Tesla, Ford, Amazon Hint At Cloudy Future For Cars 231
Nerval's Lobster writes "The automobile, once the most analog of technologies, is rapidly becoming a smartphone on wheels: Amazon announced Feb. 13 that Ford SYNC Applink-equipped vehicles will include the Amazon Cloud Player, allowing drivers to access their music libraries via voice command or dashboard controls. Ford isn't the only automotive company seeking to integrate cloud computing into the driving experience. Tesla Motors' Model S electric sedan boasts a 17-inch capacitive touch-screen in place of the usual dashboard buttons and dials. And who could forget Google's self-driving car? This isn't a future everybody wants—there are more than a few wannabe Steve McQueens who won't feel complete unless they can stomp on a pedal connected to an internal-combustion engine, flick a physical dashboard knob to the radio station of their choice, and peel out their driveway in a cloud of burning rubber. But as the latest technology migrates into automobiles, it could well be the future we're going to receive."
Cloudy future! (Score:4, Funny)
Oh! I see what you did there!
Yea, I like a physical knob (Score:5, Insightful)
it doesnt move depending on what mode my screen is in or require me to look to change the volume
Re:Yea, I like a physical knob (Score:5, Informative)
I agree with this 100% and it's one of my biggest pet peeves about modern head units, onscreen displays are really unsafe. The one thing I want more than hardware buttons though is a single hardware button that tells my smartphone over Bluetooth to listen for a voice command, I don't want a head unit with built in apps that will be dead long before the 10-12 year typical car life, I want a standard way to use my more or less disposable smartphone.
On a related topic, when do we get voice control of Amazon cloud player for Android/iOS?
Re:Yea, I like a physical knob (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree with this 100% and it's one of my biggest pet peeves about modern head units, onscreen displays are really unsafe. The one thing I want more than hardware buttons though is a single hardware button that tells my smartphone over Bluetooth to listen for a voice command, I don't want a head unit with built in apps that will be dead long before the 10-12 year typical car life, I want a standard way to use my more or less disposable smartphone.
This, this, a thousand times this.
Touch screen units require me to take my eyes off the road.
Also, I drive a car built in 2006, the stock head unit doesn't even have a USB port, I have to use this archaic device called a "Compact Disc" to transport music. I'm half surprised I'm I dont need a stone tablet.
How the hell do Ford/BWM/GM et al know what technology I'll want in a car 10 years from now. With my 2006 Integra, I can replace the head unit with minimal fuss (well as soon as I find a wiring loom for it) but BWM are integrating the head unit into the car. With BMW you dont have to worry so much as they'll keep making updates (and installing them onto old Bimmers for a not so modest fee) but the likes of Ford and Hyundai? Hyundai dont give a shit about the i30's they sold last week, let alone an Elantra they sold 5 years ago.
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Would love to see the stereo have very basic functionality, but when paired with a smart phone simply be a screen + voice command interf
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My '12 Challenger R/T has a USB port...
Yes, but what connection are you going to want in 2018? I would be almost willing to bet (I have a rule, if I place a bet with you, you may as well just give me the money, I already know the outcome--not think, know) it will not be a USB port.
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I think you mean Audi, mate.
No, Audi will sell you a fairly reliable car by comparison. He could have been talking about Mercedes, though. The difference is that Mercedes drivers have more money, so they're more likely to be raging cocks than sniveling cunts.
For those who haven't noticed, and thus haven't caught on to the basic premise, German cars haven't been reliable since the mid to late 1980s, except for Volkswagens made at Wolfsberg. That's the last time they were really designed to be great. Now they're designed to maxmize prof
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Quattro is great. Audi's might have their warts but they're head and shoulders better than BMWs.
Except that most people who drive Audis are either pricks, wankers or cunts. If you don't mind people thinking you're probably a prick, wanker or cunt they're great cars.
At least with BMWs everyone just knows you're a twat, no complications.
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The one thing I want more than hardware buttons though is a single hardware button that tells my smartphone over Bluetooth to listen for a voice command, I don't want a head unit with built in apps that will be dead long before the 10-12 year typical car life, I want a standard way to use my more or less disposable smartphone.
You have it already. It is called bluetooth. If your head unit doesn't support it, upgrade to one which does. Get a decent phone (with proper bluetooth -- that's most of them now, as contrasted to the pre-touch days of smartphones) and a decent head unit and you can reasonably expect to accomplish pairing. My el cheapo JVC lets me pair for audio output. At that point I can do everything with my phone's voice control via my headset.
Now, what we really need that we don't already have is a standard interface t
Re:Yea, I like a physical knob (Score:5, Informative)
Those kinds of controls have all moved to on-the-steering-wheel buttons. And presumably most of the controls are going to be voice activated soon, via all this fancy computing you seem so opposed to (on /. FFS).
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you either have the physical buttons or you don't. if you move everything to steering wheel then you still have them, they're just on steering wheel.
but the 17" touchscreen is useful only when you're parked or if it's being used by the passenger.
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Re:Yea, I like a physical knob (Score:4, Funny)
Yea, I like a physical knob
That's what she said.
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I assume it's not a popular comedy term for a penis in the US?
Apparently not. I don't think they even know what a bell-end is.
I hope they figure it out (Score:2)
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we recently bought a Prius with some web-enabled computer thingy in the dashboard... with our iPhones. Basic things such as MP3 song time display are missing.
That sounds wrong. Certainly our prius and iDevices communicate track information correctly.
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Well, aren't YOU special ?
Stay the FUCK out of the fast lane with that ugly pile of shit, you trend-following sheep.
Oooh, you're so BUTCH.
Dude (Score:2)
Re:Dude (Score:5, Insightful)
Road deaths happen mostly to idiots and whomever they hit, and this is cleaning the gene
There fixed.
On another note, how about we start this cleansing with you?
Yet another thing to update (Score:3, Insightful)
Except most of the manufacturers won't want to expend the effort to keep their old products up-to-date. Look forward to drive-by hackings of your buggy car firmware. And new web technologies relegating your $60k+ car to the status of a 5 year old PC.
Touchscreen dashes in cars (Score:3)
A touchscreen dash is an absolutely horrid idea. Physical buttons can be accessed via muscle memory. A dynamic control with zero tactile feedback requires you to focus on it for every function. How can anyone in the automotive industry not see this as an enormous liability?
Having a video or computer display in the line of sight of the driver is already illegal in most states (distraction) and having a computer in the front seat of a vehicle is illegal in at least California. I can't help but wonder how a 17" touchscreen with computer controls will be viewed by the police and court systems.
Re:Touchscreen dashes in cars (Score:4, Interesting)
I have played with several touch screen interfaces on cars. I am most experienced with the one in my 2006 Prius. I have also played with them in the Fisker Karma and the Tesla Model S.
It depends on how the touch screen is implemented. The touch screen in my Prius is actually fairly well designed, with most of the important buttons on the edge of the screen. The distraction caused by it is fairly minimal. When playing with the Tesla model S I noticed that they did something similar. The buttons are also fairly large and generally around the outside edge and many of the controls can easily be assigned to the steering wheel.
I have seen other cars where the touch screen is unusable (i.e. the Fisker Karma). The touch screen on the Fisker Karma is horrible and creates a lot of distraction since the buttons are tiny, inconsistent and the screen is very hard to impossible to see during the day. In order to use it one must spend a lot more time looking at it and the buttons are hard to impossible to hit while driving since they are small and have to be hit exactly. It's an accident waiting to happen.
At least with my Prius and the Tesla there is also voice input as well, though it is somewhat limited in my Prius and Tesla's is still under development from what I understand. My Prius also has good steering wheel support for most common functions so I rarely need to access the touch screen for things like the radio and climate control.
Even the touch interface on the Navigation system on my Prius is generally well thought out. My biggest problem with the touch screen on my Prius is that there is sometimes noticeable lag. When I played with the Tesla there was no lag.
On the Tesla one can easily assign different tasks to the steering wheel with no more distraction than looking at the speedometer since the menus are placed to the sides of it. On the Tesla the navigation map is also displayed just to the left of the speedometer as well so one doesn't have to look at the main display.
As far as cloud support, users have already figured out the interface to use Tesla's cloud services in order to access the car, including downloading real-time data. Users have also started creating web based applications for the Tesla. It also looks like Tesla is using the QT toolkit for their touch screen if the web browser identifier string is any indication.
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No one will own cars (Score:5, Interesting)
What they are really afraid of is the fact that once cars become self-driving, no one will need to own one anymore.
Technology is actually upended the business model of the entire autoindustry. They might innovate themselves right out of business.
I mean seriously who cares about cloudplayer in a self-driving car? If it can drive itself I'll just leave my earbuds in.
The most common vehicle in 10 years will be the autonomous Dodge caravan, taxiing us all around. Rich people will have maybe their own auto-Bently's or something, but the rest of us will just share a car.
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The most common vehicle in 10 years will be the autonomous Dodge caravan, taxiing us all around.
You are dreaming. Actually, it's not a dream, it's a nightmare that only an idiot
would want to see come true.
In ten years people will be driving cars which are much the same as they are now.
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the fuck i'll be sharing a car with most of you... you are SLOBS. your cars are NASTY. from smoking to food to children to trash to just plain nasty people. disgusting is a good 25% of the cars on the road.
A minor lesson i learned back when i was a kid i worked at a carwash for a year... and the nasty gross disgusting interiors i saw... from people who were paying $20-40 for a complete car service. These weren't broke mofos living in their cars... no. These were the middle and upper class folks.
n
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It's almost as if the people who kept their cars clean and tidy didn't visit the car wash.
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no way am i sharing a car with any of those people. nope. you can't make me.
Calm down. No one will try to make you share. You will be able to own your own car -- it'll cost an order of magnitude more than using an automated car service, but you'll have that option.
In a world where self-driving cars are the norm, everyone will view vehicles the way people living in densely populated urban centers view them now: owning a car of your own will be an expensive extravagance, but you can do it if you choose to spend your money on it. Most people will just use the automated taxis, which
My kingdom for a mod point (Score:2)
This is just the tip of the iceberg though. I keep my "stuff" in my car so I don't have to carry a huge man-purse everywhere. A generic fix-it kit in the trunk, medical kit in the glove box, device-specific holders for my electronics (as well as carefully routed power cords), plus a pen, pencil, utility knife, flashlight, map, and some work-related gear in case I get a call while I'm out. I've seriously considered getting a second, super-fuel-efficient car for longer trips (I drive a full sized truck which
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All of that crap can fit into a single bag if you omit the fix-it kit. You can have a cable dangling out that gets plugged into the lighter socket wherever you go. I use a JuiceBag which has a 10W solar panel for this purpose, so I can charge when away from the vehicle as well. (I got it on sale, those things are spendy at full price. nobody else wanted it because it was red, which I consider a feature, as it will make it easier to spot anyone running off with it.) If your self-driving rental car fails on a
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I can't wait for this utopian socialist future where you have no control over anything in your environment as it's all owned by the state/corporate oligarc...err I mean 'the people'... Then your first mistake ends up being your last as access to everything is pulled, remotely, effectively ending your life. This is after you're publicly humiliated automatically on the net for the 'transgression.' Since this tech makes it so easy and cheap, you can expect those transgression lists to be long and full of ina
Re:No one will own cars... (Score:3)
What they are really afraid of is the fact that once cars become self-driving, no one will need to own one anymore.
Technology is actually upended the business model of the entire autoindustry. They might innovate themselves right out of business.
I mean seriously who cares about cloudplayer in a self-driving car? If it can drive itself I'll just leave my earbuds in.
The most common vehicle in 10 years will be the autonomous Dodge caravan, taxiing us all around. Rich people will have maybe their own auto-Bently's or something, but the rest of us will just share a car.
...like me, they'll own motorcycles, probably. Riding a bike (full disclosure: I love my Ducati 1098) is about as close to flying as you can get in two dimensions. The subset of the population that enjoys driving cars and riding bikes for the sheer exhilaration of it (vanishingly small, to be sure, but extant nonetheless) are immune to the marketing gimmicks you are basing your argument on. I have a BT-enabled comm system in my helmet that already lets me voice control my phone -- I can drag a knee at a
Re:No one will own cars (Score:5, Interesting)
We would get there incrementally.
Not news (Score:2)
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Nowadays it's pretty clear that anything with a processor will be connect to some cloud some time in the future, like it or not.
just when we thought we had gotten rid of slavery, its chains rise once again from hell...
Why assume a US company will decide? (Score:2)
An existing example in another market is the Boeing/Airbus duopoly. In the current world market no one outside of Europe or the US has a lot of control over what kinds of l
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An existing example in another market is the Boeing/Airbus duopoly. In the current world market no one outside of Europe or the US has a lot of control over what kinds of long and intermediate passenger planes are built. (Short range passenger aircraft are a different story.) The Chinese are already working on joining this club, by the way.
It is incredibly difficult to enter this market: pretty much everything has been swallowed up and the two major powers are supported heavily by their respective governmen
This will end badly (Score:3)
How long til a malicious person is able to crash (potentially lots of) cars in the real world by hacking into some cloud servers? Or make the cars run over pedestrians instead of avoid them?
This is potentially a really serious problem, that people so far are ignoring. Maybe we need a law requiring physical isolation of a self-driving car's control computer from all networks. They need access to GPS data, but this can probably accommodated with special hardware that does its best to ensure only GPS data is passed in.
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This is potentially a really serious problem, that people so far are ignoring
Well, it's a potentially serious problem that you assume people are ignoring.
I think any company smart enough to be capable of building a viable self-driving car is probably also smart enough to foresee the possibility of hackers and design their systems as securely as possible.
It's not like there are engineers running around Google right now slapping their foreheads, saying "OMG did you see this Slashdot post? There are hackers on the Internet! And they might try to crash our cars!"
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... yet they can't seem to keep any of their current, much simpler software secure. Not just google either, but every software company in existence.. Software security is one of those intractable problems that gets exponentially harder as complexity increases..and self driving cars need far more complex heuristics and communication than typical network client software.
When the day comes that every OS and application software is 100% provably secure, I MIGHT consider trusting one of those cars, nevermind a
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How long til a malicious person is able to crash (potentially lots of) cars in the real world by hacking into some cloud servers? Or make the cars run over pedestrians instead of avoid them?
This is potentially a really serious problem, that people so far are ignoring. Maybe we need a law requiring physical isolation of a self-driving car's control computer from all networks. They need access to GPS data, but this can probably accommodated with special hardware that does its best to ensure only GPS data is passed in.
No need to hack. Just cut one off and force its AI to choose between hitting your car or a pedestrian. Prior to 9/11 nobody thought about flying a plane into a building. I'm pretty sure that the AI in self driving cars can't account for all of the crazy things people will come up with.
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That can be done now to actual drivers. Do you know what the driver will do in 9 out 10 instances? Mentally freeze and hit whatever their car was pointed at, at the time it happened. Do you know why? Because statistically no one practices those situations to turn the ideal reaction into a habit. You can never design any system (or prepare any person) to account for every corner condition. You design (or prepare) for as many things as you can so that it's better than it would have been otherwise, then deal w
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Prior to 9/11 nobody thought about flying a plane into a building.
That, sir, is pure bullshit. In fact, prior to 9/11 someone had thought about the possibility of a terrorist doing so, and had submitted a report on the subject, which was summarily ignored.
Re:This will end badly (Score:5, Funny)
That's some impressive FUD you've got going, there. But that's all it is.
http://www.usacoverage.com/auto-insurance/how-many-driving-accidents-occur-each-year.html [usacoverage.com]
And if it’s all summed up in a yearly basis,there are 5.25 million driving accidents that take place per year. Statistics show that each year,43,000 or more of the United States’ population die due to vehicular accidents and around 2.9 million people end up suffering light or severe injuries. In a certain five year period, there had been recorded a 25% of the driving population who encountered or were involved in car accidents. It is also affirmed that car accidents kill a child every 3 minutes.Statistics on the number of car accidents taking place in every state or country is normally based on medical or insurance records filed.
But you're right, I'm sure. People are /such/ good drivers. There's no way we could improve on those numbers. It's probably not even worth trying.
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Self-driving cars are not a bad idea. Self-driving cars that can even potentially be hacked remotely, are a bad idea.
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Self-driving cars are not a bad idea. Self-driving cars that can even potentially be hacked remotely, are a bad idea.
Self-driving cars are not a bad idea. Self-driving cars that roll on tires are stupid. We have long had the technology to guide vehicles without steering them, it is called rails. Cars only go where the road goes already. PRT is the answer. It will even let you keep your own vehicle.
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How long til a malicious person is able to crash (potentially lots of) cars in the real world by hacking into some cloud servers? Or make the cars run over pedestrians instead of avoid them? This is potentially a really serious problem, that people so far are ignoring...
This kind of scenario has been discussed already in relation to the self-driving car network of the future. I'm certain that once you sign for your new Federal drivers license you will sign away any rights to a lawsuit against the self-drive collective that will literally have an acceptable percentage of "oops" situations built into the system that controls cars in the future. Yes, the concept is scary, but really not any different than most other forms of automation. Acceptable losses in this case just
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They need access to GPS data, but this can probably accommodated with special hardware that does its best to ensure only GPS data is passed in.
What happens when someone hacks the GPS data that the car is receiving and tells it that the car is 20 feet right of where it really is? The car will of course automatically adjust course by moving 20 feet left into oncoming traffic.
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hi.. these cars also happen to have 2g/3g/4g transceivers in them which are active on the network whether you register for premium services or not.. there is already history to show that this situation can be and will be abused by government authority and anyone else who can get in.. A self driving car will need more than gps to navigate well. it will NEED this access to function autonomously.
It is YOU who needs to turn in his geek card.
Obsolecense (Score:4, Insightful)
The biggest problem I see with these systems is very rapid obsolescence. You'll generally replace a phone or tablet a lot more often than a car. There should be a standard port to attach a tablet to and the car manufacturer can offer software for all the major platforms, or you can choose to use something else. Instead we seem to be getting a bunch of built in tablets running code that we have no control over and can't replace. Is anybody sorting this out?
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When I think of Steve McQueen... (Score:3)
he's on a motorcycle.
It's not always smart for the DRIVER.. (Score:2)
The problem I see with more and more electronics is the loss of control, not just of the vehicle but also of your privacy. You are already driving with a black box in most vehicles, and access to that is not restricted to accident investigators - data gets pulled every time you have the car serviced, with you having nil control over how it is used.
A secondary issue is that entertainment electronics is subject to far less security checks than the stuff that makes sure your engine runs best and that steers t
a smartphone on wheels? dumb (Score:2)
Everyone is going to have a smartphone in their pockets, which they'll change every 2 years. I'm hoping a new car will last longer than 2 years, so let's just leave the smart phone capabilities up to my smart phone.
How about they just wifi up the car and leave me a slot to put a tablet or something?
Just what we need! (Score:2)
I want my car reporting my rural speed transgressions directly to the cloud-connected police, so law enforcement can be efficiently vectored to intercept me.
Better still, it can be wired to go "driverless" automatically and take me straight to the nearest court-house for doing 66 on a deserted back-country road posted 65.
Judge Dred meets Knight Rider!
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I think they would just wire the cars with a speed limiter based on the current street's speed limit... just so long as the car doesn't suddenly slow down to 25 on a freeway overpass because the road under the bridge has a lower speed limit.
Why would they do that? When the OP's suggestion would allow the government to generate revenue with a reduced expenditure, while yours would reduce the amount of revenue the government gets from traffic law violation tickets.
Touch screen (Score:2)
Am I the only one who thinks a touch screen is a *terrible* idea in a car, especially if the touch screen device is supposed to be used while driving? With conventional knobs and switches, you can often find what you want to do just by moving your hand to the approximate position and feeling for the appropriate control. I can operate my car radio without looking at it. But you're forced to look at a touch screen - in other words, stop looking where you're directing nearly two tons of metal to fiddle with so
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This is not a problem, as you are not driven the car. The car drives itself and you are just a passenger. Would be cool to share the car with others. Oh wait, we already have them, they are called buses. Nobody want to have other people in their car.
The Future (Score:2)
The future is, where you do not own a car. If you need one you borrow one. Of course it can communicate with your phone otherwise it would not know what you mean by "drive me home". Furthermore, in metropolitan areas, other means of public transport are much more efficient and easier to implement. For example, street cars, underground trains, smaller and bigger buses, which are easy to access and allow you to bring stuff with you, like buggies, trolleys or bikes. Cars supplement that, can be called, like ca
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You're neglecting cultural aspects. People will continue to use cars, even when other means are more affortable and practical, because a car isn't just a means of transport. It's a symbol and statement of freedom: The power to go where you want, when you want, bound by no schedule and dependant on no-one. Less so in Europe than the US. Over there, owning their first car is one of the big rites of passage for teenagers.
I'm glad they've thought of safety first. (Score:2)
In one hand, you have the greed of the entire industry, wanting to put every single communications device they can think of inside a car, and connect it all online, and then sell all the statistics we all will generate to target advertising.
In the other hand, I have the countless deaths racked up by just texting on the road today. I believe if we left it unchecked, it would likely surpass every other killer (including alcohol) on the road, if it already hasn't received this coveted title of dishonor.
Not ev
Yay obsolescence. (Score:2)
The engine, body and other car-ish stuff may be good for thirty years, but in five the in-car entertainment and cloudy navigation systems will be as obsolete an eight-track. Time to go out and buy a new car. Welcome to the upgrade cycle: The computer and smartphone industries got there long ago.
What I want.... (Score:3, Interesting)
I just want a plain AFFORDABLE electric car. 100 miles a day on an over night charge. $20000 or less. What is so hard about that?
Go Google (Score:2)
WIRED exclusive: logs indicate NYT writer lied (Score:2)
The NYT writer lied. It's over for that story. But the damage is done.
He was told to do certain things. Instead, he:
-Turned the heat up.
-Speeded, consistently. Over 80 mph at some point.
-Didn't stay at the supercharger long enough, almost every time - and lied about it.
-Pulled away for 60+ mile trip even though he knew it only had a charge for less than 40 miles left.
-Circled a supercharger station, for some reason.
-Lied about the car going dead. It did not.
Broder should lose his job. Read it, please!
http:/ [wired.com]
Re:Cloud (Score:4, Insightful)
To be honest I would trust amazon more than the average driver.
The main issue is probably privacy, but the internet is doing a good
job of getting rid of that anyway.
Re:Cognitive science (Score:5, Insightful)
It already costs a good amount to get, for example, a basic replacement temperature control knob thing, whatever the hell the proper name for it is. I don't want to know what a 17" touchscreen will cost, even a decade into the future, just to get your fan/heater/AC controls working again. I really do not like the way cars are heading; even without the cost, who says I want all this bullshit? Seriously, the more computerized they make cars, the more revolting they get.
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well.. that depends..
the 17" touchscreen instead of proper controls is actually a cost cutting measure. less designing, less tooling, less commitment early on in the design phase.
so a 17" touchscreen should be easier to source than exotic lever systems.
Re:Cognitive science (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not just the touchscreen either as it'll be a whole assembly, which certainly will not scale in the consumer's favor 10 years after the car was built.
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It will be more expensive. Mercedes asked me the equivalent of $150 to replace my side mirror. Only the glass - no enclosure. And I have to give them my details for the privilege of buying it. You'll be paying $2000 if your 17" monitor cracks.
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Mercedes asked me the equivalent of $150 to replace my side mirror. Only the glass - no enclosure.
Just use an independent garage. Even better, get a Haynes manual (are they available in the US?), buy the glass online, and fit it yourself. It shouldn't be a difficult job; I once replaced an entire wing mirror (on a Fiat, not a Merc, but it shouldn't be too different), and that was easy. Took less than half an hour.
It shouldn't affect the warranty either, assuming it's still got one.
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What planet did you grow up on? Of course it will affect the warranty! Car makers don't like you screwing around with the car while it is still under warranty for multiple reasons, with one being they like to squeeze money out of you.
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I was really interested in the Tesla S, until I saw the interior and found that everything is operated from the large touch screen display.
No thanks. I will only buy a car with knobs and buttons for radio and climate controls.
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Yeah. Could you imagine driving one summer evening as the sun begins to lower behind you, and it's shining with all its brightness right onto your screen? How are you supposed to do anything... adjust fans, temperature, radio, and whatever else if you have to rely on that now-useless LCD screen? Waiting until I turn off or just hoping you'll get lucky that thick enough clouds cover it don't exactly sound like very good options. Very, very bad design.
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Touch screens are a really bad and dangerous idea in cars if not coupled with very good voice control. I briefly used Pioneer's App Radio and found it a good idea but utterly dangerous to even change radio channel whilst driving.
Knobs and buttons all the way!
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I'm currently repairing my friends car made in 1999 that has the heater controls on a 7" LCD. It's not touchscreen, it uses physical controls but the setting is shown on the screen and it is impossible to even demist the windows without it.
The replacement is prohibitively expensive but used units are available from end of life cars, however they may not last very long and the labour involved in fitting them is very lengthy.
tactile feedback (Score:2, Informative)
I don't want to know what a 17" touchscreen will cost, even a decade into the future, just to get your fan/heater/AC controls working again.
More than that: I can work the controls on my 2003 Golf TDI without taking my eyes off the road. The folks at VW did their homework enough that most knobs and buttons having a unique enough feel and movement that I can adjust settings (audio, HVAC) with my right hand while keeping my left hand on the wheel, and my eyes on the road because of the tactile feedback.
I cannot see how the same thing can be done with an all-screen control panel.
I wouldn't against a large screen for information display, with touch
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Oh joy, just what I need, someone asking me a question when I try to adjust the heat or blower.
Why is that people seem to find a need to take the longest, most circuitous route to accomplish the simplest of tasks? A button or knob isn't good enough? We have to install a complete new system, highly dependent on the quality (or lack thereof) of the software loaded which has bells and whistles asking us if we know what we're doing and do we
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Companies who get much of their revenues on massively overpriced, ah excuse me "high margin" proprietary spare parts.
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Re:Cognitive science (Score:5, Interesting)
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commenting to remove my accidental -1. mod parent underrated.
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Re:Cognitive science (Score:4, Insightful)
Entirely unrelated: the more digital cars get the more unreliable they will become.
You realize cars have been almost completely computer-controlled for about a decade? Digital isn't to be equated with unreliable, bad design is.
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Distractions aside, let's say it is the middle of February and I am trying to operate this thing at 6:30 AM, like I will be in a few minutes from now when I leave for work. Let us also assume the touch screen has similar tactile properties to my smartphone.
I doubt this will work with gloves on. If I take off my gloves, my fingertips will be hard as rock and that also does not work. In my experience, touch screens require fing
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you can get gloves with just enough metal/carbon in the fingertips to trigger a touch screen (or for single finger stuff use a stylus)
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Not only that, but some parts are pretty much guaranteed to fail after X years, and be very expensive to replace. Example on my car the passenger side central locking was working only sporadically. Wasn't the solenoid; turned out to be the controller module, so cost over £500 to replace to fix the problem. Also, rain sensor on the windscreen - notorious for failing at around 4-5 years, requires a complete new windscreen + sensor module as they're bonded together. You might wonder why bother, but if th
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The second part is entirely untrue. If you grew up in the 70's and 80's you would remember that a car owner would feel lucky to get 100,000 miles out of a car. Now, if you don't get at least that many miles, you bought a lemon. Better manufacturing techniques are part of it, of course, but no small part of the increased reliability is computer controlled combustion.
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On the outside chance you're serious...
No thanks. there's nothing worse than dealing with the unintended consequences of nanny alerts/auto-restrictors. Today's cars are already loaded with them and it drives me nuts (seatbelt beeper, proximity beeper, scrolling text on the instrument cluster, and other stupid bullshit put there by 'helpful' manufacturers and control freak, knee jerking politicians. Leave it to committees to make driving a car a process that rivals the time it takes to walk to my destinat
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Re:New cars suck (Score:5, Insightful)
I am an experienced mechanic who loves old cars. Your post is bullshit.
Those cars were simple, pretty, unreliable, maintenance-intensive, and did a fine job of killing their passengers in a crash. Their brakes were garbage (front drums, single master cylinders) which is why brake shops in mountainous areas were a common sight.
Your post is nonsense and deserves no respect. I grew up working on those rides. It's no accident that many modern owners update them so they actually steer and stop.
Feature bloat is not necessary, but sells cars. I can and do work on my modern vehicles and don't pay anyone else to wrench them. The way to repair modern vehicles reasonably is the same as ever. Use good parts from salvage with a few new bits as needed. I've built many cars and trucks for a used car lot where we did this. It's standard. I'd rather bolt on factory parts as assemblies to save time and labor, so salvage rules.
I'm disgusted with "mechanics" who won't learn modern systems. Modern hot rodders take full advantage of improved ignition control and fuel management, so there is no excuse for snivelling.
Modern CNC production methods are what make TODAY the new Golden Age of performance. It's cheaper and easier to maintain your beloved antiques than ever before. The aftermarket has plenty of support for whatever you want to do.
I'd get off your lawn but I can't find it and suspect it's located in Atlantis.
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