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I wouldn't call it "woes". I have been driving an VW ID 3 since last year, it runs their custom Android OS System and should have all of the latest features. I

I wouldn't call it "woes". I have been driving an VW ID 3 since last year, it runs their custom Android OS System and should have all of the latest features. It has been quite an experience. The car is fine, basic driving functions are fine, even the driver assist features are generally fine if they are running. The software running all the displays and the "augmented" heads up display is ridiculous. The car one did shut down all displays (including speed) while driving on the Autobahn (error message: no input), I stopped in the next town, charging the car was no longer possible. I tried to find out how to do hard reboot, my wife found a thread in a forum, "leave the car with all smart keys, go at least 50 meters from the car, wait for 15 minutes". That did the trick. Sometimes the voice recognition comes on and does something weird, I have no idea why or what it tries to do, sometimes it starts a specific radio station, it has not once recognized anything I said. Some Update added a blue light glowing in front of the driver in the small LED strip, it just ominously glows for a second. It looks a bit like a warning, I have no idea what it is warning about, it just happens sometimes. Sometimes in the night the alarm starts and wakes the neighborhood, but I was able to solve that by disabling the proximity features in the smart key system. The navigation forgets that I can charge the car at home after every update. 20 kilometers before I am home it recommends I should charge for 2 hours. The UI/UX is unintuitive and ugly. It shows a lot of useless information in weird places and a lot of stuff is hard to find. The list of weird experiences I had with this car is endless, and a lot of is just just bad software development, like the issue on the Autobahn.

temac 4y ago
Some of the bugs and ergonomics problem you describe seem dangerous. The regulators should come in and ban those cars until they are fixed.
Gordonjcp 4y ago
I've been driving a 27-year-old Range Rover for a year. Sometimes I need to hold the ignition key close to the receiver in the rear window for it to lock. Sometimes I need to jiggle the steering lock a little for the flappy door to close and tell it the key is out, before it will lock. Sometimes I need to poke the "petrol flap" button a couple of times before the flap will open. Sometimes the radio doesn't really get a good signal on Radio 4 and I need to press the SEEK button on the steering wheel. The dashboard displays were fuzzy and hard-to-read, but I wiped the dust off and they were fine. They did go totally dark once when I was fiddling with the brightness control, but I turned them back on. It has never need rebooted. It has never forgotten how to be fuelled up. It has never just turned off all its electronics at speed on the motorway. The UI doesn't show any information beyond speed, engine RPM, coolant temperature and fuel level, unless there's some sort of fault indication up. I am really not convinced about buying a modern car. (My last car was also a 27-year-old Range Rover, which I still have)
- callalex 4y ago
  The crash safety of a modern car is just not even in the same world as older cars. That’s why I put up with all the jankiness. You can drive perfectly and still end up in a bad collision that was someone else’s fault.
  - Gordonjcp 4y ago
    This is sufficiently new that it meets modern crash safety standards, but is much safer than modern cars because it doesn't have all the distracting crap in it.
- txdv 4y ago
  I drive a basic 2014 jetta with an old analog media center, I really never faced an issue where the car got into a faulty state.
- doctor_eval 4y ago
  Any ICE vehicle can blow a belt, take out the power steering and brakes, and leave you struggling to maintain control, at any time. Let’s not get overly nostalgic for the incredible mechanical complexity of ICEs.
  - Gordonjcp 4y ago
    There are no cars where the brakes are powered by the drive belt. Not even the very old hydropneumatic Citroëns, with a belt-driven hydraulic pump - because they could go for 20 or 30 miles on the stored pressure in the brake accumulator. If you can't control a car with dead power steering, you can't control a car. Power steering only makes a difference at parking speeds.
    - doctor_eval 4y ago
      If you blow a belt or one of another thousand things go wrong, and the engine quits, then there’s no power to drive the steering. In a relatively large vehicle - say, a VW Amarok - power steering provides significant moment on the steering that is immediately and unexpectedly removed when motive power is lost. While the car is arguably controllable, I was shocked at how difficult it was for me to maintain directional control when it happened to me, and I’m a pretty big guy. In fact, in my case I just stalled it. The twin turbo 4cyl engine had a very steep power curve and it was easy to pull the clutch at just the wrong RPM, before the turbo kicked in. Especially if I had been driving something else. So - there’s a failure mode triggered by simple ergonomics. The combination of an unexpected stall during acceleration also presents a heavy driver workload, as I discovered more than once. The brakes are also powered by the engine and it requires very significant additional force to stop a large car whose engine has just quit unexpectedly. I’m not sure that everyone who drives such a vehicle could recover if the failure happened, say, at a busy intersection. All I’m saying is that we shouldn’t be nostalgic about ICEs. There are far more failure modes for them, all of which can lead to engine failure and subsequent controllability issues.
JumpCrisscross 4y ago
I just bought a Subaru after a week renting a Porsche Macan through Turo. It’s wild how unintuitive the Porsche interface was. It was ugly, it felt cheap and it was distracting to boot.
tibbydudeza 4y ago
"leave the car with all smart keys, go at least 50 meters from the car, wait for 15 minutes" Some engineer actually coded for this - LOL.
- dependsontheq 4y ago
  I think somebody coded for “no contact with the smart key in the last 15 minutes“ … which is even more ridiculous because the car could easily be standing at home and never leave the smart key range.
- hulitu 4y ago
  The ECUs in the car wait some time after you close the car before going in sleep mode. It's called "parking mode".
- lajosbacs 4y ago
  Tesla does the same. Mine stopped working on the highway (it let me get off it though) and on the gas station, this was its v suggested way to reset. But as this was in the dead of night in the freezing winter, I had a lot of doubts before doing this. When a guy with a crane arrived, I finally left the car and was not able to open it again.
  - dotancohen 4y ago
    This is not true. The Tesla infotainment system can be restarted - even during - by holding both steering wheel buttons for 5 seconds. I've never had a problem with it (I've never had a problem with the infortainment system, I have had other problems with the vehicle) but I've tested this while driving and it does not affect the drivability of the vehicle.
    - lajosbacs 4y ago
      That is true, it was the suggested way by the Tesla hotline after the method that you mention failed. The solution that worked ultimately was the flatbed truck...
leobg 4y ago
Ze Germans and their blue lights. Seems like that is the first thing they discuss when they design a new electric vehicle. “Where do we put the blue lights?”
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]

temac 4y ago

Some of the bugs and ergonomics problem you describe seem dangerous. The regulators should come in and ban those cars until they are fixed.

Gordonjcp 4y ago

I've been driving a 27-year-old Range Rover for a year. Sometimes I need to hold the ignition key close to the receiver in the rear window for it to lock. Sometimes I need to jiggle the steering lock a little for the flappy door to close and tell it the key is out, before it will lock. Sometimes I need to poke the "petrol flap" button a couple of times before the flap will open. Sometimes the radio doesn't really get a good signal on Radio 4 and I need to press the SEEK button on the steering wheel. The dashboard displays were fuzzy and hard-to-read, but I wiped the dust off and they were fine. They did go totally dark once when I was fiddling with the brightness control, but I turned them back on. It has never need rebooted. It has never forgotten how to be fuelled up. It has never just turned off all its electronics at speed on the motorway. The UI doesn't show any information beyond speed, engine RPM, coolant temperature and fuel level, unless there's some sort of fault indication up. I am really not convinced about buying a modern car. (My last car was also a 27-year-old Range Rover, which I still have)

callalex 4y ago
The crash safety of a modern car is just not even in the same world as older cars. That’s why I put up with all the jankiness. You can drive perfectly and still end up in a bad collision that was someone else’s fault.
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  This is sufficiently new that it meets modern crash safety standards, but is much safer than modern cars because it doesn't have all the distracting crap in it.
txdv 4y ago
I drive a basic 2014 jetta with an old analog media center, I really never faced an issue where the car got into a faulty state.
doctor_eval 4y ago
Any ICE vehicle can blow a belt, take out the power steering and brakes, and leave you struggling to maintain control, at any time. Let’s not get overly nostalgic for the incredible mechanical complexity of ICEs.
- Gordonjcp 4y ago
  There are no cars where the brakes are powered by the drive belt. Not even the very old hydropneumatic Citroëns, with a belt-driven hydraulic pump - because they could go for 20 or 30 miles on the stored pressure in the brake accumulator. If you can't control a car with dead power steering, you can't control a car. Power steering only makes a difference at parking speeds.
  - doctor_eval 4y ago
    If you blow a belt or one of another thousand things go wrong, and the engine quits, then there’s no power to drive the steering. In a relatively large vehicle - say, a VW Amarok - power steering provides significant moment on the steering that is immediately and unexpectedly removed when motive power is lost. While the car is arguably controllable, I was shocked at how difficult it was for me to maintain directional control when it happened to me, and I’m a pretty big guy. In fact, in my case I just stalled it. The twin turbo 4cyl engine had a very steep power curve and it was easy to pull the clutch at just the wrong RPM, before the turbo kicked in. Especially if I had been driving something else. So - there’s a failure mode triggered by simple ergonomics. The combination of an unexpected stall during acceleration also presents a heavy driver workload, as I discovered more than once. The brakes are also powered by the engine and it requires very significant additional force to stop a large car whose engine has just quit unexpectedly. I’m not sure that everyone who drives such a vehicle could recover if the failure happened, say, at a busy intersection. All I’m saying is that we shouldn’t be nostalgic about ICEs. There are far more failure modes for them, all of which can lead to engine failure and subsequent controllability issues.

JumpCrisscross 4y ago

I just bought a Subaru after a week renting a Porsche Macan through Turo. It’s wild how unintuitive the Porsche interface was. It was ugly, it felt cheap and it was distracting to boot.

tibbydudeza 4y ago

"leave the car with all smart keys, go at least 50 meters from the car, wait for 15 minutes" Some engineer actually coded for this - LOL.

dependsontheq 4y ago
I think somebody coded for “no contact with the smart key in the last 15 minutes“ … which is even more ridiculous because the car could easily be standing at home and never leave the smart key range.
hulitu 4y ago
The ECUs in the car wait some time after you close the car before going in sleep mode. It's called "parking mode".
lajosbacs 4y ago
Tesla does the same. Mine stopped working on the highway (it let me get off it though) and on the gas station, this was its v suggested way to reset. But as this was in the dead of night in the freezing winter, I had a lot of doubts before doing this. When a guy with a crane arrived, I finally left the car and was not able to open it again.
- dotancohen 4y ago
  This is not true. The Tesla infotainment system can be restarted - even during - by holding both steering wheel buttons for 5 seconds. I've never had a problem with it (I've never had a problem with the infortainment system, I have had other problems with the vehicle) but I've tested this while driving and it does not affect the drivability of the vehicle.
  - lajosbacs 4y ago
    That is true, it was the suggested way by the Tesla hotline after the method that you mention failed. The solution that worked ultimately was the flatbed truck...

leobg 4y ago

Ze Germans and their blue lights. Seems like that is the first thing they discuss when they design a new electric vehicle. “Where do we put the blue lights?”

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]