I want a "dumb" but well-built electric car... No side mirror lights, no motorized trunks, no suite of cabin sensors trying to figure out what I want, no air conditioned seats, and definitely no elaborate, janky, hilariously expensive infotainment system. Just put that engineering into the suspension and steering, please.
I want a tablet mount and good A/C. Maybe power windows and nice speakers. And I will take the 900lbs and $10k+ that shaves off, thank you.
When I hear this I’m reminded of surveys asking people how the government should spend its money. A majority will say cut spending, but wouldn’t agree on what to cut spending on.
“I’m ok with spending on defence, social security and education” while another wants spending only on unemployment, health care and policing. That’s the paradox where a supermajority supports cutting spending and “streamlining” government but there isn’t majority support for cutting any one thing.
So it is with cars. You want a “tablet mount and good AC. Maybe power windows and nice speakers”. Some other consumer will say “I can’t get around without GPS so a good maps app on a large screen is non negotiable but get rid of everything else.” And so on. To make a car that appeals to everyone, you have to put most features in. Kinda like an American Congress Omnibus Bill.
Cars aren't like governments, though: the Toyota Corolla doesn't hold a monopoly on anything.
Why don't we have more specialized vehicles catering to small, passionate niches?
A modern Jeep or Land Rover looks just like a modern BMW or Audi SUV. The former brands were made by offering minimal rugged off-roaders, the latter by offering luxury vehicles. Now they've been blended into the same bland category.
What about beach buggies, or even the Yaris/Matrix/Fit class of light get-arounds? Gone.
What about the old nimble 6'-bed Ford Rangers, Chevy S-10s, Toyota Pickups? Gone, replaced with monstrous lifted 4'-bed wannabe minivans.
I understand why we can't have a meaningful choice between different types of government in the same area. But why must it be that way with consumer products?
I really want true compact pickups to make a comeback. Back in high school my girlfriend had a 79 Ford ranger. Put a modern AWD and airbags on that thing and it's my dream car. Great mileage, some towing capacity, and an actually useful bed, without becoming a massive unwieldy thing.
Something that I can use 95% of the time to get groceries and not feel like it's overkill, but toss a couch, dirt bike or beehive in the back when the situation calls for it.
My comment was in response to a person who said “why can’t manufacturers make something that appeals to my specific tastes?”
The answer is, there’s no future in serving tiny niches. Due to economies of scale it makes sense to target larger segments. Kinda like a government trying to please everyone.
I, and I suspect many others, would still pay $40K for a specialty base model which would only cost $30K if it sold in mass-market quantities.
Large companies in oligopolic positions won't try to produce those sorts of products, because it's risky and they have no reason to innovate or seek untapped markets.
It feels like it would be possible if we could incentivize competition and disincentive consolidation, though. Not just in the auto market, either.
Ironically, in part because government. The industry convergence on SUVs, light trucks, and crossovers is no coincidence, this is being driven by a corrupt EPA (regulatory capture) that places more lenient emissions standards on these types of vehicles.
Thank you government, for producing a regulatory agency strong enough to direct the entire automobile industry, but weak enough to be bribed into near-uselessness by corporate interests.
> What about the old nimble 6'-bed Ford Rangers, Chevy S-10s, Toyota Pickups? Gone, replaced with monstrous lifted 4'-bed wannabe minivans.
those vehicles had horrendous safety records, and modern trucks are larger so as to allow for crumple zones. plastic shells, Styrofoam, and other improved materials allow them to be much larger but without being excessively heavier.
agree with your 4' bed and minivan comments, tho
> Why don't we have more specialized vehicles catering to small, passionate niches?
because large scale manufacturing, safety, liability, and hell just the plain ole logistics of getting stuff places means it's not cost effective. One-offs like the Rally Fighter go for 75k-100k and won't have support, warranty, or the build quality of brands like Ford or Toyota.
My guess is that any product/brand that wishes to grow beyond a small niche market has to do so by agglomerating features I.e. trying to swallow multiple niches. The push towards economies of scale (and “growth”) makes it really hard for companies to stick with offerings catering to small niches.
Because cost of entry is proportional to size of market. A narrow niche has a small market by definition, and a car has a large cost of entry, so cars with small niches are rare.
Because of killer bang for buck. Dacias are essentially cheapened versions of Renault models. The cars are reliable enough for first two owners not to be bothered, so resale value does not drop too much. Of course the absolute price point is also relevant.
Sure, but again. People are buying it because Dacias are the cheapest, and there is nothing cheaper besides some Chinese brands, which have questionable quality, and are not available on very market. My dad has Sandero. He bought it because he cannot afford any other new vehicle. If he could, he would have bought Kia X-ceed, or Toyota Yaris X-Cross or something similar.
At least in Italy, nowadays a Sandero starts around 12,500 Euro for the base-base model, it is more likely that actual sold cars are in most cases more around 14,000 Euro.
It remains the cheapest car avaialble, though the 10,000 price point is a thing of the past.
The Fiat Panda nowadays (I know as we needed a small car and asked for one no more than 1 month ago) is realistically around 17,000 Euro, and (as said recent direct experience) they are going to deliver one no earlier than six-seven months (i.e. in practice it doesn't exist).
A Renault Clio is around 18,000 Euro, three, more likely four, months time to deliver.
The whole market is simply crazy in Italy right now, in the end we settled for a (more expensive, but actually also a little bit higher level) Hyundai I20, managed to get one in 10 days time (the only model they had available, with a few largely unneeded by us optionals) for around 23,000 Euro.
All the mentioned models are so-called "mild-hybrids", so - at least in the case of the Hyundai - you have an useless small battery that prevents from having a spare tire/wheel.
As a current-gen Panda owner I can't believe there's so much demand for such a terrible car. The Sendero is vastly superior in nearly every way.
I only own it because it was dirt cheap second hand and was very satisfied with the previous gen model which was an actually good car. This one is not.
Yep, though currently they are not even very cheap used, right now a used Panda year 2021 with low mileage (10-20,000 km) is around 12,000-13,000 Euro.
A 2019 one with relatively low mileage (50,000 to 60,000 km, maybe 70,000 km) is likely to be in the 9,000-10,000 Euro range.
I wouldn't however attribute the scarcity exclusively to high demand, for all we know it could simply be under-production (for whatever technical reason or as part of a plan to sell higher priced models).
>right now a used Panda year 2021 with low mileage (10-20,000 km) is around 12,000-13,000 Euro
Fuck me, 13,000 Euros is what the original owner of my used Panda paid for it back in 2013, while I got it in 2017 for 6000 Euros with full kit and an extra winter tire + wheel set. I'm guessing it was cheap because it hasn't got much demand for it on the used market so users wanting to get rid of it need to lower the price.
People only buy Dacia because they can't afford anything else. If they could you would see the Dacia market share shrink to almost zero.
Some people cope with "Dacia is just a cheap Renault" the same they cope with "Seat (Spanish brand) is just a cheap Volkswagen", but deep down inside them they know they can't buy the car they really wanted.
So? most people would buy expensive bmw’s, Porsches or ferarri’s if they could, but they can’t afford them, so they settle for opel, Renault, Hyundai , Toyota or other more affordable cars. Nothing wrong with that. What is surprising is that are not more brands focussing on the market targeted by Dacia.
I dunno about "most people", but I would in no world buy a BMW, Porsche, or Ferrari.
Not everyone wants a status symbol, and not everyone wants a Go Very Fast Very Loud car. Some people genuinely want a car that's comfortable, reliable, and good for the environment.
Read the comment I'm replying to. People aren't buying Dacia instead of Volkswagen because Dacia is better, people are buying Dacia because most of Europe is poor.
No, not BMW. You’d have to go 5+ years at very least.
My point was that in a lot of places people who can’t afford a new car other than Dacia would still rather buy an older car from a more prestigious brand due to “reasons”.
Wouldn't old BMW kill you on maintenance and other costs of ownership compared to cheaper cars?
For about 15 years I kept having a hyundai of one sort of another while my friend has Audis. Our regular planned maintenance and our repairs were about 500% different. Anecdata n=1 of course.
There is almost no overlap between cars that sell well in Europe and cars that sell well in the US (like this article is about). Two entirely different markets.
“Very popular” probably needs to be quantified. In the US pickup trucks are the best selling car type by far. I even see increasing numbers of them in NYC which is ridiculous.
You see some American pickups, but I wouldn’t call it very popular. They’re also very impractical, hard to park, very uneconomical. Not a very rational purchase.
The only brand popular in both the us and the Netherlands is probably Tesla.
They are very practical. Maybe not if you are living in a city. If you run a company and are depending on carrying goods the f150 for example is a good bang for bucks. Maybe people cant live without. Real workhorses.
Actually, a Windstar/Aerostar/etc with the seats down/removed holds longer material with zero overhang, can hold more material than a pickup bed without the need to cover anything, and can be used to move an 8 man workcrew.
The ford model even has the same engine and transmission as their pickups (last I read).
People skip over the minivan because it's not "cool" or "too soccer mom" but JFC it's the best vehicle I've used.
Hondas and Subarus are not popular in the Netherlands. They exist but are very expensive, even for older models. Go spec a new Honda on their NL site; it’s insane.
Toyota is popular with the Yaris being highly rated and reliable as measured by ANWB (Dutch AAA). Anecdotally I see a lot of Hyundais around where I live; the EV6/Ionic is a popular eclectic model.
Yeah, it probably depends on the country. I see quite a bit of Hondas and Subarus where I am but they don’t seem to be that popular in general.
However the Honda Civic for instance seems to have had reasonably good sales figures in Europe between 2000 and ~2018 so there must still be some around.
Those are not American pickups, except for Ford f150, etc. And you don't see a lot of those in the Netherlands, very impractical.
Regarding overlap of non-pickups, usually the models that are popular in the Netherlands are different from the models in the us. E.g., Toyota Camry is very rare in the Netherlands, same for Honda Accord.
I was thinking more about Ford Escape, Explorer or even Mustang rather than the F150. Indeed I don’t see why anyone would buy a pick up like that in Europe for almost any reason.
I thought we were talking about brands rather than specific models? But yeah the Camry is not that popular in Europe, RAV4 and Corolla are on both continents though.
Luxury/mid-size SUVs seem to be quite popular on both continents.
But yeah, compact cars and hatchbacks are hardly a thing in the US and no sane person in Europe would buy a pickup truck unless they actually needed one for work.
arguably, big trucks in the US are part of that niche; they offer a lot of high-end trims for something that was, a couple generations ago, strictly a work vehicle.
I hear your point, but the given example? GPS? Does anyone prefer an auto manufacturers software GUI over the GUI of their phone? CarPlay and the Android equivalent for the win.
* Location on the map and distance to turns is represented far more accurately
* Knows which way I am pointed and can give accurate directions as soon as I start navigation, while sometimes with my phone I need to move a bit for it to know which way I’m oriented
* Works in tunnels
* Tends to stick to main roads while Apple and Google maps are far too aggressive sending me down side roads or crossing over 2 lanes of traffic.
* Don’t need to pause navigation or mess around with my phone when getting in and out of the car for breaks
* Has detailed information about the services/stores/restaurants available at each rest stop along the highway, and distances to each stop
* Detailed information about lane closures, temporary speed limit reductions due to weather, chain restrictions, etc
* Displays accurate representations of street signs and 3d renderings of off ramps
* Displays landmarks at intersections (e.g. turn right before the ramen shop on the right)
* Shows guidance about which lane to be for two or three upcoming intersections at a time (as opposed to just the next intersection).
* Much more customizable interface. I can choose whether I want it to display gas stations, convenience stores, parking, etc. on the map. How many prompts before a turn. I can enable or disable various features like split-screen turn guidance, etc.
And this is Toyota. Not the prettiest UI in the world but extremely functional. Google Maps is better when searching for businesses and other points of interest, but when it comes to actual navigation I much prefer my car's built-in GPS.
Right. The parent asked “GPS? Does anyone prefer an auto manufacturers software GUI over the GUI of their phone?” To which I responded with the reasons above for preferring my car’s built-in navigation over CarPlay.
I’m not saying that Google/Apple couldn’t build these features. Just that they haven’t.
The step-by-step guiding is top-notch and well integrated in the dash infos, the physical knobs & buttons make it easy to use while driving, it can reroute me according to live traffic infos, and it meshes nicely with the rest of the UI.
I don't really see a reason to use CarPlay/Apple Maps in this case.
Yeah, the satnav built into my Volvo is actually really nice and I trust it more than I trust Google maps. The interface for Google maps is somewhat nicer, but android auto cannot be made full screen in my Volvo while the built in satnav can. And the built in satnav can be displayed on the driver's dash.
The satnav in my Volvo is better than my phone, except maybe on forest roads BUT the interface to enter an address is a God-awful mess of about 8 lines of input done one character at a time through a wheel setup. It takes forever to input an address and if that address isn't in the system for some reason you won't know until you've wasted 2 or 3 minutes trying to input it.
There used to be an app that greatly simplified this process. Of course, it cost $20/month. It isn't supported anymore because a 2017 model was built with only 3G and my car can no longer connect to a network in the US.
Aside from the infotainment system, I love this car and will probably drive it until the wheels fall off. It is a Geeley product, so the wheels will fall off at some point unlike the battle tanks of old.
So my 2020 XC60 has an app, fortunately it isn't anywhere near that expensive - £29 a year. And yeah I just use it to send the destination to the satnav, then it pops up on the screen literally 10 seconds later.
The driving directions on my C-Max (with the much maligned Ford Sync 2 system) are actually really nice to use.
Inputting addresses is a pain, and UI responsivity is terrible (which is part of why people don't like it; it's also not pretty, but like who cares? Does the radio need a lovely background image; flat green is fine), but put in into the show the map on the left and the next three steps on the right, and it's way better than using my phone. It's been a while since I tried it, but Android Auto in a rental was worse than just using the phone, so I've avoided it since.
Also, I'm not willing to pay for maps updates every year, and XM for satellite traffic and compressed to hell music that cuts in and out all the time because I live where trees do.
The kind of places I like to vacation commonly have no cell service. The built in GPS works pretty good without cell service. Google/Apple maps fail in this scenario.
I don't buy that. I live and recreate in an area where cell service is bad to non-existent.
I navigate with Google maps all the time. The key is downloading offline maps. I've got multiple states on my phone and they take up surprisingly little space.
I still like my nav in the vehicle because of the larger screen, but I never use it to navigate.
The way around it is to allow cars to be built the way we build PCs. For electric cars, that kind of modularization should be possible. Naturally, this means some of the more ridiculous requirements like 'automatic breaking' and 'remote turn off switch' need to be removed though.
Better speakers is an easy add on. Power windows are probably uncontroversial. I don’t think there is wide demand for built in gps. I just don’t see the problem you describe. Design a basic dumb car base that can be extended with addons. There may be regulatory and other non-necessary obstacles but the ideal seems widely agreeable.
An infotainment is practically a legal requirement, since backup cameras are mandated by law in the USA. Since you already need a screen and a computer, you might as well add some more functionality.
My Volvo back up camera now lags because of all of the software updates... I'm pretty sure it's not compliant any more with standards... The updates also reduced original functionality like the 360 degree camera view as a default, which took away a major feature I bought the car for.
I also worry that there may be a point where android auto updates stop completely and the feature goes away altogether due to incompatibility overall... Likely even before the car is 6 years old. These cars aren't made to last anymore... I that case, they should cost a lot less than previous generations, or there should be a solid buyback program in place.
I don't want chat GPT, it is pretty much guaranteed to be obsolete in 4 years.... Just install a hot swappable PC in the car instead perhaps.
That's the issue - might as well not add that functionality. I had a 2014 Ford with a small but adequate screen for the backup cam, and the radio/bluetooth were based on physical buttons and knobs. Perfectly adequate, and preferable to a touchscreen interface.
I used to think that was a good idea. But now I have a car with both backup camera and sensors, and I find myself relying much more on the sensors than the camera. It helps that the implementation is intuitive -- slow beeps at 1 meter, then increasing frequency, then continuous beep, then automatic brake.
I love the backup camera, especially since I moved to a city with tiny parking space, which always trigers the beeping sounds left and right (literally). It's so annoying I wish I could disable them.
Most cars there is a button or option to disable. I have this option on my fords. It’s there for example if you add a towing hitch there has to be a disable option somewhere in the menu stack.
Manufacturers are dependent on automotive qualified parts to be available. For reference, a moderate to high end solution might use the Arm a53 cores from 2012, with an A72 if you're lucky. Usually even that gets pushback from beancounters and the fallback will be some chip from TI that makes the z80 in their calculators look almost modern. Couple this with software that has had 0 time allocated to optimization and you can see the issue.
A lot of manufacturers are exploring custom silicon instead, because that's a great way to avoid spending money.
My biggest bugbear here is the overly tight integration. A great many of the problems, from my perspective, are that the days of swapping out a head unit that you hate for one that you like has become largely impractical.
My Volkswagen e-Up has a reverse camera even though it doesn't have what I'd call "infotainment" - just a hyper basic screen for radio, it just happens to also display the camera feed when needed.
My backup camera screen is actually in the rear view mirror. There is nothing but a small, monochrome display in the dash, and that just shows the radio station, time and AC temp setting.
and that is a much poorer backup camera than the large display in my dash that adjusts for dim lighting and shows a wider angle than I can see by twisting around to look out the back. The backup camera is safer than a back window in this scenario.
I think what they meant is that the backup camera screen is embedded in the review mirror. I’ve seen those that it’s kinda like a first surface mirror and you can see the screen only when it is turned on. Otherwise it’s mostly invisible.
Bingo. The display is invisible until I pop in reverse, then it lights up through the mirror and takes up they left half. Not as big as an infotainment version, but sufficient.
I meant that, in my experience, the backup camera screens in the rearview mirror have been too small and with poor tightness and contrast compared to those in the larger infotainment screens.
I feel that a good backup camera system gives you a better view of a wider area than just using the standard rearview mirror or than turning around and looking out the back of the car.
Adding functionality there makes the parts more costly and the extra complexity increases the chance that it fails. You really don't have to add the complexity there, and the bare minimum hardware needed to display a simple camera feed wouldn't be powerful enough to function as an infotainment system anyway.
I feel the same way. My car is 18 years old, also a Toyota, and besides the fact that I could rebuild it as long as anywhere it crashed was in dragging distance of a junk yard, the main reason I've kept it is because it doesn't have anything I don't need, and that somehow means I can trust it.
I see these integrated remote phone-home TV systems that help you parallel park but shrink your windows so it feels like you're in a submarine, and it gives me the willies. We couldn't adjust the AC in my partner's Honda when her screen failed one summer and I thought, "Why are those things connected?!"
I don't have Bluetooth in my car. I don't even have an aux jack. I do have an MP3 CD player, a Garmin, and an unbeatable stereo, and I can operate all of the buttons and dials blindfolded, and they respond with no latency!
I'd take a Yaris over a Tesla, and I wouldn't be caught dead in a Yaris.
then you are atypical. Most people listen to music, news, podcasts, etc while they drive. that doesn't add much complexity to the system. particularly if the car allows phone projection like CarPlay or Android Automotive.
I have a $15 device that plugs into the 12v socket and broadcasts on a radio frequency. My phone can connect to that by Bluetooth. My radio can be controlled by physical buttons. The only thing the screen displays about the radio is the presets, which I can totally live without.
I do not need an infotainment system. Heck, I don't even need as much as I have.
I'm from Europe, so probably that's my surprise. Most of the cars around here are still (I hope we will never reach what's in the US) mostly city-compact cars (VW golf size) so visibility is quite OK and rear mirror + sensor is more than enough.
(though, I'm now in Chile and amount of huge cars/SUVs/trucks/pick-ups on the street is simply mind-boggling... whhhhyyyy on earth one would drive this monstrosity in the city?!)
That’s what’s great about CarPlay. I put a $200 wireless CarPlay (and AndroidAuto) head unit in my wife’s 2005 CR-V. Her nav is 20x better than my much newer Nissan's factory navigation head unit.
Well I could tell you that in 2017 Infiniti wasn't offering even Bluetooth on someone of their trim. No Bluetooth in 2017 on their "luxury" line?
Of course Infiniti didn't offer Carplay long after the competition had it.
It's no wonder the other Japanese automakers ate Nissan's lunch.
> And I will take the 900lbs and $10k+ that shaves off, thank you.
Going from digital to analog control is more likely to add weight and cost, so you aren't going to save in that regard. Specifically going back from the infotainment system to an old fashioned analog control panel would likely add more cost and weight than it saves.
That's fine, but it isn't going to happen by going back in time, rather they take a modern all digital design and just take features away. So your dash is going to still be digital, not because it is fancy, but because it is economical. You would wind up with something like: https://carnewschina.com/2017/08/08/meet-gms-cheapest-electr...
If the concern is lifetime ownership cost, repairs need to factor in as well. More analog parts, fewer features, and individual parts rather than monolithic control systems all can make a big difference in repairability.
You have to run more wires, more points of failure, more things to wear out. It is heavier, more expensive to produce, but ya, you can repair individual parts maybe without replacing the entire head unit.
You can save almost 1/3 to 1/2 of the 900 lbs going to manual seats from electric in some cars. It is amazing how much some of the convenience features weigh. Power tailgates? Power seats? Power sunroof? Sunroof at all? Glass and motors are the enemy.
Did you check out the Baojun E100? The Chinese have made (and sold) plenty if minimal EVs, just not much market for them in the states (well, our safety standards are different also).
After working software side in automotive, a lot of the features you stated are completely different areas of the company. This could be part of the problem, since they don't think in terms of one cohesive product and try to jam as many features as they can into a vehicle.
Without getting into the details, automotive acts like a start up with money and no idea what to actually build. Even worse, they have established leadership who in all their hubris thinks they can navigate development in bleeding edge technology they haven't the first idea on how to go about it.
A feature in the infotainment system was my responsibility. I was writing services to consume opt-in data and give user feedback. They pivoted the tech available to me for development six times in a six month span when my deadline was around eight months. I couldn't get anyone to understand that good software takes time. Apparently the automotive veterans around me said that, "this is just how it is" and my resignation followed shortly after. But all this jank shit and half baked design of what you get as a package deal in your vehicle is the result of an industry that is woefully behind in terms of a well operating "tech" company. Those features you claim to want to get rid of are the same features that allow them to claim they are "luxury" and to justify the cost of a vehicle that probably should have taken a fraction of the effort and cost to make with any sort of competency.
This is ultimately why Tesla is a crying shame and I wonder what it would have looked like without Elon's interference.
It also points out the fallacy and lie of electric car companies caring about the environment. They don't. It's just the new thing to sell. Just like every company known to man is parroting sustainability now.
Sure, but it doesn't matter whether they actually "care" about the environment, or just about selling cars, an electric car is still better for the environment.
Now, if you keep buying new cars to keep up with the latest features, that's a problem.
> Now, if you keep buying new cars to keep up with the latest features, that's a problem.
It depends on what happens to your old cars (and they're mileage ratings). Many people are driving more inefficient cars and would upgrade if affordable used cars were available. The market can absorb more than a few yearly upgraders, though of course after a point it is a waste.
Everyone can make a good car now, they are a commodity now. So to differentiate in the market you turn to nonsense (pointless features you can talk about) and obfuscation (confusing pricing and options and fees, ala airlines)
Does the word 'good' have a different meaning in the US? Your car manufacturers barely manage to compete in the segment protected by the chicken tax tariff... Some do a decent job in luxury EVs.
Because what could be more fun than praying for autonomy at speed in a self-driving car while ordering a happy meal?
I'm happy they stopped at the concept.
Given the lack of regulation, I'm surprised we don't have drones dropping happy meals through moon-roofs in traffic like turkeys-via-chopper on WKRP in Cincinnati.
This is becoming so widespread, it’s no longer just a byproduct of how a project or a product is managed. It’s an explicit guidance that is explicitly stated in the form of “No feature should take more than 1-2 months. 3 months feature work is the longest term we should plan and consider. Everything we work on from planning to design to implementation to deployment needs to be in the hand of a customer at most in 2-3 months max” I even had this hilarious conversation with my manager once.
I asked: “You know how broken this feature is, right? Like if you even deviate from the simple announcement example in any way, you’ll probably be broken in a completely unknown way. We’re providing an ‘alternative’ that only implements a 1/10 of the scenarios but nonetheless exposes the same interface to users”
He said: “yeah, that’s fine. The most important thing is to deliver something for users to use. To even know if anyone wants this at all or if no one will use it”
I perplexedly asked: “but how would you know if people are not using it because they don’t want it, or if they are using it because they try and it’s hopelessly broken?”
He said: “We’ll fix it. If they are not using it because it rough or broken, then we’ll fix it. We will wait for feedback about what’s broken and fix the problem they run into. If people want to use something and they find issues, they’ll just report it.”
I said: “… do you do that? You try a feature in a new product or a tool or a feature, and when it doesn’t work at all, do you start file feedback items and work with that company to make sure their feature work? I know i don’t. I just move on until they fix it or find a competitor who has a better alternative”
He said: “no, most people will report problems and we can fix them as they come. Also we should tell from telemetry what people are trying and what’s not working and what we should fix vs not”
I said: “yeah, that makes sense.“, knowing that our telemetry is also generally broken because it’s implemented in the same way and generally we do the work when business folks come back asking for some data or complaining how the data we provide doesn’t add up.
this sounds like a conversation wherein someone learns about lean startup / agile methodologies for the first time (build an MVP and get it in front of people ASAP to get feedback, don't perfect it first)
"obviously broken" isn't the only option besides perfect, so we'll just use the term "not perfect" here, and believe me, some of them will let you know what isn't perfect about it when you ask.
“Not perfect” is a straw man because obviously nothing ever is perfect or 100% complete. When shipping something becomes the priority, then “obviously broken” stuff just gets re-dubbed “not perfect” which is exactly the problem.
If your users are forced to use your platform because you mainly sell to CTOs who only need a list of checkboxes checked, and they strike a deal with you, then yeah. It’s a great business model to check as many boxes as possible, get that contract, then figure out what those boxes actually mean later.
"obviously broken" is a straw man because we're just discussing anything that doesn't satisfy everything you want (which you listed).
indeed, the concept of an "obviously broken" MVP is an oxymoron, since V stands for "viable"
when giving everybody everything they want becomes the priority, then "not perfect" stuff just gets re-dubbed "obviously broken" by 1 random person, which is actually the problem: it's better to ship something and get feedback and iterate on it than to ship nothing or to ship the wrong thing after a long development time or to ship at the end of however long it takes to satisfy everybody's desires
You can buy a 2011 Nissan Leaf that has had a 2018 Nissan Leaf battery pack installed, giving it 200+ miles of range, for like $15k. I want something like that!
They were physical controls but there was SO many of them and they all felt very cheap that it was its own sense of crappy cheap and likely to break UI.
This is why I salivate over Icon4x4 vintage car rebuilds. Check any video the owner posts on YouTube. All of the tech is state of the art analog stuff. It's the definition of "dumb and absolutely perfectly crafted."
Make sure you really want to drive and live with an old design before dropping tons of money on a restoration. Driving a leaf spring suspension all solid axles and body on frame truck is wayyyy different than modern independent suspension unibody frame trucks.
You might not remember it but back in the heyday of those old trucks people were flipping and rolling them on the freeway all the time--there are conditions and speeds that they just plain are not safe to drive, and a lot of that comes from their inherent design which Icon can't fix.
As far as I know all modern full-size pickup trucks are still frame-on-body, and most have solid rear axles.
(In the mid/small size there's some unibody options like the Honda Ridgeline but that's nothing new. It's just a different type of vehicle, not something that's obsoleted a traditional truck.)
Electronic limited slip diffs, ABS and wheelspin sensors with traction control, etc. go a loooong way to making modern stuff more drivable. There's no comparison to an old 80s truck with none of that stuff (and way less crash safety).
My 2014 truck has solid axels and body on frame, but the suspension is a million times better than the 70's International truck I was in when I hit my head on the ceiling as it went over a speed bump at a reasonable speed.
Coils on all four corners and I'm sure some better engineering helps quite a bit.
That exists - it's called a VW e-UP(along with its sisters - Seat Mii Electric and Skoda Citigo EV). Super basic, analogue gauges, it has a phone mount instead of an infotainment system....you hop in, turn the key(!) and drive. 160 miles range, can rapid charge, easily fits 4 adults or in our case 2 adults, baby seat, pram and Costco shopping. I love that car more than I love our 400bhp Volvo - it just works, gets us everywhere in our daily life, and costs absolutely nothing to drive. And yes, it has A/C, electric windows, and even heated seats. I'm keeping this car forever, absolutely not interested in any future replacement with VW's ID.1 and such, I know they will be packed with crappy tech that will drive me mad.
Cooled seats are just a couple of fans, a switch, and perforations in the leather. In some climates, that’s totally worth the modest expense and minuscule (usually zero) maintenance.
And I will take the 900lbs and $10k+ that shaves off, thank you.
If a manufacturer can save 900lbs they'll just put in a bigger battery instead. People are anxious about range, and manufacturers sell more long range cars.
And if they can knock $10k off the bill of materials they'll just make $10k more profit on the vehicle.
The choices that go into building a car are about driving mass market sales and increasing the bottom line. They aren't about catering to specific user needs.
Exactly. It’s just simple laws of aerodynamics unfortunately. People might demand non-droplet shaped cars, and some might even buy some. But the majority will look at the significant drop in mileage, or regulators might look at pedestrian safety or range and penalize it in general. Then some of those same people would say something like “beautiful car, love the looks, but not willing to take the range difference. Fix that and we can talk” as if it’s a menu you can pick and choose from.
This made me laugh. I've also compared the recent styling to a suppository on wheels. I suppose it must be government regulations about MPG that drives an aerodynamic shape where all sedans now have the same weird shape.
Also the reality that we finally have proper clue how aerodynamics actually are. Previously it was quite a lot of guess work and something that looked about right to designers.
I am hoping that EV conversions will lead to an "open source" approach to cars, where there will be recycled, old chassis stripped of anything proprietary and installed with standardised control chips. If this means government regulation and a 110km/h baked-in speed limit, I would happily compromise. I'm already noticing something similar occur with bicycles, where there are advocates [1] and [2] of non-proprietary bike parts.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/@durianriders
[2] https://www.youtube.com/@PathLessPedaledTV
I went a long way down this route a year or so ago, having found an absolutely perfect 1986 porsche 911 "donor car," however the amount of regulation the car needed to comply with, the engineering time and the expense of the motors, batteries and controllers (that would have to be custom made to fit the car) meant that I was going to spend a quarter million all in. I could have saved maybe a third of that taking a used car off a scrapheap, but then it defeats the point of ending up with a car I actually wanted to drive.
I am theoretically OK with smart TVs because there is a real advantage to fancy upscaling/interpolating/tonemapping ASICs like they ship with now. The HDMI link limits you in some respects, and the downstream devices just dont have that kind of horsepower (or have extreme difficulty displaying legal HDR content, in the case of PCs).
The awful UIs and spam though... Yeah, make it dumber please.
A family jaguar had an absolutely enormous computer unit that had to get replaced, all for... A absolutely horrible infotainment system that literally singlehandedly drags down the consumer reports rating
It’s how I feel about my TV too - god I hate smart tvs. All I want is a dumb display I can hook a media pc up to. I can make that setup do literally anything I want.
The Tesla Model 3 is surprisingly barebones. The display/infotainment has unnecessary extras, but the car has wheels, seats, a stereo, and AC, sitting on a battery.
Pair your phone with BT and you'll never touch the infotainment again.
It's not cheap, but it's not overcomplicated in daily use if you ignore the infotainment.
Perhaps that is why. EVs kinda follow the "tyrrany of the rocket equation" because so much weight is their batteries (aka their rocket fuel). Taking a few pounds of features off also saves some battery that is no longer needed.
Unless you want to turn on your wipers or the fog lights. It's better than before witg the latest update but the experience still sucks, especially the fog lights. I don't understand how that got past safety checks.
Things mandated by law in the US: horns, engine hoods, windshield wipers, mirrors, airbags, tire pressure monitors, backup cameras, seat belts, bumpers, anti-lock brakes, automatic emergency braking, electronic stability control, LATCH systems, mufflers/emission control systems, headlights, tail lights, stop lights, and turn signals.
Additionally air intakes may not be more than 4 inches in height, steering wheels must be circular and at least 13 inches in diameter, and tires must not discharge materials towards the rear of the vehicle.
Junk I tell yea. I live in Death Valley, CA why are you mandating me to have windshield wipers? Also I’m a very good driver why do I need ABS or automatic emergency breaking? I only text and drive when there is no one on the road.
Some of the junk is from lessons learned the hard way. For example, backup cameras dramatically reduce the chance of you running over your own children in your driveway.
EV cars are not quite there yet on price and economies of scale, so they have to have all the "luxury" frills to justify the $10-15k higher price tag vs the same ICE car.
Something closer to what you want will come eventually though. We're just still early in the EV market as a % of overall vehicles sold. Prices have already come down a lot and will continue to do so in the future.
Just the powered seat option on the Mustang Mach E is a $1500 add-on. Add memory capability is $1500 more. BlueCruise is $2100. I don't know about the weight claim, but the price estimate doesn't seem too far off.
My understanding is that a lot of profit is derived from trim packages, implying the cost to consumer is heavily inflated for those options. The difference with premium packages can approach 50% of the base model cost (although that usually goes beyond electronics)
Toss in "no phoning home" and that's a car that I would absolutely consider buying. I am not aware of any electric cars on the market right now that I would be willing to buy.
I recently bought a Chevy Bolt that pretty much meets these criteria. It’s a fine car, without many frills, and about $10K less than a basic Tesla Model 3.
Motorised seats were the single fixed requirement when we bought our car. That’s because we only have one car, my wife and me drives it similarly often.
The problem is you end up paying More for what you want because what you want doesn't align with everyone else. These cars are massed produced, so anything deviating from the popular norm ends up becoming custom and costing more, even if the custom design is less complex then the popular design.
Given that everyone else wants those bells and whistles, ironically you get more by paying less which means logically more bells and whistles is the better deal.
A logical person would in turn want the cars with "too much stuff". That is unless you're willing to pay more for less stuff.
> Given that everyone else wants those bells and whistles
I'd argue that almost nobody else wants all those bells and whistles, but most people want a couple of them. So you wind up with all of them, because people will walk away from a vehicle that doesn't have what they want more than walk away from a vehicle that has too many things they don't.
I like/use all of the features that the parent listed. There are _some_ dumb features, on my car, but most of them I quite like and are a large part of why I bought my car and not a cheaper model/trim.
And manufacturers have gotten really good at spreading the most popular features among multiple upgrade packages. You want heated seats and blind-spot monitoring? That's going to be two separate packages that include tons of features you don't really want.
There might be an option to only add the two specific features but that means a custom order that will take months to arrive and probably won't end up saving you much money anyway.
Nah... it's like with dumb SUVs - do you think that everyone wants them? Or the demad was created because it was better for the makers to make them (with relatively lower increase in cost they can charge more for the end product)? Tied with and thanks to Corporate Average Fuel Economy…
In my circle I don't know anyone wanting "infotainmant" - just a regular car to which I can connect my mobile hassle-free without dumb TV screen smack in the middle of the car...
Same goes for mobile phones - most of the people I know want to have regular sized phones (~5-5,5") but now... it's easier to smack ~7" screen to the roof-tile (that they call "phone") and sell at a premium...
SUV's are very popular among women - 43% of buyers. The industry research says that women feel safer driving them - the size makes them feel more protected, and the ride height lets them see the road much better. (Lest it go unsaid, women are on average less tall than men)
These are the reasons my wife cites preferring her Honda Pilot to her previous cars.
I'm sure nothing I have to say is news, but it bears repeating that the common excuses for driving an SUV are either selfish or irrational.
The only advantage SUVs offer in safety is that they're likely to flatten the other car in a crash. Aside from size, the characteristics of an SUV make safety worse—they handle badly, tend to roll, and their design is unsafe to pedestrians and cyclists—so buying an SUV makes the roads as a whole less safe. People buy SUVs to avoid being killed by SUVs. It's a negative-sum arms race.
SUVs have atrocious visibility, and this has its cost in blood. They are so high off the ground that it's impossible to see what is near to the vehicle. Thousands of children are injured every year from drivers not seeing them over the hood. Hundreds are killed. This kind of incident has a name: the frontover.
SUVs are a major cause of poor visibility. The need to see over other cars mainly exists because cars are so stupidly tall. Buying an SUV to see over other SUVs is another negative-sum arms race.
When I'm driving on the road, I'm totally cool with being selfish.
Driving is statistically one of the most dangerous things we do in life, and someone else being drunk/high/distracted/overly tired can end your life, or the life of a loved one, in an instant.
I don't feel bad driving a larger vehicle than other people. I will prioritize my safety.
The problem is that a good chunk of those drunk/high/distracted/overly tired are in the same type of vehicle, and cause disproportionate damage to those who do not or cannot afford a similar sized tank. Your point is a valid one, and I think it is more of a reflection of failure on the end of car companies and legislation...
Wouldn't the failure there be with the drunk/high/dusts/tired driver? Car companies are in the business of selling whatever makes shareholders the most money, and you can't legislature away bad decisions.
> Car companies are in the business of selling whatever makes shareholders the most money, and you can't legislature away bad decisions.
You can ”legislature away” socially bad decisions, at least at scale, by sufficiently shifting incentives. You can also “legislature them in” the same way.
E.g., you can create a light truck loophole in safety and economy regulations nominally intended, but not carefully bounded, to exempt vehicles with commercial use, and thereby incentivize manufacturers to expend enormous resources on propaganda to create demand for a new class of personal vehicles that fit into that loophole, shifting the market so that even after the loopholes don’t work the same way, the demand remains.
My point wasn't that legislation has no impact, of course it can move the needle. Many people will follow the rules simply because they prefer to, and others will because the legal punishment is enough of a deterant.
My point was that jumping from some people have wrecks because they drive drunk/high/distracted/tired to we need more legislation doesn't make any sense. If we want to inform the public of the risks of driving impaired we absolutely can do that, it doesn't require laws and punishment to help educate people.
Assuming we can legislate away bad decisions is effectively agreeing that we'd prefer the state is powerful enough to take away any decision we may want to make but that they disagree with. Why not just expect the government to help research the risks and inform us, trusting us to make the best decision for ourselves?
I don't think the assumption is that government is legislating away anything. The decisions are still up to the people, but the reward or consequence will be the byproduct of the legislation. Get a DUI, lose your license for 10 years. Have an incredibly good driving record, get great benefits(not the 5% off your insurance premium).
At best that legislatures away the car makers' bad decision of selling cars without seat belts and airbags.
My point was that you can't legislate away drivers' bad decisions. At best you can leverage the fact that many people would rather follow the rules, and that punishment will compel more to comply.
Yes, we are all helpless and changing anything is just too hard to actually do. 100 people die every day in car accidents, but literally nothing can be done about this without changing something so that means literally nothing can be done.
I'm kinda really fucking sick of this particular American mindset towards cars, school shootings, gerrymandering, corporate greed, and basically everything else that sucks about our society.
I never said nothing can be done. I'm raising the view that solutions, and even government intervention, doesn't have to mean legislation.
Research and education is a huge help, for example. What I can't get behind is the idea that we're all such helpless children than only government punishment can keep us from ruining everything. What happens when the authority given to that government lands in the hands of a person or pay with whom you fundamentally disagree?
Of course the ultimate accountability would be with the driver, but a) there is little to no accountability left on the road anymore and b) changing widespread behavior patterns is usually a top down thing. You can certainly legislate in a way that either rewards or punishes types of behavior(good/bad driving), or nudges car makers to scale down models/increase safety. Higher gas prices were enough to get me out of a big truck.
Similar to a separate thread here, I just can't get behind the idea that we as a society are helpless without governments "nudging" us in what they see as the right direction.
First and foremost we need to educate or population better, but from there the government should rarely need to go beyond good faith research and trusting it's people to generally make the best decision for themselves.
I understand being afraid of a car crash. I can understand doing the wrong thing out of fear. Driving an SUV is wrong, but hardly an unforgivable sin.
But I don't think you can be let off that easy. You seem to have come up with some way to technically admit you are in the wrong without really confronting it. What is "totally cool" supposed to mean? Does being "totally cool" with something mean it is moral, or does it just mean you don't feel angry about it? Why would you defend a decision based on whether or not it makes you "feel bad"? These words are weaselly. They dismiss the moral element of your actions without really addressing it.
If you're in the right, prove it. If you're in the wrong, admit it.
That's not how it works. You can't prove morality the way you can prove math. Not unless everyone involved accepts an infallible point of reference, like a book or a pope--and even then there are differences in interpretation.
All moral questions, like, "is it moral to drive an SUV?", are variants of the Trolley Problem. Whichever choice you make ends up hurting some people and helping some others. But different people have different moral axioms about how to calculate the balance of that equation.
For example, I could probably save 5 people right now by sacrificing myself and giving away my organs. The fact that I don't means that I value my own life more than those of 5 strangers.
In the same way, driving an SUV to reduce one's own risk is not surprising.
Your own morality may lead you to different choices. That's OK. My whole point is that there is no "correct" morality.
You can try to convince others to adopt your morality (which we call "proselytizing"); you can say that some beliefs are unpopular in this society (and thus demonized); you can even look down on people who don't share your morality (we all know people like that). But you can't say that they are objectively wrong. That's not how morality works.
That attitude is the exact reason roads in the U.S. are much less safe. Cars are oversized, heavy and completely lethal for any pedestrians or cyclists. It's just a very dangerous trend that will cause more people to die.
Idk why you're being downvoted. It's well documented and obvious fact that SUVs and tracks are lethal to pedestrians and cyclists because of their hostile low visibility design.
By choosing to drive those in populated areas you're signalling a total disregard for lives of others.
Personally I rather die than kill a child, and SUVs are far worse in that regard. Despite making up 15% of accidents in this[1] study, they represent 25% of fatal accidents. A child is 8 times more likely to die if struck by an SUV according to the same study. Empirically, SUV front blind spots are crazy and if you have a young child ask them to stand in front of your car with measuring tape while you’re in it. Very easy to imagine pulling out without seeing them and crushing them to death. The problem is even worse if you have a short partner. I felt blind when I drove my dad’s.
Even if we go for the selfish perspective, rollover rates for SUVs are intrinsically higher, and it looks like the Hilux in particular hasn’t bothered fixing this design flaw in 9 years[2]. And that additional braking distance can be the difference between a massive headache from rear ending, or worse.
Driving defensively will increase your odds of survival per mile far more than any additional metal will.
And also, only 5% of all accidents are two rolling cars collisions, and a not small part of that are parking collision.
The average number of death per km was decreasing until covid in Europe and countries that did not buy into the SUV trends, but started increasing in the US in the early 2010s and correlate with the percentage of SUVs.
That's we need regulation. We are slowly approaching "let's drive a tank" territory. SUVs make the world dangerous and scary for people outside of cars: pedestrians, cyclists, other small personal vehicles users.
It's very sad to see people being cool with that but I understand it's rational. You will likely not go to jail if you kill someone because of low visibility. The victim blaming culture will even try to convince you it's not your fault that you haven't seen a pedestrian or cyclist from the vehicle you have chosen to drive.
> SUVs make the world dangerous and scary for people outside of cars: pedestrians, cyclists, other small personal vehicles users.
Unfortunately the way a lot of American culture works means that this is actually the desired outcome. Cars today are basically advertised on their pedestrian killing prowess and, unsurprisingly, have even been used as weapons of terror quite frequently recently.
My annoyance with it is that this mentality is exported outside. I'm "totaly cool" with Americans driving tanks on the roads and killing each other, I'm not fine having to deal with this shaite outside of the USA...
>the common excuses for driving an SUV are either selfish or irrational.
I don’t know if you’d call my Subaru an SUV or not, but daily I’m transporting multiple kids, a cello, football gear, groceries, various things for work - there are lots of reasons why people need larger vehicles.
I have a VW CC. Four door sedan with huge trunk space. I've driven cross country multiple times, hauled lumber in it, 30 bags of mulch, you name it. The idea that you need an SUV to carry a lot of stuff just doesn't match reality.
The other major safety advantage of the SUV is in the single-car crash (hitting a tree, pole, etc). SUV weight provides a significant safety margin here. The single car crash is nearly 1/2 of all crashes and responsible for the majority of auto crash deaths!
So your statement about SUVs making the roads less safe is demonstrably false. SUVs are the safest class of vehicles on the road, and if everyone drove an SUV, there would be fewer auto crash deaths overall.
Also, the newest SUVs have lower rollover death rates than the newest cars.
In terms of pedestrians, we should implement policy changes like more sidewalks and elevated crossings, lower speed limits and traffic calming features in pedestrian areas, tougher distracted driving laws and enforcement, and pedestrian air bags on all vehicles.
How are you going to implement elevated crossings in a suburban neighborhood, where the soccer moms in their monster SUVs can't see squat, and routinely speed? Kids are crossing multiple places; we can barely get ADA type curb cuts at the crossings.
Oh, and "pedestrian airbags" only help you avoid hitting the windshield. On most trucks and SUVs you don't even make it that far. You're just squashed like roadkill on their grills.
I think the elevated crossing is the type where the crosswalk is raised and forms an effective speed bump requiring drivers to slow regardless of whether a pedestrian is present or not.
Heavy marketing was done to make them popular, and once they reached a certain threshold, their size created an arms race, since they blocked visibility for everyone not also in an SUV.
> Weird that heavy marketing would finally penetrate my brain the same year we had our first kid.
Nah, but that marketing, and the financial incentives which motivated it, and the arms race from a critical mass of larger vehicles affecting visibility because of it are why minivans and SUVs (the former popular first and then the latter later because of when each worked as a regulatory dodge) bevame the choice for those needs, which were once filled by station wagons.
I’m an SUV owner myself for very similar immediate reasons to the ones you cite. Nothing about that interferes with my ability to understand that the market context within which those preferences call for that result is a product of specific, well-documented interplay between regulation and profit-seeking business behavior over several decades.
You sound like you know what you are talking about but I am not following. As a consumer I had a choice of vehicle (I could have bought a sedan or a station wagon or a minivan) and I picked what I wanted.
You are not following because you are looking only at your decision at the moment of buying, and not everyone else's decisions over the past 35-ish years that have shaped, (even if we assume for a minute that the massive marketing investment has had no direct impact on your personal preferences):
1. The set of vehicles on the road and thus what your experience in different vehicles will be like, e.g., in terms of road visibility, and
2. The mix of specific vehicle models and features of each that are actually manufactured and available at the time you made thaf decision.
As uncool as they are, as a former minivan owner they are the most practical thing ever. From hauling kids to hitting home Depot for some DIY (with the rear seats removed), having two sliding doors and being able to swallow 4x8 sheets or a washing machine -they are hard to beat.
> and the ride height lets them see the road much better.
Ah... and then everyone will get a SUV with similar mentality and then we will get SUV-extra even higher and "sturdier" to feel even safer?
FFS... world is not hostile, riding in compact city-car is not harmful. At best it's the mentality that "everything outside wants to kill me" o_O Get a tank maybe?
I do the same with my Honda Fit. Desks, doors, 2×4s, bicycle, 44U rack… It's true I can't fit a whole sheet of plywood, but most SUVs have the same skinny-door problem.
> most of the people I know want to have regular sized phones (~5-5,5") but now... it's easier to smack ~7" screen to the roof-tile (that they call "phone") and sell at a premium...
This has to do with the power they're trying to cram into the phones. We've pretty much gotten transistors as small as we can, but manufacturers still need to sell new phones and the way they've done that for years is increase compute and camera power.
AFAIR the CPU/APU size is quite small. What takes quite a lot of space is battery. And because things are less and less optimize we need more computing power which needs more juice. What's more - bigger screens require more power as well.
Why those big phones popular? Because CPU efficiency doesn't sell well but number do, so we have a race: more storage, more ram, more MP camera... and bigger screen. Those are the most visible and easiest to adjust things. And many people associate size with being "better"...
Does everyone else want those bells and whistles or have we come into that impression through some misinterpretation? I don't know anybody that wants all that shit. For those who do, upon the misadventure whereupon they are informed of the costs of overcomplicating I suspect there is a large proportion of people who won't want it in short order. I also suspect a large contingent of people who buy into the marketing and upon facing reality, are silently disappointed. And finally people who are somehow insensitive to cost, and disappointment.
most people want a significant portion of those features but not everyone wants the same set of features. As a result all features as wanted by a significant portion of the customers.
This is why there are so many white cars being made and delivered to dealerships in the US. With production still extremely constrained, manufacturers are just limiting what colorways they ship. They know anything new will sell since the lots are so empty, and buyers will just take whatever comes in the latest shipment. Having been new car shopping (and ended up buying used), I'm amazed at how much the car buying process has changed for new cars. You used to be able to order a color and trimline, with factory options without any issues. Now dealers laugh at you and say "Here's what the factory MIGHT send us in the next 6 months. Want to put down a deposit?"
The only thing I like about this change is that there seems to be far less high pressure sales going on.
Not completely. Adaptive cruise control is becoming more common. Some Toyota's have it in all versions for some models. Mercedes A class you have to pay additionally for the basic models.
I want a "dumb" but well-built electric car... No side mirror lights, no motorized trunks, no suite of cabin sensors trying to figure out what I want, no air conditioned seats, and definitely no elaborate, janky, hilariously expensive infotainment system. Just put that engineering into the suspension and steering, please.
I want a tablet mount and good A/C. Maybe power windows and nice speakers. And I will take the 900lbs and $10k+ that shaves off, thank you.