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Comment by jjice | Hacker News Reader

I have a newer Corolla that's pretty much the absolute floor of the base model (LE with I believe minimal packages) and it has all the technology one would expect now, all while having physical buttons where it matters. Lane assist and adaptive cruise control are table stakes now.

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Indeed, I have a 2023 Corolla. The dealer didn't like it when I said "LE" stands for "Low End" as a joke (it means Limited Edition).

The technology for such a low end car is impressive. In addition to adaptive cruise control and lane keeping, the display shows the speed limit not by consulting a map but by reading the signs as you drive down the street. They call it RSA, Road Sign Assist. It also uses the camera and radar to alert when there are potential hazards (closing too quicky on the car in front, and lane changing into someone in the blind spot).

All that in a $23K car, built into that base price.

Makes you wonder. Technology usually becomes less expensive. Car companies have used it as a differentiator for years though. There are giant cost differences between like a base line Tundra and a top of the line and the mechanicals are the same; it's more price for luxury and more tech.

Seems like Toyota is about to make a big Lexus pivot in the next year or two.

2022 Corolla owner here. Mine is UK spec with “Design” trim, which is middle of the range in terms of luxuries. I love mine. It’s got enough technology without it being annoying and has everything I want. The adaptive cruise is a killer feature. Best car I’ve ever owned.

As the unofficial corporate tag line quips: 'Toyota: for when your favorite appliance color is beige'

But in all seriousness, I'll give props to Honda, Toyota, and Mazda for amazing engineering cultures. In the sense of being extremely good at optimizing trade-offs.

I always thought Toyota's LE connoted Luxury Edition and SE Sport Edition

You are right -- I just looked it up. All the same, the LE is the low-end Corolla model and I wouldn't have ever guessed it meant luxury edition.

In the 1980s, it was the high-end trim line, more or less across the board. I believe it gradually drifted down as special trim lines for different models were added until it was the base line on everything.

I think in (most of) europe, most of the safety-related features are mandatory on all new cars these days, so all these features must come on all trim levels. This does make the base model a lot more expensive then a few years back, but you get all the nice features, so that also makes them cheaper in general.

Plus people who buy cars are eating all the depreciation. I’ll glad buy your 2024 Corolla in 2032.

Are you sure about that? The sustainable operation of modern cars is in doubt, from very specialized parts and fully integrated modules, to critical software that will not be updated, to dealer keying required for most every substitute part, the era of anyone being able to run cars for 200,000 miles long after the warranty is over will soon be in the history books.

I haven't seen any evidence that the "reliable" car brands are trying to change that dynamic moving forward. I think we are seeing a change in consumer behavior that leads to increased demand for new cars, but that is not connected to the reliability of the platform of the long term maintenance requirements.

If electric cars are actually simpler like all of these experts keep telling us, then in the next 3-5 years, we'll know which models are living up to expectations and which ones are not aging as gracefully.

The other thing to consider is the "old" batteries. If I can buy a used Nissan Leaf and harvest the batteries for a home-storage project after the frame kicks the can due to rust or some other problem, then I'm essentially able to keep those batteries as a form of equity on the vehicle. We also will see new companies popping up to address these home-battery conversion projects with plug and play harnesses to drop in your car batteries after the vehicle is no longer worthy of use on the road.

Sure, batteries will also continue to come down in price across the board, so that calculation also needs to be considered, but we're in this interesting middle zone where a lot of used EV value is being left on the table because the business market hasn't quite kept up with the demand for the next step in the lifecycle of modern EVs.

You say this like the average age and reliability of cars hasn't been skyrocketing for years.

Toyota offers a 10-year warranty on new cars, which would have been unthinkable 20 years ago.

You can't update the infotainment, but the engine controls have remained modular because it's simply too hard to convince people to buy truly unrepairable cars. Tesla did it, and once people realized that gently tapping a Model 3 was likely to total it resale values plummeted.

My mother drives a 12 year old car. If you don't use it much and have a parking garage cars are pretty much indestructible.

The average age of cars on the road is about 13 years!

2006 Tacoma's are selling for like $5k less than their original MSRP!

~20yr ago the Koreans were offering 10/100k as a "we stand behind our product" signal.

Honestly, I don't like this trend. Some of these features - like lane keeping - encourage/enable distracted driving. Meanwhile the necessary sensors make cars so expensive to repair that they're becoming a disposable good. As my driving instructor says: If you need a lane keeping system to keep your car in a lane, you shouldn't be behind the wheel.

Lane keeping is also tremendously dangerous, if the system gets confused on e.g. construction sites. I hated how much I had to fight the car not to swerve into the huge barriers running along the middle of the original road layout.

Like many (many) things, it is all about the implementation - not all lane keeping assist thinks it knows better than the driver.

The problem is knowing which lane keeping assist systems are good and which are not. Every dealer just treats it as a 'checkbox' item and implementations vary by model and year.

Had a Kia loaner a few years back that to my surprise tried to actively kill me by repeatedly steering into oncoming traffic on a provincial road. I really prefer steering myself to last-second correcting a temperamental computer.

There's no way in hell I'd buy a car nowadays without at least a weekend rental.

There's too many random dumb features. (Hyundai/Kia's coffee break notification?)

Pretty much all the manufacturers have that now. I'm skeptical that it works, but it definitely tackles a real problem with drowsy drivers.

The problem with Kia's implementation is that it can't be turned off.

> The problem is knowing which lane keeping assist systems are good and which are not. Every dealer just treats it as a 'checkbox' item and implementations vary by model and year.

Yep, I agree.

I used to travel to my parent's home 300km away once a month, and changing from a 2010 no-assist car to a Tesla Model 3 with AP (not FSD) back in 2019 was a game changer. I used to drive there on a Friday evening after work, and I basically collapsed into bed when I got there. With AP I was still tired of course, but also still functioning and way more alert. In my experience Tesla's AP UX is very good: chime when engaging, chime when disengaging, you don't need to look at the screen to know the state you're in, and if you touch controls it lets you know (via chime) and deactivates.

One of the most horrible UXes for me has been on a new Hyundai i10 with the basic lane assist (and I know it's very similar on a new VW Golf that my cousin is leasing):

- there's no chimes, you're forced to look at the screen at the center of the dashboard

- said display is 100x400 (or sth similar) 16-color pixel screen in the center of the dashboard

- out of said display, you need to look in the very corner for an icon of 10x10 pixels that can be yellow, green or white (which under low backlight/high contrast conditions can be tough to decipher)

- lane-keep is on by default at every car start, and tends to butt in on twisty roads (very common where I live), so half-way through a turn you'll feel the steering wheel literally lose force-feedback, while you're still applying force, and swearing ensues

- someone thought that constantly reminding people of the speed limits was a good idea, so the car will scream incessantly at you for being 50.1 over 50

- but will happily let you change lanes and re-engage auto-steer automatically (you need to manually enable this) while doing 120km/h on the highway without any hint that it's re-engaging automatically

- the speed warning is yet another setting that you can turn off at runtime, but you can't persist properly

- auto-steer, after is manually engaged, will stay happily engaged even after you leave they highway and are at very low speeds, and will try to correct you when doing roundabouts

I think the Tesla UX is way better there, and I think regulatory bodies should start preventing things like the i10 assist to be sold to customers, because they're actively dangerous. I've literally had minor heart attacks due to the lane-keep butting in on twisty roads - I thought the front tires were slipping for some reason.

I was driving until not long ago a VW with all those systems and, while less pleasant than the current Audi, I never met any of those inconveniences you met. Yes I know sample size, but... So, lane assist had zero visuals involved - activated or not activated, and giving your wheel a soft bump in that direction (it never tried hard turns, for better or for worse). The downside is that construction sites with colorful lines would indeed confuse it, so you'd either press the disable button, or keep your hands on the wheel (wife complained about it, but for me it was acceptable). The Audi handles construction sites perfectly, so far (soon a year). Speed limits meant on both cars only a visual some place, so you could ignore it (Audi highlights on the HUD the speed limit). So all in all, I believe Hyundai f'up it big time, or something got really wrong in that car - a perfectly good reason to give it up either way.

Lane keeping assist helps when trying to use the increasingly complex infotainment systems to do simple things like adjust seat warmers.

A lot fewer people should be behind the wheel than is currently the case in most countries. Unfortunately in the world we live in we need to make do with less than perfect solutions for this.

I agree, and I think we're in a dangerous middle ground between fully engaged driving (manual transmissions) fully automated driving. It's hard to evaluate the net impact of these features, but I would not be surprised to learn that lane keeping actually results in more injuries and deaths due to distracted driving than it prevents

I'm very happy that the "base model" of cars now has a lot of the modern tech. Not because I'd personally buy a base model, but because its what you get whenever you travel and need to rent something.

In the past, when traveling, I'd be shocked at just how bare the rental cars were compared to my normal home experience. Fortunately that's no longer the case.

I have an acura Integra and a Toyota Highlander. Both have most of the capabilities as standard except stopping for obstacles/traffic lights and making lane change or turns. They can detect vehicles around it and follow the one in front. Theoretically once you are on the highway/interstate they can drive themselves.

Tesla Model 3/Y will includes Lane Departure Avoidance (a reactive safety feature that nudges you back if you accidentally drift over a line), it just will not actively steer to keep you centered

Yeah, I rented a Corolla recently which was about as basic as it got - and within less than 90 seconds of entering the vehicle/driving I had everything I needed figured out.

CarPlay was trivial to pair up. Screen resolution was meh, but otherwise it Just Worked(tm).

Adaptive cruise was trivial to turn on and read the indicators for.

Lane keep assist was also overtly obvious - both if it was on, and how to turn it on/off.

The A/C controls were nice easily understood knobs and buttons.

Blindspot detection was standard, worked great.

Overall just a very intuitive vehicle.

Can you remove the modem or sim card to prevent it from phoning home without disabling these features?

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