras on cars I've driven are often useless even in parking scenarios because of that.

On my Renault Megane e-Tech the cameare is placed at the top of the rear window, and due to the small "shelf" on the top of the roof above, it's quite sheltered.

I often find that I forget to wipe the rear window because I have no trouble seeing with the camera.

However the wiper does go over the area covered by the camera, so with snow in particular the wiper works wonders.

Re: Polestar eliminates the rear window in latest electric car

#95

Post by culopatin »

voidUpdate wrote: post #58
Doctor_Fegg wrote: post #53

> Polestar says this allows for "a new kind of immersive rear occupant experience" where passengers are "cocooned" away from the world That sounds awful. (But then I always take the window seat in trains.)

being cocooned away from the world in a moving car sounds like a recipe for motion sickness to me...

Indeed. I hate the last row in SUVs for this reason

Re: Polestar eliminates the rear window in latest electric car

#96

Post by greenish_shores »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #47

I can switch the camera in my car to replace the normal mirror. This is useful when the trunk is full. I hate it, though, because it forces your eyes to quickly and repeatedly adapt to short vision (the image is close to you), then again on the road etc. There is no such a problem with the normal mirror which shows objects far away so you you don't need to adapt when switching between forward and back view

Is it physically possible to mitigate this issue by placing some sort of lens on the screen, so you would need to actually focus "to far" in order to see it?

Re: Polestar eliminates the rear window in latest electric car

#97

Post by bonton89 »

troupo wrote: post #78
paradox460 wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My recent model Subaru Ascent came with a "smart mirror". When enabled, the rear view mirror is actually a display, showing a view of what a rear camera, mounted high in the rear window, sees. This is not the backup camera, it's got one of those too, down by the license plate. At first I had a little bit of skepticism. I figured it would be useful when the back is full of cargo or whatever, but limited beyond that. A…

How do you deal with grime, dirt, rain, snow? The rear view cameras on cars I've driven are often useless even in parking scenarios because of that.

I have a Subaru Outback and the back up camera is basically useless during the winter. I'll clean it before I leave in the morning and it will be covered in filth the next time I put the car in reverse. Even rain seems to cause it grief. Maybe they've improved the design since 2019 though.

When the backup camera isn't covered in grime it really helps with parking though.

Re: Polestar eliminates the rear window in latest electric car

#98

Post by bonton89 »

kpmcc wrote: post #44
erulabs wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recessed with hydrophobic cover, heater element, mechanical redundancy (or better, zero moving parts), electronic redundancy, and software testing. Solved! These are all entire industries that already power society-vital functions. Embrace it!

So much complexity to do the same thing as a mirror and a window…

And 10 years from now when it fails it will be a $1200 repair.

Re: Polestar eliminates the rear window in latest electric car

#99

Post by mrguyorama »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #85
troupo wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you deal with grime, dirt, rain, snow? The rear view cameras on cars I've driven are often useless even in parking scenarios because of that.

Or 6 years from now when the camera fails and is no longer a part available from the manufacturer

This is actually not an issue. Nearly every single car manufacturer uses the exact same camera module, and have for like a decade now.

The standard is that head units have a composite video input that simply gets switched to whenever you put it into reverse, and any overlays are done in the head unit.

These are utterly standard parts, and the entire auto industry could die tomorrow and you would still have zero problem sourcing this part for decades to come.

It doesn't matter which make or model of car you have.

Re: Polestar eliminates the rear window in latest electric car

#100

Post by justsomehnguy »

dieselgate wrote: post #31
toast0 wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Driving without a rear window isn’t a big deal - see, for example, nearly every cargo delivery van on Earth. Yeah, it's totally fine, as long as you have both side mirrors. It'd be nice if they put bigger mirrors on the side if they're killing the rear window though. Although they're pushing a screen to replace the mirror, I guess. I haven't used one of those in a while, but I did have a rental with a screen / mirr…

The “long as you have both side mirrors” is kind of interesting nuance. My 1980 civic back in the day only had driver side mirror from the factory which seems common-enough in older cars - it isn’t totally necessary anyway if there’s visibility. assume modern cars would only lack them if it’s damaged or similar.

But it had a rear window and a rear view mirror.
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