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Comment by throwawayboise | Hacker News Reader

This is why I don't want electronic gizmos (nav systems a particularly good example) in my car.

You have a phone that can do GPS and navigation, and probably do it better than the software in your car. The phone is much more easily replaced than the built-in navigation unit, should it stop working for any reason. The phone works the same way in all cars. The phone gets software updates easily and seamlessly.

Quit putting unecessary technology in cars. It will only cause expensive problems in 5 or 10 years, because it will be utterly obsolete by then and unfixable.

The car should not care what the date is. It should not care what time it is. The clock in my car says 12:00. Why? Because I have never bothered to set it. I don't care, and I have the correct time, accurate to the millisecond, on my phone.

The technology in the car should only be about running the engine and transmission and other essential systems in the car.

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Before CarPlay, I’d agree, but no more. Now the car infotainment is basically just a monitor and interface for my phone, and I couldn’t be happier. I can keep on upgrading my phone and the tech in my car can keep on improving.

You're still locked into an API that will definitely be obsolete in 10 years.

This is a non-problem. Vanishingly few people keep a car for more than 10 years.

God forbid anyone buys a used car.

Average age of a car in the US is 12.1 years: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/09/28/cars-on-american-roads-keep-...

Average time a new vehicle is kept is 8.4 years: https://www.iseecars.com/how-long-people-keep-cars-study

Thank you for validating that my comment is factual and correct.

And doesn’t work worth a crap. Can’t pinch zoom on google maps for example.

Source if this is so definitive?

What API? It's just mirroring the screen like HDMI. Apple can put whatever they want on any existing CarPlay display.

I would suggest that any car you can obtain now will be obsolete in 10 years:

Either the car is electric, and the battery will wear out in 3-5 years

The car takes gas, and you'll need to replace it (with an electric one, or carbon capture to offset its emissions) within 10 years to avoid catastrophic global warming

> Either the car is electric, and the battery will wear out in 3-5 years

More like 8-12 years.

[0] https://www.carmagazine.co.uk/electric/how-long-do-electric-...

No worries, it will burn in 2 years...

most electric cars have batteries warrantied for 8 years... there are EVs on the road with batteries older than that today (the Nissan Leaf was originally released 12 years ago)

Batteries are wear items, you don't throw your car away when the tires run out of tread.

Batteries cost significantly higher than tire, it is not an equivalent comparison.

How many people chose to replace batteries inside their phones instead of getting a new phone?

Getting a new phone is a lot cheaper than getting a new car.

Most of the people I know personally.

Your phone will be obsolete first.

What viable alternative do you suggest that exists?

My first pickup didn't have a clock, so I got a cheap one and stuck it to the dash with a magnet. Had to adjust it for DST, which was fine, as it had usually gone off a few minutes at that point. That was an okay level of electronic gadgetry for me. What we've got today is bonkers.

Anybody remember the analog clock in the Chrysler Sebring?

Daylight savings time? Hah, just rotate the damn thing 30°

While I agree this would be the best way to design things, is it really a net positive for the first owner of each car who might just have it for 1-3 years?

That’s the primary target for the design after all. And with more and more cars being leased, what the second and third owner will feel about outdated or flaky tech is becoming even less relevant to the person who is the customer.

Resale value is a thing.

You're correct that the real customer for a "new" car is the person who will drive it/own it for max 3 years. When I worked at a dealership it was funny how the used car lot managers would just auction a car that was slightly older than 3 years or just had more miles than what an average person drives in a year for the age of the vehicle. I've seen how cars my dad used to sale when he started selling cars vs the cars he was selling when I was working with him had gone down in terms of long term quality. These infotainment things are just another nail in the coffin for cars that would otherwise be useable. I feel at some future time this pain point of automobiles will be become more universal in nature and hopefully give a second option.

Yup. I don't really get why car manufacturers try to "differentiate" themselves with navigation and apps of their own. I mostly just want it to be a dumb screen that my phone can display on.

I have a Honda from 2004 with a navigation system. The last map update was in 2014. And that update was done by replacing a DVD, of all things, in the trunk. Granted, smartphones weren't a thing back in 2004, so I can't blame car manufacturers for not foreseeing this sort of thing. But nowadays there's no excuse.

this same sentiment could have been applied to cell phones 20 years ago, right? “Why does my _phone_ need a screen? all it needs are 12 keys, a speaker, and a microphone. if i wanted to listen to music, id use my CD player. If I needed directions, id use my map.”

No, it wouldn't have applied because computers (and eventually cell phones) did those things better. For instance, using Map Quest was way more convenient than using a map. Using iTunes was way more convenient than a CD. If someone asked me, "Do you want iTunes on your phone?" The answer would have been yes. What does a car do better?

Itunes was a bloated pig then (still is). Winamp on my phone, yes.

I would tend to favor an approach based on support commitment and distance from the core functionality. Cars are really two products, a pretty mature transportation system and (these days) a low-end entertainment/map system which a cheap Android vendor would be ashamed to ship. They’re used to supporting the mechanical side for ages but software support is much rockier.

If the vendors had to support full functionality on those appliance-like systems at no cost for the 10-20 year service life of the vehicle, it’d just be CarPlay/Android Auto because they know that’s not their strength. “Smart” refrigerators would similarly not be common if they couldn’t orphan it after a year or two.

The difference is you replace your phone every few years so it doesn't matter if parts become obsolete. A car has to work for at least a decade so any tech in it will become problematic later in its life.

> It should not care what time it is. The clock in my car says 12:00. Why? Because I have never bothered to set it. I don't care, and I have the correct time, accurate to the millisecond, on my phone.

Oh yeah buddy? I have it on my wrist with an Eco Drive watch :)

My 05 car's (I bought it used much later) navigation is way better than Google Maps at keeping a GPS fix and giving clear directions. If I could get new map data for it I would use it instead of my phone.

Has Google Maps got worse in the past few years? It's been jumping streets, giving turn directions that change at the last minute or upset it into recalculating even after the turn for me. I thought it was much better a few years ago.

Main issue to me is that in my experience unless I put the phone on the dash (where it can easily overheat in summer unless I put it right on the aircon vent) the phone doesn't grab the gps satellite signal that easily.

I just wanted to drop in my phone and that’s on the screen and that’s it…

I’ll handle the rest.

Tesla is the only car manufacturer that does it right. I put my phone aside when I am in a Tesla, which is safer than when I am in my other car, where my hand is often on my phone.

I use the Tesla UI for navigation, music, answering calls. Usually there is no need to touch my phone while I am behind the wheel.

Every car manufacturer has done that for years. This scenario worked with bluetooth before Android Auto/Carplay was a thing, and AA/Carplay have been standard since shortly after the backup camera mandate brought screens to all new vehicles. I haven't had a rental car that required me to mount my phone to see navigation in 3+ years, and I haven't needed that in my personal (non-Tesla) vehicles for considerably longer.

Tesla is strictly inferior to many manufacturers such as Mazda who manage to give you all of that without relying on a touchscreen.

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