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Comment by serial_dev | Hacker News Reader

> apps as a weird Tech People affectation

Maybe I never had the right luxury brand car, but I still see it as such.

If I want to have an app for my car, I’m my opinion that car failed me to provide with a simple, convenient driving experience.

I want to get in the car, check if it’s charged / filled up enough, check for errors (as a routine, but there shouldn’t be any), and drive.

If I need to change anything (AC, light, volume) I should be able to do it without having to take my eyes off the road.

What features do you like so much that you consider them “invaluable”?

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I would say the place where I differ is here:

> I want to get in the car,

I don't want to have to get in the car to do any of this. I'm able to get the climate control started in the car by saying out loud "Hey Siri, warm up car" (a shortcut I set up exposed by the Tesla app). The location is always up-to-date so if my wife is driving the kids in it, I can see their current location and ETA. I want to be able to open the door without unlocking the car manually. I want to be able to close the trunk remotely if I carried in a load of groceries. Etc.

None of this is some kind of alien technology that Tesla invented, but rather the vast majority of legacy car manufacturer apps are just total garbage piles that were outsourced to some low-bidder somewhere. It shouldn't be that hard.

Finally I get to ask this of a real person.

How important are these things for you? If the automatic trunk motor broke, how much would you be willing to pay to fix it? What is the value difference for you to be able to heat up the car from outside the car?

My questions point towards some variation of my central question: why does any of those things matter to you in a car? The primary purpose of a car is to get me places, everything else is optional. Is it because all the cars are equally sufficient for getting you places or so you actually value remotely controlling your car higher than the cars ability to drive you places?

For myself all of those gimmicks are just more complication that can break. I value a car that is fun to drive and with minimal abstraction. It sounds like you value maximal abstraction, and that's quite odd to me. I wish to understand your viewpoint.

The only two features I use of my car app (which is also a Leaf), is to remote start the heater, and check the charge level. This car is the first one I've owned with remote heating. Is it essential? No. But after scraping ice off my car manually for 20 years, I don't ever want to go back. But that's all I use the remote heater for - de-icing.

As for battery charge level, I don't know why the various charger apps can't read that info off the car as it charges, but I'm sure there's some incredibly dumb reason for that.

(Not the person you’re replying to) I’ve never had a car with an automatic trunk motor, so I can’t answer that one, but back when I lived in the Midwest, if my ability to remote start the car to power climate control (particularly of the windshield defrost) stopped working, that definitely would have been in the “I’m willing to pay thousands to fix this” realm. In some cases, that would absolutely limit the ability for the car to get me places; you’re not going very far with a quarter inch of ice on the windshield.

In the summer, it gets closer to “gimmick” territory, but there are also totally times when interior surfaces of the car were too hot to touch, and that affects driving in its own right if you can’t grab the steering wheel.

You know you can just scratch the ice off, right?

If something is broken to the point that the car can't heat up, yet it's cold that there is thick ice on the windshield I would think twice about driving. Even if you could remove the ice.

No one said anything about anything being broken, just about the ability to remotely heat up the car before starting to drive. Having a heating and having a remote controlled heating that works with the car switched off are two separate things.

> No one said anything about anything being broken,

Yes they did. Both the guy you asked and the one he responded to.

Sry, what I meant to say was "No one spoke about the complete heating being broken. Heating is a basic requirement in a car imo. Remote-controllable, engine-off heating is not."

Many cardiac events start that way.

Dude if scraping ice off a windshield gives you a heart attack you have way bigger problems than your car not heating up remotely. Go see a doctor.

Huh?

Across decades, I've heard of many cardiac events from shoveling the driveway, but absolutely zero from scraping ice off a car windshield. This correlates to the vast difference in effort required by each action — scooping, lifting and moving tons of snow, vs scraping at a few ounces of ice (which is even easier if you let the car run a few minutes with the windshield defrost on).

Now, if we had car (not trucks setup for plowing) that could automatically clear the driveway, that would be a must-have feature in areas with winter climates...

And they could just walk.

The luxury of not having to stand in the cold reaching over the windshield scraping is worth so so so much. Add to that not having to sit in a cold car, waiting for it to warm up, is also worth a lot.

You can scrape the ice off manually and wear adequate clothing to “survive the drive”. Toughen up, dude!

Remote deicing of the windows in the winter sounds rad and more then just a gimmick.

Even with gloves on it can be quite cold to remove the all the ice from windows. Or you sit in the cold car for 5 minutes waiting for it to defrost on it's own.

And yes, if your climate control is broken I would pay to fix it.

Edit: When you share a car and have no dedicated parking spot the location information can also be interesting.

How important is it for you to have a garage door opener? As opposed to manually getting out of your car, opening it, and then closing it manually

I see these extra features as similar to a garage door opener. It is convenient and I'd be willing to pay to fix it if it ever broke

Most people just fill their garages with crap and leave their cars outside anyways.

It's all managed by the car's computers, the complications are already there. You just don't get to control them how you like, for no good reason.

I want to chime in. I drive Skoda Enyaq (VW Family EV, think ID.4) and have all these gimmicks. I ruled out a Model 3 because at that time it didn’t come with some of these features like notarized trunk etc.

I have my car on a schedule and it automatically heats up, turns on the seat heaters and defrosts the windshield. By the time I leave the house I have seither a snuggly warm car or pre cooled car. That is a huge time saver for me. One annoying part on this car is the fact that the LED headlights don‘t defrost. It sounds like a real first world problem but when it’s real cold outside and the car warms up etc I need to manually scrape the ice from the headlights. I would pay some money to get this „fixed“…

Pro tip: a sealable plastic sandwich bag filled with boiling water from the kettle. Rub it on the ice; watch the ice vanish extremely quickly.

Will try that next winter. The other annoying part is the fact that I back in reverse in my parking spot. So I usually don‘t see the headlights. I realize that something is off when I‘m already on the road.

For things like remote heating or auto trunk operation, the cost I’d be willing to bear is gated mostly by how much the delta to just buying a new car would be. Especially since having kids, a lot of this stuff makes my life a lot easier. If I’m trying to carry a crying toddler and a large bag of groceries into the house, I don’t want to be struggling to try to get the trunk closed. Being able to completely de-ice the car from inside while I’m getting kids dressed for school instead of needing to spend an extra five minutes doing it manually is likewise huge.

The Tesla (like any EV I’ve driven) is also fun to drive, but I’d trade away the instant torque for the other features if you made me choose.

Having used a car for many years, I suppose these things are nicer than not having them, but they also sound like the kind of features I’d come up with if you said to me, “we already developed an app for our latest car model. What should it do?”

They're nice to haves for ICE vehicles. Pre-heating an EV cabin before departing, when the car is plugged in, increases range by a lot. Turning charging on and off via lets you take advantage of low electricity rates.

Ok, that makes a bit more sense, especially since I have not owned an EV.

> Pre-heating an EV cabin before departing

Cars have been doing this for a years now with a keyfob. But I suppose over network/cell gives you greater range.

> Turning charging on and off via lets you take advantage of low electricity rates.

I would have thought that'd be a feature of the charger, not the car, but not an EV owner so maybe I'm just wrong here. That does make more sense for an app, but also sounds like a feature that could work fine without one too.

> But I suppose over network/cell gives you greater range.

Useful if you're charging in the parking lot at your work, or at a mall or whatever.

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