Comment by jballanc | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jballanc | Hacker News Reader

As interesting as the idea is, I don't think the analogy with Darwinian evolution quite holds. In order for something to act as a selective pressure it needs to actually exert pressure. That is, just simply saying, "Well, if it weren't that way, then certainly someone would jump in with an alternative" doesn't work as an explanation because it's never happened. Taking it back to biology, it's as if someone asked "Why don't we have 3 eyes?" You could come up with all sorts of reasons why 3 eyes might be worse than 2, but until someone is actually born with 3 eyes and has trouble surviving because of it, none of your reasons would be valid selective pressures.

Edit: As to the original question, I imagine the right answer is something more along the lines of: where to place the fuel door is considered rather unimportant, and so left until last. At that point, it goes wherever it will fit...

Most manufacturers put the fuel door on the opposite side from the exhaust pipes. Also, even though it may not seem like a specific side would make any difference in the performance of the car, but when the tank/door are on the opposite side from the driver it keeps the suspension more balanced than if it's on the same side. As such, many performance cars have the gas cap on the right

I think you're right that such pressure has not been applied via market selection, in that a carmaker has never been advantaged/disadvantaged by its choice of fuel door sides.

However, merely realizing that such counterplanning would be possible, should a bias to one side emerge, does provide pressure in a game-theoretic sense. It makes any attempt to synchronize a car fleet on one-side self-defeating, even in the thought-experiment stage. So it works at the level of conscious strategy, for any design team that even begins to consider a placement strategy other than 'whatever fits our other choices'.

You're making a big assumption that "putting them all on the same side" has ever been seriously considered or that, were it considered, the result of jamming up gas stations was considered. Without empirical evidence to support these assumptions, Occam's Razor would have me believe that it's as simple as: nobody's really thought about it (other than, as pointed out above, to balance the suspension in high-performance vehicles).

I read it as saying that the decision to standardise fuel door position has never been taken because there is no percieved advantage; only the risk of having everyone queue on the same side of the pumps. There's been no need to change this approach since no choice (left/right) has so far affected the 'survival' of a car model.

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