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Comment by kylecordes | Hacker News Reader

It's interesting to see a parade of people object to the updatability.

Sure, on a minute-to-minute timescale, anyone must obviously agree.

But over the long term of owning a car, it is an immensely valuable feature. My 2018 car still feels quite new and fresh - much less reason to replace it than if it were falling behind.

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It absolutely is not. I do not want my 2 ton moving vehicle updated on a whim. My 2019 has a screen I can never really turn off that is bright at night, my 2008 has a slow laggy UI that an update will never fix. The 2000 Miata sitting in my garage has the best interface of them all. Push buttons and dials for climate control, two window switches in the middle tombstone area and that's really it outside the typical steering wheel controls for signals, lights and windshield wipers. It's amazingly simple and should continue working even when my newer cars are dead and gone.

> I do not want my 2 ton moving vehicle updated on a whim.

The car won't update itself, so:

1. Ignore any updates as they become available.

2. Problem solved.

For devices that connect to the internet, such as for updating maps and real-time traffic data, does the lack of security updates mean that your 2-ton moving vehicle is now somebody else's 2-ton moving vehicle?

Which is actually an argument for non-updatability.

Completely agreed. Mainly, I wanted to make a distinction between "cannot be updated" and "can be updated but isn't". The former is a design choice that removes entire classes of vulnerabilities. The latter is a usage choice that keeps vulnerabilities open.

Since I cannot directly reply to you (ajconway) -- this is thoroughly untrue. Tesla does it at the very least and I'm aware that is becoming a "feature" offered in other vehicles now too.

If you click/tap on the time stamp next to a message you reach a dedicated page where you can reply (same thing I had to do to reply to yours at this conversation depth).

Well what do you know, TIL. Thank you!

I always marveled at the competence and refinement of automotive interfaces...they killed that shit.

I'm with you on this, I do understand people not wanting the extra cognitive load to learn new changes in the UX but as a tinkerer I really love that my car can get OTA updates that add/changes features. Actually many (most of?) Tesla owners have a Tesla also for this reason. Source: lurking in Tesla owners forums/groups.

You'd buy a new car because the UI feels a bit dated?

Not with any urgency of course; it's one factor among many. We have a 2015 car that feels like 2005, and a 2018 car that feels like 2022. The terrible map/etc. experience will certainly be a motivator when replacing - and makes old car worth much less on the used market than one that updates.

> You'd buy a new car because the UI feels a bit dated?

There's a substantial group of people who lease cars, and just get a new car after the lease is up. For that group of people, that's probably a substantial reason along with the exterior styling.

The main reason for leasing cars is (a) wanting to prove how rich they are, and (b) being irrationally afraid of maintenance.

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