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Comment by anon7000 | Hacker News Reader

Mazda has done a great job at this so far, very minimal screen which automatically just shows CarPlay, and buttons for all the normal car stuff, which also isn’t overdone. The only flaw is the scroll wheel to interact with the screen, which is just slightly too clunky in apps with too many options

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My 2017 Mazda cx5 refuses to not play the radio. There is no "off" for the audio, you have to choose a source. I use my phone, via bluetooth. But sometimes, for unknown reasons, the car does not connect with the phone. It then falls back to the last source chosen before BT, which is radio. Okay, so I created a flash drive with an mp3 of 30 seconds of silence, played that, then went back to bluetooth. This failback strategy worked one time, then it also failed to recognize the flash drive, and failed back to radio, again.

I will never want to listen to the radio. I would love to remove radio as an option. I would love to have no fallback as an option. But no, the car just f-n loves the radio and will not stop trying to force it on me.

Oh yeah, and the radio is buggy and could get stuck if I tune into the wrong station. https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-60333765.

This car definitely tries too hard to be smarter than it is. There's all sorts of exceptions that keep the doors from auto-locking when I walk away, and I would turn all of them off, but I can't. Walk away too fast? doesn't lock. Open the rear? won't auto lock. Car just doesn't feel like it? doesn't auto-lock.

And god forbid you hit the unlock button when the passenger has already unlocked it. Anxious beeps from the car for several solid seconds. That is not an error condition!

Performance and reliability have been great though. They just need to stop trying to be smart. They're not.

Long pressing the source button turns off audio and keeps it from turning on automatically on the next start. This at least lets you explicitly decide when you want music.

Ah yes, Mazda. The car company which won't even give you a fuse box diagram, and instead says to contact the dealer if a fuse blows.

https://www.cx90forum.com/threads/fuse-box-diagram.172/

Something foul and malign is afoot at Mazda these days.

While not dramatically better, just a few posts down[0] someone paid for the "Welcome to Mazda" service manuals/program for $30 and shared the fuse box schematics

[0] https://www.cx90forum.com/posts/2706/

From the perspective of Mazda being malign, it's not the tiniest bit better.

Use the volume button as "functional on/off" for the radio.

I have tried that (not on a Mazda). The radio is still there playing whatever and if there is a valid station the now playing song has to be shown on the other useful screen. On I got the system to default to radio off, but that means I can't control my heated seats w=ithout turning the system on - there are several seconds of noise between getting the system on and it responding tol the volumn knob.

I think making manufacturers pay you back the whole car in a recall, or half the car and you keep it, for this kind of crappy design, would be a good thing (especially since I am sure the firmware is code signed lolol). Oh no more Matsuda or GM because they went bankrupt from fines and restitution? Cry me a river, sucks to suck cutting corners lol.

Re: radio always turning on, my LDV eDeliver 9 is the same but worse - sometimes the radio comes on immediately, and sometimes it takes about 20 seconds. You can’t preemptively mute it in the latter case. There’s lots of other weird quirks with the radio (e.g. going into reverse switches to a low-volume radio if you were previously playing music or a podcast in CarPlay). It’s as-if almost any change in the audio switches the radio on. Other than that, it’s a great van!

MG has exactly the same issue. Default to radio for some weird reason and no real "off" without disabling the whole system.

Mazda also managed to squander a huge brand and structural advantage by falling into lockstep behind other Japanese automakers in underinvesting in EV manufacturing infrastructure. Now they have to rely on their JV partner Changan to lead the way in producing EVs, giving up the core structural strengths that Mazda previously had in designing and building their own components - including software and controls, which in the Changan-led models have no continuity at all with Mazda's domestic models. They just superficially copy the Mazda exterior design language while wholly dependent on Chinese supply chains (and some Android Auto for the software, it seems) for manufacturing the actual EV.

A lot of people still don’t want or can’t really afford EVs given their limitations. I’d say it’s the majority where I live. I directly know only one person who has a full EV (not a hybrid).

I don’t think the Japanese automakers have squandered anything, yet.

We paid maybe a $10K premium for a used EV truck. It gets 2mi/kWh. Most parts of the country are paying ~ $0.125 per kWh, so that’s &0.06 of a dollar in electricity per mile.

A comparable truck gets 18mpg mixed. At $3/gallon, that’s $0.16 per mile. So, the price premium pays back after 100K miles. That’s comparable to milage driven during a long car loan.

I ignored oil changes, tax breaks on used cars, and picked the form factor where EVs are the least economical.

It’s still basically break-even.

For commuter with charging access at office or home EV makes sense. For me making 300+ mile round trips with no charging infra (pull in at the gas station in the foothills) and low overall mileage EV is trickier.

If that’s your common use case (with no stop on the destination side of the trip), then it’d limit your options to high range vehicles.

There's a stop, it's just in the middle of nowhere. 20 minute charge would be annoying but survivable assuming they had them in say Lone Pine. And yeah, 20 something mpg and 16 gallon tank multiplies out to a large range.

You're in luck! There's a dozen Superchargers available right in downtown Lone Pine: https://www.plugshare.com/location/60596

Including supply and generation, we pay $0.148 / kWh, and yeah, I average $0.06 charging my EV at home on a slow, inefficient 120V / 15A. (Some day I'll upgrade, maybe.) I've never charged anywhere else (except for free at the used car dealer where I bought it.)

We make a ~180 mile trip roughly once / month and could charge on site as we always stay ~2 nights, though probably slow 120V / 15A charge (aka Level 1). My current car would probably be pushing it, range-wise, but I definitely think for the vast majority of our usage, we could be using only EVs if we got one with a 300+ mile range (based on 100% battery usage.) From what I've read some EVs (like mine) struggle a bit below 15% and start to run in "limp" mode.

China is currently making affordable EVs, though they might not meet (American) expectations of things like range. There’s no reason why traditional automakers couldnt be doing the same had they not focused on larger ice vehicles, hydrogen, or the luxury market.

Hopefully they figure it out because I love my Mazda 3 hatchback and would buy an EV version of it in a heartbeat. Not only is it very fun to drive (I have a manual transmission) but the interior design is excellent.

Mazda's target market is quite different from the EV buyers one, at least here in Europe.

Its reputation is that of a brand for people who really like cars, who can appreciate the care put into proper engineering and a wonderful manual transmission; or people with an eye for a "conservative" kind of quality. It's basically the new Volvo, but sportier.

While that might affect their market share in HN neighborhoods I assure you Mazda is making money hand over fist selling their boring non-hybrid SUVs to normal people. People love them and they sell.

They have a low single digit percentage profit margin. That is not making money hand over fist, that is barely surviving.

https://www.mazda.com/content/dam/mazda/corporate/mazda-com/...

That doesn't seem unusual for automotive. What number were you expecting to see?

It's not about unusual, just that a low profit margin in a volatile industry is (with a downward trend in sales for almost 10 years), by definition, not making money hand over fist. That is why their market cap graph looks like this:

https://companiesmarketcap.com/mazda/marketcap/

Mazda’s operating margin is higher than Walmart’s (along with many others). I think hyper scalable sectors like high tech and finance distort our OM expectations.

Operating margin is irrelevant, only profit margin matters for this context. Walmart hangs out in the 2.5% to 3.5% range, not materially different than Mazda. Either way, any business with a low single digit profit margin is not making money hand over fist. It might be different if Mazda had such a huge and loyal market share that their low profit margins are offset by low volatility of expected future sales (such as with Walmart/Costco), but that isn't the case at all with Mazda.

Their expectation is that their sales will be stagnant at best, but probably decline for the foreseeable future.

I know Mazda makes good boring SUVs, I own one. I like Mazda's design philosophy, that's why I want them to succeed. In terms of vehicles sold, Mazda's sales peaked in 2017, the year before I bought my most recent one. As best I can tell, operating profit peaked in 2016.

Mazda maintained their relevance and independence by operating their own center of design, engineering, and manufacturing excellence in Hiroshima, and exporting the results to the rest of the world, since at least the 1960s. As I mentioned, that thread is now broken as far as EVs go, with the Changan JV making EVs for Mazda. China is now producing excellent EVs that surpass the capabilities of ICE cars at a fraction of the cost/price, thanks to continuous improvements in LFP battery technology. China also dominates solar, which (together with the batteries) solves the grid stress issue for large EV deployments in most regions of the world. Together these exports are likely to disrupt Japanese, US, and European ICE exports and energy markets throughout the world, no matter what tariffs the US chooses to enact.

Mazda and the rest of Japanese companies slept on it, led by Toyota's trust in the hydrogen-powered future that didn't materialize, even while Panasonic had the best batteries in the world. The time to invest in these platforms and technologies was 15 years ago - now they will have a far harder time financing this and finding technology development partners. Sure, they can survive - not thrive - on existing ICE exports for a while, but they will face a shrinking market and stronger headwinds - and are likely to lose their independence, which is what allowed them to design great cars. Don't believe me? Look into what's going on with Nissan (which squandered an even bigger lead - the world's first mass-produced EV).

> underinvesting in EV manufacturing infrastructure.

This has been a fantastic decision, as a large number of EV manufacturers have gone bankrupt.

I bought a Mazda3 a few months ago and I love it. It is exactly what I want as a driver.

I even adore the scroll wheel and wish it could be in any car I own in future. Yeah it takes slightly longer to do certain actions in CarPlay, but I can do it so much more safely than I could in the Civic I had before. The infotainment boots basically instantly; as you mentioned CarPlay starts itself, and the patronising-but-mandated “don’t use this in motion” warning dismisses itself. In the Civic I would be half way down the road already by the time it booted, blindly prodding at the screen to try to dismiss that warning so I could pause the podcast that started playing itself because I plugged my phone in.

And, while my 2022 car predates the stupid auto-re-enabling ADAS requirement in Europe, the 2024+ models have single button deactivation. I dunno how, cause it’s supposed to require a minimum of two presses legally, but it sure makes me wanna stick with Mazda.

However that makes the upcoming 6E that much more disappointing. They’ve partnered with a Chinese manufacturer, I assume because they don’t have an EV platform of their own ready yet. Looks fantastic from the outside, but the inside is a sea of touch screens with barely a physical control in sight.

When I was doing my car shopping two years ago, I was initially considering another Mazda, specifically looking at the Mazda 3 AWD Hatchback. Their high tech features were significantly behind the other Japanese auto manufacturers. Some features like the ability for the car to automatically stay in a lane were not present.

When looking at who is doing it right, I wouldn’t put Mazda on a pedestal. They simply are behind the competition.

Generally agree but they are laying the path to enshitification. You see you can get turn by turn directions on the HUD, but only through their app where they want you to pay $10/mo for the privilege. Same for inputting addresses into their crappy nav system.

So I only use Google maps with Android Auto now, but cannot put the turn by turn display on. Also, who knows what telemetry Mazda is sending home on me without me knowing or wanting them to. Probably selling it to data brokers.

Really? I rented a cx90 with hud and with CarPlay and Apple Maps I think it had turn by turn directions

I believe I've heard the newer Mazda 3s have added the navigation into the HUD for Android Auto and Carplay. It's not in my 2020 though which is annoying.

As for selling your data, yes absolutely. It goes to Connected Analytic Services which is an affiliate company of Toyota Insurance. Toyota Insurance Management Solutions (TIMS) is another name to look up. Subaru sells your data to them as well.

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