Hacker News Reader

Comment by vgoh1 | Hacker News Reader

I wholeheartedly disagree that automotive progress, on the mechanical side, has slowed down. The ride quality, handling, fit and finish, noise & vibe, chassis rigidity, fuel economy, reliability, have all been improving. Go back 10 years, go back 10 years before that, etc., and you will see incremental improvements. Beyond that, look at how much more "stuff" comes in cars today, but for the same amount of money. That means, as we cram more and more tech in a car, the mechanical bits are getting cheaper. The same is true for motorcycles.

What is really going on, is the improvements in the mechanical design are just not as flashy.

View on HN

There have been significant mechanical improvements under the hood. Dual clutch transmission enabling things like (very quick) paddle shifting has trickled into a lot of cars over the last decade. Gasoline Direct Injection has also seen rapid adoption. Hybrids were a small niche not too long ago, let alone EVs. Turbos seem a lot more common as well.

Dual-clutch transmissions have had a lot of reliability problems, and not many automakers actually use them. CVTs are probably used much more often.

GDI on the other hand has basically taken over; I doubt there's any new gasoline car sold without it now.

Hybrids haven't been doing well, outside of the Prius. EVs are getting more adoption now than hybrids. The problem with hybrids is the cost: you have a gas engine plus a big battery pack and motor, basically two powertrains in one vehicle.

Turbos however have become very, very common as everyone is downsizing engines and using turbos to get more power, while improving fuel economy.

Yeah, I cry every time I have to use some cheaper new rental car compared to my 15 year old bmw 3-series (not even m-series, just regular one with diesel engine on top of that).

Sluggish, puddy garbage of an experience compared to pure joy I can experience with my own.

I would say improvements were done to make things more cost-effective to increase margins, but not necessarily better cars per se.

Other things are with furniture I obtained with an older apartment - amazingly well built, can still hold together well after 50+ years. It was not luxurious back then, but would be definitely be luxurious now.

1. Making things more accessible is not a crime, instead it's one of the biggest enablers of our age. See Henry Ford and Ford Model T.

2. Compare apples to apples. How does a new BMW 3-Series compare to your 15 year old one? My guess is, it probably compares favorably.

Depends on what you are looking for.

In a new 3-Series you can turn the steering wheel with your index finger, there is no manual transmission, you hear fake engine noise. The 15 year old car offers a completely different driving experience and he might prefer it over the bland, comfortable new car.

I'd be curious to see the numbers, but I'm pretty sure the new one has more oomph than the old one. The comfortable aspect I get, but new BMWs have plenty of bite in them.

It went somewhat downhill with F30.

See those slim runflats? Runflats save space in the trunk for the spare, and them being slim means they are hard. So in order for the ride to be softer, the axle suspension changed, and much softer silentblocks are being used. The result is, that your drive doesn't feel like your car is sitting on rails, like E90 or E46 did, instead it is muddy and jelly.

Another disaster is the start-stop system. When warm, the needles in starter can break. Meaning, that you just went down from highway to the petrol station, refuelled, and you cannot start anymore. You are stuck there on the station.

But hey, those LED angel eyes look much cooler.

E90 came with RFT tires and at least E92/E93 lack spare wheel well in the trunk. I dunno about E90, it might be an option there like it was in E60s (but it's very rare).

They didn't use electric steering thankfully. It went downhill starting E9x though, the materials used inside wear much quicker, the suspension and road feel is somehow less than E46 and the chasing of weight savings but increasing comfort through electronics and servos means the car is heavy still but you no longer get that satisfying door or bonnet thump like you did in E39/E38/E46, which were pinnacle of BMWs engineering IMO. Cabin noise insulation is also less than pre 2005, I assume because of weight savings. The post 2005 cars are so complicated that non-enthusiast ownership is most likely a bad experience.

/335xi N54 owner

Don't forget the styling. Every car looks like the exact same boring "bar of soap with wheels" today. There's a little variation in terms of grill and light clusters, but from a distance I can no longer tell the difference between any of the top 10 sedan or coupe models.

The new cars have electronic steering, electronic gearboxes, electronic everything. That much tech essentially eliminates "road feel". Some older cars are actually much more interesting to drive, despite their flaws.

I wholeheartedly disagree with you. haha

Go back to a BMW of 1990, and it's not that much different from a new car today. Fuel injection, air bags, ABS. Internal combustion engine, exhaust, radiator, transmission. etc. etc.

Heck, even back then it was perfectly normal for a car to get better than 10L/100km (23.5mpg)

There have been incremental improvements for sure, but in all honesty it's the same thing, just tweaked a little.

Disagree with you and I have sources.

A 1990 BMW 3 Series got 18 miles a gallon and a 2019 BMW 3 series gets 30 combined. 1990 had a 5 speed and the new one has an 8 speed.[1] The power and efficiency of ICEs are night and day vs the 90s.

You could literally same the same thing about anything and it would be a huge generalization.

“It’s just a CPU/RAM/Disk/Nic with a monitor and keyboard. We had those in 1980s and it’s only incremental every since.”

[1]https://www.fueleconomy.gov/feg/Find.do?action=sbs&id=41157&...

This is like saying if you go back 10 years, computers still had RAM, hard drives, CPUs, and GPUs so they're basically the same as today while neglecting the fact that there have been significant improvements in all of those and a modern computer would run circles around one from 2009.

There aren't many noticeable improvements in cars from one year to the next, but over the span of a full model change, you usually get fairly significant improvements in safety, fuel efficiency per horsepower, and in-cabin features.

Also note that we haven't reached maximum ICE performance yet, either. For example, Mazda is soon to release their Skyactiv-X engine, which is a sort of hybrid spark and compression ignition system with a large fuel efficiency increase over traditional engines.

Try driving one of the latest cars with all modern driver aids etc. for a few hundred miles: lane departure, blind spot warning, parking sensors, automated parking assist, distance sensors etc. Include routing around traffic congestion and a requirement to stop halfway for some unexpected reason, necessitating use of in-car navigation system.

Then try doing the same with a 1990 BMW. Unless you are being deliberately obtuse you will miss the driver aids etc., as they make the whole experience so much easier. Old cars are simply nowhere near the latest cars for safety, comfort, ease of use etc.

Anecdotally I would argue that the last 10 years have seen a more significant improvement in car technology and capability than the prior 10 years.

If we look at power alone even though EPA regulations have only gotten stricter during the same time frame if we look at the same model of car (Ford Mustang GT) we see that it has gone from 310 HP [1] to 460 HP [2] in 10 years. The same power that was delivered by the V8 which powered the Mustangs that my friends and I pined over in High School (ca. 2004) is now delivered by a compact I4 turbocharged engine which also delivers 25 MPG [3].

[1] https://www.caranddriver.com/reviews/a15147979/2009-ford-mus... [2] https://www.caranddriver.com/ford/mustang [3] https://www.edmunds.com/ford/mustang/2019/mpg/#style=4017572...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com