I want a 7-10” central display that spends 99% of its time showing CarPlay but also has a radio if I need it, the backup camera when I’m in reverse, and lets me change a couple of settings for convenience features like auto locking etc. Everything else can be dials, knobs, and buttons. My Mazda3 is perfect for this and I’m quite sad that I’m almost certainly not going to be able to find anything like it by the time I come to replace it.
Car companies are in a billion-dollar software war
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Re: Car companies are in a billion-dollar software war
#232So I have serious thoughts about driving “software defined vehicles” in the future. I mean, and the article has confirmed this sufficiently, the core competence of the established car manufacturers is not software. I don't trust the newcomers like Tesla or the Chinese manufacturers for the time being. In my opinion, the same standards should apply to software in motor vehicles as in the aviation industry. And there c…
How is Tesla, a 21 year old company that has shipped seven million cars across the world (including the worlds best selling car) a "newcomer"?
Re: Car companies are in a billion-dollar software war
#233Remove the LTE chip and all functionality related to ads, support wireless CarPlay and android auto, and use physical buttons. You’ll win every award in the industry.
Removing LTE would remove key features that drivers want, including real time traffic updates, remote controls and streaming media? What's your objection to LTE?
I think the idea is your phone will do that for you via carplay (etc)
Re: Car companies are in a billion-dollar software war
#234Cars now have computers, cellular internet connections, cameras, microphones, privacy policies ... I can barely find the words to describe just how frightening the status quo is.
Indeed. Reading the comments here makes me a bit more grateful for my early 2010s vehicle. I added a Bluetooth module so I can play music wirelessly. My phone magnetically connects to an air vent and starts charging. I open Maps and tell it where I want to go. Done. :)
Re: Car companies are in a billion-dollar software war
#235As someone who works professionally on embedded software devices that update over the internet, car companies are stuck not because they can't get software talent, but because they have no ability to actually build the electronics alongside the software, which is ultimately what constrains embedded software. Without the right hardware, the constraints are just insurmountable, you can not do X feature because board A…
> But you can not just roll all your own electronics in a year.
Why? A year is a long time and it's a solved problem. In any case even if you allow the "a year is not enough" argument why didn't they start 5 years ago?
Re: Car companies are in a billion-dollar software war
#236Earlier quoted context omitted.
...why? Seems pretty sensible to me?
Almost everyone has a phone you don’t need a second one built in to your car.
Almost like sometimes people get seriously injured in car accidents and can't get to their phone, assuming it's where it was left prior to the accident.
Re: Car companies are in a billion-dollar software war
#237Earlier quoted context omitted.
Removing LTE would remove key features that drivers want, including real time traffic updates, remote controls and streaming media? What's your objection to LTE?
I think the idea is your phone will do that for you via carplay (etc)
That's a huge assumption. Cars had cell connectivity long before smartphones showed up. Onstar predates the iPhone by a decade.
Re: Car companies are in a billion-dollar software war
#238Earlier quoted context omitted.
> As an aside a lot of people like to levy criticism on the infotainment screens which I think is very well deserved, but then people text and drive, watch YouTube videos, and do all sorts of crazy things too. Instead of levying criticism on these distractions (let’s include billboard too) we should instead focus on just reducing car usage since we won’t stop people from being distracted. This argument to me reads li…
We can - but we don’t need to clutch our pearls about infotainment screens as if they are some sort of special moral insult relative to what’s very common in today’s driving communities. Criminalization of texting and driving and such doesn’t matter unless you enforce, and we don’t enforce. So it’s de facto legal. Who cares about infotainment screens at that point?
We are talking millions of cars driving at a speed that can kill people both inside or outside the car. Anything you can do to reduce those distractions is a net positive for society. Less death.
As for criminalizing texting, I’ve heard enough people getting caught and getting big fines that it works enough for me to dissuade me from doing it.
Re: Car companies are in a billion-dollar software war
#239Somewhere in the last decade I became a curmudgeon who yells at clouds. I'd like a car with zero screens, no internet connectivity possible, and maybe one audio input and a radio. Also I drive a manual, which here in the US seems to be almost unheard of. As an aside, what's next? You can't buy a chef's knife without wifi?
> Also I drive a manual, which here in the US seems to be almost unheard of.
It's uncommon but some enthusiasts still drive them. My last two vehicles have been manuals. Planning to keep driving them as long as I can. 8)
Re: Car companies are in a billion-dollar software war
#240Terrible mobile website for what its worth. Two sentences per in paragraph ad and I couldn’t fully read the article because it bogged my se2 down to a crawl. How I wish I could jailbreak this phone and install a real adblocker but alas not on magic version number.
"Reader mode" has been a saving grace for me. I use it at every opportunity, desktop and mobile.