8 ms·
James Moylan, engineer behind arrow signaling which side to refuel a car, dies
- toomuchtodo 10mo ago“Moylan arrow” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_gauge#Moylan_arrow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_gauge#Moylan_arrow https://www.vermeulenfh.com/obituaries/james-moylan-2/#!/Obituary https://www.vermeulenfh.com/obituaries/james-moylan-2/#!/Obi...
- rationalist 10mo agoAnother car thing that is named after someone: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroney_sticker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroney_sticker Also known as the "Window Sticker"
- onionisafruit 10mo agoMansfield bars too, if you don’t mind getting ghoulish
- rationalist 10mo agoI have never heard of that name before, and had to do a search. In case anyone else wants info too: https://www.getgordon.com/faqs/what-is-mansfield-bar/ https://www.getgordon.com/faqs/what-is-mansfield-bar/
- onionisafruit 10mo agoSorry that was thoughtless of me to not provide a link
- cf100clunk 10mo agoA couple of other links: https://archive.ph/pluwT https://archive.ph/pluwT https://www.jalopnik.com/2061179/inventor-little-arrow-what-side-fuel-filler-is-on-dies/ https://www.jalopnik.com/2061179/inventor-little-arrow-what-...
- celeritascelery 10mo agoI had no idea till this moment that’s what the arrow was for…
- nutjob2 10mo agoI'm sure about 99% of people are in the same boat.
- kirubakaran 10mo agoThe signage is for cars, not boats.
- KineticLensman 10mo agoBut they are still all at sea
- acheron 10mo agoI didn’t know it was possible to not know this.
- AlotOfReading 10mo agoI've encountered a few cars where the arrow points to the wrong side, and it's quite subtle if no one tells you.
- apparent 10mo agoWho taught you? I didn't know until my 20s and have met many adults who didn't know.
- phantasmish 10mo agoNobody ever told me and I drove my first car for a long time, rarely drove other people’s cars, and did not have the kind of lifestyle that either supported or required rental cars. I found out around age 35, I think. From reading it online. I’ve told a bunch of people who didn’t know.
- markus_zhang 10mo agoI only knew it because someone talked about that. Very useful. RIP.
- phibz 10mo agoOn cars without the arrow they often follow the convention where the gas filler handle is depicted on the same side of the gas icon as the filler door is in the car.
- nutjob2 10mo agoFirst time I've heard of that convention.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- snozolli 10mo agoBecause it's a myth. It used to go around Reddit regularly. There's even a Snopes entry: https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fuel-icon-foolery/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/fuel-icon-foolery/
- pants2 10mo agoI've heard that the gauge always points towards the side the cap is on when pointing to empty
- anjel 10mo agoFar too subtle
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- whiteboardr 10mo agoThat was the original idea on how the icon should be used but obviously too subtle. Moylan basically added a modifier icon for clarity.
- deathanatos 10mo agoWhat a letter. Clear, concise, just chef's kiss. I love that little indicator.
- anigbrowl 10mo agoWhy would you not just always put it on the driver's side, since they're the most likely to be doing the refueling?
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- arijun 10mo agoWhat happens when they sell the car in a country that drives on the other side of the road? They would have to move everything around.
- chongli 10mo agoThey could design the fuel tank to be symmetrical about the axis parallel to the car’s axels. This would let it be flipped during installation at the factory to have the refueling port facing either side. Then the only difference would be the body panel and little door that covers the gas cap.
- kube-system 10mo agoThey could but there are downstream packaging compromises that would cause. It is easier to design the vehicle without imposing that design constraint on yourself
- sitharus 10mo agoMany (mostly European and North American) manufacturers can’t even be bothered flipping the indicator and light controls around, there’s no way they’d flip the whole fuel tank.
- aryonoco 10mo agoThey don’t. It stays on the same side as it was. They don’t move the bonnet opening lever or the indicator stalk either.
- anigbrowl 10mo ago
- ryanjshaw 10mo agoAnybody else get confused by whether the arrow represents where the car should be or the pump?
- LoFiSamurai 10mo agoNo
- michaelmdresser 10mo agoI think this is the source of me misinterpreting the symbol a few times, so yes.
- sublinear 10mo agoI agree. As much as people appreciate the factoid, it's not an example of good design. I don't ever recall the arrow being paid attention to until listicles and other blog spam were born. It has all the elements of great clickbait.
- gk1 10mo agoI actually use it all the time when driving a rental.
- mhdhn 10mo agoI use it all the time because I switch between a lot of different cars a lot, and my memory is not that great.
- jquery 10mo agoThat isn’t in conflict with it being bad design.
- mschild 10mo agoTrue. Though im unsure of what would be a better one. Doesnt get much simpler than an arrow. Id think that for a car you own you wouldnt need it after the first few times though.
- londons_explore 10mo agoYou can do a while lifetimes work, and yet sometimes it's a tiny action like this which can have the biggest benefit to mankind. Just think how many billions of times someone has avoided pulling up to the wrong side of the pump because of this arrow - literal lifetimes of effort saved.
- iancmceachern 10mo agoI use his arrow all the time. I'm also a Ford Truck Fan. RIP James.
- wombatpm 10mo agoWhich is great for new cars. I drove a 78 Buick Riviera. Friends couldn’t figure out how to fill it up. Because the gas cap was behind the license plate in the back!
- waldrews 10mo agoWhy didn't they just ask ChatGPT? Oh wait.
- charcircuit 10mo agoFor those curious, the first sentence of the response from ChatGPT gets it correct. >On a 1978 Buick Riviera, the gas cap is hidden behind a flip-down license plate on the rear bumper.
- IncRnd 10mo agoThat's not what I received from ChatGPT. This is: The fuel filler door is on the left side (driver’s side) of the vehicle. Therefore, the little arrow on the dash fuel gauge should point to the left to indicate that. (Most Buick Rivieras of that era had the fuel filler on the driver’s side, though official Buick manuals or build sheets from 1978 confirm this location.)
- fragmede 10mo agohttps://chatgpt.com/share/6957819f-b9d0-8009-a5d2-cfbde7daa6a5 https://chatgpt.com/share/6957819f-b9d0-8009-a5d2-cfbde7daa6... Paid account, ChatGPT 5.2 Share the links, people!
- weinzierl 10mo agoIt's a convenient little invention but "the fact that there wasn't a simple way to know which side of a vehicle the gas tank was located on" is not quite true. Usually, if the vehicle is of Japanese or British origin, the cap is on the left, otherwise it is on the right. Source: I’ve driven dozens of different vehicle models all over Europe for decades. This rule always worked well enough for me.
- justaregulanerd 10mo agoAnecdotally I’ve driven far fewer cars; my Mazda 323 BG has the filler on the left, but my Subaru Forester SG is on the right, despite both being of Japanese origin. My Forester is likely to be an exception rather than the rule, however I do feel that the everyday person isn’t going to make the connection between the country of origin and filler side, especially so if it’s not consistent. I never noticed the Moylan Arrow on my Forester for a year in owning it, and often mixed up the side for that time. Interestingly, my 323 doesn’t have the Moylan Arrow, but the Ford Laser equivalent does.
- tjr 10mo agoWow! I just used this a few days ago when I rented a U-Haul van. Such a great user interface element.
- tiku 10mo agoOne of my previous cars didn't have the signaling arrow and I missed it instantly. Such a subtle great idea.
- justaregulanerd 10mo agoAlways found it incredibly strange that my Mazda 323 from 1995 (originally released in 1989) doesn’t have the arrow [1], but it’s co-developed Ford Laser KF/KH does [2] Although, I believe the platform was primarily developed by Mazda so perhaps they didn’t catch onto this arrow until well after my generation of 323 was on the market. [1] https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/cBUPxJJlgjs6KOI2.full https://d3nevzfk7ii3be.cloudfront.net/igi/cBUPxJJlgjs6KOI2.f... [2] https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/Kv4AAOSwt-pjJtKG/s-l500.jpg https://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/Kv4AAOSwt-pjJtKG/s-l500.jpg
- apparent 10mo agoI was like 20 when I learned about this trick. Before then I'd only driven a few vehicles, and I just knew which side of the car the gas tank opening was on. A friend mentioned it when we were going to fill up a car a borrowed car and I asked which side it was on. I've since met many adults who were unaware of this trick. It's like the real-world analog of an insufficiently discoverable UI functionality.
- schmuckonwheels 10mo ago2020s UX "experts" would bury the entire instrument cluster under a hamburger menu if they could get away with it. The fuel gauge would be moved three menus deep and thus impossible to find, then removed in subsequent model years when their telemetry data "proved" no one used it anymore.
- eastbound 10mo agoIt drives usage up! Seriously, I wonder whether this “Make things to annoy people” trend is a normal situation, or an emerging behavior due to our era, and whether it will be solved one day. Example: In 2003 all UX was abominable, programs were ugly and black and white and text and boring, then came the iPhone with the idea to hire designers for apps, it was entirely new and absolutely unseen before. It was necessary during the take off phase of our industry, but are we simply witnessing the regression to normal, with UX being driven by corporate suits?
- unglaublich 10mo agoIn the end, these engineers' job is make profit for the company. If the customer allows for all this crap, and still buys cars/fridges/tvs with such horrible UX, then it's the way forward.
- schmuckonwheels 10mo ago>If the customer allows for all this crap You imply they ever had a choice. Companies like Tesla and Rivian pioneered the trend of bringing webshit-as-an-instrument cluster to the mainstream. Other car companies saw dollar signs, rode their coattails and immediately copied it. What is a customer supposed to do? Buy a Mitsubishi Mirage? Build their own instrument cluster?
- cornichon622 10mo agoWell personally I bought a used car which got out of the factory in 2010 and has a gauge cluster which isn't a screen. I see no reason to buy new instead of used, and I see no reason why I would change my car to a newer one anytime soon. I agree that automotive engineers do not work for the end customer leading to shittier cars, but I also think that most people are unable to vote with their wallet (or just don't care).
- arjvik 10mo agoOne of the many patron saints of engineers! If he so believed in it, may his arrow be pointing up! :)
- sumoboy 10mo agoNobody getting gas at Costco cares.
- schmuckonwheels 10mo agoMost people do, with the exception of the woman awkwardly stretching the long hose over the roof of her minivan, scratching it in the process.
- sodafountan 10mo agoMy Dad explained to me what this symbol meant when I got my first car. We went to get gas, and I had no idea that I pulled up on the wrong side of the pump. He indicated that the symbol told you which side of the car the gas tank was on. It was a 1994 Ford Taurus.
- daveoc64 10mo agoI'm from the UK and had honestly not heard of the arrow. I've checked my Toyota Yaris, and it's there!
- mongol 10mo agoIs the side to fill up evenly balanced between cars in average? I imagine there is value to make it close to 50/50 to simplify the logistics at the gas station. I was thinking car manufacturers perhaps had agreed so that some brands do it one way and some do it another
- zmgsabst 10mo agoEven if there was a single side for filling, direction of approach being random is enough for 50/50 utilization of the pumps — so I’m not convinced there’s a pressure to spread which side the tank is on.
- namdnay 10mo ago> direction of approach being random is this specific to a country? I'm not sure I've ever seen a petrol station that wasn't one-way
- zmgsabst 10mo agoI’m not sure I’ve ever seen one that was one-way; but my experience is limited to US, MY, TH, and VN. In those four at least, traffic can come from either direction so you can have left-handed fills use both sides of a pump.
- devilbunny 10mo agoCostco and Sam's Club usually have their filling stations set up for one-way traffic, but offhand those are the only ones I've seen that way in US, Canada, Caribbean, and western/central Europe (though the Euro design of filling stations just off the highway encourages one-way traffic, it doesn't mandate it). Haven't driven myself elsewhere.
- alibarber 10mo agoHuh, you’ve got me thinking now. Here in Finland at least there are a lot of completely unattended pumps that once you exit the road it’s basically just a patch of land and you pull up in whatever direction you want to match the side of your tank to a free pump. But in the UK where I’m from and just got back from this is maybe less common.
- luckydata 10mo agoThat's funny, I know someone that's fairly famous in the product development world that claimed to be the inventor of the gas pump arrow. Weird thing to lie about.
- spenjovewkwhalo 10mo agoWho knew? I always thought this was a UX lore, and it was subsequently debunked.
- f4c39012 10mo agoI prefer the pump that is on the side of the petrol cap, but filling up from either side absolutely works for me in the uk, there isn't a "wrong side"
- tlavoie 10mo agoOne side is "wronger" when driving an unnecessarily large land yacht. My Civic, it's fine.
- cake-rusk 10mo agoCars in India don't have this arrow. The inlet is always on the left (passeger) side. I wonder if there is some regulation governing this. Edit: though I have never seen / noticed any cars with the fuel inlet on the driver's side some imported cars may have them. I guess this is a first world problem.
- delaminator 10mo agoWhen I lived in India you bought petrol from the petrol station in 2 litre plastic bottles.
- cake-rusk 10mo agoReally? When was this?
- cromka 10mo agoWhen they lived in India
- delaminator 10mo ago10 years ago, in Calangute.
- ultratalk 10mo agoPeople still do this here.
- cake-rusk 10mo agoWhy?
- ultratalk 10mo agoI live in India and what I've noticed is that the position of the "refuel your car" fuel pump icon shows where the inlet is.
- delaminator 10mo agoOr make it so you can pump on both sides of the car, like we have.
- lovegrenoble 10mo agoIndian vehicles do not have this arrow.
- mrnaught 10mo agoAre you sure ? Have been driving car myself when I visit. Since 2018 I don’t recollect a car without that arrow.
- janosch_123 10mo agoHis letter is from 1986. Mercedes W123 and R107 clusters had triangles pointing in the filler direction in the 1970s already. (Granted, not quite as clear as his next iteration).
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- aristofun 10mo agoSorry to ruin the party but i never really noticed this until this post. Ive always checked the gas side for a rented with my own eyes. Idea maybe is great but implementation is so so if it’s not immediately obvious for many people
- nerdsniper 10mo agoYou’re not alone. I point this out to other millenials and gen z all the time and it’s usually the first time they learn about it.
- aristofun 10mo agoAnother signal that the design sucks :)
- lucketone 10mo agoAlternatively, it signals that people are really lazy and/or “common education” (process for common knowledge) is lacking on this topic. (I bet it is described in the manual; but we will never know - I also have not read it)
- aristofun 10mo ago> I also have not read it Unless you’re a professional driver - you’re in your right. We dont have to learn how to use UI made for people. If that’s the case we could just read where the fricking inlet is. It’s the design that is bad
- bookofjoe 10mo agohttps://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46403464 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46403464
- yunnpp 10mo agoTIL: There is an arrow signaling which side to refuel a car. And while I am only slightly embarrassed that I did not know this, I am more excited about having learned this now. Yup, I just checked my car and it really is there, guys.
- lproven 10mo agoI was scrolling down the comments waiting for the first comment from someone experiencing this revelation. I only learned maybe 5-6 years ago -- but then, I only bought my first car at age 55, because I have a kid and moved to a tiny country with infrequent public transport.
- jjhvbvcvjvvgh 10mo agoI drove cars for 34 years and didn’t know about the arrow. I looked up some pictures for my cla gauge. Seems it’s there