Comment by cmrdporcupine | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cmrdporcupine | Hacker News Reader

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Truth.

Volvo's latest EX30 (and also the Polestar 4 I was in last week...) require you to use the touchscreen to just open the glovebox. How does that even make sense from a cost POV? They put in unnecessary servo motors for that? What made them think consumers wanted this? The EX30 is supposed to be their cost reduced rock bottom price car, and they wasted money on that? Screw you, Geely.

Google Maps pops up questionaires on me while I'm driving ("People reported police nearby, are they still there?")

You're seriously distracting me during my driving of a 4000lb machine at 100km/hr so you can data-collect from me? What's next? Surveys and YouTube style interstitial skippable ads when picking navigation targets?

I have no idea how they get away with this, it should have been flagged as a safety hazard. If the PM is on this forum, I'll tell you this: you should be ashamed. If I was still working at Google, I'd be on buganizer right now giving you hell.

> How does that even make sense from a cost POV? They put in unnecessary servo motors for that? What made them think consumers wanted this?

China. That's the elephant in the room.

Cars aren't designed for the Western markets any more. We tried that and lost marketshare against the Chinese on their domestic market (the only one in the world that still has growth potential), and the primary reason market research determined was that Chinese manufacturers cram their cars full of gimmicks.

So, we design our cars for Chinese bling-bling demands now because it's too uneconomical to have distinct supply chains and we get all the BS that you can't sell a car in China without.

Yeah, my volvo also wants me to do questionnaires when driving. Insane.

When I am buying a new car, I now always try to rent one, and specifically the current model year, for a few days and do various types of driving. My V60 used to spend some time in the garage and I got various new models as replacements. The new one, for instance, has a choice of two behaviours when it thinks you are above the speed limit:

- beeping - or, in order to speed above what it thinks is the limit one needs to release the throttle and press it again

The main problem of course is that its very often mistaken about the speed limit.

Another problem. The thing recently got a new major version of the infotainment system. On my 2 year old V60 it is now noticeably more laggy, for instance when bringing up the AC panel its at least 1.5 seconds before it comes up. Now what is more likely - that I will press the button and regain focus on the road, or that I will press the button, and be distracted for a second or two longer?

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