Toyota and VW fall further behind in the software race

toyota, please, lean into this and go the other way: physical buttons/knobs/etc and dropping useless technology

stay on top, say "no"

https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-reliability-owner-s...

Toyota and VW might as well sit this one out and make the case that you don't need modern bloatware to enjoy a car. "Here's your new car, works the same as it always has."

I'm with the other commenters in wanted less software in cars.

Here's you're new Bloat SUV, its has the most software of any car in its class. It spies on you more, costs the most for maintenance (because mechanics need even more expensive propriety software to talk with the cars software) AND subscriptions! So many of those! You can put the windows down for free, but it'll cost $19/month to put them up! Software!!!

Our toyota prius has software enough to keep my cruise control speed safely behind the car in front of me, and give me warnings of lane departures if I weave. The car plays bluetooth audio from my phone. The car has buttons to set the ac settings. This is the appropriate use for software in the car. Features are not bugs. Touch screens in a car are dangerous and bad. This person is selling something. Toyota cars last and dont' require subscriptions. I can buy a maps update SD card if I want. Toyota is killing it and my next purchase will consider anti-features like all controls via screens a failing design.

Is this the hackernews comment section or luddite times? I think a lot of people here have not gotten a taste of level 2 self-driving. I will never buy a car without some sort of self-driving ever again. Being able to just supervise your car while it is driving in heavy traffic is so relaxing. Complete game changer.

> but the reality is that while we use smartphones every day, utilisation of privately owned vehicles is only 5 per cent,

And are used far less than car infotainment, by almost all of those folks.

It'd be better for everyone if there was some kind of modular, competitive ecosystem of infotainment OSes, but we don't even have that on phones (somehow the PC alone is the one neutral device).

Like, folks should be able to plug in a Chromecast dongle, that can then manage the car's subsystems, while outputting some DisplayPort screens.

Trying to keep sophisticated consumer electronics devices running & up to date & powering these expensive expensive platforms satisfactorily is a game we should want car makers out of. Car makers should want out of it. Having the product & it's whole lifecycle gated on the computer awful bedeviling coupling.

I connect my RAV4 to comma and it’s better than a Tesla on highways hands down.

Don’t need no junk software selling my privacy for ads.

Go the other way Toyota, make rock solid cars that are easy to repair and hold their value.

I plan to keep on buying Toyotas as long as they keep on making highly reliable affordable cars without junk software.

> The latest ranking of auto groups’ digital performance from consultancy Gartner shows only three legacy carmakers — Ford, GM and BMW — make it to the top 10 while the rest are dominated by Nio, Xpeng and BYD from China and US start-ups including Tesla, Rivian and Lucid.

> Ford, GM and BMW

Hahaha! Yeah, and the most dominant companies in producing LLMs are Desire2Learn, Duolingo, and McGraw Hill.