by devy on 10/30/22, 3:55 AM with 378 comments
by rco8786 on 10/30/22, 11:25 AM
by MrFoof on 10/30/22, 6:54 AM
Granted, because of regulatory requirements there is STILL A MANUAL RELEASE… on the floor, near the chassis sill (and might be driver-seat only). So you save money going to electronic releases, but still have to put a manual one in anyways.
The glovebox is merely annoying (though I can think of edge case situations where it could lead to your death), but with the door release, there are documented instances where it HAS led to someone’s death: https://jalopnik.com/texas-man-and-his-dog-die-after-getting...
by BizarreByte on 10/30/22, 4:54 AM
by macintux on 10/30/22, 4:31 AM
I thought GM had jumped the shark when they started leaving the reverse lights on when you park, just to make sure people or cars nearby don’t know whether it’s safe to pass you in the parking lot. This is a whole new level of stupidity.
by squarefoot on 10/30/22, 9:23 AM
"The touch-screen-actuated glove box is terrible because it’s one of those examples where carmakers have found that they have the technology to do something, so they do it, without considering literally anything about what they’ve done. Did anybody want this? At all? It takes something that has never been a problem, opening a glove box, and added cost and complexity to the construction, and added time and inconvenience to the process. No problem is solved, but a fuckload of new problems are introduced."
Here's the gist: carmakers, as many other businesses -this can apply to pretty much every product-, need more bullet points to be shown in advertising, so they use technology to add every possible feature, including those that are technically useless but still could add points of failure because of their bare existence. I think there's no way out until people is taught how this works very early in their life, and I mean children at school, so they can use their wallets when time comes. I can't see this coming anytime soon, however, as our economy totally embraces advertising the useless.
by gorgoiler on 10/30/22, 8:25 AM
Is a robolatch cheaper, compared to a manual latch? Is there a cost saving for the manufacturer?
by quickthrower2 on 10/30/22, 6:55 AM
by permo-w on 10/30/22, 5:57 AM
by throwaway892238 on 10/30/22, 6:05 AM
by userbinator on 10/30/22, 5:39 AM
by a_square_peg on 10/30/22, 11:04 AM
... which is to say, this is all very horrible.
by neilv on 10/30/22, 6:25 AM
Is there any decent automotive company remaining?
by yosef123 on 10/30/22, 12:55 PM
Disclaimer, this is from what I heard and using common sense, but in might be completely wrong.
by bmitc on 10/30/22, 10:33 AM
by spike021 on 10/30/22, 4:38 AM
by janosdebugs on 10/30/22, 12:24 PM
by killjoywashere on 10/30/22, 2:58 PM
It makes me so happy to think the Nobel committee, which was dominated by experimentalists, when considering Einstein's contributions to science, could only bring themselves to award him the prize for grocery store door openers.
by rnoises on 10/30/22, 6:48 AM
by etaioinshrdlu on 10/30/22, 7:08 AM
by cbeach on 10/30/22, 11:08 PM
But just to play devil’s advocate here: the benefit of the glovebox being software-controlled is that it enables features like PIN-protecting the glovebox contents, or Tesla’s “valet mode” where certain car features (including opening the glovebox) are disabled when you hand your keys to a stranger.
by thih9 on 10/30/22, 10:29 AM
by malshe on 10/30/22, 3:08 PM
Did they do focus groups for this feature? Did they get responses like these?
“I hate how easy and quick it is to get the glovebox open. Can you guys solve that?”
“Is there any way to make simple acts I’m used to doing a real fucking chore?”
“How can I be sure every single tiny fucking thing on this car will be an expensive hassle to repair in 10 years?
“If the battery dies, is there any way to fuck me over even more than normal? Like, you know, hard?”
“Can you just smack the shit out of me over and over again with like a slab of roast beef, or is there some electromechanical and software solution you can integrate into the car for the same effect?”
by nikau on 10/30/22, 11:32 AM
by frob on 10/30/22, 3:08 PM
by Tagbert on 10/31/22, 6:05 AM
For things like glove box latches and door latches, just simple mechanicals please.
by bagels on 10/30/22, 4:40 AM
by nickhalfasleep on 10/30/22, 5:07 AM
Car companies, like software companies, want to go to a subscription model.
by j-bos on 10/30/22, 10:48 AM
by brandonp0 on 10/30/22, 5:15 AM
by nojvek on 10/30/22, 10:11 PM
There’s the simplicity of Toyotas that keeps me attracted to them. Although when battery dies, you can’t open the trunk in newer RAV4s. So they’re going to shit as well.
I would buy a dumb cheap electric car in a heart beat.
by JoeyBananas on 10/30/22, 5:09 AM
by Brian_K_White on 10/30/22, 8:16 AM
That Rivian was so bad I feel like it should be illegal. Who the F comes up with this stuff?
by dhosek on 10/30/22, 5:16 AM
I hope I never meet a Toyota engineer in person, because it would be hard not to do something criminal to them.
by ytch on 10/30/22, 5:33 AM
When controlling the light, temperature or others from touch-screen, I need to wait those animations and a slight delay after touch the trigger.
by rubyist5eva on 10/30/22, 1:06 PM
by tgsovlerkhgsel on 10/30/22, 12:15 PM
Want fast access, you got it. Want to lock the glovebox, you got that too.
by gaze on 10/30/22, 4:47 PM
by xwdv on 10/30/22, 5:36 AM
by DangitBobby on 10/30/22, 6:39 PM
There is no longer anything useful on the dash above the wheel. No speedometer, odometer, battery level indicator, repair lights, nothing. All of it is integrated into the infotainment unit on the dead center of the dash. Similarly, there are no knobs or real buttons anywhere on the center of the dash; it's all touch screen. All of it. I wanted to moan about it the entire time I was in the car, but I didn't want to just complain about my friend's nice new vehicle.
The F-150 lightning I test-drove similarly has all of the climate control and music controls stuffed into infotainment center with no physical knobs or dials to be found. If you read online, you will also find that its infotainment center is notoriously slow. Otherwise, it's a very nice truck.
Tesla is basically the Apple of EVs right now. Leading the way in some really interesting technology and features while causing potentially irreparable long-term damage to the health of the industry overall (think storage-tier pricing and the removal of all but USB-C ports/headphone jacks).
Edit: found this video in the Twitter thread linked in the article 1. Actually what the Cadillac is doing here (particularly with the doors) is aggregious. Tesla has added an additional step to opening doors from the outside (you push your thumb in first and then grab the handle) which is something you can become accustomed to in one fluid motion. At least it looks kind of nice and is only mildly less convenient than traditional handles. The push-to-release-pull-side-of-door-because-theres-no-handle mechanism on the Cadillac is absolutely braindead.
Seeing this video and multiple other new cars in person, I've also noticed a disturbing trend of changing the hatch opening mechanism. Before: manually open the hatch assisted by hydraulics which prop the door open until manually closed. Now: automatically open the hatch (slowly) on a button press and close it (slowly) on a button press. What's the problem here? Apart from being actually worse UX once the novelty wears off, the second mechanism is much more failure prone over the lifetime of the vehicle. The nice salesman at the Ford dealership actually told me off for trying to manually close the frunk on the Lightning because he was afraid I'd break it!
My honest opinion is that these changes all point in one direction but cut two ways. 1. Increase revenue by increasing standardization and eliminating many pieces from the manufacturing process (at the expense of UX/longevity) and 2. Mitigate the lost recurring revenue due to how much more reliable EVs are than ICEs by introducing new failure modes masked as modern features for plausible deniability.
by olouv on 10/30/22, 4:50 PM
by barbarbar on 10/30/22, 2:04 PM
by soitgoes511 on 10/30/22, 12:00 PM
by vicapow on 10/30/22, 5:22 AM
by indus on 10/30/22, 3:14 PM
by m3kw9 on 10/30/22, 2:01 PM
by paulryanrogers on 10/30/22, 6:37 PM
by dbttdft on 10/30/22, 3:18 PM
Continuing from that last sentence, a big part of the problem is that the Christian religion is all but replaced with a corporate equivalent. It's now plausible to claim someone is racist and homophobic if they don't like Apple products. This is a huge part of the issue. There is almost no criticism in media about technology. On any nerd social internet corner, you'll have a bunch of burger eating slobs who do exactly what I complained about: You'll explain that this toaster is bad because it smells like burning plastic and has holes in it that drop bread crumbs all over your counter which get blown around the kitchen. They'll respond by saying, "how dare you insult this prestigious company that only existed for 5 minutes, they are my favorite. I have never actually tried another product but this is the best because I bought it and it had a shiny thing on it and I felt so good after this purchase". Thanks to this social environment, it's basically impossible to get a good review of any product what so ever on the internet. 99.9999% of "Nerd culture" is actually just about buying stuff. Any time I want to buy something I expect to take days out of my time just to find a product that isn't severely crippled so badly that the mindless consumer will complain about it (on 1/20 review sites). Don't get me wrong, this isn't an internet problem. Most people IRL hold the same mentality.
Vehicles have all the garbage you'd expect for this demographic:
- ECU with shoddy and fraudulent software (dieselgate, uConnect, unintended acceleration)
- LEDs that flicker worse than a CRT (these are actually dangerous as at night you can't immediately tell the position of a car within a split second, which goes to show how much shits regulators give, "at least they saved a penny and some carbon emissions (TM)")
- Terrible inputs with issues like being touch screen, horrible debounce, etc
- Cheap, vain, lack of taste, glossy paint that easily sells to idiots who like shiny things and they'll even pay extra for it despite it being worse in every way
- All kinds of dangerous half working gimmicks around "steering for you" which are especially easy to upsell to idiots
- Spyware that phones home
by chmod775 on 10/30/22, 4:46 AM
"Remind me again why the brake pedal isn't a button buried in a sub-menu? Because that would be inconvenient, unintuitive, and doesn't allow quick access?
Then why the fuck would you do this with anything?"
by casey2 on 10/30/22, 11:50 AM
If you don't want it don't buy the car? I fail to see the issue.
by voidz on 10/30/22, 9:15 AM
by leogout on 10/30/22, 10:18 AM
by jonathanberger on 10/30/22, 4:50 AM
From my personal experience I probably open my glovebox four times a year. How many times do I look at my glovebox? That's much harder to estimate but I'd guess dozens. Do I like a clean looking dashboard? It was actually a major selling point for me when I recently went car shopping. People obsess about how their cars look on the outside but how things look (and thus feel) on the inside is more important.
A glovebox latch only minimally affects the look and feel but I don't find the tradeoff that automakers have chosen as obviously bad as the author.