Hacker News Reader

Comment by hasmolo | Hacker News Reader

i'm dropping my subaru for this among other reasons.

1. throttle response, move your foot to 20% and experience between no throttle and wide open as the 'turbos' kick in in my outback

2. every time we get near an intersection with bollards, it thinks it's a kid and slams on the brakes

3. you're not allowed to persist auto start disabling

4. you will be nagged for looking anywhere other than dead straight, especially if looking around a curve, you'll get beeped at

5. sometimes when driving the main 'touchscreen' just dies, takes about 5 minutes to reboot, and the entire time i have no climate or audio control, luckily the adaptive cruise control seems to stay working, you just can't reenable it...

View on HN

I thought 3 was federal law and was universal amongst US cars.

I personally don’t mind it, but thought it was indicative of how unpopular that feature was when a software update moved the disable button to my Subaru’s dock.

FWIW my Subaru doesn’t experience the other issues mentioned besides 1 & 5. 1 is like any turbo I’ve driven before so maybe my expectations are off but 5 is crazy annoying.

1. Subaru's engines are notorious for being low powered. A 2.0 with 152hp and a 2.5 with 182hp? That's... NOTHING. Even with turbos that is shamefully low. Pair that with a slow-acting CVT and you have a recipe for disaster.

I do wonder if the mapping of the pedal is direct. Because one can do it in 2 ways: First one being: putting your foot down 20% means open up the air intake valve and derive fuel requested from that. Or 20% is give me 20% engine power, which then can actually continuously remap what that means in terms of how much we open up the air intake valve and how much fuel we inject as the turbos spin up.

3. I have never seen a car that allows you to do it as the user. I program it in my BMW.

5. If the car is new enough I'd start the lemon process.

Wow on 2-5, but I thought 1 was 'normal' for cars with a turbo charger?

Turbo lag is normal, but is is rarely more than a couple seconds. Even my F350 when pulling a heavy trailer I don't notice it - unless I'm in too high a gear for my speed. (I've only had a turbo with a manual transmission - I've driven some automatics that are slow enough to shift that you might think it was bad turbo lag, but those cars didn't even have a turbo)

I think it's mostly transmissions and other non-turbo effects that cause these contemporary lag complaints.

With all the fleet mileage requirements, there are much higher gear ratios for cruise and coast modes, so the engine can be bogged way down near idle speeds. Also, there are more software based throttle controls and interlocks. Some of this has to do with heavy-handed reaction to prior "unintended acceleration" panics, and some is just part of all the modern traction/stability control and efficiency programming.

The programming can get utterly confused and fail to dip back into a ground state where it is ready to accelerate. People doing various combinations of heel-and-toe or other transitions between braking and acceleration, including rolling stops, may get their car into a different mode than they would want, and the recovery from this seems like "turbo lag" or worse.

I wouldn't say that is a thing anymore since the 1980s. My old 2003 truck a 5.9l turbo diesel was quite responsive but at nearly 6 litres spewed a lot of exhaust to spin up the turbine. Smaller cars may suffer a bit more although some sporty cars may have two stages; separate small and large turbos. The small is good at lower rpm and the large better at high rpm.

Interesting. Out of these 5 issues I've only experienced the auto start annoyance on my Subaru crosstrek 2021.

Is this limited to their higher end models?

Surely 5 is a warranty claim. I actually went through 3 head units on my 2014 Subaru XV with a very similar sounding issue.

Huh, that sounds terrible. I got two Subarus (nether if them outback) and never had any of these problems. Maybe a bad model year or some controller issues?

Subaru was awesome. The cvt, the ridiculous headsets, and thin paint mean this 18 xt forester is sadly my last one I think.

The 5 speed outback sport I had before was absolutely a joy to drive.

We just bought a 2023 6-speed Crosstrek and it’s amazing. Also, fewer (color) screens because it’s practically the base.

Sadly the last year one can get it as a manual.

I quite like the CVT, but yeah my Outback paint is pretty much not up to the task of protecting from the Aussie sun, the branches and nuts that fall out of the, and birds and bats that poop all over it. I actually like cars that look nice but I'm now almost at the state of mind as long as it stops the body from rusting it is good enough.

It’s not that I don’t like the cvt, but if it breaks I may as well buy a new car… my friends outback had its cvt self destruct and yeah, no thanks.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com