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Comment by tobyhinloopen | Hacker News Reader

I had similar experiences with a modern Volvo. (XC40 T8 EV). Modern cars seem to be absolutely terrible.

It's like all those Single Page Applications on the web that are just downgrades over the classic Server-Side Rendered apps. Sure, you have more features, but at what cost? Reliability.

I think the last generations of cars before the touch buttons and screens were the last "okay" generation. Somewhere in 2010s, all cars were converted to be "smart cars", and they are all terrible. Who walks into a BMW dealer and sits down, surrounded by how many displays, and think: Wow! That's neat! And then you go to drive and it just notifications, beeps and boops.

I just want a luxury car that is grand, silent, feels nice, is nice to drive, and doesn't blast my eyes with screens.

I once connected my Volvo to pull a trailer. First, it reminds me to update the software. I click it away. It then gave me 2 notifications about some assist features not working and rear warning not working or something, idk. It also occasionally reminded the child locks are enabled, which I do not need reminders about. Then it is cold, so you get a cold weather warning. And then the windows are a bit wet because I didn't clear the camera properly from ice, so you get a warning about the cruise control not working. So 10 minutes in, I had received 6 notifications from my CAR! I didn't even use cruise control, I just wanted to pull my trailer a short distance. And some of these notifications block the navigation and require interaction to close. While driving!

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If I was to buy a car these days (which I'm not, I don't have nearly enough money for that), I'd want something with as little "computer" in it as possible. Just a box with 4 wheels and an engine, or maybe a battery and a motor, maybe a heater for when it gets a bit cold, and I'll throw a bluetooth speaker in the back seat if I need something to listen to

It feels a bit counterintuitive to go for a Bluetooth speaker over 3.5mm?

Your low tech car will feel like a emotional prison. Of all the annoying modernities you want the worst one? If you want to make a deal with the devil I would choose rear camera.

Think about it. All the headache and time to pair Bluetooth devices over a dead simple connector.

I would aim for a pre 2016 car. I think that has some margin to the Internet of Shit product lines?

I would prefer 3.5mm over Bluetooth, but keep in mind most people get their music off their phones and (almost?) no modern phones have headphone jacks. Dongles are a thing, but meh.

Additionally, modern Bluetooth devices have very little friction in my experience.

> Dongles are a thing, but meh.

A USB to jack left fixed in the car is not much of an imposition. Even less so if it can be combined with a 12V adapter for charging.

Ye. Many modern phones are *@*$ too. My wife is still bitter about not having a 3.5mm jack on hers she unknowingly bought 5 years ago. So much trouble ...

However if more than one person will use the car (incl. as passanger) the annoyance of Bluetooth is even worse.

We have a dongle in the car that is protected by a sworn oath to never be removed from the cabinet along with some charger cables.

It's my understanding that Bluetooth 5.1 fixes the multiple users in car issue, and it only got properly rolled out in the last couple years.

I believe it when I see it.

Even our Renault scenic from a decade ago seamlessly connects to my phone when I enter it.

Multi user seem to be the major pain point. I think linked and active headphones blocks the car too.

There is just so much stuff that can make the abstraction of automation leak and you have to spend more time fixing it this one time than saved in the total lifetime of the car with a simple cable.

> All the headache and time to pair Bluetooth devices over a dead simple connector.

Conversely, I pair my phone once when I get the car and I never need to worry about messing with it again; it's just connected when the car starts. I don't even need to take my device out of my pocket or bag.

On top of that I get hands-free calling if someone calls while I'm driving, I get steering wheel media controls, I get voice controlled media selection (play playlist foo, play artist bar, etc.)

Ye that is my experience too. Aslong as noone touches the setup it works.

1945 Willys MB

Just to note the trade-off here: modern cars are much safer in crashes than even cars from ~20 years ago, and the less computer you want, the further back in time you need to go to find suitable cars. There are nuances to the safety thing: some brands were/are safer, more popular car designs today tend to have some features that may worsen safety (taller cars are less stable, heavier cars handle worse, big heavy cars are worse for pedestrians).

[citation required]

I wonder if there's even any citations that can directly show that a 2024 car is "much" safer than a 2004 car. Without relying on NHTSA's safety rating system, which is an indirect proxy at most (and probably has changed multiple times for "reasons"). And without being confounded by changes in regulatory measures.

Look at the statistics over time?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motor_vehicle_fatality_rate_...

Could that be from other things though? Better tyres, improved safety-barrier technology, etc.?

I'm struggling to find the original document/page I read on this, but largely, "a car having better parts is due to the road having features that benefit these parts due to generations of studying the way cars behave in that set of circumstances.

Autos are designed around and for the roads they will serve, not vice versa. This is the bane of auto manufacturers who want to make one tail light housing for all their cars in all their markets.

it's a bit more easy to read data comparing for example safety in Euro market vs American market (there are fundamental differences in safety thoery; lighting, ride heighgt, weight, engine size etc. As opposed to looking at changing trends in one market over 20 years, which are largely stylistic.)

I think it depends on what you're trying to gauge for safety.

Pre-2000 satedy improvements were heavily about WHEN you get into an accident...

Post 2000 it is heavily is heavily DON'T get into an accident, and it's heavily electronic. Anti-lock breaks, lane change vehicle detectors, unintentional lane change warnings, auto-breaking before collisions.

I certainly agree with the general vibe that cars do too much now, but I'd rather have a dumbified 2010+ish car

How much safer are they? I can totally believe that the crash safety of cars improved hugely in the 90s - that's basically when large crumple zones, computer modelling of crash performance, airbags, seatbelt pretensioners etc were all developed.

But 20 years ago was 2005. What's changed on a modern car since 2005? There's obviously a lot more safety features (and these have increasingly been part of the crashworthiness rating cars are given). But if you crash into a wall at 40mph, how much stronger are they?

>How much safer are they?

A lot. Probably the biggest single change was the introduction of the small overlap crash test by the IIHS. It turns out that the standard frontal crash tests are quite unrealistic; in most frontal accidents, the driver swerves to avoid something but clips the corner, rather than just slamming into something head-on. Cars designed to perform well in the standard frontal crash test often performed miserably in the small overlap test.

Compare the same model before and after the small overlap test:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6s0Oq2SPu48

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RE_EUa3VC48

Surprised at how much the dummy’s head misses the airbag in the 2013 model but hits it almost in the center in the 2016.

The best crash is the one being avoided - I had my modern car save me from slipping 2 times with the ESC. (stability control)

The safest cars basically saturated the safety tests. To the point where car companies are making up their own tests, simulating much more dangerous collisions.

Perhaps structurally but the tech stuff isn't improving safety.

With the absolute slightest bit of fog, excessive humidity, rain or snow by Mazda tells me one of its radar systems isn't operable and to please drive safely.

I don't know what Mazda you have, but my Mazda CX-5 2017's radar systems are MUCH more reliable than the Volvo XC40. The CX-5 maybe failed a handful of times in the years I owned it, but the XC40 failed almost every time the weather was bad (rain, cold, mist, etc)

This is going to become nearly impossible in Europe, it may already be in some places due to regulations restricting old vehicles due to emissions. ADAS requirements and other laws forcing manufacturers to implement all sorts of restrictions: just as an example, from 2024 on all new vehicles must implement ISA (Intelligent Speed Assist) that limits speed based on GPS and signs recognition. Anecdotal, but many cars built since mid 00s are ticking timebombs due to their endless electronics faults that will cost drivers a massive bill at some point if not multiple times over their lifespan, good luck finding those proprietary boards that have dozens different variants incompatible with each other for one single car model and have not been produced for years or decades. And if most car manufacturers are utterly incompetent at engineering lasting electronics, let's not get into software that they dedicate the least paid and most desperate SwEngs to work on. Coming to an abrupt halt from cruising speed on an highway is a common failure mode I've seen more than once dictated by insane ECUs programming, for example. I'd like to believe miniaturization and just maturity in the industry will make those sort of issues less prevalent for newer cars, but I'm not hopeful about it.

It's literally illegal.

In the EU, it's illegal to sell cars that don't have back camera, not beeping if seatbelt not fastened, and not beeping if speed limit is exceeded.

Backup camera is also required in the USA, along with the seatbelt chimes.

Our new car beeps constantly for unclear reasons and doesn't explain why. It's not helpful and I'd like it to stop.

Try buckling all your back seat belts. Recently US cars are required to annoy you if back seat passengers are not buckled in; many (most?) manufacturers are not putting in weight sensors to see if there are rear seat passengers present; they’re just putting in seat belt buckled sensors.

Our previous car did beep when there was any weight on the passenger seat while the seat belt was unbuckled, which is extremely annoying when you just put a bag there.

Another annoying thing was that in order to use the navigation from the car, you first had to agree to obey the traffic rules or something. I already do that by participating in traffic.

I don't think this incessant beeping for every little thing, nor requiring clicking though extra screens, is useful and I doubt it adds anything to safety. It's distracting and annoying and I start thinking about why the car is beeping this time, instead of focusing on the traffic.

That's the really big problem with this design: the car should not draw attention to itself; my attention should be on the road. Also, when it does beep, it should at the very least make clear why, and you should be able to turn it off.

I remember when i was a kid and the cars started dinging when your seat belt was unbuckled, and my family (and everyone we knew) went out and bought empty buckles that just plugged into the seat belt latch, to defeat the dinging and let you drive without your seatbelt in peace. I wonder if these still work to defeat the more and more aggressive warnings.

When I was a kid, cars didn't even have seat belts in the back.

I'm all for the extra safety, but if they make safety too annoying, people will start looking for workarounds.

People will look for workarounds regardless. Some people just become irrationally incensed if you suggest that they aren't perfect. It's really frustrating. There's an entire subset of the population that lives life explicitly thinking "Rules are for everyone else and I deserve everything"

Next time you go to the grocery store look at how many carts don't get put away. The exact same people who do that will freak out and start a war if their car gets scratched by a loose cart.

Don't believe my takes? Go to a local city or school board meeting and see the utter insanity that comes from people that you will be shocked to learn are a middle manager at some company or own their own small and successful business.

Some people genuinely don't get that the world isn't about them, and I think we have drastically underestimated the percentage.

> drive without your seatbelt in peace

That’s one very stupid way to die.

You'd be surprised how many "normal" people initially revolted against seatbelt laws and protested through noncompliance. Even the people who accepted that seatbelt use was safer, refused to use them because of the usual "The Government Won't Tell Me What To Do!" mentality.

"I will endanger my own life, just to spite the government that will never know about how I'm spiting them unless I die."

I can understand not wanting the government to decide how they live their life, who they can and can't marry, how they should identify, which bathroom to use, etc. But I'd think no-cost life-saving stuff is not a hard decision. Same with vaccines.

I wear my seat belt anytime I leave the driveway but I still want one of these things.

My car can't tell the difference between a person and my backpack on the passenger seat, but it dings regardless.

We just had two teenage boys in the area get ejected through the windshield (not wearing seat belts). One died, one's in the hospital.

Wear your seatbelt.

maybe find the speaker chime and execute it live on stream.

I've had a new Toyota Corolla over the weekend, and the beeps were driving me nuts.

The car reads signs, and beeps everytime it detects a change in speed limit. If you go over the speed limit, even if its 1 km/h the car starts beeping as well.

I never drive really fast, when the car says I'm driving 1 KM over the limit my GPS speed usually is 5 below. This makes the signals extra annoying.

They should have used beeps when you're 10 or more over the speed limit or something like that so you don't get spammed with notifications all the time. The system being as it is, I'm 100% sure I will get it removed by a tuning shop.

I noticed this ~5KM/H difference between my GPS and the speedometer of a Toyota 2014 model. I checked and it had to do with liability apparently[1]

https://www.reddit.com/r/CarsAustralia/comments/10d4g0b/spee...

It has always been common for cars to estimate your speed a bit on the high side, because there's always a margin of error, and that way you don't accidentally go over the speed limit while thinking you're still below it.

But for a car to start beeping (or worse, interfering), they'd better use that margin of error in the other direction.

I can't stand all the beeping. It is wild how police are so against using mobile phones while driving (and they are right) but allow all these other distractions to run rampant in modern cars and distract drivers.

How we allow massive touch screens in Tesla's and other modern cars is beyond me.

I normally drive a 15 year old car, and recently traveled and had to rent a car at my destination. This thing was infuriating and constantly annoying in so many ways. I had to return the first one because I couldn't figure out the touch screen (!!), and the replacement I got just beeped and booped constantly for reasons unknown. I couldn't even figure out how to use the radio. It kept asking me to log in (to what??) just to use the nav system.

Of all the signals of "I'm getting elderly," who knew I'd first start feeling like this from trying to use a car?

I'm in my 30s and I'm the same. Also the touchscreen reflecting the sun in my eyes is a source of annoyance.

My toyota is constantly beeping.

I especially love the collision detection that goes "BIBIBIBIBIBI" and the screen goes red saying "BREAK NOW!". All of this happens regularly when I'm dodging parked cars in small streets at very low speed. The message appears about half a second too late anyway (assuming I have instant reaction time, which I doubt). I'm glad it doesn't break automatically at least.

Also it reads speeds signs but it has no idea when they no longer apply, or doesn't read the new one, or reads a speed sign from an adjacent road, or sometimes just imagines it.

My volvo DID brake automatically and it pissed me off multiple times.

That sounds awful. Especially since not once the alert triggered when it should have.

Note that this is only for when buying new cars - used models can still be sold and bought without these "niceties".

The next car I am going to buy is probably going to be older than my current one.

> The next car I am going to buy is probably going to be older than my current one.

I've also come to this bizarre conclusion. Cars are rapidly regressing. I currently drive an '09, and yearly maintenance costs have begun to approach the value of the car. I'm not sure how long I can economically keep it on the road, but what would I replace it with? A '24 Driving-IoT-Nighmare?

Grass ain't always greener.

Depending on your locale, you're going to need to replace all suspension, steering, exhaust, frame peices etc. on that 09' car you bought used for 6. Will quickly approach 20k in time and money, and at that point, most people bite the bullet and deal with new car bullshit/payments.

Also do a transmission drain and fill only not a flush which will distribute all the gunk around and mess things up.

Bought a 10 years old clio with 80k km, which needed like 500€ service when bought.

Now at 15 years and 200k km still running strong, with less than 300€ service costs yearly.

I'm jealous.

I live in salt belt in US, have a 14 year old hatchback. This year alone I have had to replace 2 of the 6 control arms, rear rotors, all pads, parking brake cable (ugh), strut/shock assembly up front , clutch and brake masters, rear wheel hubs, trailing arms. That alone is like 4k in my time, nevermind the parts or if I brought them to a shop.

last year I did clutch job, vent/purge valves, intake cleaning, timing job....easily 5k

I am very jealous you have somehow avoided these things with the Clio. Idk how mazda managed to make my hatch out of seemingly rust.

Spare parts for clios are there practically free, since it's so common - also mechanics like them, since older models are very simple to service.

Largest parts I had to replace so far were exhaust (60€ for part) last year and exhaust hatch (I don't know if that's the correct english term for that, 80€ for part) this year. Brake pads I had to change twice so far, but it was also pretty cheap.

With my mother I have a joke that rebuilding my clio from scratch would probably cost me less than tire change on her merc.

The only annoyance I have with it is that it's eating through light bulbs at annoying pace, since electricity in the older clios tends to be a bit funky. But okay, that's a 5min change usually.

Same in US: your car has externalities on others. Even if it was a one seater you'd up everyone else's liability insurance without the chime.

do you have any studies that back that up?

IMO the chime, if anything, decreases safety (it interrupts the driver's attention)

The backup camera is entirely analogue, zero computer required. All manufacturers use the same couple of camera modules which output standard composite video, which is why even nice cars have obvious analogue artifacts and distortions.

Even OEM headunits usually just consume a standard composite video input and switch to it when it has a signal.

This information is valid up until at least 2020, but it might be changing as cars get more advanced cameras and stupid-er head units. I bet Tesla just uses their existing cameras.

>not beeping if seatbelt not fastened

Also trivial to do with analogue electronics, which we have done for decades.

speed limit warnings are a dead end though. Impossible to do without some sort of technology to know what the "current" speed limit is.

Don't they sell used cars in Europe?

Hello to my fellow Saab daily drivers silently nodding their heads ;)

From what I remember of Saab, they sound perfect. Just some car that drives well and doesnt need a firmware update

All software is like its makers full of attention-whoring. Its a nasty side-effect of the "identify with your work" ethics.

Thus i propose a new job, the ux-castrator. His only job, is to traverse the software and excise out tumorous attention hogging growths and limitations based upon thee.

Back to the chasm from which you came daemon, for the user needs not see you, know you, be aware of you and your works. You are a cog and until needed by your use-case, a invisible cog add infinitum. Not a bringer of gifts, not a master-of-metrics, no, bound to the circle of usefulness for all eternity and all the dark patterns shall not have you escape the runes.

UX Castrator - i love it :) I'll try to give myself that role

The "Use feature ABC? Yes/Not now" dialog that shows up day by day until users click "Yes" increased usage of ABC by a significant amount!

Chat GPT i want you to play user on any App i start, click all the dark pattern buttons and notifications. Pretend to be interested. Fill out the surveys. Then present the app without the cruft.

Speaking of which, so many people here were wondering what specific shenanigans Google was getting at with forcing Gemini into google workspaces.

Well then they go on a superbowl ad and brag about "millions of people using Gemini"

Ladies and Gentlemen: You ever fake metrics for a commercial? I haven't.

I doubt it's tied to the commercial "millions" is probably easily met through the search blurb "AI overviews" or people who have accepted it on their phones or google homes

It's usually a product-management failure that causes this. If you make your UX sufficiently invisible your department becomes invisible, and you get de-prioritized for promotion.

Management by metrics makes this worse, by forcing staff to game the metrics.

> just want a luxury car that is grand, silent, feels nice, is nice to drive, and doesn't blast my eyes with screens.

'92 BMW 325IS. Coupe. Strait-six. RWD. 5-speed Manual. Cornered like on rails. Never once suprised me with a random shift at a dangerous moment. Had a great little trip computer. No screens. No bluetooth. About 7L/100km. I took it skiing. I took it rock climbing. It drove me to my exams. It drove me to my first real job. I slept in it more than want to admit. It had 320,000km on the clock when i had to sell it.

It was full of little optimizations, like how in fifth the speedo and tac would match each other. Or how the center console was angled about 25 degrees towards the driver so all the buttons were equidistant. Or how the armrest perfectly matched the shifter and the stiching on the steering wheel was positioned to give grip in the thumb hooks. Biult in germany, the dash was so simplified that it didnt have mph on the speedo, nor did it even have the letters "kph" or "rpm"... just numbers on a black background. If you need to be told which is which, you dont deserve to be driving such a car.

If you are listening BMW: I would pay a premium for a new biuld of that car. Everything i see at your dealerships, all your plastic cars, are total junk.

The 94' 316i was my first car! Loved it.

Of course you get some issues with 33 year old cars. I let my 31 year old mx5 go but slightly regret it - it needed ~£3000 spent to renovate but then they keep their value as classics. Getting replacement parts can start getting tricky.

Hah, did it fall apart from rust?

Well, not exactly fall apart but there were rust holes you could see through. It would have needed at least some welding to get through the mot and ideally a fair bit of bodywork stripped back and replaced.

> It was full of little optimizations

Sounds almost as if the car was designed to cater for the user of it that holds the responsibility of hurtling a metric ton of metal at unnatural speeds instead of being a living room on wheels. Who'd have thought of such revolutionary ideas.

"Modern cars seem to be absolutely terrible.”

Agree. OP should have just bought a 10yo Corolla.

I drive a 3yo Corolla. While it does have the touch screen, it also has physical buttons both on the steering wheel and on the panel.

Well, the volume knob for the car audio, while physical, is actually digital so it's uncomfortably laggy.

I only use the touch screen to interact with the navigation (it integrates with Android via USB).

They just don’t die. My 16 year old one seemed end of life 10 years ago and when I holed the sump, I was resigned to getting it wrecked.

After driving it for a few months it didn’t die so I took it to a mechanic. I got told off for my dry sump technique and told not to do it again. It got a new pan and some oil, that was it. It’s done 5 or so years of light service since. It’s been stolen, carried masses of firewood, too many dogs and too much concrete.

Great car.

Heh ye I would also be a bit moody as a mechanic if someone gave up over such a simple repair and kinda did 10 year of motor wear in 4 trips.

To your defence it is kinda hard to know what problems are simple problems.

Next time just glue a piece of aluminium on the inside of the old sump with JB Weld or a similar type of heat-resistant epoxy. Been there done that after my wife holed a few too many sumps by driving her Skoda over overly high obstacles. The first time she did this I could follow her track in the tractor to where she parked the car for me to tow it homes, the other times were out in the bush - she's a veterinarian which takes her to places where roads are afterthoughts. I just swapped between sumps, repairing the freshly broken one in wait for another turn. That car has been sold and she has not yet managed to hole the current one but I know from experience this works just fine.

Is there anything you can’t fix with JB weld? The stuff is amazing.

> They just don’t die

Because they only have features of 90s car, not 2020s car. It's just shockingly bare. A lot of times coupled with dull drivers so must be some confirmation bias too.

No-one:

Manufacturers: "Did someone say heated seats-as-a-service?"

This one is just silly since it's not making any serious money to manufacturer.

That said we shouldn't stop car evolution because one shitty manufacturer fucked up. If you wan't one - you can always buy a Lada, they were perfect since 70s...

OK, how about Stellantis (Jeep, Citroen, Vauxhall etc) introducing adverts every time you stop your car?

https://m.slashdot.org/story/438631

My mother used to drive a 1989 Corolla until 2005, when she bought another Corolla. Both are working without issues to this day.

You mean she's not had to, checks notes, "upgrade the operating system" in all that time? /s

I mean, my 9 year old Clio drives fine with pretty basic software. Whereas when I see a Tesla on the road I try not to get too close out of fear it will do something random and dangerous.

It sort of feels like Internet connected toasters. If the add-on fails, I'd like to still toast my bread (read drive my car).

The cold weather alert especially gets on my nerves. I appreciate the heads up, but I don't appreciate the HUD crying wolf about stuff that doesn't require my immediate attention.

This is my biggest bugbear with VW (and related) cars. The "it's below 4ºc" message has the same warning tone as messages about tyre pressures, engine malfunctions, etc.

I'd be more worried that you already know how an engine malfunction alert sounds like!

Oh I'm very familiar, I've not had a good experience with my Skoda Karoq!

Mine is the "grab your steering wheel" alert when the lane-keep assist does too good of a job staying in the lane and it doesn't receive any steering input from me for too long of a period.

I do have to say that after test-driving a number of different vehicles before buying my Taos last summer, that I appreciate that VW continues to use real buttons for most inputs - although I do understand a number of their other vehicles use capacitive touch buttons.

Drives me nuts. It's so loud in my Mazda.

Oh, and in the winter, if the front sensors are iced over, it has the worst ear-stabbing incessant EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE... sound at low speeds until I go out and fix it. I have not found any other way to shut it up. It might be at high speeds too, because it is so awful that I cannot not go out and fix it, so I'm not sure. Luckily it hasn't happened yet where I couldn't stop somewhere.

There was a good (?) video on the subject the other day, it was mainly about Volkswagen / VAG but highlighted the software problem.

Cars are / were basically Frankenstein monsters under the hood, with dozens of onboard computers / chips all needing to work independently yet collaboratively and talk to each other. VW set up a new subsidiary and hired 3000 people to build the car software system of the future, reducing the 70-odd computers to 3 or so.

But we all know software, it uh, didn't go as planned.

Anyway, iirc Toyota or Mazda, one of them, was at the forefront of bringing regular buttons back to cars. And I hope there's going to be new car companies that iterate on the thing again and build simpler cars again. It should be a lot cheaper too, because it feels like they bolt on more and more electronic features to try and upsell the car. Building a car with the features and numbers of 30, 40 years ago should be doable at a fraction of the cost. And that development is coming actually, but it's coming from the likes of China and India. It's not profitable to bring them to the west though.

The BMW G20 3-series before and after the facelift[1] perfectly exemplifies this issue.

[1]: https://cdn.bmwblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/bmw-3-ser...

EDIT: top is after, bottom is before.

I'd take the bottom picture any day. Is that the newer or older one? Although the LED strips are stupid.

The top pic I saw in the showroom and I really didn't like it.

In the name of $DEITY: WHY? I would pick without thinking the car without the child tablet attached to it, too. We will be forced to switch to this kind of stupid cars by regulation, or planned obsolescence, not by choice.

Not entirely regulation and planned obsolescence but because cost. Coding in the climate controls on the touch screen has a fixed cost that doesn't really increase with each car built. Adding multiple physical buttons, does. Even if each button costs cents to make.

Note what did not change. The pedals and steering wheel are identical. Someone at BMW still knows what quality means.

That box sticking out of dashboard is one of the most retarded things I've ever seen in a German car.

I'm afraid a lot of the tech is either necessary by law or necessary to get a decent safety rating these days, so you can't make the simple cars from yesteryear.

Now, screens aren't required by law or safety ratings, but there's no getting around having a lot of software in there, and thus a screen to configure all that stuff.

Sure, but a screen, even a touchscreen, is not mutually exclusive with buttons. My Toyota has both, and after setting up the navigation, I can go the whole way and do everything without touching the screen.

Reversing cameras are required by law and they need a screen.

And are required by law because people with big SUVs kept running over their own children when backing out of driveways.

"Regulations are written in blood"

Oh, you're right!

For new cars in the US (they're not required at all here in UK)

EU requires them too

Backup sensor suffices, unfortunately.

Not EU wide. At least in Spain, entry level cars don't have neither camera nor sensors

All newly sold vehicles in EU need to have either reversing camera or sensors starting from July 7, 2024

Indeed, thanks for the correction

Should front facing cameras be required by law (in USA) too? The bonnet height of USA vehicles appears to be adult shoulder height. If you're 5ft/150cm tall or under they're lethal.

I have a 22 Miata with all options, which is about shortest hood you can get in the us.

The vehicle HAS A front facing camera, it takes up a huge portion of the front windscreen. There's no way to see an image from the front camera.

Is it there to....To tell me if i'm...about to crash? it has no automatic cruise or anything. Absolutely puzzling.

Another gripe about this car; "car play" works about half the time. Maybe. 20 percent of the other half, whole display freezes until I restart the car. Mazda can't figure it out and what am I gonna do, lemon it?

mye 15 year old other mazda hatchback connects to bluetooth instantly as soon as i turn the car on and begins to play music.

I have a ‘21 Miata with the same gripes. The CarPlay situation got slightly better with an OS upgrade last year – now it only crashes about 10% of the time, and 75% of those recover on their own without needing a power-cycle.

The lack of adaptive cruise is baffling. We test drove a ‘15 CX-something-or-other in 2014 and it had the ability to brake automatically (dealer was very interested in demoing this feature). I assume it also had adaptive cruise, so it’s wild that a 6 years newer sports car wouldn’t have that feature.

Mind boggling. I've had the same OS update applied, reflashed, etc. Still the same an I stopped chasing it :(

When it comes to mazda it's hard to understand why they do the things they do. We can only be happy they haven't turned miata into a crossover yet.

Great car!

Probably. Could have two classes for forward visibility, one that didn't and one that did.

I wouldn't make the camera a free for all though, it makes sense for pretty good direct visibility to be a design priority (so the camera would be required on cars that had okay but not great forward visibility and it wouldn't be allowed to build anything else).

General purpose computers and touchscreens are much cheaper than analog counterparts today.

Getting the software right is hard (and thus expensive), which is what traditional physical product companies have a hard time figuring out.

Auto programming is the prime example of Conway's law.

Like, you have 10s of critical applications that you want to keep simple and not crashing or bugging out. So, just give them each a computer.

No way for the shitty wiper department's buggy ECU to ruin your day in the brake ECU by blocking all the hydraulic lines. You can even put them on different CAN buses!

Even an economy car from 15 years ago will have 2-4 CAN buses for this reason.

> reducing the 70-odd computers to 3 or so.

What are they even counting as a 'computer' to get to 70?

I know that in the door there's going to be a microcontroller, to connect the buttons, the lock and the window motor to the CAN bus (or whatever it is they use these days). Is that a computer? Are they proposing to get rid of it?

Ideally yes because if the microcontrollers can be replaced by a central macro-controller computer you can then update it all more easily. You make the whole thing more software defined.

Which is the problem. A lot of separate micro controllers will probably never need an update. We have now had microcontrollers in cars for decades, and they almost all worked fine without updates. Its only recently, with the more software defined systems, that we have needed updates.

To add, I recall a fair proportion of ARM's sales (as per annual report) were for automotive use, so we a lot of this were processors that compared well to what you would have run a desktop on a decade earlier so reasonably sophisticated systems potentially, just kept simple by being single purpose.

I'm not in a position to know but from reading around a lot I think the VW ID3/4 ended up having a nightmare update scenario because early hardware was buggy.

I know from working at a phone company that hardware absolutely has bugs and it's only reliable as long as you're changing very little. If you start having a system where you're trying to optimise everything e.g. to save power when not in use and allow lots of customer choices in how things work then you're going to choose new microcontroller hardware and software and it will have bugs that have not been ironed out over the years.

The stories I read about ID3 updates going wrong were about certain controllers not successfully acknowledging their firmware updates. So I can see a strong temptation to make it all vertical - to have control over everything so you can ensure it works before you order 200k of them. Instead of having 60 suppliers all providing their interpretation of your bus protocol, each with unique bugs you take the whole thing into a single design.

I can also see it being far more conducive to have a smaller number of bigger and more homogeneous microcontrollers each of which might not be perfect for every job but since they're all the same you only have to provide 1 software update solution and you can test the shit out of it.

And you will then multiply the amount of wiring needed because everything departs from the main computer.

It's much easier to run a communication wire and a 12V wire, and have a microcontroller control the sensor/motor

And when that macro controller computer eventually (inevitably?) dies, it will hurt the wallet immensely.

> What are they even counting as a 'computer' to get to 70?

When I worked in the industry, we had four different CPUs of different architectures on one small (fit in your hand) circuit board, each running its own software and communicating with each other via buses on the board. This was for controlling one single function in the car.

Strictly speaking, I would say that single circuit board was 4 separate computers. It quickly adds up.

It's ridiculous that any of these things need microcontrollers. My first car's door had a little joystick that physically moved the mirror around, presumably using pushrods or something. The door lock was a physical device you moved up and down, and had a motor connected (power door locks were fancy). It also had cranked window controls, not so nice. But power windows didn't need a computer either.

We keep taking things that worked fine without a computer, adding a computer, and ending up with all the problems of a computer but with little extra benefit to the user.

> presumably using pushrods

It was probably using stepper motors, with the pulse train being generated by a microcontroller.

No, there genuinely used to be purely mechanical mirror controls. You'd twiddle the little joystick and it would more or less adjust the mirror, in a way that at least in my experience was slightly imprecise and rubbish, but definitely didn't demand any electronics.

The video in question: https://youtu.be/74E-eAxQ9P4

Mazda is pretty great actually. I have a CX30 (3 years), where the screen is not sensitive and everything is controlled with mechanical buttons...

The best of both worlds...

Same - really happy with my Mazda CX-5. It has everything including Lane Assist and Adaptive Cruise Control, and it just works.

> It then gave me 2 notifications about some assist features not working and rear warning not working or something, idk.

It told you the blind spot indicator isn't working anymore which is relevant safety information.

I think google's prev ceo once said something like, "Computers should have been invented before cars". They took it wrong, computerizing cars before reaching level 5 automony was a mistake.

I spent 2 * 1 hours in a 'fresh' car some time ago, it was a nasty experience. It had all these 'backseat driver' functions, like trying to figure out and then misjudging somehow what the speed limit currently was or trying to influence where on the road I place the car, as if it could know better than I do what would be appropriate.

The 'lane assist' was just absurdly awful, it only figured out where the car was sometimes, when it could 'see' the line on the edge of the road clearly enough for long enough, and then pushed away from it under the assumption that I don't have a precision of a few centimeters in relation to it. So once it suddenly pushed the car closer to a heavy truck during an overtaking. And it's not needed, since the edge lines are rumble strips or you feel the tire slip off the asphalt into gravel.

It was also obvious that the screen in the middle section ('infotainment'? idk.) was designed by a junior on a huge monitor sitting right in front of them, because the clock was really small and in the upper right corner. Took me a minute to figure out how to make it stop incessantly send out visual noise about what was on some radio channel even though I had stopped the playback from it. It's for good reason many cars has dark orange LCD and not bright off-white on light blue gradients, for one it's a nuisance when the light outdoors is dusky or misty.

This was an Opel, don't remember which one. Next time I hand in my friendly relatively low-tech car from 2006 for repairs I'll bring a friend to drive me instead of borrowing another one of these disgusting Scrum cars.

>like trying to figure out and then misjudging somehow what the speed limit currently was or trying to influence where on the road I place the car, as if it could know better than I do what would be appropriate.

These "features" are now mandatory in the EU so you can look forward to a lot more cars implementing them as they try to sell global cars.

Where I live it's a common hobby to tune and style cars, so I'm hoping these people will have figured out how to make future cars tolerable when I'm forced to move off the old school machines. Maybe it'll be possible to switch out the ICE for another powertrain, without at least some of the annoying christmas lights.

> And some of these notifications block the navigation and require interaction to close. While driving!

/rant For some reason, some idiots, piece of crap human beings, think that it is ok to bombard you with notifications, with no way to make them go away. It is everywhere: on phones, on TVs, on cars.

Dear SW coders, please, read human interface guidelines from Apple from 20 years ago and X user interface guidlines.

Do not draw transient windows without an OK or Cancel button. /end rant

I have the same car and the thing I like most about it is that it doesn't have a giant screen and looks more like a traditional car. I can't say I've had the same issues (or any issues besides the slow infotainment system). I do agree that the amount of notifications are excessive but that seems to be the case with all newer cars.

It all doesn't quite work well enough to justify all the new tech. My 7 year old car is pretty good, it has a small 8 inch screen which does car play/android auto and has nice buttons and dials for all controls. No distractions!

Ineos Grenadier, they make them like cars used to be made with real buttons and stuff.

I have SOS Inoperative in car. Contacted the dealer, it seems like it can be software issue - where update will fix it… But I have to pay for it. Pay for a software bug!

For me it's just another stupid notification to close after getting in car, just after "no seat belts fastened in rear" - yeah, 'coz nobody here!

Giving me notification about unnecessary things, but when one module failed and got car in limp mode - nothing showed, I was just shocked when car couldn't accelerate as expected… during overtake. Yeah, safety.

Try Lexus

They’re primarily US market cars, they just BONG all the time instead!

I test drove a Lexus NX350h and RX350h not too long ago, and modern Lexus cars also have an issue of taking fancy tech too far:

- By far the worst part of the current Lexus design is the steering wheel controls. Instead of physical buttons dedicated to one function, you get two four-way touchpads on the steering wheel. They don't have a fixed function since they can be customized and have two "pages" each - you have to look at the HUD to see what function they're mapped to. Even if you know what they're mapped to ahead of time, you still have to touch the controls to "wake" them up on the HUD and can't simply just click the button. It's a complete hassle if you want to skip a song or adjust cruise control speed.

- The climate controls are almost entirely touchscreen based. The temperature controls have a knob but they're quite mushy and don't have well defined steps.

- The doors are no longer physically controlled inside or outside, but instead are electronically controlled with buttons since this is linked to safety sensors to prevent someone from opening a door in front of a car. I honestly think the door controls are fine, but this is something that pretty much every review complains about.

On the other hand, regular new Toyota models don't have the above issues. Camry, Crown, etc. all have physical steering wheel buttons and climate controls.

> Modern cars seem to be absolutely terrible.

At least it doesn't steal your personal data like Smart TVs do.

Assuming this is sarcastic, since modern cars famously _do_ steal your data.

Absolutely they do

https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2024-10-09/car-brands-ar...

my 2015 suzuki is pretty analog, apart from its android auto feature

>"It's like all those Single Page Applications on the web that are just downgrades over the classic Server-Side Rendered apps. Sure, you have more features, but at what cost? Reliability."

Except the cases where there is a need to support some ancient / exotic browser this is total BS. There is no special sauce in SPA that makes it less reliable contrary vs backend rendered.

People tend to forget all the god awful server-side PHP/JSP/ASP slop of back in the day. I dunno, to me those days felt worse than today.

But yeah, bad software is bad no matter the tech used.

I wish people opened their router UI more often to cure nostalgia.

If anything the current JS-centric world view at least puts someone in charge of the "user-facing" parts.

Before you had all these backend-focused people who despised building HTML pages in charge of user experience. You know the kind of people who think the user is the database not the actual users.

Didn't you get the memo. Only Tesla can be bad.

>>(XC40 T8 EV).

Such model doesn't exist. Do you mean XC60? And if so then it's not an EV, it's a PHEV.

Anyway, Volvo made a collosal mistake of going with the Android Automotive operating system. It looks good but it's genuienly a pile of steaming crap. When Volvo had Sensus(their own OS) yeah it wasn't pretty but it was stable and it worked day in day out. I have a 2020 XC60 T8 with sensus and I literally have had zero issues with this car. But the new AOSS models? Oh boy, the main advice on facebook Volvo groups is to just start your drive by hard resetting the system to avoid freezes during operation(!!!!!). If you don't have GSM signal you don't get maps since the car doesn't store them locally anymore. The cars randomly lose cameras, sound stops working until full reboot, and whenever there is an OS upgrade(which is often) you have to roll the dice on what else it's going to break today.

>>I just want a luxury car that is grand, silent, feels nice, is nice to drive, and doesn't blast my eyes with screens.

Honestly find the same car but with Sensus instead, you will find the experience a lot more like what you're looking for.

XC40 was renamed to EX40 in 2024 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volvo_XC40.

There is an EX40, that's the EV model. But the XC40 still continues to be sold:

https://www.volvocars.com/uk/cars/xc40/

The wikipedia link literally quotes:

> In 2024, Volvo renamed the battery electric XC40 to the Volvo EX40, aligning it with newer battery electric models such as the EX30 and the EX90.

Which makes me think Volvo sold their cars with the old name but other engine options, electric being one of them. They split "XC40" into "XC40 (ICE)" and "EX40 (BEV)".

The XC40 T8 EV does exist. I know, because I owned one. It was a 2022 model I think, got it late 2021. The renamed it a few times after that. I basically had one of the first XC40 EVs on the local market. I ordered it before they were in the showrooms.

EDIT: I looked up the invoice; they called it a "XC40 Recharge Level III P8 BEV AWD AT". I think it had a P8 TE badge ("Twin Engine"). So it wasn't T8. I got it Sep 2021. It was also the first model with the Android system.

Was just going to suggest it was a P8: T8 was the hybrid system used on 60/90 series.

I disagree with that. I really like the Android infotainment system because 1) voice control actually works and 2) built in Google maps is all I want in a car and they work very well.

As far as I can tell the issues they have had is with their poor software engineering team and picking extremely mediocre hardware that is too slow to run it.

>>1) voice control actually works

English is not my native language so I'm yet to find a car where this works. But it's not a problem with the car, it's Google's voice assistant being useless for anything other than English sounding names. I can say "Google call Janusz Zawadiadzki" and there's exactly 0% chance it will work. It just can't do it. Don't get me started on it trying to read texts that aren't written in English when the system language is set to English, it's hilarious.

>> picking extremely mediocre hardware that is too slow to run it.

It freezing and losing sound and generally being in all kinds of non-operational state isn't due to the hardware being slow, it just doesn't pass muster for automotive-grade software which should never exhibit any of these behaviours no matter what.

I'd be pretty surprised if any other voice assistant would do better in this instance. I can't speak for how useful it is outside of English but I am fairly confident whatever the manufacturer comes up with would be much worse.

Regarding the freezing and all the other issues, I've not experienced any of that at all. It's been rock solid for me. We didn't buy it at release though which is maybe why we have such drastically different experiences. We have also bought a used one for about 50% of the original cost which is why is another reason I'm probably more forgiving than you, if you had purchased it brand new.

My Renault Megane e-Tech has Android and it was far better than whatever the other cars used.

One point Renault did right was use beefy enough hardware. They went[1] with an automotive Qualcomm Snapdragon, while it seems Volvo and others went with an Intel Atom.

All I know is it's smooth like a good tablet.

While voice recognition is not perfect in Norwegian, it was also by far the better one. A lot of room for improvement though, like if I say "call Merete" it won't find my contact named "Merethe", which is pronounced exactly the same here.

[1]: https://9to5google.com/2021/09/06/android-automotive-renault...

> yeah it wasn't pretty but it was stable and it worked day in day out.

I've driven a V40 with Sensus for 10 years and noticed a 'watchdog reboot' while driving _twice_. Which means the map goes out and comes back in a few seconds; the digital gauges run another OS (QNX I believe) and remain rock solid...

As an owner of a 2020 V90CC (which was the last of the Sensus models), I have to disagree. I’m never buying another Volvo based purely on the terrible software experience that Sensus provides. Only being able to use half the screen for CarPlay, random crashes, features that simply don’t work, map updates that are permanently “installing”, blasting me with 1-2 seconds of radio at full volume at random when I’m playing from my phone.. zero acknowledgement from Volvo on the issue (we can’t replicate it).

I’d take the android auto version any day, but I’ve just replaced the car with a different brand. Unfortunately you can’t escape the relentless notifications and beeps no matter what the brand is these days, but at least the software is stable in the new car.

I just want CarPlay and for the car to get out of the way. Where’s the CarPlay 2 vehicles? They can’t come fast enough.

Ha, it's funny how everyone has completely different experiences it seems. I've owned my XC60 for over 5 years not and literally genuienly had zero issues with this car - software or hardware wise. Never had a single software crash.

>>Only being able to use half the screen for CarPlay

I don't know, that just never really bothered me? I use the built-in satnav anyway since it's necessary for the hybrid system optimization to work.

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