What about extreme violations of privacy? Let me know when that is “out”, too.
Yeah, so the thing is, any amount of trust that I had has already been completely destroyed. “We don’t do it anymore because it’s illegal, trust me bro” isn’t going to cut it. Does the bill include mandatory prison time for executives for violations, or just cost-of-doing-business fines? Will this be enforced by a government regulatory body that is not literally outnumbered 20:1 by car manufacturer lawyers?
If the car has any kind of network capabilities and 100% of the car’s software is not open source, I’m not buying it. Period.
This bill would not need to exist if cars were FOSS, or if cars were non-networked. Those are the only 2 solutions that I will accept. This bill is worthless to me.
Will the regulatory body be stacked with, and bribed by auto execs?
Does the Space Pope shit on Uranus ?
I didn’t read too far, but,
To restrict car manufacturers and other companies from selling consumer car-related data, increase transparency regarding data practices, and for other purposes.
already skips over collecting the data, so yeah. I would guess this bill just exists for the optics, and isn’t actually intended to challenge the industry.
I agree with you, the damage has been done. That’s why I’m looking at alternative methods of transportation, like an ebike or public transit. Hopefully your area has good infrastructure for that.
I’m planning to get an ebike to commute. It took me awhile but I finally found a nice bike that doesn’t have an app.
Cool! Which one?
The Ride1Up Prodigy V2 step-through CVT. It’s got tons of great tech at great price. USA based company too if that matters to you.
Thank you!
It did not occur to me that they’d do this with ebikes but now I’m concerned. Would be nice to know what you found for the day when I decide to get one.
I found the company Ride1Up. They only sell direct online but that keeps their prices down. I like the Prodigy V2 step through for the ease of use and it has a CVT transmission that let’s you down shift while stopped and has nearly no maintenance. I don’t know where your from but it’s a USA based company which I appreciate
Definitely not within reach physically, but good to see what’s available out there. Thanks for replying!
It’s nice to have principles, but in a few years you’re going to have to find a new way to get around.
I mean, a lot of cars have a genuinely phenomenal life span, if you don’t mind getting something that isn’t shiny and new you can probably get like a 2012 Toyota or Honda and drive it till the wheels fall off. My dream car is from the 90s and people still generally regard them as fairly reliable
Eventually it’ll be an issue, but that does leave a lot of time for nerds and hackers to find a way to gut networking stuff while telling the car it’s still intact. Dunno if we’ll ever see an open source car OS compatible with the systems in major manufacturer’s vehicles, but privacy workarounds feel like they could be pretty realistic
My dream car is from the 90s and people still generally regard them as fairly reliable
I would not want to share the road with modern oversized cars while driving a car with 90s crash safety
I drive a Miata as a 2nd car for weekend fun, but it’s not a real option as a daily driver if you value your life
Not to mention that it uses 8 liters of gas per 100km, whilst my daily driver averages 12wkh per 100km
Thats fair. A na miata is basically my dream car, I hope to someday daily one in spite of being from the 90s 😅
Lol cars last more than “a few years”, my current vehicle is 20 years old. I’ll easily get another 150,000 miles out of it, probably more. I already have a crate motor picked out to swap in when the engine finally dies. Or I could just “upgrade” to a newer year and still be non-networked.
Now I’m being a little silly, but at this rate of climate change acceleration, I’m starting to bet that my current vehicle is going to outlive capitalism anyway.
something, something, open source car.
Some nerd running Gentoo on his car. Has to recompile everything every time he has an oil change.
But once it’s recompiled it runs so smooth.
Hahaha, that’s cute.
Touchscreens were never popular with customers. Manufacturers kept cramming touchscreens in cars and using them to control everything becuase they were being stupid with new tech.
Edit: I guess I should have been clearer. I was talking about as a replacement for tactile controlls in a car like the article is talking about. Reverse cameras and other things that are good to have a touch screen for make perfect sense but using your touch screen to control your Air conditioning in a way that you have to divert your attention from the road to operate sliders and buttons on a touch screen is dumb as hell.
Also the fact that touch screens are cheaper to build with how expensive battery tech has been in electric cars.
Cheaper to build and can be adjusted and patched as you go
One of the biggest problems with touch is still that you have to take your eyes off the road (for quite some time). I have no issue if we are talking about some internal media center stuff and you still have some sort of haptic button on a steering wheel. But as soon as we are talking about AC, fans and everything you sometimes need to drive, I’m off.
Teslas are so bad for this, that whole “all the controls are on a big ipad” setup should be illegal.
Touchscreens are great to have, controlling Android Auto or Apple Carplay with physical buttons like you have to do in a Mazda is a nightmare.
The problem is when the touchscreen is used as a replacement for physical controls, instead of an addition. Stuff like controlling your climate control should not be exclusively controlled through the touchscreen
And don’t even get me started about VWs stupid decision to put touch controls on the steering wheel. At least they backpedaled on that decision pretty quickly
My wife and I drive almost the same model of Audi, separated by a couple of years. One still has physical buttons for infotainment and one has a touch screen, but both support Android Auto and CarPlay.
I prefer the physical controls for it, because I can glance at the screen and know “turn right two clicks and press down” to get where I want, and then look back at the road while I do it.
I added Android Auto and Apple Carplay to my 2016 Audi via an aftermarket add-on module that ties into its native MMI system and it requires me to use the dial and buttons to interact with it. I also really like doing it that way for the reason you described. I can easily switch apps and navigate menus by counting clicks without taking my eyes off the road. Plus I can still use my phone for some of the more complicated interactions like entering in addresses that Google Assistant can’t decipher (only when the vehicle is stopped and in a brief and safe manner, of course)
I love my touchscreen, it’s great for media control, map, etc.
Mind you that is all it does, every other feature is behind a physical button. Which I also love.
Touchscreen for some things, physical for the rest.
In my 2021 Seat Leon the controls for defogging the windscreen and the heated rear window (both essential in Sweden) are placed on a cluster of touch buttons below and to the left of the steering wheel.
It is insane, you have to take you eyes off the road and lean forward to press them.
Also, to activate the seat heater, you need to access the climate panel on the infotainment, so you loose the view of any CarPlay navigation.
The car has dedicated touch surfaces to change the AC temp, but the main ones are next to the power button touch area for the infotainment, and none of the areas are illuminated.
I like my car, it is fun and comfortable, but the overreliance of touch controls is infuriating at times.
Touchscreens are cheaper UI part too. It saved money and “looked cool”… Win-win for shareholders
Touch screens also seem like they would be easier to integrate with subscription services. Auto manufacturers are looking to make things like heated seats a subscription.
Cars have been getting steadily worse. There doesn’t seem to be any enforcement of recalls (has anyone satisfactorily had the Honda Civic 2016-2021 air conditioning resolved? How much did you spend?)
If they can take cars away from us entirely, and move to us renting self driving cars, that’s what they would really want to do. Pay for your radio, pay for heat and AC…
A screen is legally required for the backup camera in the US since 2016.
Can we address headlights that are brighter than the sun now?
my issue isn’t really with the brightness, it’s the height. Don’t get me wrong bright headlights are annoying as fuck, but a huge ass truck behind me with their headlights literally higher than my back window is insane.
My point exactly. The brightness is great, when it works in your favor. But when a modern car sits at such a height, where the low-beams shine directly over the top of my car, it’s obnoxious
That, and people don’t know how to adjust them, or are unwilling to. My parents’ cars have a dial to adjust the headlight angle for when carrying weight in the back of the car, or when towing, but they never touch the setting.
I miss that in my old car. When I’m drivng around in the city and don’t rally need much headlighting I’d angle them all the way down. When I’m in a dark area where there’s enough people that I can’t use my brights I’d just angle them up. My current car has stupid self leveling headlights so I don’t get any of that fun :(
Especially when people fuck with the ride height on their trucks. They almost always end up with the front higher than the back, relative to it’s stock setting. Then don’t bother to adjust the head light angle to compensate.
Then, on I need a massive light bar on the top of my truck. Never mind that I never take this thing off road or do any work with it. It looks cool and it’s bright and shiny.
Fuck off. Can we just tax these things properly and not v give them a lower tax rate since their classed as commercial vehicles. No one buying these massive boats uses them for more than going to home Depot once a year to buy some leaf bags.
/Rant
I don’t know the white point on some of the LED headlights is extremely taxing to look at at night.
My car has adjustable headlight height and I love it. I put em all the way down because they’re stupid bright.
I hope European-style adaptive headlights become the norm in the USA eventually. Some higher-end cars have a matrix of LEDs instead of one bulb per headlight, and they can programmatically dim just some of the LEDs. If you have your headlights on but there’s a car in front of you (or on the other side of the road, whatever), the high beam will dim just the area the car is in. This happens automatically while you’re driving.
This is an option in some European vehicles (or may be standard on high end ones) but they have to explicitly disable the feature when exporting to the USA.
The USA did approve something relating to this, but it must not be sufficient since the European manufacturers are still disabling the feature in the USA.
From personal experience in Europe, I can tell you that it sounds great in theory, but it’s horrible in practise. I get routinely blinded by headlights here and I feel like it has only gotten worse with the advent of LED headlights.
Not all manufacturers use adaptive headlights, and on some cars it’s only available as an upgrade whereas there’s a lot of people driving base models.
Interesting, I have those on my car and I actively avoid using them.
It can’t cope with anything more than a simple scenario (dim around car in front, deal with on coming car in other lane). If you also have pedestrians and vehicles on side junctions, then you burn their eyes.
So, I’d assumed it was a US feature (straight, wide roads) brought over here
SHUT UP ABOUT THE SUN
Damn, why’d you have to bring up the sun again?
IT ALL GOES BACK TO THE SUN
That and buttons that are almost as flat as touchscreens.
I want my clickety-click Fallout and Star Wars rugged industrial feeling.
Its worse in the rain and even worse still in the snow.
And for some reason my state still doesn’t have properly reflecting paint, so everyone drives with their high-beams on because otherwise you can’t see the lanes. The net result is that nobody can see anything because they’re constantly being blinded by oncoming traffic.
It sucks all the way down…
Never had an issue with them but then I live in Europe, where auto-adjusting/adaptive lights aren’t just legal it’s a requirement if you want to make the headlights permanent high-beams.
I wish adaptive lights were legal in the USA. Manufacturers like BMW have to disable the feature at the factory because their implementation isn’t approved for usage in the USA.
I saw this, but apparently the European ones don’t meet the US guidelines, and the Euro manufacturers aren’t yet redesigning and recertifying their headlights to meet the US guidelines. The two brands I was looking at (BMW and Porsche) both still have this feature disabled on their 2025 US models.
They are more safe since people can feel the buttons without taking their eyes off of the road. I don’t understand why they thought it was a good idea to use touchscreens.
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Tactile controls cost more to install
Not just more to install, but also more to design. Physical controls have to be designed so they fit the aesthetic of the car and don’t look out of place. On the other hand, a touch screen can just reuse a generic UI design across every vehicle made by a particular manufacturer, or even across different manufacturers if the same vendor supplies the same OS for all of them.
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In my lurking time here, I have seen many comments on Lemmy that criticize capitalism, but I think it’s not as bad as it is made out to be on here. I earn money by working, can spend my money on what I want, and can start a business if I wanted to. The best businesses are rewarded with more money while poor businesses fail. I don’t see anything wrong with that. Admittedly, it is possible that I am wrong because I have never studied economy other than the short lessons from required college classes my first two years. Do you have any objective sources where I can start to learn? I tend to be liberal/Democrat, btw.
Free market economy != Capitalism.
Your freedom to do those things under capitalism is wholly bound by your existing wealth, and wealth begets wealth. When your parents are well off, you can get into good schools, get better education, and ultimately get a better job and, really, be a better worker bringing more wealth into the already existing pool of wealth your family had. Those who have been disenfranchised by way of things like eminent domain, redlining, or the straight up prosecution of them and their fellow men simply don’t have that option to rise up. They don’t even have the opportunity to try and fail, they’ve failed by their very existence. At a macro scale, once you’ve reached the top (e.x. Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc.) you have the resources to not only out-do any of the competition but to sell products at a loss to starve your competition and bully them into submission, which big companies do all the time instead of investing in better products. It’s just good business.
Circumstance plays a lot into how much wealth you start out with and how much wealth you end up being able to accrue, so while it’s nice being not even at the top but even just the middle, it’s important to have the mindfulness to know that there are those below you who don’t have the same freedoms, and they’re not there because their businesses did poorly. Some of them are, but most are simply victims of greater powers stealing their capital.
The best businesses are rewarded with more money while poor businesses fail.
Absolutely 100% false.
I earn money by working
But do you earn enough? Does the working class earn enough? The general consensus for most people is no. The vast majority of wealth that the working class produces every year does not make it into the hands of the people who produced it, but rather the oligarchs who already possess most of the wealth already.
I can spend my money on what I want, and can start a business if I wanted to.
These are not exclusive to only capitalism. People were trading money for goods and starting businesses for thousands of years before capitalism was around.
The best businesses are rewarded with more money while poor businesses fail.
This is how it’s supposed to work in a merit driven free market economy, but that’s not how late stage capitalism plays out.
Many corporations are run by imbeciles and hemorrhage money, pursue short term profits at the expense of long term sustainability, treat their workers horribly, and rely on their monopolistic position in the market to survive rather than merit, competence, ethics, or quality. When they finally make an error that would normally bankrupt a company out of existence, they simply cry to the government for bailout money, and they get it every time because our politicians are bought and owned by billionaires and their lobbyists. This is the core principle of an oligarchy, which we are, and which capitalism always evolves into given enough time.
The rich get bailouts, the workers do not. This is a direct product of wealth inequality and regulatory capture that capitalism inherently generates.
The main argument against capitalism is that it leads to only a privileged few getting all the wealth, opportunities and freedom while the rest become wage slaves and debt slaves. It is the ultimate capitulation to artificial scarcity as if that’s somehow the best we can do as a species.
All the homelessness, overpriced healthcare and education, unaffordable housing, etc exists because of capitalism and it’s supporters look at this and say “good. fuck the poor.” or “this is the best we can do.”
I stopped being a libertarian because I was tired of the cynical capitulation.
The funniest thing is that the final stage of unbound capitalism means no estate and then, when they need help there will be nobody to save them.
Wouldn’t your comment equally apply to being a small business owner (let’s say blacksmith) under feudalism? As a good blacksmith, you will earn more clients and prestige, while poor blacksmiths won’t get repeat business. You might be able to expand your forge and hire more people to do the tedious work of making chainmail or whatever.
I don’t know that anyone can ever provide an “objective” source on capitalism. Anyone who writes on the topic has inherent biases. Here are a few: https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-at-Work-Cure-Capitalism/dp/1608462471
https://www.amazon.com/Slow-Down-Manifesto-KOHEI-SAITO/dp/1662602723
https://www.chelseagreen.com/product/doughnut-economics-paperback/
https://www.amazon.com/What-Wrong-Capitalism-Ruchir-Sharma/dp/1668008262
https://www.amazon.com/There-Are-No-Accidents-Disaster_Who/dp/1982129689
https://www.amazon.com/Deaths-Despair-Future-Capitalism-Anne/dp/0691217076
Yup. “Capitalism” has become a punching bag for people who are frustrated about some form of government protectionism or lack of interventionism. If you ask someone to define it, you’ll get wildly different answers based on whatever they’re frustrated by. The real problem is cronyism, where the “haves” get special treatment from those in power so both sides benefit.
Example w/ Musk and Trump
As an example, look at Elon Musk buddying up to Trump. There are two explanations (probably more) here:
- Musk actually thinks Trump is the best thing since sliced bread
- Musk wants protectionism in the form of more EV tariffs, which will absolutely benefit his cash cow, Tesla
This all happens under “capitalism” because Musk is motivated to get more capital, but it’s happening through government, which ends up essentially as a government subsidy of Tesla (and other domestic EVs) using taxpayer dollars (in this case tariffs). It’s not a direct handover of cash, but when your foreign competition needs to charge twice as much as they normally would, there’s less motivation for your company to drop prices.
Capitalism is intended to be a system where the market is largely separate from the government, but everything is co-mingled and people point to the knotted mess as “capitalism,” when really it’s a mess of different political ideologies all messing with market forces. What we actually need is for more capitalism, as in less government interference w/ the market, so market forces can actually fix things.
Potential solutions to better use market forces
This means:
- less protection for corporations - rich people using tactical bankruptcies indicates a broken system
- fewer regulations, but higher penalties - regulations reduce the penalties for bad action to a fine, we need lawsuits and jail time
- fairer tax system - we currently reward capital gains far more than earned income, we exclude a significant amount of inheritance from taxation, and we have structures (trusts and whatnot) to further protect money from taxation; the tax system should be drastically simplified to reduce abuse
- enforce anti-trust more consistently and frequently
There’s certainly more we could do, but the above should significantly help correct the major problems we see today. Right now, it takes a massive scandal for a wealthy person or very large business to fail, and the above would dramatically reduce the scandal needed to cause one to fail.
“More capitalism” doesn’t mean screwing over the poor either. In fact, if you look at the Nordic countries, they’re actually more capitalist than the US ins many ways, and they have solid social programs. The difference is that there are clearer boundaries between government and the market, so you don’t end up with as much weird “collaboration” between companies and the government.
I personally believe in UBI/NIT (Universal Basic Income/Negative Income Tax) instead of most welfare programs (perhaps keep Medicare/Medicaid, but replace Social Security, food/housing assistance, etc) to minimize the disruption of natural market forces. That would be a very capitalist-friendly solution where the government and the market stay in their own lanes.
You seem to be a bit confused about what exactly capitalism is. Capitalism is the ideology of private ownership, specifically with regards to the means of production. It is contrasted with socialism, which is the ideology of public ownership of the means of production.
Capitalism is the ideology that allows for someone to own a factory, for example. It allows for them to possess it, in some nebulous way, and to therefore be entitled to the fruits of labor produced there. Even if they themselves did not work to produce those products. Capitalism is the ideology of private wealth accumulation and the ideology of class. It is the ideology of wealth inequality (as opposed to wealth equality where capital is shared equally among all). It is the ideology that creates markets out of supply and demand, specifically designed to collect as much capital as possible from people seeking products. Capitalism is protected by the state, which creates justifications for its existence and prevents the working class from uprising against capitalists. The state colludes with capitalists. They exchange political power for capitalists’ labor power. In this way, any party that is not explicitly anti-capitalist is necessarily pro-capitalist. To allow capitalism to exist is to protect it. In this way, capitalism is not just private ownership itself, but it is also the politics that protects such ownership and the states that choose to allow it.
Contrasted with socialism, the ideology of public ownership. Socialism is the classless ideology. Socialism is social welfare, including ideas like social assistance or UBI. Socialism allows for means of production, like factories, to be publicly and equally owned by all. It allows the fruits of labor produced in those factories to be shared by all. Like capitalism, socialism produces its own political ideologies. Socialism as a state of being requires some form of protection (much of the debate on the left can essentially be seen as “how should we protect an established state of socialism?”). As socialism is classless, and as its production is communal, it is open to encroachment by capitalists who will seek to establish private ownership and markets there. Most agree, some state or state-like entity must be established to protect the socialist society. In this way, any politics that are explicitly anti-capitalist must be socialist.
Capitalism is protected by the state
That’s how it often ends up, sure, but that’s not its defining feature. If you strip away all government (i.e. leave a bunch of people on a desert island), you’d end up with a capitalist system. It’s just the natural way of things. It starts with a market economy, and eventually market participants find they can pay others to grow their goods faster than trading/earning it directly, and some people would prefer to take the steady income of working for someone else over starting their own venture. If a venture fails, the owner loses everything, whereas the workers just move on to someone else’s venture.
When a government gets involved, it takes a monopoly on force in order to protect market participants from each other. Since it has that monopoly on force, there’s a lot of potential upside for market participants to get the government on their side. That’s why we see so much cronyism, because it’s a lot more profitable to get the guy with the gun on your side than compete in a fair market. But once you allow that to happen, capitalism becomes corrupted because you introduce ways to eliminate the inherent risk of market participation. It’s a lot harder to fail when you can get the government to make rules to prevent competition, letting you keep charging high prices for lower quality products and services.
Socialism as a state of being requires some form of protection
Exactly, and if that form of protection gets corrupted, the entire system is screwed. Look at what happened to pretty much every socialist state, the elites find they can get a ton of gain through treating their people unequally, and resort to heavy-handed measures to keep them in line.
The most successful “socialist” states (e.g. Nordic countries) aren’t socialist at all, they’re capitalist societies (and in many ways have a more free market than the US) with a hefty social safety net. Sweden has a high number of billionaires relative to their population. Why? Because they’re capitalist, not socialist. They do have a high tax rate, but they abolished their wealth and inheritance taxes in the 2000s, probably because they tend to scare away wealthy people and therefore local investment.
And I really don’t think socialism is actually classless, at least not when there’s a strong governing body. It just exchanges the capitalist “owner vs worker” class for “ruling vs worker” class, because there’s no way those in control will settle for the same living conditions as the workers. So it basically just trades someone who gained ownership through investment for someone who gained control (essentially ownership) through moving up in the party. To me, that means the owner is likely better equipped to run things than someone who “inherited” it through political maneuvering. Why would a socialist leader want to actually improve the living conditions of the people if they could just maintain power by killing off rivals?
So no, I largely reject socialism as a governing system because it’s way too easy to corrupt, and instead seek to borrow socialist ideas for how to operate an economy. Instead of governments owning the means of production, let’s instead look at co-ops. Instead of production and consumption quotas, let’s do cash redistribution from the wealthy to the poor so everyone can participate in the market economy (and a worker w/ a steady base income can take more risks and try to become an owner, or at least leave awful employers). A system like that can better weather bad leadership than one where the leadership has significant control over the economy.
First time hearing negative income tax but sounds like an idea i had after a nice walk after the edible kicked in lol
It’s basically UBI, but with income caps. So if you make above a certain threshold, your benefits reduce and completely disappear by a second threshold.
Thats a pretty thorough reply which gives some further insight into the issues we’re facing. While the ideas certainly makes sense in a vacuum (especially with governments and markets staying in their lane), there is a major issue in that the very politicians managing the government would have a pretty big conflict of interest which would prevent the sort of reforms necessary, as most politicians would fall under one or more of the following:
- They own/run businesses from prior to running for a political position- there’s always going to be a subconscious bias towards playing favours especially as they can go back to said business if they don’t last a term
- They have a stake in the businesses that are in the free market
- They could be receiving gifts and/or contributions from businesses that have a vested interest in having a politician that aligns with the business’ political agenda, including having a position for a politician if they lose a re-election bid
It’s really difficult to see how the government can be separated from the free market if the politicians are closely involved with the businesses, which can later be deemed as “too big to fail”.
Yeah, we need a lot of reforms to fix underlying problems that get in the way of progress. Some things that I think can help:
- voting reform - STAR, approval, or even ranked choice voting to better reflect the will of the people
- electoral reform - some solution to gerrymandering, either algorithmic redistricting or (my preference) proportional representation
- reduce obstructionism - in the US, I’d prefer for the House to pass laws, and for the Senate to ratify them with a high vote tally (say, 60% to block a piece of legislation)
These are large shifts in how governments are organized, and potentially could be passed through large-scale public protests, like the Civil Rights Movement in the US. The public is incredibly hard to motivate, so organizers need to be really careful about which causes they push for. My preference is the second, because I think it has the best chance of creating positive, long-term change, and it’s something that’s pretty hard for politicians to competently argue against.
The best businesses are rewarded with more money while poor businesses fail.
citation needed
You’re talking about free and open competition in a perfect competition marketplace. This is an ideal (similarly far-fetched as communism/socialism*) where there are low barriers to entry, and consumers have good information to make well informed choices. In this world competition bid’s down excess profits in the long run - essentially to consumers benefit. not the benefit of producers. wages are low but it doesnt so much matter becauases competition keeps prices low.
Capitalism wants to increase the return to capital , so it works against competition to create market power (by many means including legal system power and regulatory capture as well tacit or explicit corruption) both over consumers and over their own supply chain (e.g. employees). It inherits its legacy from rentierism and landowners who also like to monopolize land, ration it and have tenants bid up rents.
‘objective sources’, on economics? Good luck. economists are so bi-assed that most of them can spew shit out of two holes simultaneously.
- both communism and perfect competition probably work fine in a small closed community, where everyone pretty much has repeated interactions with everyone - visibility - and there will be other examples where they each work fine-ish, but on a large enough scale, anomynity and human nature come into play. The reality is human trust is excellent, but some people will abuse it when they think they’ll get away with it and that destroys it.
That’s true.
With a T9 phone, I used to be able to send a complete text message without ever taking my eyes off the road.
Now that I’ve got a touchscreen I’m swerving all over the place every time I try to text. It’s way less safe.
Don’t text while you are driving. What the fuck?
Woosh, hopefully?
Stop fucking texting and driving.
Yes, please just text and drive, fucking is too distracting.
“Babe, hold on, I need to send a text,”
I prefer reading an erotic book. And well…you know where the other hand goes that isn’t holding the book.
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Jesus took the wheel
One word. Tesla.
It became the Apple of automobiles and everyone was rushing to copy them. Then came the fall of Elon and everyone is realizing how full of shit the company is.
Cheap tech that looks expensive, that is why we have touch screens. Also harder to repair for the customer to do. A physcial button is easy to replace and quick.
There’s a kind of people who think they don’t need to know an industry to know where it’s heading and where the progress is.
Mobile computers being thinner and replacing buttons with touchscreens are from that kind of delusions.
Now built-in chatbots with voice recognition and synthesis are all the rage. If you remember that “elevator in Scotland” sketch.
Ullluvunn!
Also, bring back gauges, instead of idiot-lights. It’s nice to know when a problem is beginning (overheating, etc) before it becomes a crisis when you have no choice but to pull over.
Yeah I hate it when information is hidden in the name of minimalism. I’d rather have a plane cockpit UI than a bicycle UI, even if it means I feel like an idiot at various points when I discover new things I could have been doing the whole time.
The feeling like an idiot is how people learn.
Yeah, realizing I was an idiot implies I’m a bit less of one than I was before I realized.
My hybrid dash is anything but minimal. I have a zillion selections to show me a slew of random things. None of them are an engine temperature reading. So frustrating.
If it hasn’t happened already, it wouldn’t surprise me if useful instrumentation space is reallocated to advertisement space at some point. Though hopefully the consumer rage in response would end whatever company tries that first.
It’ll start as a feature. When you need gas we’ll automatically show you the cheapest gas stations around you. People will gobble it up.
I recently learned that in my car the same light is used to indicate that the parking brake is on and that the brake fluid is low. Nothing bad happened, and it’s getting worked on, but my first thought was that the sensor on the brake must be broken. It’s poor design, seemingly without reason.
Yay, I never left having physical controls for things like HVAC controls and volume.
Touchscreens are great for context-sensitive controls, but less so for things that should be accessible at all times and usable without looking.
I’m so glad I kept my car and weathered through this shitty phase of car manufacturing.
If only there was hope for weathering through the data collection, subscription-based features and the death of sedans though…
I asked a dealer for a dumb-car. No fucking auto 911 dialing, bluetooth enabled, GPS service horseshit, just a normal car and he shot me
I think you want a 2007 Toyota Corolla lol
I’ve currently got a 2012 Mazda 3 but swapped the radio for one that supports Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. No other fancy features.
We’re looking for a new car, but unfortunately there’s nothing between “sedan” and “minivan” that we want. We have three kids and a minivan, and we hardly use the extra seats or storage. It’s still working fine (it’s a mid-2000s Sienna), but my wife and I hate driving it, it has terrible gas mileage (20-ish MPG), we don’t need the space 99% of the time, and we never need the storage space and people space simultaneously.
What I want is:
- AWD
- >30mpg, ideally 35+
- flip-up third row (will be used like 1-2x/year, if that)
- >30 cubic feet storage w/ third row unused (Prius is super close)
- as small as possible
- if I have to get an SUV, at least 1500lbs towing capacity (prefer >3000lbs)
If they still made them, a station wagon would absolutely fit the bill. But now, I can’t have that, so I’m stuck in SUV-land.
So my plan is to completely abandon the third row and get a compact hybrid SUV. If we buy new, it’ll be a Rav4 hybrid (the CR-V hybrid has a dinky 1000 lbs towing capacity, and if I have to get an SUV, I want the option). If we buy used, it’ll probably be a Ford Escape hybrid, not because it’s good, but because it’s cheap and good enough (Escape and Rav4 can both do 1500lbs towing). I don’t want either, but since there’s pretty much nothing in the sedan w/ storage space market (and I want more than suitcase storage, we camp quite a bit), I’m essentially being forced to get an SUV.
I hate SUVs, but I guess that’s what we’re getting. I’ll probably get an EV for the second car (currently a Prius), if only for the convenience of never having to fill up gas again.
Toyota RAV4 is nice. Especially the hybrid
Edit: never mind you mentioned that
Yup, they’re just a bit hard to get ATM because they’re super popular, so I’m not going to be able to haggle much to get a better deal. Used Rav4s go for the same if not more than new Rav4s.
The Ford Escape, however, is pretty decent and a lot more available than the Rav4, so I can probably get a decent discount. There are several 3-4yo Ford Escapes at $10-15k less than new that look interesting in my area.
That said, neither the Rav4 or the Ford Escape has an option for a third row/jump seats, which sucks.
I really just want a station wagon…
It might be too large for your use case, but have you looked at the Kia EV9? The EV6 might be worth looking at too.
EV won’t work because we do road trips quite a bit, charging infrastructure in the US sucks, and range would suck in the winter. If I’m going to get an EV, I’d need about double that range for a family car since we regularly go about 300-400 miles between charges, and often 800 miles in a day (takes about 13-14 hours driving). An EV would add a day to those trips, as well as require longer stops.
I’m planning on getting an EV for my commuter (only need about 150-200 miles of range), but not for our family car until range improves significantly.
and often 800 miles in a day (takes about 13-14 hours driving)
Oh wow. After my last trip that was supposed to take like 9 hours and ended up more like 12, I decided to never do that to myself ever again. But I guess if you have multiple drivers that can share the burden, such along day on the road is still an option.
Eh, I usually drive the whole way because I often get carsick if someone else drives, though my SO is there if I need a break. I grew up doing that, and started driving most (if not all) of the way as young as 16, so I’m used to it. We’re pretty efficient at it (get gas and go to the bathroom, then get back driving), and my kids basically just read, watch videos, or play video games in the backseat.
It’s a lot cheaper than flying and honestly less stressful than flying (no TSA, listening for boarding call, etc) and we don’t need to rent a car at the destination, though it takes a lot longer.
We’ll also do “shorter” trips at like 200-400 miles (i.e. visit nearby state and national parks), and an EV with 200-300 miles range would make that annoying (we’d have to recharge just before getting there). And the charging infrastructure to those places is spotty at best. An EV would be totally fine for around town driving, but not for road trips, so I either need <200 miles range, or >400.
Makes sense.
My wife and I don’t commute very far so an EV is fine for us even if we can only charge it with 120V initially (until we install a proper charger in our garage). We’ve got a BMW iX on order.
Tesla is opening superchargers to all brands eventually. That’ll help a lot, as will the inevitable changes that’ll happen to gas stations where they replace some pumps with EV chargers.
Range is definitely an issue, but it’s improving over time. 10 years ago, the average EV range was around 100 miles. I know BMW have tested a prototype car with ~600 mile range, and that tech should hopefully come with their Neue Klasse vehicles some time in 2026/2027. The Lucid Air gets around 500 miles range. Our current gas car (2012 Mazda 3) only gets around 360 miles until the gas light comes on, so it’s not actually that different for us.
Yeah, we’re right in that awkward window where EVs are almost good enough to replace the family car, but not quite.
We can usually get 400 miles out of our minivan, and filling up gas only takes a couple minutes. We usually pack lunches and whatnot for these road trips, so there’s really no reason to stop any longer than that. I guess it’s nice to stretch our legs or whatever, but we’d really rather just get to our destination and relax there.
With an EV, we’d probably get about 250 miles range since highway speeds are about 70-80mph in my area (probably a little less since fast charges aren’t everywhere), and then 20-30 min waiting to charge. For a typical 700-800 mile trip, that’s 3-4 stops, so if it’s 30 min each time, it would add 2 hours to the trip.
If we could get 400-500 miles range, we could recharge once, which is totally reasonable. But we’re not there yet, so we’re looking at hybrids for the family car and an EV for around town driving.
I hope that Mazda isn’t a diesel one.
Well, there are some strategies:
- data collection - remove/disable the antenna/broadcasting chip - in some cars it’s as easy as removing a fuse, in others you need to take things apart to remove the TCU or modem
- subscription-based features - don’t buy them and look for hacks to enabled them w/o buying
- death of sedans - buy sedans
Unfortunately, that’s a drop in the bucket since it seems the market in general wants larger cars with more spyware, and aren’t pushing back enough on subscription BS.
I’m actively looking for a car, and unfortunately the process is:
- find models we want to try out
- look up online about how to disable the spyware nonsense
- actually go look at cars
- repeat from 1 as necessary
- play dealership games because the private used market is essentially gone
- actually remove spyware
We’re on step 3, and I’m not looking forward to step 5. I’ve actually never purchased from a dealer before, because I’ve bought everything before now from a private seller. Wish me luck…
Can I suggest auction sites for used cars. Government is always getting rid of old cars.
I’ll have to check those out, I keep forgetting all about them. We don’t urgently need a new car, so that’s probably a good idea.
Get any Infiniti with a 3g antenna. The network doesn’t exist anymore so it can’t phone home.
Touchscreens can stay, but only for non-essential tasks like changing settings or entering addresses. Climate, media, and all other controls you usually use while driving should be tactile by mandate.
But we’ve still got a good 10 years of avoiding used cars. This era is literally landfill.
10 years and counting
There’s so much bullshit in new cars that’s it’s infuriating, especially considering the cars call home with all kinds of privacy violating bullshit.
Never mind that even 3-5 years down the line, some of these systems will fail to connect/ pair with the latest gadget in your pocket.
Back in the 80s, Don Norman popularized the term affordance. Humans need something to push, pull, turn or otherwise interact with. We are physical beings in a physical world.
Driving vehicles is potentially life-endangering. Just because the technology is there and cheaper does not mean that humans can push aside their physiological limitations in a critical situation.
Take the emergency blinker. You know where it is, you see it all the time - it’s right there in front of you! But when a real emergency happens, you’ll be fumbling for the button, concentrating on the situation at hand. Now imagine that button on a touchscreen.
I’ve noticed this with modern standards. They just don’t have the same experience because nothing is actually linked. It’s all electronic. I miss the feeling of the linkage as I moved through the gears. Feeling the disc touch as you let out the clutch. There was a magic to that. Now it has the feeling of setting on your hand for too long.
This always happens, with change you have things you don’t need and things you need, and things you consider and things you don’t consider, and things you had and things you will have. Of these there’s a combination of things you had, you need and you don’t consider. Which means you will not have them, while needing them and not considering them.
Correct good feedback is in that area.
I can’t imagine driving a stick like that. If it’s all electronic why bother with being standard as well?
The term is «affordance»
Thanks. Damn autocorrect.
Suspected as much!
I use my four way hazard lights when there’s heavy braking on the freeway to make sure people behind me are paying attention. It’s a button on my dash and pretty easy to toggle.
Though is that something that touch screen cars really put into the touch screen!?
I don’t think I’ve seen a car with the hazard lights button on the touch screen… Even the Teslas have a physical button for it. I imagine this must be a legal requirement, at least in some countries.
I don’t know Don, I’m sure he’s a fine guy, but I’ve read about all these kinds of rules (EDIT: emerging) much earlier - as early as 1940s, with airplanes and cars and other machines in production and in front lines that people had to operate for long hours under strain and make as few mistakes as possible.
Even USSR, not the Rome of ergonomics, had GOSTs for average ratio of errors an operator makes on a certain machine, machines had to be inside those numbers in tests involving people, or they wouldn’t get adopted into wide usage.
Note how the criterion is defined. Not formalities like the shape of something or the layout conforming to some vague definition, but the results of an actual test on people. Of course, though, there were also a myriad GOSTs as to how the specific controls may look, a GOST for every detail one could use in a device.
Just because the technology is there and cheaper does not mean that humans can push aside their physiological limitations in a critical situation.
Have you considered the shareholders though?
Yes please.
I don’t know how much longer my button & dialled up 2012 shitbox is going to last. Being able to buy new without the crap is something to look forward to.
Then again, there’s the whole ‘car phones home/connected services’ thing to consider as well. I like my car safe, but dumb as rocks otherwise.
The other day I saw a mid-90s shitbox in the parking lot and it made me so hopeful for my 2008 car. Like, that’s a sign my car has at least 10 more years in it.
With good climate (not a rust belt) and being fortunate enough to not blow an engine, it should do well with diligent maintenance.
Mostly why mine still goes. The bodywork is utter crap - full of scratches, dings, dents and the front end looks like someone dropped a running belt sander on it. Ex write-off. Mechanically though it is sound.
My worry is the timing chain. Chains last longer than belts, but they are a dog to change and generally not worth the labour. It will be that or a crash that sends it to the great scrappy in the sky.
Mid-90s a bit too early for me. I am fond of ABS (mandatory here since '04) and airbags ('98) at the very least. Not always a guarantee on cars of that era. Love the looks though.
Best of luck with your teenager.
Thanks :)
I didn’t think I could go back to not having a backup camera, heated side mirrors, and that feature that detects when your wheels are slipping and makes adjustments so you still go the way your steering wheel indicates.
Airbags and ABS are non-negotiable.
I miss heated mirrors now that you mention it. My 2003 Civic had them but the 2012 Corsa does not. Joys of poverty spec - I’m lucky to have electric windows.
I like my car safe, but dumb as rocks otherwise.
I always find that funny. I got my first car with radars and auto adjusting cruise control and so on and it’s much safer than the 2 years older Jetta I was driving before. If I’m distracted it warns me if there’s something on the road, it warns me if I act tired (swaying and going over the lines), if cruise is on it automatically slows down if the car in front of me slows down without braking…
You’re like people complaining about ABS in the motorcycle world even though it brakes faster than the majority of riders in conditions where it turns on…
I think they’re talking about subscriptions to use features that are already on the car. Connected services like remote start as a service can eat shit.
Indeed.
Safety systems are just fine.
ABS, lane deviation warnings, automatic braking and the like all actively prevent accidents - without being an annoyance to the driver, if implemented well. That tech is mature now and generally ok across the board.
I dislike all kinds of cruise and attempts at self driving though. More of a personal preference, but I think it makes the driver cede too much of their control to the vehicle - allowing them to become more easily distracted and less able to notice incoming hazards that the vehicle might not.
I don’t want my car sending any data out to anywhere, that’s all. And all those features should be able to be manually disabled, because I personally am not a distracted or tired/drunk driver so I don’t need any of that stuff.
Should be illegal to have touchscreen controls in a car, it requires you to look at it to effectively control it, which means the car forces you to ignore the road to do anything.
Finally. Are they actually hiring decent UX folks this time or are they using the people who designed 1980s VCR programming UIs again?
You mean like the 1985 Subaru XT Coupe? God I love that cassette futurism look!
Steering wheel looks like a gun which fits since it’ll probably kill you
That is such a strange looking steering wheel.
Funny part is it looks sci-fi to me.
This will never not be sci fi to me lol
The retro futurism of the 80’s was the best
Some of the most zany quirks and features of any car!
Get outta here, Doug Demuro! Go back to YouTube!
did 80s VCRs even have OSD? we went from a top loading National to a hi-fi so basically skipped the 80s. and 90s VRC UX would be perfectly acceptable as far as I’m concerned.
They mostly didn’t have OSDs, they instead had indecipherable 7-segment and some fixed elements like ‘Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa’, with 2 or 3 buttons. The younger Gen-X/older Millennials got their reputation as ‘whiz kids’ in part by handling those interfaces on behalf of their mystified parents.
80s and early 90s designed the best dashboards. Change my mind mf.
God I hope so
Plotnick, an associate professor of cinema and media studies at Indiana University in Bloomington, is the leading expert on buttons and how people interact with them.
I like that being a leading expert on buttons is a profession that exists in this world. You go Rachel Plotnick.
