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I went car shopping this year in the new market and found that that if you want more a "dumb" car (UX occurs primarily outside of a touchscreen, no internet, no

• nerdponx 5y ago
  I can only imagine that there is some financial interest here. By forcing people to bundle in high-margin techno-junk, they can raise the overall profit margins cars relative to cost of living / inflation. That, and/or maybe there are high-value corporate partnerships involved.
  • prova_modena 5y ago
    You're right, car dealers/manufacturers do use options packages to increase profit margins by bundling less popular high margin features with more popular ones. The number of brands that let you spec out a new car using a truly a-la-carte selection of options has shrunk, and is now mostly confined to the ultra high end brands (which make huge margins on everything anyway). However, it's not a new phenomenon, manufacturers and dealers have done this with "luxury" or "sport" features for a long time. This has usually meant adding stuff like alloy wheels, different interior trims, better speakers etc. The difference now is the huge amount of complexity that modern "smart" features bring.
• buscoquadnary 5y ago
  So I wanted something like this when we were looking for a minivan I don't trust smart devices or vehicles as that's just one more thing that will break. So we found a van didn't have those things but my wife insisted on BT and a backup cam. So we negotiated with the dealer and they were able to make a deal with us to have their shop install a backup cam and Bluetooth for cost, and we love the van ever since. My point is that a lot of features can be put in the car after market and you don't have to deal with having to buy the whole upgraded package.
  • Vrondi 5y ago
    You can aftermarket this with a simple replacement rear-view mirror/camera kit. Easy-peasy. Or an aftermarket car stereo/ camera kit.
• symlinkk 5y ago
  It’s not some grand conspiracy lol, it’s just that they bundle features together to save on costs. Henry Ford did this a century ago by only offering the color black.
• giantg2 5y ago
  I did sort of miss losing blue tooth when switching to a newer work truck from a muscle car that had it. But it hasn't been an issue. I don't miss any of the other feature enough to pay for them (no key fob, no power seats, etc; but it has power windows and locks, so that's nice). The quality of tactile representation and response on the knobs/buttons are not as good as my old 89 caprice was. But that's true of all cars today.
  • Vrondi 5y ago
    Pretty easy to add this aftermarket.
    • giantg2 5y ago
      I don't care enough to add Bluetooth. If I do anything, I'll add a backup camera.
  • JoshuaDavid 5y ago
    If you have a cigarette lighter that you use as a USB charger, they make cigarette lighter bluetooth-to-radio adapters which also have usb slots for about $20. Set your car radio and the adapter to the same frequency, and your car now has bluetooth.
    • soylentcola 5y ago
      Mine's on a used Fit. Lighter port has a little 2x USB port permanently plugged in. One USB to phone's charging cable, the second powers a little BT receiver (and that has a 3.5mm audio out to the front input of the basic "dumb" factory stereo). I did have to spend 5 min setting up some little adhesive wire straps to bundle the little cables out of the way, but total cost was maybe $25-35 for the USB power adapter and Bluetooth rx. Granted, it wouldn't have been necessary if so many phones didn't ditch the dedicated audio output, but at least it wasn't an expensive workaround.
• ArtemZ 5y ago
• fingerlocks 5y ago
  Did you look into Subaru? They are still using physical controls for all car functionality. You can get heated seats, heated steering, stereoscopic lane keep assist & adaptive cruise control, etc. There is a touch screen, but I only use it for Apple Car Play.
  • CodeAndCuffs 5y ago
    Same for our 2021 Mazda crossover. Lcd screen but no touch screen. Just a spin/tilt/press knob for media/settings. Climate control is a dedicated physical panel. It was a big selling point fornus
    • kenhwang 5y ago
      Mazda is the only major auto manufacturer that seriously prioritizes driving ergonomics over tech gimmicks/cost savings. But gimmicks sell better.
  • acheron 5y ago
    Sounds like this varies based on model and year? My 2020 Ascent is like this, with the touchscreen only for radio/CarPlay (and backup camera), though there is a physical volume knob (yikes, touchscreen volume control would be a nightmare). But I've heard other Subaru owners say more things are integrated. I'm not sure it's strictly increasing by model year either, maybe they added some and then went back to physical controls later in some models? Anyway, yes, Subaru should be a possibility, but obviously research the specific model first.
  • olyjohn 5y ago
    My mom's Subaru has all the heating and seat heating controls on the touch screen. It's a 2022 model, so either it's changed to that, or it's part of a certain package. Also, it's one of the worst touch screen systems I have ever seen.
  • frankgrimesjr 5y ago
    Sadly, Subaru are also starting to slowly move controls onto a touchscreen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFbZ3nkhcRQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TFbZ3nkhcRQ
• MisterTea 5y ago
  > I wonder how well my car will age when miscellaneous sensor all over the car start failing. That's just it, the tech is making the cars less reliable. Will all of these bespoke parts be available in 10, 15, 20 years? I would hate to have to dispose of a working car because the dead now obsolete chip on the bespoke LCD dash module shaped like the cars dashboard is no longer in production. I had cars who's odometers didn't roll 100k miles until they hit 15 years. I have a 2002 van that has 102k miles on it. > Now as others have mentioned, these unwanted smart features might actually be required by law/regulation/tax-credit/legal-dept, so it's not bad programming/design but "design by committee" that's dooming our chances of a good dumb car. None of that requires LCD dash boards, tablets, touch screens, phone home, internet, subscriptions, etc. Everyone is just high on the concept of rent seeking and perpetual cash flows. They hate the fact that you buy something and walk away from them. They want you on a leash like a dog and they've been doing a damn fine job leash training you and your children. Opinion: Mandated lane keeping and other lane keeping/self driving safety garbage is papering over the failure of the human race to govern itself. The people who I see swerving all over the road are either selfish assholes who insist on playing with phones/speeding while piloting a 3000+ lb machine or people who should not be driving at all. Now we have TV commercials that show people diddling touch screens while driving. We have failed.
  • greedo 5y ago
    Backup cameras are mandated in the US now, so that requires an LCD screen on the dash.
    • waynesonfire 5y ago
      No it doesnt. My subaru has it in the rear view, where it belongs.
      • rootusrootus 5y ago
        It's nice if you don't want a touch screen, but a bigger screen makes a very noticeable difference in how usable the camera feed is.
      • 5y ago
• dntrkv 5y ago
  > these unwanted smart features Only within the niche HN-type tech crowd. Most people outside of this group want these features, even other techies, including myself. It's the same discussion on any thread involving smart devices. People want this stuff, that's why there have been over 200M standalone smart speakers sold. As far as why these things get bundled, that’s just how auto manufacturing works. Every unique configuration costs an additional overhead to the OEM. Bundling allows them to reduce this overhead.
  • sho_hn 5y ago
    I'm always surprised how defeatist and negative the tech community's attitude towards computerized UX in cars is. Often the opinions are simplistic and dismissive instead of zooming into the details. It's similar to when onscreen keyboards in phones where "obviously never going to work" when now, most people probably wouldn't want to give up the screen real estate for a hardware keyboard, except even more one-note. I find it much more true that most car software simply isn't very good yet on average. Let's say most existing implementations of touch UIs in cars don't add value and are cumbersome to use, for example - but that just means they're individually badly realized, not that it's not worth trying. And in reality, it's also a much more nuanced "depending on the use case and the situation" or "impacted by bad performance". There are quality differences out there. And there's plenty of use cases in cars that benefit from a thorough software approach. This is an area with interesting problems to solve and plenty of innovation left to happen, and where hard and good work makes a mark.
    • chucksta 5y ago
      Then they are charging their buyers 30k to beta test, and leaving buyers with no other option, which, I don't think most people are comfortable with. I think it's easily identifiable to the HN crowd, because most readers are very familiar with this process and the discomfort it can cause. Then you add on the argument of what they are doing with the information, and if they can be trusted..
      • sho_hn 5y ago
• tessierashpool 5y ago
  adding a backup cam is like $20, dude. it cost me a little more to put Bluetooth, Apple CarPlay, front and rear dashcams, and a touchscreen into my 97 Honda, but it still wasn't an unreasonable amount. my other car's a 97 BMW (with far less miles on it, well under 100K) and I'll do a slightly more deluxe version of all the same upgrades once the weather gets nice. of course both my cars have power windows. the Honda interior is nothing to write home about but the BMW's all leather and wood. neither has heated seats, but I don't really need them where I live, and if I did, I'd just buy them on eBay. it'll get harder in future, of course, but for now, if you want to skip all the excess computation in modern cars, all you have to do is know a little bit about cars. it's not rocket science. what I'm really looking forward to is when electric vehicle aftermarket conversion kits become more common. you can find them for certain models already but it's very early days.
• loudthing 5y ago
  In the US in May of 2018, a federal law went into effect saying all new cars require a backup camera. This means that there needs to be an LCD screen visible to the driver for the camera. This is sort of a slippery slope as far as feature creep. Now that you have this screen, aren't drivers going to expect to see something on it 99% of the time when they aren't backing up? Actually this leads me to realize why some automakers like Ford integrate the screen into the rear view mirror, so when it isn't on, it disappears behind a one way mirror.
  • giantrobot 5y ago
    > In the US in May of 2018, a federal law went into effect saying all new cars require a backup camera. This law actually says that if a car can't meet a prescribed rear visibility threshold it needs a backup camera. Instead of make safer designs manufacturers just install cameras. But I don't disagree manufacturers are using screens as an excuse to add superfluous bullshit they'll then use for data mining. See USC 2342 Unintended Consequences, Law of. My favorite part of backup camera is manufacturers that put a warning overlay on the video telling you to watch your surroundings. An overlay that eats up some significant percentage of the screen occulting potential hazards you might otherwise see. I for one can't wait for the backup camera to display ads in the lower third. If they take up enough space manufacturers could make a mint selling personal injury and insurance ads.
    • i_am_proteus 5y ago
      note: 'proscribe' means to prohibit and 'prescribe' means to require
      • giantrobot 5y ago
        Thanks, fixed it. Don't want a misspelling to affect the effect of my statement.
        • matt-attack 5y ago
          Not enough humor on HN. Well done.
• krnlpnc 5y ago
  There are many cases where aftermarket versions of these features will perform as good or better than the OEM version. Granted, it's extra work to research and install them, but the end result can be great. Personally, I will research used cars with top end factory trim packages, looking for models with either a DIN sized radio slot or readily available aftermarket upgrades. By double checking for compatibility ahead of time you can then retrofit carplay, bluetooth, etc. into a "basic" car, for example: https://gromaudio.com/vline/index.html https://gromaudio.com/vline/index.html I also prefer to shop for used cars because I see them as more "stable" than new cars. What I mean by that is, major flaws in the model/year have been reported and ideally fixed (but are at least known) in the years since release. Common issues/symptoms and repair details are much easier to find online via forums, etc. after a car has been around for a few years.
  • flibberbit 5y ago
    Nice, thanks for sharing Vline! I wish modern cars still followed that philosophy, but it's hard to find cars with DIN radio slots these days since all the electronics are so integrated into them. It feels like you'll be stuck in pre-2015 cars if you choose that. Not that pre-2015 cars are terrible, but it makes it harder to find low millage ones. I also think about the environmental impact of buying a new car. Manufacturers try to sell you on the idea that getting a new car is better for the environment but I really wonder how much fuel you need to save over the lifetime of a car to make it worth the cost of building a new one, in comparison to just fixing and older one. Who knows, maybe it's better to keep driving a '80 olds than to buy the latest ford electric truck.
• NikolaNovak 5y ago
  It's an interesting differentiation strategy though, and while cars are becoming more and more similar along some axis, there is a distinct different segmentation between manufacturers. When shopping for minivans, they all "have" comparable features. But Manufacturer A base model has no advanced safety features; you need to buy $10k of leather seats and chrome highlights to get them. Manufacturer B offers a $2k safety pack to any and all levels. Manufacturer C simply has those same safety features across all levels. Similarly, features such as Android/Apple Car/Auto play; or Sirius XM; etc. The bundling strategy is completely different across manufacturers. For us, the last three practical family cars we bought (as opposed to cars of desire:), were hugely influenced by which manufacturer had a bundling/segmentation/feature strategy that worked for us.
  • rdtwo 5y ago
    Same, I found a Rx350 to be cheaper than a highlander for this reason when I bought one used many years ago
• starwind 5y ago
  I looked at new Audi’s last year, and my main thing was I want physical gauges on the dashboard. The sales guy looked at me like I was from Mars and then showed me the stripped versions (which were, I gotta say, pretty nice) I wonder how much all the screens have contributed to the increase in accidents in the last couple years
  • el-salvador 5y ago
    I went to buy a TV a couple of years ago, and I think I got that same look from the sales guy when I said I didnt want a "smart TV".
    • rdtwo 5y ago
      Yeah good luck you gotta pay double for that feature
  • climb_stealth 5y ago
    Are you saying it is possible to buy a new Audi with analog gauges? Do you have any more details on that?
• pengaru 5y ago
  Well-built cars are fundamentally durable, long-lasting machines. So of course manufacturers are eager to sneak in anything to make a car seem "worn out" and in need of replacement sooner than later. What's frustrating is there seems to be no shortage of willing buyers eating this crap up, apparently looking forward to replacing their vehicles in lockstep with their other consumer electronics.
• tablespoon 5y ago
  > I think manufacturers are hoping that certain aspects of the modern auto become "can't live withouts", e.g. bluetooth, which helps them smuggle all the other more marginally useful, security and ux intrusive features into your model. I think that implies nefariousness that probably isn't there. It's more likely a combination of: 1. Marketing/sales wanting whiz-bang features to use in their pitches. 2. Copycatting competitors, also for marketing/sales pitches. 3. Customers that are often not aware of the downsides, have been conditioned to accept them (e.g. they'll all like that now), or are uncritically enthusiastic about shiny new things. 4. Lazy design thinking, of the kind that causes Mozilla to drop good features from Firefox. 5. Cost cutting, of the kind that causes almost all companies to consistently choose to make their products marginally worse over time (e.g. lets not pay for feature X, since the users can use a cheaper awkward workaround instead). Personally, I think we should have some federal standards for car UX: a required set of standard physical controls for commonly used standard functions (e.g. car operation, climate control, audio entertainment) and plus minimum standards for screen UIs (e.g. touch sensitivity & accuracy, UX latency, etc.). While I'm wishing, cell modems and other data transmitters should be required to be separately fused, and that the car should be required to operate without annoying error messages if that fuse is pulled.
  • KennyBlanken 5y ago
    Coupling bluetooth to all sorts of unnecessary stuff as part of a "technology package" was the mantra for Euro car manufacturers for a decade or so until bluetooth became something people expected, no matter what.
  • LeifCarrotson 5y ago
    It definitely fails Hanlon's Razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." As long as you assume "stupidity" to include stupid things about the mathematics of our universe like coordination problems, design by committee, and the tragedy of the commons... There's a very slow, very week feedback loop that may be too weak at the moment to fight against this trend: the customers who are dealing with and worry about perpetual sensor failures and computer issues at 150,000 miles are not the same customers who are buying the car off the dealership lot. Meanwhile, the people with brand new vehicles are not worried about those problems, they're only slightly (and only long after it's too late) worried about the eventual resale value. I trust that my old Toyota and Subaru will still be dependable and repairable for many years, but I won't buy an old BMW or Mercedes because my family and coworkers have too many horror stories of expensive, exotic gadgets that have gone bad in mysterious ways. But we're 40 years removed from the bad old days of the 80s and 90s when those imports were decimating the lethargic Big 3 in quality and cost, which is more like the time scale on which consumer attitudes like that began to be formed. 2018 laws regarding rearview cameras are really new in comparison to a cultural thing like that.
• jjav 5y ago
  > I wonder how well my car will age when miscellaneous sensor all over the car start failing. I predict that 50 years from now there will be more functioning cars from the 1960s than from the 2020s. With the combination of quickly obsoleting technology that won't be fixable and overly interconnected electronics that become impossible to diagnose after a while, there's not much hope for current and future cars to be anything but disposable. Old mechanical cars though, can be kept running essentialy forever by just someone with access to a machine shop and some patience.
  • beerandt 5y ago
    It's really ashame that we'll never see versions of those mechanical cars combined with the manufacturing precision and quality control available today. Sure there are one-offs and some drop-ins available, but they'll never get dialed in the way cars do after a year or two of mass production.
    • jjav 5y ago
      > It's really ashame that we'll never see versions of those mechanical cars combined with the manufacturing precision and quality control available today. The car that makes me cry a little every time on the what-could-have-been topic is the Honda CRX HF. 54 MPG in 1988. Most cars can't match that today over 30 years later. If Honda was allowed to do a modern version with some use of carbon fiber for even more lightness and all the advances in fuel injection tuning and engine manufacturing, surely we could have a ~70+ MPG CRX by now.
  • fswd 5y ago
    every month I'm breaking a sensor in my 2004 dodge. It's been about $300 every other month in mechanic fees. I've got two new ones right now. They got rid of relays and are using some kind of FET for some sensors, lights, switches. Some of the sensors are catastrophic (won't drive or drives extremely dangerous). For whatever reason dodge decided to get rid of the throttle cable and go with a two sensor and servo. If it fails, no mechanic will touch it. I took it out and cleaned it, and it just started working. Ghost in the machine.
• asdff 5y ago
  The old notion that sensors always go bad in cars was never really accurate. People would see a check engine light, get the code read and see it says "O2 sensor" and replace the O2 sensor. Then the code happens again, they say "That damned O2 sensor on this stupid car" and replace the O2 sensor again. Rinse and repeat until you get a new car. However, I'm willing to bet the O2 sensor was actually giving the correct read and was working fine, and the source of the issue is probably well upstream of the O2 sensor.
  • Tade0 5y ago
    I saw an O2 sensor go bad in my car. Only difference comparing to a brand new one was that the reading was changing very slowly. No check engine light though.
• jlg23 5y ago
  > if you want more a "dumb" car (UX occurs primarily outside of a touchscreen, no internet, no geolocation) you lose all potential for any nice non-smart features. So no heated/powered seats, no power windows, You can have all that when you buy a "good" base and get your features on the aftermarket. For the definition of "good" also consult your mechanic, he should know which cars are easy/nice to work with. I've been looking at reliable 4x4s that I can trust for daily off-road use in the outskirts of the Sahara and I currently favor a UAZ (20k Euro) base and modifications for 5k Euro (more gas tanks, proper seats, navigation and entertainment system).