6 ms·

It's disappointing to me that there's not a manufacturer leaning into a market for people who don't want big screens and spyware in their ride. In every thread,

It's disappointing to me that there's not a manufacturer leaning into a market for people who don't want big screens and spyware in their ride. In every thread, I see a lot of people who share my concerns, but they don't seem to manifest as an actual consumer class to be catered to. https://twitter.com/jazz_inmypants/status/1381783956383760386 https://twitter.com/jazz_inmypants/status/138178395638376038...

rahen 4y ago
Dacia does. The Spring and Sandero are hugely popular in Europe as no-frills cars.
- globalise83 4y ago
  Seconded. Their 3rd gen Sandero and new Jogger (basically Sandero Stepway estate version) are really great value for money, and have physical controls for almost everything important.
- cheschire 4y ago
  "Great news!" -James May Joking aside, I wonder if it's a difference in much pride is tied to cars in USA vs Europe, or if there's the same amount of pride but just fewer predatory loan offerings allowed in Europe. Is it a legal limit, or just people unwilling to commit to 8 year loans? I suspect if there were some government mandated limit of 5 years on car loans you would see no-frills cars take off like gangbusters in the USA as well.
  - nicbou 4y ago
    It varies wildly, but I think that credit is perceived and granted differently in Germany, compared to Canada. Where I live, we also need to drive less than in North America, so many of my friends don't have a driving license. I'm tempted to say that cars matter less here - they're usually parked out of sight - but I bike to a different neighborhood and there are young guys in pristine luxury cars cruising around. If you visit a different part of the countries the composition of cars changes too. It definitely varies according to nationality, too. Perhaps it's a function of culture, insurance prices and petrol prices.
  - dublin 4y ago
    There are three groups of people buying high-end cars that might require a 5+ year loan in the US: 1) The independently wealthy, who don't finance anyway, but pay cash (unless the manufacturer offers 0% financing - never turn down a chance to use someone else's money for free...) 2) Those who want to keep up appearances with their richer friends (often in group 1), but are financially savvy enough to lease rather than finance a loan, especially since they would not be caught dead in a five-year-old car. This is by far the largest group, and why there is (or has historically been) such huge depreciation on high end luxury/sports brands, excepting Lexus. 3) The group who really wants to fool people into thinking they have more money than they do, and actually takes the idiotic road of financing a depreciating asset in such a way that they will be perpetually "upside down" on it, and responsible for horrendous maintenance and repair bills once the warranty period is up.
jdvh 4y ago
I got a Mazda for this reason. Physical buttons for everything and carplay for navigation+spotify. Best of both worlds. Infotainment has touch screen when stationary, but while driving it can only be operated by voice and console buttons/wheel.
- robin_reala 4y ago
  This is what I was going to reply with. Mazda’s viewpoint is that using touchscreens is dangerous while driving, so they specifically deactivate it above around 5mph. Surprisingly this works fine with Carplay: the navigation dial moves a focus outline through the various focusable elements of the screen, then a press to activate it. Fine for me as the driver, absolutely infuriating for my partner as passenger.
  - freedomben 4y ago
    > Mazda’s viewpoint is that using touchscreens is dangerous while driving, so they specifically deactivate it above around 5mph. My Ford (which brand I will never buy again by the way) disables much while driving as well, which is utterly infuriating for the passenger. If they think it's "safer" then they didn't do much research because it just leads to us using our phones instead, which are far more distracting. Thanks for mentioning this about the Mazda. I had considered looking at one for my next purchase, but I'll look for something less tyrannically paternalistic and full of misplaced self confidence and hubris.
    - scohesc 4y ago
      May I ask why you're turned off by Ford?
      - freedomben 4y ago
        Yes absolutely. I bought a practically brand new vehicle from them (Expedition) and have had all manner of crazy breakages, and even the dealer can't fix them properly (but will still charge me $2,000 for the "repair" even if it didn't actually work). Just the top things: 1. The backup camera faults out about 40% of the time. Usually it gets riddled with digital artifacts that make it impossible to see important details (like was common when watching video files under weak hardware during the 90s/00s). This becomes a major problem when backing up to a trailer hitch or backing into a tight parking spot. I took it in twice to the dealer and the first time they said they couldn't find anything wrong at all (and charged me a hefty diganostic fee) and the second time they said the camera was bad and replaced it (for almost $1,000). Within a few days the new camera was glitching like the old. 2. The Throttle Body fails every two years and has to be replaced (which is not cheap). When this happens also, it enters "limp mode" which essentially leaves me stranded wherever I happened to be when it decided to die. Unlike an older (and better) vehicle it doesn't give me the owner/operator (who has to pay the bill) the option of saying, "I accept the risk and command you to run." I lived in Alaska for a few years and this could literally be a death sentence to somebody if it happened in the wrong place. As much as I hate the inconvenience of the design, I can't even imagine the rage and hate I would have after freezing to death because it refused to operate. 3. The blower motor stopped working, so Heater and A/C don't work. This is at best highly uncomfortable (and when paying $40,000 for a new vehicle, is unacceptable), but at worst it's a major safety issue. In the winter time the windshield and windows will fog up and I can't clear them. The dealer has replaced nearly every part involved (blower motor, resistor, etc) at $700 per pop, and it never fixes it. Utterly infuriating. 4. The bluetooth is awful. I frequently have to pull over to the side of the road and reboot my vehicle in order to fix the damn radio. It's like having a windows 95 powered car. 5. The physical controls for the rear heater/AC (which does at least blow unlike the main) are broken for some inexplicable reason. 6. The tail light bulbs burn out every few months and frequently need to be replaced. It's not terribly hard but I have to get out my tools and take off the tail light to change the bulb. Takes about 15 minutes but I'd much rather do something else with that time, and I hate randomly becoming a cop magnet every time one burns out. There's more, but I am weary and must stop.
arthurofbabylon 4y ago
The layers of separation between stakeholder interests (what does the customer want?) and operating behavior (what gets built?) is fascinating. In this case, I wonder what the story is. Ideas... - Feedback loops are very slow to close in auto design/manufacturing, widening the stakeholder-execution gap. - I have the impression that disconnected, unaccountable "futurists" lead auto design and obfuscate real human needs - Classically, there is a big gap between what people say they want and what they're actually willing to pay for What else might be contributing factors?
- natch 4y ago
  People with a bias, working for publications that take massive advertising dollars from the auto industry, design biased tests and publish them, is one contributing factor. But then consumers who imagined all sorts of problems with a system sit down and try the system in real life (not in a contrived test) and they find they surprisingly like it and it works very well.
- dfxm12 4y ago
  Cost - as others are pointing out, it costs a lot more (in time and money) to design a physical interface, and then you can't deliver updates if there is an error, so you gotta really take the time to test that everything works. The other is that, when it comes down to it, consumers probably care more about other things, like price, MPG/range, exterior styling, brand loyalty, etc. This means that even if the car has a sub-optimal UX, customers will still buy it (because the positives outweigh the negatives).
- LittleAnaconda 4y ago
  There might just not be enough demand overall to justify creating lower tech versions of cars. Similar to how car enthusiasts tend to like manual cars. The economies of scale for companies just often isn’t there to create manual versions across multiple models of cars. It should in be easier to create low tech versions of cars (no need to have an entirely different transmission) so perhaps this is a flimsy reason.
the_snooze 4y ago
I bought a 2020 Honda Civic hatchback a while back and found it reasonably designed. There's a small touchscreen for Apple/Android integration, but the car itself has no internet connectivity, and the center console has plenty of physical buttons and knobs to control sound and climate. Honda said they're not too keen about touchscreen-mania [1], but that seems to have gone away in more recent model-years (at least based on what I saw displayed at a recent auto expo). https://www.thedrive.com/tech/32797/long-live-buttons-hondas-not-sold-on-touchscreens https://www.thedrive.com/tech/32797/long-live-buttons-hondas...
- Pasorrijer 4y ago
  Just a note, this is because in the 2016-2017 Honda Civic Hatchback, they went all in and buried all the physical buttons and knobs for sound and climate in the touchscreen, and got major negative customer feedback to the point where they brought them back.
  - ihuman 4y ago
    Which functions were buried? All the images I can find of the 2016/2017 model have the same sound and climate controls as the 2020. The only major difference was that they replaced the capacitive buttons next to the touch screen with real buttons, but I think that happened before the 2020 model. The 2022 seems to have the same controls as well, but rearranged (and the touch screen moved farther away)
    - Pasorrijer 4y ago
      All the climate control was in the touchscreen. No knobs, only a button that took you to the climate control screen, but you had to change all the settings on the touchscreen. (Looking at the photos, you could change the temperature but nothing else. No fan speed, A/C, etc.) The capacitive slider for volume seems fine, until you realize it was implemented entirely in software, so if the touchscreen hadn't finished booting, or was slow because it was too cold, that experienced extreme lag. Since the steering wheel buttons ALSO didn't work until the touchscreen booted, it meant if the wife was listening to music super loud with the windows down at night, when you turned the car on in the morning it took about 10s to be able to turn the volume down.
lastofthemojito 4y ago
I don't think we can expect manufacturers to lean into this. They care about sales. It seems like regular folks are more impressed by whiz-bang, "wow, this new Bronco played a video of beautiful scenery on its HD screen when I got in" than, "hey, this car's button layout is just like my last couple of cars, there won't be any learning curve". The automakers know which trims and options have sold best and presumably they're competent at interpreting this data and catering to the whims of the market. It may make more sense for regulators to get involved. "Include physical buttons for commonly-used controls" is a clear common-sense goal, although I'm not sure which things would qualify as commonly-used. And of course automakers could maliciously comply - maybe Tesla would bury tiny controls in the bottom of the center console or something and just keep focusing on touch-screen controls and minimalist dashboards.
- briandear 4y ago
  Definitely don’t want government involved in car UI design. Imagine if government dictated that phones must have BlackBerry-style keyboards. Even the FAA doesn’t go that far. Speaking of aviation, avionics is where UI gets really good for the most part. The Garmin G1000 is nearly perfect in my opinion — powerful tech with great hardware controls that are easily to use when task saturated in difficult flying conditions. Car makers could learn a lot from Cirrus, Garmin, and Embraer.
  - lastofthemojito 4y ago
    I guess you might say that you don't want government further involved in car UI design. They're certainly involved already with plenty of regulations around speedometers, the familiar "PRNDL" shift order, etc.
    - a9h74j 4y ago
      Just a thought, incentive-wise. Could part of the motivation for automakers to use touch-screens involve regulatory risk? It is one challenge to freeze requirements within a companies own process well enough in advance. It is a risk to have those requirements changed from outside. And what if regulators start to assume touchscreens and lower cost of implementation.
lallysingh 4y ago
http://ineosgrenadier.com/ http://ineosgrenadier.com/ is probably what you're looking for.
dailykoder 4y ago
I just want a "dumb", but good and kinda long-range EV.... (that's affordable somehow) I don't need any big screen or surveillance things. I just want to drive, with a little music and that's it. Nothing more nothing less. Maybe navigation, but even that is not necessary. I have my phone, which works fine.
- liotier 4y ago
  A basic Bluetooth interface to the car amplifier and microphone, a sturdy tablet stand that takes multiple sizes... And that's it - cheap and future proofed. ... But no way to keep the commercial relationship going after the sale - huge downside, for the manufacturer !
- WorldPeas 4y ago
  i'd wanted a bollinger for so long for this reason. shame they were 125k and now only make industrial chassis
- CountHackulus 4y ago
  Kia Niro EV. It's basically just a car but with EV systems. I've owned one for 2 years now. The newer ones have slightly larger touchscreens for Android Auto/Apple Carplay but there's buttons for everything. The Hyundai Kona is basically the same thing but I don't have one to compare.
troyvit 4y ago
I'm hoping for two things, and I mean "hope," not "expect." The first hope is for the growth of aftermarket mods that electrify internal combustion cars.[1][2] They don't save you money right now but maybe costs will come down. They'll never be as slick as the OTS stuff. The second is even more distant, and that is for the right to repair to extend to cars so that we can safely mod all the software that comes with a modern car. Then, at least if we don't want it we can turn it off. One bright spot though is a massive growth in non-car transportation. I work by the window in a lower middle class neighborhood in a small town and I already see all kinds of cool e-bikes, scooters and hell-knows what whizzing by the house. No room for awful electronics on those, they're just wheels, motors, and helmets. Here in Colorado something like that would serve 80% of my transportation needs. Maybe renting a car for the other 20% becomes more of an option. [1] https://www.electric-cars-are-for-girls.com/electric-car-conversion-kit.html https://www.electric-cars-are-for-girls.com/electric-car-con... [2] https://canev.com/ https://canev.com/
dotopotoro 4y ago
Probably we are like linux users. In total, over whole globe, we make up quite a sizeable number, but in each geographic location we are still a rare breed (not enough to get the enough momentum).

rahen 4y ago

Dacia does. The Spring and Sandero are hugely popular in Europe as no-frills cars.

globalise83 4y ago
Seconded. Their 3rd gen Sandero and new Jogger (basically Sandero Stepway estate version) are really great value for money, and have physical controls for almost everything important.
cheschire 4y ago
"Great news!" -James May Joking aside, I wonder if it's a difference in much pride is tied to cars in USA vs Europe, or if there's the same amount of pride but just fewer predatory loan offerings allowed in Europe. Is it a legal limit, or just people unwilling to commit to 8 year loans? I suspect if there were some government mandated limit of 5 years on car loans you would see no-frills cars take off like gangbusters in the USA as well.
- nicbou 4y ago
  It varies wildly, but I think that credit is perceived and granted differently in Germany, compared to Canada. Where I live, we also need to drive less than in North America, so many of my friends don't have a driving license. I'm tempted to say that cars matter less here - they're usually parked out of sight - but I bike to a different neighborhood and there are young guys in pristine luxury cars cruising around. If you visit a different part of the countries the composition of cars changes too. It definitely varies according to nationality, too. Perhaps it's a function of culture, insurance prices and petrol prices.
- dublin 4y ago
  There are three groups of people buying high-end cars that might require a 5+ year loan in the US: 1) The independently wealthy, who don't finance anyway, but pay cash (unless the manufacturer offers 0% financing - never turn down a chance to use someone else's money for free...) 2) Those who want to keep up appearances with their richer friends (often in group 1), but are financially savvy enough to lease rather than finance a loan, especially since they would not be caught dead in a five-year-old car. This is by far the largest group, and why there is (or has historically been) such huge depreciation on high end luxury/sports brands, excepting Lexus. 3) The group who really wants to fool people into thinking they have more money than they do, and actually takes the idiotic road of financing a depreciating asset in such a way that they will be perpetually "upside down" on it, and responsible for horrendous maintenance and repair bills once the warranty period is up.

jdvh 4y ago

I got a Mazda for this reason. Physical buttons for everything and carplay for navigation+spotify. Best of both worlds. Infotainment has touch screen when stationary, but while driving it can only be operated by voice and console buttons/wheel.

robin_reala 4y ago
This is what I was going to reply with. Mazda’s viewpoint is that using touchscreens is dangerous while driving, so they specifically deactivate it above around 5mph. Surprisingly this works fine with Carplay: the navigation dial moves a focus outline through the various focusable elements of the screen, then a press to activate it. Fine for me as the driver, absolutely infuriating for my partner as passenger.
- freedomben 4y ago
  > Mazda’s viewpoint is that using touchscreens is dangerous while driving, so they specifically deactivate it above around 5mph. My Ford (which brand I will never buy again by the way) disables much while driving as well, which is utterly infuriating for the passenger. If they think it's "safer" then they didn't do much research because it just leads to us using our phones instead, which are far more distracting. Thanks for mentioning this about the Mazda. I had considered looking at one for my next purchase, but I'll look for something less tyrannically paternalistic and full of misplaced self confidence and hubris.
  - scohesc 4y ago
    May I ask why you're turned off by Ford?
    - freedomben 4y ago
      Yes absolutely. I bought a practically brand new vehicle from them (Expedition) and have had all manner of crazy breakages, and even the dealer can't fix them properly (but will still charge me $2,000 for the "repair" even if it didn't actually work). Just the top things: 1. The backup camera faults out about 40% of the time. Usually it gets riddled with digital artifacts that make it impossible to see important details (like was common when watching video files under weak hardware during the 90s/00s). This becomes a major problem when backing up to a trailer hitch or backing into a tight parking spot. I took it in twice to the dealer and the first time they said they couldn't find anything wrong at all (and charged me a hefty diganostic fee) and the second time they said the camera was bad and replaced it (for almost $1,000). Within a few days the new camera was glitching like the old. 2. The Throttle Body fails every two years and has to be replaced (which is not cheap). When this happens also, it enters "limp mode" which essentially leaves me stranded wherever I happened to be when it decided to die. Unlike an older (and better) vehicle it doesn't give me the owner/operator (who has to pay the bill) the option of saying, "I accept the risk and command you to run." I lived in Alaska for a few years and this could literally be a death sentence to somebody if it happened in the wrong place. As much as I hate the inconvenience of the design, I can't even imagine the rage and hate I would have after freezing to death because it refused to operate. 3. The blower motor stopped working, so Heater and A/C don't work. This is at best highly uncomfortable (and when paying $40,000 for a new vehicle, is unacceptable), but at worst it's a major safety issue. In the winter time the windshield and windows will fog up and I can't clear them. The dealer has replaced nearly every part involved (blower motor, resistor, etc) at $700 per pop, and it never fixes it. Utterly infuriating. 4. The bluetooth is awful. I frequently have to pull over to the side of the road and reboot my vehicle in order to fix the damn radio. It's like having a windows 95 powered car. 5. The physical controls for the rear heater/AC (which does at least blow unlike the main) are broken for some inexplicable reason. 6. The tail light bulbs burn out every few months and frequently need to be replaced. It's not terribly hard but I have to get out my tools and take off the tail light to change the bulb. Takes about 15 minutes but I'd much rather do something else with that time, and I hate randomly becoming a cop magnet every time one burns out. There's more, but I am weary and must stop.

arthurofbabylon 4y ago

The layers of separation between stakeholder interests (what does the customer want?) and operating behavior (what gets built?) is fascinating. In this case, I wonder what the story is. Ideas... - Feedback loops are very slow to close in auto design/manufacturing, widening the stakeholder-execution gap. - I have the impression that disconnected, unaccountable "futurists" lead auto design and obfuscate real human needs - Classically, there is a big gap between what people say they want and what they're actually willing to pay for What else might be contributing factors?

natch 4y ago
People with a bias, working for publications that take massive advertising dollars from the auto industry, design biased tests and publish them, is one contributing factor. But then consumers who imagined all sorts of problems with a system sit down and try the system in real life (not in a contrived test) and they find they surprisingly like it and it works very well.
dfxm12 4y ago
Cost - as others are pointing out, it costs a lot more (in time and money) to design a physical interface, and then you can't deliver updates if there is an error, so you gotta really take the time to test that everything works. The other is that, when it comes down to it, consumers probably care more about other things, like price, MPG/range, exterior styling, brand loyalty, etc. This means that even if the car has a sub-optimal UX, customers will still buy it (because the positives outweigh the negatives).
LittleAnaconda 4y ago
There might just not be enough demand overall to justify creating lower tech versions of cars. Similar to how car enthusiasts tend to like manual cars. The economies of scale for companies just often isn’t there to create manual versions across multiple models of cars. It should in be easier to create low tech versions of cars (no need to have an entirely different transmission) so perhaps this is a flimsy reason.

the_snooze 4y ago

I bought a 2020 Honda Civic hatchback a while back and found it reasonably designed. There's a small touchscreen for Apple/Android integration, but the car itself has no internet connectivity, and the center console has plenty of physical buttons and knobs to control sound and climate. Honda said they're not too keen about touchscreen-mania [1], but that seems to have gone away in more recent model-years (at least based on what I saw displayed at a recent auto expo). https://www.thedrive.com/tech/32797/long-live-buttons-hondas-not-sold-on-touchscreens https://www.thedrive.com/tech/32797/long-live-buttons-hondas...

Pasorrijer 4y ago
Just a note, this is because in the 2016-2017 Honda Civic Hatchback, they went all in and buried all the physical buttons and knobs for sound and climate in the touchscreen, and got major negative customer feedback to the point where they brought them back.
- ihuman 4y ago
  Which functions were buried? All the images I can find of the 2016/2017 model have the same sound and climate controls as the 2020. The only major difference was that they replaced the capacitive buttons next to the touch screen with real buttons, but I think that happened before the 2020 model. The 2022 seems to have the same controls as well, but rearranged (and the touch screen moved farther away)
  - Pasorrijer 4y ago
    All the climate control was in the touchscreen. No knobs, only a button that took you to the climate control screen, but you had to change all the settings on the touchscreen. (Looking at the photos, you could change the temperature but nothing else. No fan speed, A/C, etc.) The capacitive slider for volume seems fine, until you realize it was implemented entirely in software, so if the touchscreen hadn't finished booting, or was slow because it was too cold, that experienced extreme lag. Since the steering wheel buttons ALSO didn't work until the touchscreen booted, it meant if the wife was listening to music super loud with the windows down at night, when you turned the car on in the morning it took about 10s to be able to turn the volume down.

lastofthemojito 4y ago

I don't think we can expect manufacturers to lean into this. They care about sales. It seems like regular folks are more impressed by whiz-bang, "wow, this new Bronco played a video of beautiful scenery on its HD screen when I got in" than, "hey, this car's button layout is just like my last couple of cars, there won't be any learning curve". The automakers know which trims and options have sold best and presumably they're competent at interpreting this data and catering to the whims of the market. It may make more sense for regulators to get involved. "Include physical buttons for commonly-used controls" is a clear common-sense goal, although I'm not sure which things would qualify as commonly-used. And of course automakers could maliciously comply - maybe Tesla would bury tiny controls in the bottom of the center console or something and just keep focusing on touch-screen controls and minimalist dashboards.

briandear 4y ago
Definitely don’t want government involved in car UI design. Imagine if government dictated that phones must have BlackBerry-style keyboards. Even the FAA doesn’t go that far. Speaking of aviation, avionics is where UI gets really good for the most part. The Garmin G1000 is nearly perfect in my opinion — powerful tech with great hardware controls that are easily to use when task saturated in difficult flying conditions. Car makers could learn a lot from Cirrus, Garmin, and Embraer.
- lastofthemojito 4y ago
  I guess you might say that you don't want government further involved in car UI design. They're certainly involved already with plenty of regulations around speedometers, the familiar "PRNDL" shift order, etc.
  - a9h74j 4y ago
    Just a thought, incentive-wise. Could part of the motivation for automakers to use touch-screens involve regulatory risk? It is one challenge to freeze requirements within a companies own process well enough in advance. It is a risk to have those requirements changed from outside. And what if regulators start to assume touchscreens and lower cost of implementation.

lallysingh 4y ago

http://ineosgrenadier.com/ http://ineosgrenadier.com/ is probably what you're looking for.

dailykoder 4y ago

I just want a "dumb", but good and kinda long-range EV.... (that's affordable somehow) I don't need any big screen or surveillance things. I just want to drive, with a little music and that's it. Nothing more nothing less. Maybe navigation, but even that is not necessary. I have my phone, which works fine.

liotier 4y ago
A basic Bluetooth interface to the car amplifier and microphone, a sturdy tablet stand that takes multiple sizes... And that's it - cheap and future proofed. ... But no way to keep the commercial relationship going after the sale - huge downside, for the manufacturer !
WorldPeas 4y ago
i'd wanted a bollinger for so long for this reason. shame they were 125k and now only make industrial chassis
CountHackulus 4y ago
Kia Niro EV. It's basically just a car but with EV systems. I've owned one for 2 years now. The newer ones have slightly larger touchscreens for Android Auto/Apple Carplay but there's buttons for everything. The Hyundai Kona is basically the same thing but I don't have one to compare.

troyvit 4y ago

I'm hoping for two things, and I mean "hope," not "expect." The first hope is for the growth of aftermarket mods that electrify internal combustion cars.[1][2] They don't save you money right now but maybe costs will come down. They'll never be as slick as the OTS stuff. The second is even more distant, and that is for the right to repair to extend to cars so that we can safely mod all the software that comes with a modern car. Then, at least if we don't want it we can turn it off. One bright spot though is a massive growth in non-car transportation. I work by the window in a lower middle class neighborhood in a small town and I already see all kinds of cool e-bikes, scooters and hell-knows what whizzing by the house. No room for awful electronics on those, they're just wheels, motors, and helmets. Here in Colorado something like that would serve 80% of my transportation needs. Maybe renting a car for the other 20% becomes more of an option. [1] https://www.electric-cars-are-for-girls.com/electric-car-conversion-kit.html https://www.electric-cars-are-for-girls.com/electric-car-con... [2] https://canev.com/ https://canev.com/

dotopotoro 4y ago

Probably we are like linux users. In total, over whole globe, we make up quite a sizeable number, but in each geographic location we are still a rare breed (not enough to get the enough momentum).