most tech in cars is decade-old bottom-bin stuff that's selected for stability and hardiness, and the software is developed by people who have never been within a hundred feet of a UI design doc.
It was 94.9 FM in the Seattle area.
For those not aware there was a radio station on 94.9 FM which broadcast album art like most HD radio stations do. However in the file data they did not broadcast the file extension. Most cars were unaffected since they don't actually care about the file name. They grab the extension info from the file data itself. Mazdas were different because they do. It could not handle a file without an extension and the system crashed. The problem was that it stored the album art files in cache as well so it would crash, try to restart, come across the file with no extension, crash again and the whole process would loop over and over and over. There was no way to fix it by yourself and you had to go to a dealer to replace the whole head unit. Thankfully Mazda, to its credit, offered free replacements for anyone affected. Unfortunately this happened during COVID with its supply chain issues so you had to drive around with a constantly rebooting infotainment system for a while until your replacement unit arrived.
I work in a tech company and I ask myself this everyday. I think it’s because of egos. People don’t care about the user, they care about impacting the user based on idea that THEY had. They assume just because they managed to launch the idea, it must be a good one. And you might be thinking to yourself “really? Something as dumb as a keyboard change?” Yes. I’m on a team that spent A YEAR on dark mode for our like 10 screen main product. A year. And then the person that led that initiative got a major promotion and is now a director level. They just care about money and getting the next promotion. The people who have no chance at a promotion are the ones that made sure QWERTY was even still an option since they likely wanted to remove it completely.
Who decided that the keyboard in a car should default to alphabetical instead of QWERTY?
Some old dude who has a secretary that does all his typing for him, that’s who.
*”Janet? Did we ever receive that engineering memo? ‘Email’ you say? Very well - print it for me, and then read it to me. And then file it. Thank you, Janet, that will be all.” {click}*
The CEO of a company I worked for is worse. I'm changing a few details so I don't dox myself but imagine someone with a highschool diploma who did a short management course, then joined the admin department of a small (but highly respected) engineering group. Then staged a coup to become CEO and made a bunch of idiotic changes. This caused all the engineers to resign, and all the people with any knowledge of the industry to resign from the board of directors. So she is the CEO of 4 low level admin people in an engineering group that doesn't have any engineers.
Just before they resigned, the engineers were instrumental in arranging a giant nationwide engineering project. The project is comprised of a bunch of different independent engineering companies, and was given truckloads of money to complete. The project has it's own management and governance structure, but the admin and "CEO" are in charge of administering the money to each group in pre-approved lump sums based on the original quotes. The "CEO" misunderstood and instead thought that she was given the money to run the whole project, and that everyone involved was now her employee. She was sending cringy emails out to well known reputable companies asking them to tell her a little about their company because she needed to make sure they were trustworthy before sending them money (money that was already approved and allocated to those companies).
Instead of just giving them the pre-approved lump sums, she withheld the money and told them to submit timesheets and receipts so she could reimburse them and micromanage them individually. Then she told them she was in charge of who they hire, the salary levels, and the terms of each contract (these are independent companies that have existed for 50+ years). And because she knows nothing at all about the industry, She was also reinventing 'best practices' for things that already have best practices.
Whenever anyone tried to tell her that what she was suggesting is 'not smart' and sometimes criminal. She dug her heels in, doubled down, and got a lawyer to write it up formally in her role as "CEO". The problem is that all the money is in their accounts and it is very difficult to get the money back when they are not breaking any laws, because there is no-one to appeal to. So the project has to play along with her as much as they can without compromising the quality of the project until the funding cycle ends.
She also gets extremely annoyed and vindictive when she is not invited to any of the technical discussions. But whenever she attends them, she tries to conceal her lack of knowledge by derailing the meeting with bullshit that sounds like a miss america contestant "I am so honored and privileged to be working for such a great company doing such great work, with such great people" etc.. and nothing of substance is discussed.
/rant
>nothing of substance is discussed.
These types of managers that get into the middle of every meeting and speak from platitudes about leadership and direction while discussing nothing of substance and contributing nothing to a solution, we see through you. We aren't dumb. You hired us because we can figure shit out.
> and then read it to me.
I hate the voice of my entertainmentsystem, and it talks way to much.
Just shut up and let me dial/speak the numer, i dont need an remeinder that i can just do 36 numbers every fucking time
I used to work somewhere where the MD's PA would print his emails & put them in a folder attached to his door.
We used to walk past sniggering as the visible page was almost always spam, usually penis enlargement or voluptuous Jennifer wants to meet.....
I have no idea how using a cell phone is illegal, but manufacturers can glue an iPad onto the center console and require you to use it for normal operation like operating the heat controls. This should at a minimum fail the car in any safety rating, and likely should just be flat out illegal.
My favorite thing is how turning the volume knob NEEDS to turn my entire touch screen into a virtual volume knob telling me that I in fact did just change the volume (for a solid 5 seconds which is an eternity in driving time), while also covering everything else that was on the screen, such as my GPS navigation.
It's almost like the marketing department is overriding engineering decisions based on selling as many cars as quickly as possible, which means flashy features that look cool at first, but get annoying after three days - well by that point the car is already sold, so...
Having worked at a software company, sometimes the engineering team is just that dumb. You'd be surprised how many people have talent in engineering in terms of knowing *how* to build good software, but have absolutely no grasp on how users will want to use it. They need someone to tell them what to build and how it should work, and if that person isn't there, you get stupid shit like the volume meter covering the entire screen.
Five years ago my husband wanted to check out a Mercedes E class, and I nearly died laughing because the interior looked like an old wheelhouse on a mississippi steamboat - it could only be described as "rustic". Like I would not have been surprised if there were cranks instead of buttons, you had to shovel coal instead of pump gas and the horn went AHH-OOOO-GAH. AHH-OOO-GAH.
Last week as we are in the market for a new car, my husband decides maybe it's time to look at a Mercedes E class again. The whole console is a fucking starship and nobody at the dealership can stop talking about how it comes with "the Tik-Tok", like who doesn't want the Chinese government checking out your driving as a standard feature. And is there some other Tik-Tok, so this has to be identified as THE Tik-Tok?
Why do they not understand what people want from cars? It's not like they make them or anything...oh wait. Also, on a related note, why does BMW only have like, 5 colors for their cars? And all of them except white cost $1000-$3,000 extra.
As a teenager I worked for a place that made parts for Model A cars. Guy was a collector and an engineer who resorted to making his own parts and it turned into a company. Anyway the company made the woo gha horns and they gave me one as a parting gift when I went to college. I planned to put it in my car but haven't had that done yet. I should probably display it somewhere.....
Someone else mentioned iPads, but the infotainment system in my wife's Subaru is best described as one of those quasi-smart dumb phones (messaging phones?) where the touchscreen requires a firm press and several seconds to register any input.
To clarify, I don't mean you need to hold the button for several seconds. I mean that after you touch it you need to wait several seconds to do something.
My friend said his step-mother has a newer Volvo that has eject buttons for the rear headrests and they're on the touchscreen, which is so sensitive that you can basically trigger the "buttons" before your finger actually touches the screen. And he also said the second time he got walloped by one of the headrests he was ready to murder.
I was disappointed that I could not find any mention of this feature online nor a demonstration.
2019 Forester and so many irritations (I got a lemon). Dealership couldn't synch seat to fob so have to readjust every time I get in car. 'Eyes on road' msg pops up regularly when I'm laser focused on road. I even created two profiles, with and without dark glasses, no help. Once came on every 3 second for the entire trip. Turn that feature off and it turns itself back on when car restarted. Same with 'line crossing' warning. Live in the US but tire pressure only in European units (was right when I first got it but switched). The 'change unit's' option in setup doesn't affect it. They charge $100/year for remote start-up, a feature that's already permanently built into the car. Hatch opened periodically on its own the first year, or wouldn't open at all. That took a factory recall. A message saying 'Driver monitoring control disabled' pops up periodically, then disappears. Never again.
If you want an actual answer, it's that they are using parts (screen) that are certified to standards for heat, vibration, etc.
Those parts tend to be more expensive, because they have undergone more testing; and they tend to be slower/worse, because it's difficult to design a large, responsive screen bright enough to withstand direct sun in a 160F car interior.
Rather than spending 1,000 on a fast part that meets those engineering requirements, they get one that meets the requirements but is slower.
Software is another story. You buy the car, and that pays for the developer's salary. Once the car is purchased, there is no incentive (like there is with a SaaS app, operating system, etc) to improve on the software that is already deployed. The developers for the 2019 software are frantically working on the 2020 software as soon as the 2019 goes out the door.
A little that. Ive made car infotainments a few times.
1) The processors were top of the line at the time (IMX6,8, QNX running on some, Kanzi Rightware on some), but they are old. A few reasons for this
2) Bureaucracy, Car companies are huge, and these infotainments are made by 100s of engineers, so it takes a few years to actually make these system.
3) Testing, Regulations, Safety Committees etc. Now you have to add a few more years onto the dev time as the various traffic regulatory and commission boards come onto it.
4) Finally it is ready to be put into a car, so the CEO comes down and says they don't like it and want it to look like the newest design trend. There goes a few more years of dev time. So lets use this timeline for a 2023 car.
2013 - Found a board they liked that is cheap because they are making millions of these
2014 - Found a software package they liked, design is sorta done
2016 - Have a basic prototype of the infotainment system, can start basic regulation testing
2019 - Regulators and safety commissions are finally done with testing, The system is more or less complete.
2020 - On the floor for production. CEO doesnt like it, a few years of redoing and more safety tests
2022 - Finally in a production car for 2023.
Thats why all the designs are 10 years behind and the software is crap, because its a decade old.
The answer to your question is that regulation takes time. We're in the period after phones became common but there was no law against use while driving.
There shouldn't be a law against using your phone while driving. Distracted driving laws should cover anything from tuning the radio to doing your makeup to talking to a passenger to using your phone to fucking around with the infotainment system.
It's almost like laws should establish regulatory agencies with authority to make rules covering new issues so that legislatures (full of people with no subject expertise) don't need to draft laws covering every new development.
Honda took the volume knob out of some last gen cars. Then they added it back in. It was annoying especially when people would try and adjust the volume and instead it would just put the air on full blast.
A buddy of mine has a BMW with gesture controls, and they are kinda cool but you wouldn't want to be driving with a passionate Italian in the passenger seat.
Oh yeah. Just got a RAV4 here too and I'm very happy with the fact that almost everything is a button. The only minor annoyance for me is the system hates connecting to my phone with Bluetooth. I have to remind it every time that my phone exists so I just use a USB cable.
God we want a little truck so bad. Something to run to the hardware store with and be able to buy a couple pieces of lumber and a BBQ.
I don't need some truck that is so manly that I as a woman grow balls from it.
I used to work at a Ford dealership, and I always hated having to prepare the new King Ranch Super Duty trucks because they have step rails that automatically pop out when you open the door... But only after you turned that setting on. So I had to heave my fat carcass into these trucks and the floorboards come up to the middle of my chest.
And the salesmen almost never would turn that setting on, even though they had to drive them off the delivery trucks and park them on the lot.
Please pray that I never have to touch another Super Duty again, I want those days behind me.
Maverick ticks your boxes. That new Toyota would probably have a good ratio, they seem to be slow at embracing new tech. I looked at a santa cruz interior but it has more screen than buttons, same with dodge rampage. Baja wilderness will probably have that new subie screen, idk how you feel about this. That's every model I could remember off the top of my head
my car has touch controls to open the goddamn sunroof. It took the sales guy three tries to get it to work and i never get it first try.
touch interfaces are The Worst.
Finding an AM radio station used to be quick and easy with an old fashioned analog knob tuner. Now I have to press a button about 200 times to scan the whole range. And do dome lights that turn on automatically bother anyone else? Sometimes you don't want to be lit up like fish in an aquarium. Somehow I managed to get along for years deciding for myself when I wanted the lights to come on.
And I don't need 1000 of them. It's not a 747 cockpit.
I have a 98 Chevy Silverado. The infotainment system is a radio and a clock. If I was to hook in my phone I can use the black magic tape player adapter.
There can be too many buttons real or on screens. The point is the buttons have to be useable. There are like 7 buttons on my rear view mirror of the Toyota.
Let’s make the buttons more functional and similar across brands. Give importance to the once that are used while driving and others that work only when parked.
new jeep cherokee, that damn thing automatically connects to every phone it can, when you start the car.
It's a daily occurrence when
1) in the morning I start the car in the garage, my wife in the kitchen listing to an audio book on her phone. bam, audio book for me in the car.
2) in afternoon I get home and pull into the garage, my wife is in the house on a phone call. Bam, suddenly I'm in the car talking hands free to some person on the phone.
It's hilarious how obnoxious it is. We've removed the phone from the car multiple times. It "remembers". It always remembers.
definitely.
BUT IT GETS WORSE ....
We've turned off bluetooth on the phone, thinking that would solve it. The phone's bluetooth turns back on, and connects.
It's fucking haunted.
If it’s an apple phone, you have to disable Bluetooth from the actual settings menu, not the quick menu you can pull up any time. Figured that out a while ago. If you do it from the quick menu, it turns back on after some time. Annoying.
Wait. Really? If you disconnect it from settings it actually makes your phone not connect to the car? Because my Bluetooth will look like it’s off but still somehow my car connects to it but I’ve never tried that
Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi in the control centre just put them to sleep for a day on an iPhone, to turn them off fully you have to go specifically into settings.
It’s probably actually your phone. You have to forget the device there or else it’ll constantly try to connect to anything it’s ever connected to. If it’s an iPhone, disabling Bluetooth is only active for at most 24 hours. It says something like “disabling Bluetooth until tomorrow” when you press it but it’s really subtle.
Is it a samsung phone? For me its the phone thats annoying. I can be on bluetooth earbuds, get near my truck, and the phone switches over. I dont know why it thinks I want to connect to the nearby device instead of the DEVICE THAT I WAS ALREADY CONNECTED TO
The way cars implement Bluetooth is completely egregious.
Apart from your multi-user complaints, most will connect to media..... when set to another source like FM radio. The phone audio is captured and ignored. It should only ever capture audio when set to Bluetooth audio.
Hopefully they come up with a way to tell if a phone is in the car.
My parents got a new Mazda something something a few years ago and I really like their implementation. Screen is not touch screen, there's a knob in the centre console that you use to control the whole thing for entertainment along with voice. And actual buttons for everything like seats and air con etc. The Tesla approach of touch screen everything looks cool but is incredibly brain dead. It's illegal to use my phone while driving but lets put a big fucking iPad in the middle of the car that I have to use to change anything with the interior of the car.
Just ordered a 2024 manual hatchback yesterday! Apparently the 2024 models have a touchscreen that's only enabled for CarPlay and Android Auto but the rotary dial needs to be used for everything else. Honestly, I think it's the best of both worlds and the climate controls are buttons. I'm excited for this car to arrive.
My wife has a Mazda 3 and the big knob is great, but I still have to look at the screen to know when I've twisted far enough. I miss my Sonata when I could do almost anything by touch without actually needing to look at a screen. Now I have an Outback and I've never been more pissed off at an infotainment system before. I fully expect the newer outbacks to be unable to retain their value just because of that.
The trick with the mazda knob is to glance at the screen and know what option you want. there are usually only 5 on screen at once so it should be easy to work out how many clicks to turn the knob. the best part about the mazda system is you know 100% that if you turn the knob the required number of clicks you will 100% be on the menu option you want. It will never fail to register a click or double register. It's an easy system to use with the minimum of glances.
Omg. My Honda Odyssey had that knob thing and I hated it. It took so long to select anything or enter addresses with it. Way more distracting than hitting a steering wheel button in my EV and saying “Navigate to 126 James Street in Wilmington.”
The car industry is tone deaf. People want their phone to be their primary interface for information, music, and entertainment, which should seamlessly integrate with their cars. Instead, many companies are getting rid of phone integration in favor of their in-car interfaces. The reason is simple: greed! Car companies want you to pay them for things like navigation, music and entertainment.
The aftermarket retrofit market will be booming as carmakers go further and further down the path of forcing their interfaces and subscriptions on consumers.
There is definitely something extremely dystopian about the current push to make everything subscription based (or rely heavily on planned obsolescence if they convince you to subscribe)
My car is older (2012). It did not have CarPlay but had a screen for nav. I got a part from China that I installed behind the screen that enables wireless CarPlay for my car.
Now I have no technology reason to upgrade car.
The writing is already on the wall. Manufacturers wanna charge you for as much as they can in vehicles nowadays, and creating recurring payments as well in the form of services that used to just be expected.
Wonder how it'll come to a head. You think the manufacturers will try and push legislation limiting what you can do with your car, in the name of "safety" or whatever?
When asked the CEO just says "we want to control the experience." I don't think any car company is going to create a better software experience than 2 of the largest software companies in the world.
> The car industry is tone deaf.
They just don't care what you want. They save tons of money with this so the beatings will continue until morale improves.
But they technically don't save money.
Their own implementations are more costly to implement, refine and keep updated. Those are not cheap.
You also have to "compete" and inovate in a software market, and most car manufacturers are pretty bad at it.
Ford CEO said it well:
> While many brands are looking to build proprietary replacements, the Ford chief held that it is no longer possible for automakers to compete with tech companies in the software space. **“In terms of content, we kind of last that battle 10 years ago,”** commented Farley.
Yes, I know that was from Ford commenting on GM's insane move to go proprietary against CarPlay because they somehow think they can monetize driver data.
I don't believe these things are more expensive than what is there. This is literally outsourcing a huge amount of union work and getting a finished modular product in a box to install. It also simplifies the interiors, meaning a more streamlined production line if a lot of features are just accessed via a different screen.
This is true, my wife’s 2015 Land Rover hasn’t had the maps updated ever because they want $150 every year to update them. Guess what is free to use and is updated nearly constantly…google maps. $20 phone mount and who needs that hard-to-use proprietary GPS?
It's costly and new cars (2000+) are getting more and more difficult to "jailbreak".
For example, Audi has been doing their "component protection" scheme for years now - where you can no longer take an electronic module from a donor car and transplant it to another car (similar to iPhone's pairing of components).
Where most manufacturers have been using CANBUS for years (which is a relatively simple protocol/bus to implement) to communicate between modules, newer cars are encapsulating CANBUS with IPSEC to communicate between the modules. This makes reverse engineering way more difficult to do.
Features are no longer that easy to enable/disable, as some of them are tied to the presence of X509 certificates ("SSL certificates"). And this isn't even new, if I recall correctly, BMW has been doing that since at least 2004 for features like Voice Commands on their antique CCC Infotainment system.
Granted, with sufficient time people will find a way, they always find a way, but don't count on new car models to be able to be tinkered with right away.
For example, you can see old "hacks" for Tesla here: https://github.com/jnuyens/freedomev
But notice that it also hasn't been updated in 4+ years.
Just give me a place on the dash to hold my phone, charge it, let me use my own preferred map app on my horizontal screen, and give a/c and radio buttons.
The phone thing is spot on and I’ll add to your list an integrated dashcam or at least a usb outlet behind the rear view mirror. Insurance companies should be lobbying for this to be law. Also, make the premium sound system actually premium.
From what I understand, they can't do that because it would encourage using your phone while driving... So, let's put a touch screen right where you wish your phone could go that does exactly what they weren't supposed to do with your phone. XD
FWIW, the chips that most car manufacturers used were (are) old from a tech perspective, which is why they were hard to come by.
Manufacturers are biased towards proven tech over new features to push reliability.
I recall when some factory burned down in Japan. the chips it made will never be available again and everyone had to redesign all their shit. A to D converter IIRC.
If you’re talking about AKM, the DAC chips are available again, but everyone had to redesign their stuff because they didn’t know how long it would take AKM to come back online.
I lived in Michigan for a bit and had friends who worked at Ford. The amount of planning ahead they have to do for those vehicles is insane.... but there's no excuse. A 5 year old base-model ipad is better than what's in most vehicles, and I don't understand how that can possibly be.
Because a 5 year old base model iPad is designed to work in a pristine set of limited conditions.
Automotive use cases involve extreme heat, extreme cold, wet, agitation, and more.
I still find it so fking stupid that they put things like AC and Heated Seats in fking menus.
Instead of using tech to improve the driving experience they're making shit more unsafe cuz people have to be focusing on poorly designed menus while driving.
It's so backwards and brainless.
Honestly cars from around 2011 are completely superior to modern cars in this regard. They still have physical buttons for everything and you can swap out the double din CD player for a touchscreen head unit with wireless CarPlay/Android Auto for a few hundred bucks. It’s the best of both worlds.
People want to get in a car and drive. Not sit there waiting for their phones to connect and sign up for ten subscription services before the car works.
yeah they are trying to make owning a car make no sense before you could pay it off and have at least 10 years of no car payment now they want it to be prohibitively expensive to maintain and fix that you just get a lease and have a perpetual car payment.
people want cars, not iPhones with wheels.
No amount of touch screen tech beyond say an inbuilt GPS will make a car with a poor quality build, and poor fuel efficiently, worth more money.
That and it's ridiculous trying to fumble with a touch screen that I have to look at while I'm driving to use simple functions. I don't have to look to grab my AC dial and crank it up or crank the heat up. Taking my eyes off the road for any reason is a bad idea. Somehow using your phone while you drive is illegal but all this nonsense isn't.
Or the inability to pass on features you don't want. Subaru is my prime example. I own a 2011 Impreza WRX. No mods. Totally stock.
I love the car, but when I have a loaner like an Outback, every damn one has the front facing cameras to assist with steering, alert you when you barely cross painted lines, and the "feature" of turning off the engine when you're stopped for about 3 seconds at a light or stop sign that you have to disable every time you start the car if you don't want it doing that.
No option to downgrade.
I don't want to pay for "features" I neither want nor wish to use. So not only am I paying more for things I don't want, I have no option to get a model without them and if I want to turn them off, I can't do so permanently.
A major reason I still have my 12 year old car with no intentions of getting a new one.
Volume and temp are the two things that people will want to control *while driving*. Those two things should be *always* be controlled by physical knobs and buttons.
Everything else can go into the touch screen, except maybe mirror adjustment.
Just give me a backup camera, FM/XM/AM radio, and most importantly, both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. Don’t put any other crap in the infotainment. Maybe HVAC if there are physical controls too.
Car manufacturers should be forced to make car infotainment upgradeable, without any detriment to the user. And they should be forced to release software updates and fix bugs for several years after the unit is released. Fucking planned obsolescence and gatekeeping. I'm tired of this shit...
My wife has a car that is basically all touchscreen and I. Fucking. Hate. It.
I hate having to wait for screens to load up to to turn on the AC when it’s 100 degrees
I hate that I have to look at the screen to adjust anything and can’t just use feel to know what knobs to turn.
My car is all knobs and I love it.
When I first saw the Tesla Model 3 interior, I thought it was a pre-production mockup and they simply hadn't finished designing the interior...lol nope. And then they went on to almost finish designing the cybertruck before giving up so I suppose that's just their style now.
>Unsurprisingly, more people are choosing not to use their car’s **native** infotainment controls. Only 56 percent of owners prefer to use their vehicle’s built-in system to play audio, down from 70 percent in 2020, JD Power found. Less than half of owners said they like using their car’s **native** controls for navigation, voice recognition, or to make phone calls…
>
>Naturally, it seems like most **people are preferring to use smartphone-mirroring systems like Apple CarPlay and Android Auto**, which have proven to be incredibly popular over the years. And indeed, there have been other surveys that indicate **people prefer interacting with the apps on their phone than whatever cockamamie bullshit was cooked up by the company that made their car**.
Emphasis mine. This isn’t about touch screens taking over the place of buttons. It’s just the obvious case that the UX of car dashboards and controls is terrible, the GPS is terrible and often outdated, need extra subscriptions, etc.
CarPlay/AAuto have updated maps (with live traffic), Spotify, podcasts, dictation for messages, digital radio via data, etc. Obviously people will prefer to use them, than some outdated, slow, clunky UX, with terrible navigation and alternatives.
I want an analogue display for car functions, like fuel or heat etc. shouldn't need to rely on a delicate digital display and wait 20 seconds for a computer to boot just to see these things.
Because it’s fucking stupid that when I have a passenger in my car and they can’t use the fucking touch screen while I drive. I the driver have to then hold my phone and use my face or password to unlock my phone while I or the passenger enter’s instructions into apple or google maps. It’s the stupidest fucking thing ever
I want a car/truck that drives. Has AC and a backup camera along with airbags.
That's it. I don't need a new touch screen or some other "security" features or AI or voice activation. I'm tired of seeing cars and trucks get more expensive too. I just want an affordable car that's safe and comfortable.
I want a car that is affordable, that is stripped down and light. Safe, but bare bones. No seat warmers and shit, no bells and whistles. Hell, if it has window cranks I'd be okay with it.
My first car was a Geo Tracker. No AC, no power anything, manual transmission. It was amazing, like a little jeep thing. Got over 40 MPG and had pretty decent acceleration.
I would love to have something like that again.
I’ve got a VW Jetta. Love it’s handling, engine, etc. German engineering at it’s finest. But there are so many ways that they absolutely ruined the driver experience with all of the ridiculous push-buttons and crap. I literally need to take my eyes off the road for seconds to change the blower from defrost to floor (find which button, then click thrice — or is it four times? Whoops, over-shot. Do it again and watch carefully the as the little icon changes). That’s just one example of many literally life-threatening idiocies in this clusterfuck of a “dashboard.” I am lead to two conclusions —the whole team who designed and approved this “electronic” dashboard don’t have a driver’s license , and they should all be sacked.
If you are part of the drivetrain, suspension etc., engineering crew, great job, keep at it!
I will say that so far, I really like the mix of tech and analog in my new RAV4 Hybrid.
Plenty of buttons and knobs, CarPlay, and I can use two phones without much effort
So cars will connect to every device I own, and I don't want it too, but if I want to read the error codes on my car, I need to purchase another, separate device?
Anybody else see a serious issue here?
I want to thank Acura/Honda for making the most simple touch screen possible in their new cars. I mean it is near perfect with how simple they are. Not a single bell or whistle and real knobs everywhere. I legitimately went with an Integra over the new GTI because of this exact point.
I want my f****** buttons back. I hate touch screens in a car you have to look at the screen even if you have good muscle memory to be 100% sure. With a button your hand is either on the volume knob or it's not
The keyboard in my ford defaults to alphabetical instead of qwerty. I hate it
God how does shit like that get approval?! Are they intentionally trying to create a poor user experience?
Want QWERTY? That’ll be 2000 bucks please.
Annual subscription, not single payment.
Beat me to it. $19.99/mo “convenience package” subscription (save 25% by paying yearly!!).
I used to say the worst phrase to happen to the world was "technically legal". Now I believe "as a service" has replaced it.
WOWEE sounds worth it to me!!!
most tech in cars is decade-old bottom-bin stuff that's selected for stability and hardiness, and the software is developed by people who have never been within a hundred feet of a UI design doc.
The stability part seems to be optional
Yes. The 95.5 fm Incident comes to mind. Thousands of Mazda cars got completely bricked by a radio station
It was 94.9 FM in the Seattle area. For those not aware there was a radio station on 94.9 FM which broadcast album art like most HD radio stations do. However in the file data they did not broadcast the file extension. Most cars were unaffected since they don't actually care about the file name. They grab the extension info from the file data itself. Mazdas were different because they do. It could not handle a file without an extension and the system crashed. The problem was that it stored the album art files in cache as well so it would crash, try to restart, come across the file with no extension, crash again and the whole process would loop over and over and over. There was no way to fix it by yourself and you had to go to a dealer to replace the whole head unit. Thankfully Mazda, to its credit, offered free replacements for anyone affected. Unfortunately this happened during COVID with its supply chain issues so you had to drive around with a constantly rebooting infotainment system for a while until your replacement unit arrived.
Wow. This story started out like it was something that happened many years ago and then bam. Nope. Pretty recent.
This reads like a side mission in Cyberpunk 2077
I work in a tech company and I ask myself this everyday. I think it’s because of egos. People don’t care about the user, they care about impacting the user based on idea that THEY had. They assume just because they managed to launch the idea, it must be a good one. And you might be thinking to yourself “really? Something as dumb as a keyboard change?” Yes. I’m on a team that spent A YEAR on dark mode for our like 10 screen main product. A year. And then the person that led that initiative got a major promotion and is now a director level. They just care about money and getting the next promotion. The people who have no chance at a promotion are the ones that made sure QWERTY was even still an option since they likely wanted to remove it completely.
Who tf decided that? I can’t imagine any developer or programmer actually making they decision
Who decided that the keyboard in a car should default to alphabetical instead of QWERTY? Some old dude who has a secretary that does all his typing for him, that’s who. *”Janet? Did we ever receive that engineering memo? ‘Email’ you say? Very well - print it for me, and then read it to me. And then file it. Thank you, Janet, that will be all.” {click}*
Literally the CEO of the company I work at lol And they are an _online retailer_
The CEO of a company I worked for is worse. I'm changing a few details so I don't dox myself but imagine someone with a highschool diploma who did a short management course, then joined the admin department of a small (but highly respected) engineering group. Then staged a coup to become CEO and made a bunch of idiotic changes. This caused all the engineers to resign, and all the people with any knowledge of the industry to resign from the board of directors. So she is the CEO of 4 low level admin people in an engineering group that doesn't have any engineers. Just before they resigned, the engineers were instrumental in arranging a giant nationwide engineering project. The project is comprised of a bunch of different independent engineering companies, and was given truckloads of money to complete. The project has it's own management and governance structure, but the admin and "CEO" are in charge of administering the money to each group in pre-approved lump sums based on the original quotes. The "CEO" misunderstood and instead thought that she was given the money to run the whole project, and that everyone involved was now her employee. She was sending cringy emails out to well known reputable companies asking them to tell her a little about their company because she needed to make sure they were trustworthy before sending them money (money that was already approved and allocated to those companies). Instead of just giving them the pre-approved lump sums, she withheld the money and told them to submit timesheets and receipts so she could reimburse them and micromanage them individually. Then she told them she was in charge of who they hire, the salary levels, and the terms of each contract (these are independent companies that have existed for 50+ years). And because she knows nothing at all about the industry, She was also reinventing 'best practices' for things that already have best practices. Whenever anyone tried to tell her that what she was suggesting is 'not smart' and sometimes criminal. She dug her heels in, doubled down, and got a lawyer to write it up formally in her role as "CEO". The problem is that all the money is in their accounts and it is very difficult to get the money back when they are not breaking any laws, because there is no-one to appeal to. So the project has to play along with her as much as they can without compromising the quality of the project until the funding cycle ends. She also gets extremely annoyed and vindictive when she is not invited to any of the technical discussions. But whenever she attends them, she tries to conceal her lack of knowledge by derailing the meeting with bullshit that sounds like a miss america contestant "I am so honored and privileged to be working for such a great company doing such great work, with such great people" etc.. and nothing of substance is discussed. /rant
Department of labor should be able to help I'd imagine
Or attorney general if there’s state/federal funds not being distributed properly.
Oh, good point yeah
She sounds like her parents are/were wealthy
>nothing of substance is discussed. These types of managers that get into the middle of every meeting and speak from platitudes about leadership and direction while discussing nothing of substance and contributing nothing to a solution, we see through you. We aren't dumb. You hired us because we can figure shit out.
> and then read it to me. I hate the voice of my entertainmentsystem, and it talks way to much. Just shut up and let me dial/speak the numer, i dont need an remeinder that i can just do 36 numbers every fucking time
I used to work somewhere where the MD's PA would print his emails & put them in a folder attached to his door. We used to walk past sniggering as the visible page was almost always spam, usually penis enlargement or voluptuous Jennifer wants to meet.....
They've definitely crossed the line of "Doing too much" in cars.
Yup, it’s like ms office. Stop adding. It’s like car bloatware and they charge you for it. No reason the average car needs to cost $45k.
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I have no idea how using a cell phone is illegal, but manufacturers can glue an iPad onto the center console and require you to use it for normal operation like operating the heat controls. This should at a minimum fail the car in any safety rating, and likely should just be flat out illegal.
Buttons that you can use without taking your eyes off the road is so 20th century!
Not takng your eyes off the road is so 20th century.
You mean you have to use your hands? That's like a baby's toy!
A slow iPad too. Edit: No one gives a fuck about your Tesla.
God damn is this true. Why the fuck are they all so slow…? It’s a fucking 50k+ car. Just download more ram.
My favorite thing is how turning the volume knob NEEDS to turn my entire touch screen into a virtual volume knob telling me that I in fact did just change the volume (for a solid 5 seconds which is an eternity in driving time), while also covering everything else that was on the screen, such as my GPS navigation.
ARE YOU NOT INFOTAINED?!
Coming this summer.. RADIATOR.
My radiator already came, you can see the evidence all over my parking spot.
Yup, gotta plan your volume changes around turns
Seems like a safe time to do it.
Omg that is so funny, and sad.. they don’t QA test shit, just gimmicky interfaces everywhere..
It's almost like the marketing department is overriding engineering decisions based on selling as many cars as quickly as possible, which means flashy features that look cool at first, but get annoying after three days - well by that point the car is already sold, so...
Having worked at a software company, sometimes the engineering team is just that dumb. You'd be surprised how many people have talent in engineering in terms of knowing *how* to build good software, but have absolutely no grasp on how users will want to use it. They need someone to tell them what to build and how it should work, and if that person isn't there, you get stupid shit like the volume meter covering the entire screen.
The info-taint-ment and the start stop is why I didn’t buy the outback. Bought a cx-9
Five years ago my husband wanted to check out a Mercedes E class, and I nearly died laughing because the interior looked like an old wheelhouse on a mississippi steamboat - it could only be described as "rustic". Like I would not have been surprised if there were cranks instead of buttons, you had to shovel coal instead of pump gas and the horn went AHH-OOOO-GAH. AHH-OOO-GAH. Last week as we are in the market for a new car, my husband decides maybe it's time to look at a Mercedes E class again. The whole console is a fucking starship and nobody at the dealership can stop talking about how it comes with "the Tik-Tok", like who doesn't want the Chinese government checking out your driving as a standard feature. And is there some other Tik-Tok, so this has to be identified as THE Tik-Tok? Why do they not understand what people want from cars? It's not like they make them or anything...oh wait. Also, on a related note, why does BMW only have like, 5 colors for their cars? And all of them except white cost $1000-$3,000 extra.
Upvote for perfectly spelling out the sound of that old horn we all know but have never heard IRL
As a teenager I worked for a place that made parts for Model A cars. Guy was a collector and an engineer who resorted to making his own parts and it turned into a company. Anyway the company made the woo gha horns and they gave me one as a parting gift when I went to college. I planned to put it in my car but haven't had that done yet. I should probably display it somewhere.....
Don't get a BMW. They are great but they don't last, have poor resell value, and maintenance is notoriously expensive.
“Can’t hear the navigation? Well now you can see it either. Take that, you two legged fuck!”
Love: It’s what makes Subaru a Subaru
Someone else mentioned iPads, but the infotainment system in my wife's Subaru is best described as one of those quasi-smart dumb phones (messaging phones?) where the touchscreen requires a firm press and several seconds to register any input. To clarify, I don't mean you need to hold the button for several seconds. I mean that after you touch it you need to wait several seconds to do something.
> those quasi-smart dumb phones (messaging phones?) Feature Phones.
My friend said his step-mother has a newer Volvo that has eject buttons for the rear headrests and they're on the touchscreen, which is so sensitive that you can basically trigger the "buttons" before your finger actually touches the screen. And he also said the second time he got walloped by one of the headrests he was ready to murder. I was disappointed that I could not find any mention of this feature online nor a demonstration.
My favorite feature is how the visual halfway point on the volume scale is number 19
Anyone who sets their volume to an odd number is a sociopath, I don’t make the rules
I love my Subaru, but my god the newer models are just the worst for this.
2019 Forester and so many irritations (I got a lemon). Dealership couldn't synch seat to fob so have to readjust every time I get in car. 'Eyes on road' msg pops up regularly when I'm laser focused on road. I even created two profiles, with and without dark glasses, no help. Once came on every 3 second for the entire trip. Turn that feature off and it turns itself back on when car restarted. Same with 'line crossing' warning. Live in the US but tire pressure only in European units (was right when I first got it but switched). The 'change unit's' option in setup doesn't affect it. They charge $100/year for remote start-up, a feature that's already permanently built into the car. Hatch opened periodically on its own the first year, or wouldn't open at all. That took a factory recall. A message saying 'Driver monitoring control disabled' pops up periodically, then disappears. Never again.
If you want an actual answer, it's that they are using parts (screen) that are certified to standards for heat, vibration, etc. Those parts tend to be more expensive, because they have undergone more testing; and they tend to be slower/worse, because it's difficult to design a large, responsive screen bright enough to withstand direct sun in a 160F car interior. Rather than spending 1,000 on a fast part that meets those engineering requirements, they get one that meets the requirements but is slower. Software is another story. You buy the car, and that pays for the developer's salary. Once the car is purchased, there is no incentive (like there is with a SaaS app, operating system, etc) to improve on the software that is already deployed. The developers for the 2019 software are frantically working on the 2020 software as soon as the 2019 goes out the door.
The center consoles are bottom Barrell binned CPU's running them. Anywhere else it would be unacceptable but nope, us consumers accept it in a car.
A little that. Ive made car infotainments a few times. 1) The processors were top of the line at the time (IMX6,8, QNX running on some, Kanzi Rightware on some), but they are old. A few reasons for this 2) Bureaucracy, Car companies are huge, and these infotainments are made by 100s of engineers, so it takes a few years to actually make these system. 3) Testing, Regulations, Safety Committees etc. Now you have to add a few more years onto the dev time as the various traffic regulatory and commission boards come onto it. 4) Finally it is ready to be put into a car, so the CEO comes down and says they don't like it and want it to look like the newest design trend. There goes a few more years of dev time. So lets use this timeline for a 2023 car. 2013 - Found a board they liked that is cheap because they are making millions of these 2014 - Found a software package they liked, design is sorta done 2016 - Have a basic prototype of the infotainment system, can start basic regulation testing 2019 - Regulators and safety commissions are finally done with testing, The system is more or less complete. 2020 - On the floor for production. CEO doesnt like it, a few years of redoing and more safety tests 2022 - Finally in a production car for 2023. Thats why all the designs are 10 years behind and the software is crap, because its a decade old.
And one that has a stroke every time someone plugs/unplugs a phone to charge.
An ipad that crashes every 30 minutes
A slow ipad with the most unfamiliar, unintuitive UI you can imagine. And every car has a different one.
The answer to your question is that regulation takes time. We're in the period after phones became common but there was no law against use while driving.
There shouldn't be a law against using your phone while driving. Distracted driving laws should cover anything from tuning the radio to doing your makeup to talking to a passenger to using your phone to fucking around with the infotainment system.
It's almost like laws should establish regulatory agencies with authority to make rules covering new issues so that legislatures (full of people with no subject expertise) don't need to draft laws covering every new development.
What most people want is so simple. Physical buttons for everything important. A reasonably sized screen with Apple CarPlay and Android Auto.
Our new CRV is basically this, lots of buttons and physical knobs, nice screen for Apple CarPlay. Loving it so far
Honda took the volume knob out of some last gen cars. Then they added it back in. It was annoying especially when people would try and adjust the volume and instead it would just put the air on full blast.
A buddy of mine has a BMW with gesture controls, and they are kinda cool but you wouldn't want to be driving with a passionate Italian in the passenger seat.
Same with my new Rav4. Thing is straight utility with a few bells and whistles.
Oh yeah. Just got a RAV4 here too and I'm very happy with the fact that almost everything is a button. The only minor annoyance for me is the system hates connecting to my phone with Bluetooth. I have to remind it every time that my phone exists so I just use a USB cable.
Put all that in a pickup truck that isn’t the size of Jupiter and life would be great
God we want a little truck so bad. Something to run to the hardware store with and be able to buy a couple pieces of lumber and a BBQ. I don't need some truck that is so manly that I as a woman grow balls from it.
I used to work at a Ford dealership, and I always hated having to prepare the new King Ranch Super Duty trucks because they have step rails that automatically pop out when you open the door... But only after you turned that setting on. So I had to heave my fat carcass into these trucks and the floorboards come up to the middle of my chest. And the salesmen almost never would turn that setting on, even though they had to drive them off the delivery trucks and park them on the lot. Please pray that I never have to touch another Super Duty again, I want those days behind me.
Maverick ticks your boxes. That new Toyota would probably have a good ratio, they seem to be slow at embracing new tech. I looked at a santa cruz interior but it has more screen than buttons, same with dodge rampage. Baja wilderness will probably have that new subie screen, idk how you feel about this. That's every model I could remember off the top of my head
They should never hide the air-conditioning behind a bunch of screens
Just fourteen menus to navigate through to do what used to be a simple turn of a knob.
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I refuse to buy any car without buttons. It should be a crime and a safety issue to not include them.
my car has touch controls to open the goddamn sunroof. It took the sales guy three tries to get it to work and i never get it first try. touch interfaces are The Worst.
And knobs! We want knobs!
Finding an AM radio station used to be quick and easy with an old fashioned analog knob tuner. Now I have to press a button about 200 times to scan the whole range. And do dome lights that turn on automatically bother anyone else? Sometimes you don't want to be lit up like fish in an aquarium. Somehow I managed to get along for years deciding for myself when I wanted the lights to come on.
I daily drive a 1986 Toyota, all my buttons still work, *knock on wood*. Give the people their buttons back!!
I drive a 2021 Toyota, and it still has buttons too, because their UX team isnt brain dead.
Me too. The buttons do all the important stuff. Info screen gives me info and has some rarely used options or features.
In a 2023 sequoia, one of their features they were advertising was buttons. Go figure.
Ah yes the sequoia....starting at $90k
I got a wheel that is also a button and 4 way directional control. Mazda mx30... It's great.
And I don't need 1000 of them. It's not a 747 cockpit. I have a 98 Chevy Silverado. The infotainment system is a radio and a clock. If I was to hook in my phone I can use the black magic tape player adapter.
There can be too many buttons real or on screens. The point is the buttons have to be useable. There are like 7 buttons on my rear view mirror of the Toyota. Let’s make the buttons more functional and similar across brands. Give importance to the once that are used while driving and others that work only when parked.
new jeep cherokee, that damn thing automatically connects to every phone it can, when you start the car. It's a daily occurrence when 1) in the morning I start the car in the garage, my wife in the kitchen listing to an audio book on her phone. bam, audio book for me in the car. 2) in afternoon I get home and pull into the garage, my wife is in the house on a phone call. Bam, suddenly I'm in the car talking hands free to some person on the phone. It's hilarious how obnoxious it is. We've removed the phone from the car multiple times. It "remembers". It always remembers.
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definitely. BUT IT GETS WORSE .... We've turned off bluetooth on the phone, thinking that would solve it. The phone's bluetooth turns back on, and connects. It's fucking haunted.
Your phone is clearly cheating on you with the Jeep.
I think you're on to something, CondescendingShitbag.
If it’s an apple phone, you have to disable Bluetooth from the actual settings menu, not the quick menu you can pull up any time. Figured that out a while ago. If you do it from the quick menu, it turns back on after some time. Annoying.
Supposed to be the next day.
Wait. Really? If you disconnect it from settings it actually makes your phone not connect to the car? Because my Bluetooth will look like it’s off but still somehow my car connects to it but I’ve never tried that
Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi in the control centre just put them to sleep for a day on an iPhone, to turn them off fully you have to go specifically into settings.
ah thanks! I'll give that a shot. however, it's still a problem if my wife is using bluetooth headphones, and I pull into the garage.
It’s probably actually your phone. You have to forget the device there or else it’ll constantly try to connect to anything it’s ever connected to. If it’s an iPhone, disabling Bluetooth is only active for at most 24 hours. It says something like “disabling Bluetooth until tomorrow” when you press it but it’s really subtle.
I’ve got ghost shit like that all over my house; worst one is a Sony TV turns on Bluetooth constantly despite me turning it off.
Is it a samsung phone? For me its the phone thats annoying. I can be on bluetooth earbuds, get near my truck, and the phone switches over. I dont know why it thinks I want to connect to the nearby device instead of the DEVICE THAT I WAS ALREADY CONNECTED TO
yes samsung.
Wait until your wife’s phone call with her boyfriend ends up in your car. It’s a Jeep thang.
Maybe he knows how to turn it off??
The way cars implement Bluetooth is completely egregious. Apart from your multi-user complaints, most will connect to media..... when set to another source like FM radio. The phone audio is captured and ignored. It should only ever capture audio when set to Bluetooth audio. Hopefully they come up with a way to tell if a phone is in the car.
I’ve definitely had the issue in my New Highlander frequently, very silly design
My parents got a new Mazda something something a few years ago and I really like their implementation. Screen is not touch screen, there's a knob in the centre console that you use to control the whole thing for entertainment along with voice. And actual buttons for everything like seats and air con etc. The Tesla approach of touch screen everything looks cool but is incredibly brain dead. It's illegal to use my phone while driving but lets put a big fucking iPad in the middle of the car that I have to use to change anything with the interior of the car.
Just got a Mazda 3 and I love the infotainment system.
Just ordered a 2024 manual hatchback yesterday! Apparently the 2024 models have a touchscreen that's only enabled for CarPlay and Android Auto but the rotary dial needs to be used for everything else. Honestly, I think it's the best of both worlds and the climate controls are buttons. I'm excited for this car to arrive.
They're SO much fun to drive and I love the controls. I have a 2019 hatchback and would only consider upgrading to the turbo edition
That’s what I have. “Sport Mode” is fantastic on the highway.
My wife has a Mazda 3 and the big knob is great, but I still have to look at the screen to know when I've twisted far enough. I miss my Sonata when I could do almost anything by touch without actually needing to look at a screen. Now I have an Outback and I've never been more pissed off at an infotainment system before. I fully expect the newer outbacks to be unable to retain their value just because of that.
The trick with the mazda knob is to glance at the screen and know what option you want. there are usually only 5 on screen at once so it should be easy to work out how many clicks to turn the knob. the best part about the mazda system is you know 100% that if you turn the knob the required number of clicks you will 100% be on the menu option you want. It will never fail to register a click or double register. It's an easy system to use with the minimum of glances.
I do not think the interior of the Tesla looks cool at all.
I think it looks cheap and unwieldy.
Omg. My Honda Odyssey had that knob thing and I hated it. It took so long to select anything or enter addresses with it. Way more distracting than hitting a steering wheel button in my EV and saying “Navigate to 126 James Street in Wilmington.”
You can do both in the Mazda.
A key fob that costs $700 to replace!
A steering wheel that doesn’t fly off when you’re driving.
Is a good idea, and I stand by it!
You have to marry your mother in-law
The car industry is tone deaf. People want their phone to be their primary interface for information, music, and entertainment, which should seamlessly integrate with their cars. Instead, many companies are getting rid of phone integration in favor of their in-car interfaces. The reason is simple: greed! Car companies want you to pay them for things like navigation, music and entertainment. The aftermarket retrofit market will be booming as carmakers go further and further down the path of forcing their interfaces and subscriptions on consumers.
There is definitely something extremely dystopian about the current push to make everything subscription based (or rely heavily on planned obsolescence if they convince you to subscribe)
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My car is older (2012). It did not have CarPlay but had a screen for nav. I got a part from China that I installed behind the screen that enables wireless CarPlay for my car. Now I have no technology reason to upgrade car.
Mind sharing what ‘part’ you’re referring to?
They make them for many different car types. This is not my car but basically the same thing. https://youtu.be/WBe143jf674
Here's some videos: https://www.youtube.com/@CarPlayLife/videos
The writing is already on the wall. Manufacturers wanna charge you for as much as they can in vehicles nowadays, and creating recurring payments as well in the form of services that used to just be expected. Wonder how it'll come to a head. You think the manufacturers will try and push legislation limiting what you can do with your car, in the name of "safety" or whatever?
Rivian doesn’t allow CarPlay and annoyance only increases with time.
I’ll never buy a car that doesn’t allow CarPlay. Could be a hard line for any Apple user.
Or and android user. Android auto works just as good
Not wrong. This is one thing Android & iPhone users can easily agree on.
When asked the CEO just says "we want to control the experience." I don't think any car company is going to create a better software experience than 2 of the largest software companies in the world.
Yep. The screen should just be a dummy display with very little built in. Wireless CarPlay with a wireless charging place for phones is all we need.
> The car industry is tone deaf. They just don't care what you want. They save tons of money with this so the beatings will continue until morale improves.
But they technically don't save money. Their own implementations are more costly to implement, refine and keep updated. Those are not cheap. You also have to "compete" and inovate in a software market, and most car manufacturers are pretty bad at it. Ford CEO said it well: > While many brands are looking to build proprietary replacements, the Ford chief held that it is no longer possible for automakers to compete with tech companies in the software space. **“In terms of content, we kind of last that battle 10 years ago,”** commented Farley.
Yes, I know that was from Ford commenting on GM's insane move to go proprietary against CarPlay because they somehow think they can monetize driver data. I don't believe these things are more expensive than what is there. This is literally outsourcing a huge amount of union work and getting a finished modular product in a box to install. It also simplifies the interiors, meaning a more streamlined production line if a lot of features are just accessed via a different screen.
This is true, my wife’s 2015 Land Rover hasn’t had the maps updated ever because they want $150 every year to update them. Guess what is free to use and is updated nearly constantly…google maps. $20 phone mount and who needs that hard-to-use proprietary GPS?
I should learn how to jailbreak people's cars. I could make a living doing that
It's costly and new cars (2000+) are getting more and more difficult to "jailbreak". For example, Audi has been doing their "component protection" scheme for years now - where you can no longer take an electronic module from a donor car and transplant it to another car (similar to iPhone's pairing of components). Where most manufacturers have been using CANBUS for years (which is a relatively simple protocol/bus to implement) to communicate between modules, newer cars are encapsulating CANBUS with IPSEC to communicate between the modules. This makes reverse engineering way more difficult to do. Features are no longer that easy to enable/disable, as some of them are tied to the presence of X509 certificates ("SSL certificates"). And this isn't even new, if I recall correctly, BMW has been doing that since at least 2004 for features like Voice Commands on their antique CCC Infotainment system. Granted, with sufficient time people will find a way, they always find a way, but don't count on new car models to be able to be tinkered with right away. For example, you can see old "hacks" for Tesla here: https://github.com/jnuyens/freedomev But notice that it also hasn't been updated in 4+ years.
Just give me a place on the dash to hold my phone, charge it, let me use my own preferred map app on my horizontal screen, and give a/c and radio buttons.
The phone thing is spot on and I’ll add to your list an integrated dashcam or at least a usb outlet behind the rear view mirror. Insurance companies should be lobbying for this to be law. Also, make the premium sound system actually premium.
From what I understand, they can't do that because it would encourage using your phone while driving... So, let's put a touch screen right where you wish your phone could go that does exactly what they weren't supposed to do with your phone. XD
I remember during the chip shortage thinking there would be no chip shortage if car manufacturers did not have all that unwanted tech.
FWIW, the chips that most car manufacturers used were (are) old from a tech perspective, which is why they were hard to come by. Manufacturers are biased towards proven tech over new features to push reliability.
I recall when some factory burned down in Japan. the chips it made will never be available again and everyone had to redesign all their shit. A to D converter IIRC.
If you’re talking about AKM, the DAC chips are available again, but everyone had to redesign their stuff because they didn’t know how long it would take AKM to come back online.
I lived in Michigan for a bit and had friends who worked at Ford. The amount of planning ahead they have to do for those vehicles is insane.... but there's no excuse. A 5 year old base-model ipad is better than what's in most vehicles, and I don't understand how that can possibly be.
Because a 5 year old base model iPad is designed to work in a pristine set of limited conditions. Automotive use cases involve extreme heat, extreme cold, wet, agitation, and more.
I still find it so fking stupid that they put things like AC and Heated Seats in fking menus. Instead of using tech to improve the driving experience they're making shit more unsafe cuz people have to be focusing on poorly designed menus while driving. It's so backwards and brainless.
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Honestly cars from around 2011 are completely superior to modern cars in this regard. They still have physical buttons for everything and you can swap out the double din CD player for a touchscreen head unit with wireless CarPlay/Android Auto for a few hundred bucks. It’s the best of both worlds.
Did that with my 2012 mazda 3 so I could use wireless gps without having a phone mounted. Really is great.
Now why would I give up my CD player? What am I supposed to do with all those MP3 CDs I burned?
I miss the old days of being able to switch out the radios. All this new shit is unnecessary
Standard form factor and electrical interface. It was perfectly beautiful. And now...
People want to get in a car and drive. Not sit there waiting for their phones to connect and sign up for ten subscription services before the car works.
My Kia has an annoying menu that shows every time I turn the fucking car on. I have to accept to continue. No way to disable that shit. Fuck you Kia.
Just more crap that breaks down and costs time and money to fix.
yeah they are trying to make owning a car make no sense before you could pay it off and have at least 10 years of no car payment now they want it to be prohibitively expensive to maintain and fix that you just get a lease and have a perpetual car payment.
They want you to have a car subscription.
people want cars, not iPhones with wheels. No amount of touch screen tech beyond say an inbuilt GPS will make a car with a poor quality build, and poor fuel efficiently, worth more money.
That and it's ridiculous trying to fumble with a touch screen that I have to look at while I'm driving to use simple functions. I don't have to look to grab my AC dial and crank it up or crank the heat up. Taking my eyes off the road for any reason is a bad idea. Somehow using your phone while you drive is illegal but all this nonsense isn't.
Or the inability to pass on features you don't want. Subaru is my prime example. I own a 2011 Impreza WRX. No mods. Totally stock. I love the car, but when I have a loaner like an Outback, every damn one has the front facing cameras to assist with steering, alert you when you barely cross painted lines, and the "feature" of turning off the engine when you're stopped for about 3 seconds at a light or stop sign that you have to disable every time you start the car if you don't want it doing that. No option to downgrade. I don't want to pay for "features" I neither want nor wish to use. So not only am I paying more for things I don't want, I have no option to get a model without them and if I want to turn them off, I can't do so permanently. A major reason I still have my 12 year old car with no intentions of getting a new one.
The built in gps is always hilarious to me. I’m not using that shit, I’ll just use Google maps in my phone over your clunky slow outdated gps.
I’m not driving my phone. For God’s sake, give us buttons and dials.
Yup. We want physical buttons.
And dials. Forget having to control a volume or temp with a up/down buttons
Volume and temp are the two things that people will want to control *while driving*. Those two things should be *always* be controlled by physical knobs and buttons. Everything else can go into the touch screen, except maybe mirror adjustment.
[удалено]
Just give me a backup camera, FM/XM/AM radio, and most importantly, both Apple CarPlay and Android Auto. Don’t put any other crap in the infotainment. Maybe HVAC if there are physical controls too.
My son in law has new to him used truck. The first thing he boasted about when we got in to head to a ballgame is that it has buttons and knobs.
Just give me android auto and I'm happy. It looks better and is more intuitive then most OEM infotainment systems
Car manufacturers should be forced to make car infotainment upgradeable, without any detriment to the user. And they should be forced to release software updates and fix bugs for several years after the unit is released. Fucking planned obsolescence and gatekeeping. I'm tired of this shit...
My wife has a car that is basically all touchscreen and I. Fucking. Hate. It. I hate having to wait for screens to load up to to turn on the AC when it’s 100 degrees I hate that I have to look at the screen to adjust anything and can’t just use feel to know what knobs to turn. My car is all knobs and I love it.
I hate the I-pad looking screen that is stapled to the dash on some newer cars. It looks so stupid up there.....
When I first saw the Tesla Model 3 interior, I thought it was a pre-production mockup and they simply hadn't finished designing the interior...lol nope. And then they went on to almost finish designing the cybertruck before giving up so I suppose that's just their style now.
>Unsurprisingly, more people are choosing not to use their car’s **native** infotainment controls. Only 56 percent of owners prefer to use their vehicle’s built-in system to play audio, down from 70 percent in 2020, JD Power found. Less than half of owners said they like using their car’s **native** controls for navigation, voice recognition, or to make phone calls… > >Naturally, it seems like most **people are preferring to use smartphone-mirroring systems like Apple CarPlay and Android Auto**, which have proven to be incredibly popular over the years. And indeed, there have been other surveys that indicate **people prefer interacting with the apps on their phone than whatever cockamamie bullshit was cooked up by the company that made their car**. Emphasis mine. This isn’t about touch screens taking over the place of buttons. It’s just the obvious case that the UX of car dashboards and controls is terrible, the GPS is terrible and often outdated, need extra subscriptions, etc. CarPlay/AAuto have updated maps (with live traffic), Spotify, podcasts, dictation for messages, digital radio via data, etc. Obviously people will prefer to use them, than some outdated, slow, clunky UX, with terrible navigation and alternatives.
I want an analogue display for car functions, like fuel or heat etc. shouldn't need to rely on a delicate digital display and wait 20 seconds for a computer to boot just to see these things.
My car still have manual window cranks and it is from 2018 lmao.
Because it’s fucking stupid that when I have a passenger in my car and they can’t use the fucking touch screen while I drive. I the driver have to then hold my phone and use my face or password to unlock my phone while I or the passenger enter’s instructions into apple or google maps. It’s the stupidest fucking thing ever
I want a car/truck that drives. Has AC and a backup camera along with airbags. That's it. I don't need a new touch screen or some other "security" features or AI or voice activation. I'm tired of seeing cars and trucks get more expensive too. I just want an affordable car that's safe and comfortable.
I want a car that is affordable, that is stripped down and light. Safe, but bare bones. No seat warmers and shit, no bells and whistles. Hell, if it has window cranks I'd be okay with it. My first car was a Geo Tracker. No AC, no power anything, manual transmission. It was amazing, like a little jeep thing. Got over 40 MPG and had pretty decent acceleration. I would love to have something like that again.
I’ve got a VW Jetta. Love it’s handling, engine, etc. German engineering at it’s finest. But there are so many ways that they absolutely ruined the driver experience with all of the ridiculous push-buttons and crap. I literally need to take my eyes off the road for seconds to change the blower from defrost to floor (find which button, then click thrice — or is it four times? Whoops, over-shot. Do it again and watch carefully the as the little icon changes). That’s just one example of many literally life-threatening idiocies in this clusterfuck of a “dashboard.” I am lead to two conclusions —the whole team who designed and approved this “electronic” dashboard don’t have a driver’s license , and they should all be sacked. If you are part of the drivetrain, suspension etc., engineering crew, great job, keep at it!
All I want is CarPlay
I will say that so far, I really like the mix of tech and analog in my new RAV4 Hybrid. Plenty of buttons and knobs, CarPlay, and I can use two phones without much effort
Fuck the goddamn touch screens. Give me tactile satisfaction!
So cars will connect to every device I own, and I don't want it too, but if I want to read the error codes on my car, I need to purchase another, separate device? Anybody else see a serious issue here?
You're telling me nobody thought a spinny dial was a better idea for a gear shift aside from the design team who first put that in? No...
That's why I love my 2018 Civic. A decent sized screen that connects to Apple CarPlay and physical buttons and knobs for mostly everything else.
I want to thank Acura/Honda for making the most simple touch screen possible in their new cars. I mean it is near perfect with how simple they are. Not a single bell or whistle and real knobs everywhere. I legitimately went with an Integra over the new GTI because of this exact point.
I keep thinking there will be some startup electric car manufacture that goes full luddite. No bells. No whistles. Battery, motor, and not much else.
I want my f****** buttons back. I hate touch screens in a car you have to look at the screen even if you have good muscle memory to be 100% sure. With a button your hand is either on the volume knob or it's not