A Lot of New In-car Tech is 'Not Necessary,' Survey Finds (arstechnica.com) 218
Car buyers are increasingly skeptical of advanced automotive technologies, a new JD Power survey reveals. The study found that while drivers appreciate practical innovations like blind spot monitoring, they see little value in features such as automatic parking systems and passenger-side infotainment screens. The survey measured user experiences with new vehicle technologies. Results show that systems partially automating driving tasks had low perceived usefulness, aligning with recent Insurance Institute for Highway Safety data indicating no safety improvements from such features. The survey identified AI-based smart climate control as popular among users. However, facial recognition, fingerprint scanners, and gesture controls were largely viewed negatively.
Let humans be responsible for driving (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Let humans be responsible for driving (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately car manufacturers now seem to be aiming car cabin systems at teenagers, not the 30+ age group who actually buy new vehicles and generally just want something that hassle free.
I don't want to do friggin menu diving to find the option switch the fecking radio band (hello BMW) or have to know some special steering wheel key combination just to zero the odometer. KISS please. My new car is japanese because they still have some buttons for things like climate control but even they arn't as easy to use as my old 2000s vehicle.
Re: Let humans be responsible for driving (Score:3)
Only the climate control systems male stupid decisions. It is 150 degrees in my car parked in the sun and the car want to turn on the AC (good) but also recirculate (bad) the interior air?! Why on earth would I want 150 degree air blown at me when it should just vent that shit?!
Re:Let humans be responsible for driving (Score:5, Insightful)
I want dials and buttons for things like AC/Heat...so I can with only a glance or even just by feel I can control the environment temps.
I want simple ability to connect to my phone to listen to tunes, if I'm not listening to the radio.
Again, I want analog dials/knobs to control my music...
I know this seems to be asking for the world....but I do NOT want my car to be phoning home to "the mothership", I don't want any updates installed that "I" do not ask for or approve.
I do not want my car talking to another cars, or apps....it does NOT need to be accessible remotely.
If you put it in there as a capability....please clearly and honestly show me how to simple turn it OFF.
I don't need lane nannies....let me turn that off when I want.
I don't need it to drive...I don't need it to have a camera on me, monitoring anything....
Please let me buy or configure into as DUMB of a car as I can.
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Re:Let humans be responsible for driving (Score:5, Insightful)
...I do NOT want my car to be phoning home to "the mothership", I don't want any updates installed that "I" do not ask for or approve.
No kidding.. I see NO NEED (other than for "big_brother"/nanny state activities) for internet connectivity in a vehicle. IF I'm sitting in the car, waiting for wife to finish shopping and I suddenly want to DDG (F..k Google, its DuckDuckGo for searches for me) something, I have a perfectly good phone in my pocket to do said search.
My current vehicle is a 2013 Hyundai Elantra, pleasantly withOUT any of that icrap and even if I was a millionaire, I would NOT buy ANY of the current crop of cars that insist on having always-on internet connectivity. I'm 74, so I think I'll be able to keep this car running good till my time on this planet is completed..
Re: Let humans be responsible for driving (Score:2)
ICE or EV, I mainly want the car to go where I point it and to have a seat that my wife can operate without an operating manual. Physical buttons to control the essential functions. I don't want to go into a menu to turn on the vent fan or windshield wipers.
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The day there is an affordable self-driving car that is provably safer than driving myself, I'll probably stop driving. It's not that driving is *never* enjoyable, but for the most part it's just a chore I need to do to get from A to B, and when I don't have to do it anymore I'll do something more useful with my time.
But I have my doubts whether we'll see that day soon, and I'm not eager to be a test subject for some vendor's claim of full autonomous driving safety. Still, I really appreciate level 1 featu
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While I understand your thoughts....I do have to think to myself, that you have likely never bought and owned a "FUN" car to drive.
In all my years, I've never owned anything but 2-seater spor
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Is it still possible to buy a brand new stick shift?
Re: Let humans be responsible for driving (Score:3)
Some safety features like the lane departure warning is quite annoying though.
Lane keep assist is scary because I lose the feel of the road conditions and in winter that's by itself a safety hazard.
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Do I really need to have a 360degree view of the car when its parked through an app?
360 degree view is one of the very best features of modern vehicles. If you can use it when parked it can show you if anyone is dicking with your car, but more importantly, it is amazing when parking. As vehicles get ever harder to see out of in the name of improving rollover protection, technologies to help you see out of them gain in value. Besides 360 degree view, the other great camera feature is rear view mirrors that turn into screens and give you an unobstructed rear view so you don't have to try to
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I have an old 2000-era pick up truck. It has aircon and electric windows but that's about the extent of tech. It's wonderfully old fasioned and built to take a good hammering. I love it's simplicity and "dumbness". It's my work truck and what I need it to do is haul hundreds of pounds (lbs) of stuff and help me drive through unpaved, deep snowed roads and not be heart broken if I pick up a d
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Don't think for a minute these fancy features are being added because people want them. What else would car dealers up-charge you for, if they can't throw in all this needless stuff? They try to make it seem like the extras are just part of the package these days, while adding thousands to the price.
I had one dealer insist (after agreeing to a price) that he had to add another $700 for VIN number etching on the glass, because it was now a security feature and they didn't allow any vehicles off the lot witho
Re:Let humans be responsible for driving (Score:4, Informative)
"You have an hour to waste each day commuting?"
The average American spends 52 minutes in commuting each day. In New York, it's 66 minutes.
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Apparently the average American does.
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This may shock you but you can't always pick and choose where your jobs is located. You need a job to, say, survive or progress in life.
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Most people need jobs. Not every job can be done remote. Not everyone can move to be very close to their job, especially as single income households are more or less a thing of the past.
And finally, not every commute is a waste of time. Mine's approaching 80 minutes a day (40 minutes each way), and I've lost 4lbs already.
The trick is of course not commuting by car.
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Even a bus, light rail, or train is a great time to stop and read the news, read social media, or do anything that's NOT work. Stop and relax before you're at the office and the shit hits the fan again.
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That's not the reason I don't use public transport. It's also pretty expensive. It might be cheaper than owning and driving a car, but I drive an EV so I can feel a little bit better about not belching out toxic fumes that our dilapidated buses do
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Can I purchase a car that can automate my commute such that I can totally tune out - read the newspaper, check my email, maybe take a nap - and not constantly worry my car will end up killing someone (starting with me)? I can do that with commuter rail or a bus. I can't do that with any production automobile available today. As far as I know, even the best automated systems still rely on the driver being able to take back control as a second's notice.
Un
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Are you making the assumption that everyone on Slashdot is a keyboard twiddler that sits at a desk all day so they should be working from home?
With a user ID as low as yours I'd expect more maturity and an understanding that the vast majority of people need to leave the house every day to go to work, and that professional keyboard twidders that do busywork for Capitalism are the minority.
it's not your car (Score:5, Insightful)
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The features being discussed here are not safety features, they are extras like passenger-side infotainment systems. It's right there in the summary.
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you'll get what the insurance company wants
I'm curious to know how an insurance company influence the features in a car I buy? The only way I can think of is by lobbying government to make a feature a requirement which is hardly effective given the typical inertia of your average government. What am I missing?
K.I.S.S. (Score:5, Informative)
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I have a feeling that it won't be long though, where vehicle restoration/enthusiasm has problems. So much stuff is made out of plastic that there simply won't be parts available. There are already problems with cars from the seventies and the plastic/fiberglass fillers between bumpers and sheet metal, and it's only going to get worse from there.
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Most of the issue with keeping older cars running is the replacement of unusual parts that don't usually wear out during normal use. Weird stuff happens and you need to pay to fix it. Most of the time in the past i'd give up and just buy a new car. Not so much an available luxury now, with new cars being so awful on multiple levels.
Then there's the issue with the car having low value according to the standard price guides, so a single minor collision totals your vehicle. I drive carefully.
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I mean, where there is a market or even a fun project, there will be someone to supply it. Just look at all the replacement after-market parts for old computers and consoles.
3D database needed (Score:2)
One of the things the world needs is a database of scanned parts soas to 3D print them.
I was snapping the boot down on my '72 Eldorado convertible when my thumb simply went through the aged plastic part.
Either I find that piece that was somehow in air conditioned inventory for decades (and in the right color), learn some serious woodworking, or 3D print it.
We need a standard so that a pieces are taken off to do work, they can be scanned and duplicate.
hawk
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Until we have thermo-set plastic (as opposed to thermoplastic that gets soft again when it's warmed up) I don't expect a lot of 3d-printed auto parts.
The outdoors is hard on things to begin with, and cars add heat, full sun, pressure, and vibration to the mix.
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The gripe when I was a kid was against power windows in cars. Why would you ever get a car with power windows? They just break and cause problems. You know what hardly ever breaks? A hand cranked window. Now, I don't think you can find a car that doesn't have power windows and the argument has moved on to computers and other accessories.
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KISS works great for software. Not always for Engineering.
Your CPU is no longer made-the car is totaled (Score:3)
Obsolescence factored in? (Score:4, Insightful)
I expect software to go south in 5-7 years at most. It was an issue already with automotive audio head units no longer working right with later revisions of Bluetooth. When all this software stops working right, is the car still drivable?
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I'd worry more about the hardware tbh. Modern cars have a huge number of very expensive modules, any one of which could render the car if not undrivable then unable to pass local fit-to-drive tests if it failed and you can guarantee their price is 10-50x actual cost price. And thats while its still being manufactured. Past that if the scrapyard doesn't have it the car's not going anywhere.
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you both seem to be talking about the same coin, just on opposite sides.
Those expensive modules are there to facilitate the software that runs things. If the functions were not driven by that sort of software like they used to be, then those expensive modules and their CANBUS network interfaces wouldn't be required.
I still maintain that the late nineties is going to prove to be the pinnacle of automotive design, because we got EFI for improved drivability but weren't relying on our cars to be massively net
SAAS (Score:2)
>>I expect software to go south in 5-7 years at most.
That's why you need to pay us a monthly subscription fee so your software will always be up to date.
Too much cloud (Score:5, Interesting)
We have a new car, and the biggest problem is storing data in the cloud. Example: each driver has a preferences profile, so you get in, tell it who you are, and the settings are applied. Only: thus sometimes takes *forever*, because the profiles apparently have to be fownlsded from the cloud each time. WTF? That's not much data, surely it should be local?
More generally, the car continually uploads its position. Any registered driver can follow the car's movement, which is bad enough, but *who else* has access to that data?
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It could easily be local and would probably have been simpler for them to implement. But in new cars as with many apps, your data/habits is what interests them if not directly then to a 3rd party they can sell it to. Anonymised of course you understand *cough*.
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We can also track the vehicle with the app. I find that very helpful and reassuring, especially when my kids are driving. You're right, Tesla and maybe the government can track where I'm going. But they could do that when I'm not in the car
Don't forget touchscreens. (Score:5, Interesting)
The worst possible interface for a driver of a car doing 70mph. I'm frankly amazed no regulatory authority has if not banned them or at least mandated buttons for certain heavily used functions such as climate control and radio.
Also other features are of dubious use such as lane follow/self drive/whatever. My car has it but I have to keep my hands on the wheel and look straight ahead else it looses its shit so whats TFing point? I might as well just steer it myself.
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There was this [slashdot.org] earlier this year, although they're more focussed on safety features than radio and air con.
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Pretty low bar though to be fair. Those are the few last remaning things that ARE generally still mechanical switch operated in most cars. Sounds like the EU decided to stop the rot going any further rather than rolling some of it back. Better than nothing though I guss.
Re:Don't forget touchscreens. (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm frankly amazed no regulatory authority has if not banned them or at least mandated buttons for certain heavily used functions such as climate control and radio.
The EU's NCAP is moving that direction [theverge.com] with their safety ratings..
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No iPads (Score:3)
I want a new car that doesn't include an iPad embedded into the dashboard. I want a new car that is in no way connected to a manufacturer's network. I want a new car that let's me, the driver, make driving decisions. I want a new car that isn't embedded with nonsense sensors forcing me to pay thousands of dollars for new parts and "calibration" when someone bumps the car. I can't find that, so I purchased 2001 Mercury Sable LS in remarkably excellent condition with low miles for $2200. I'll keep the car in excellent condition for a very long time. Keep your damn iPads, telemetry snooping, bullshit sensors, and manufacturer lying to customers.
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The article addressed this. It's because cars are required to have backup cameras that the screen exists. Since a doctor [go.com] couldn't be bothered to turn his head and look behind him, the rest of us have to suffer. According the linked article, 200 people die each from being backed over by a vehicle.
Conversely, more people die in bathtubs [seattlepi.com] each year than being backed over. Perhaps we should put a camera in bathrooms as well.
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I want a new car that doesn't include an iPad embedded into the dashboard. I want a new car that is in no way connected to a manufacturer's network. I want a new car that let's me, the driver, make driving decisions. I want a new car that isn't embedded with nonsense sensors forcing me to pay thousands of dollars for new parts and "calibration" when someone bumps the car.
You are probably looking at Toyota/Lexus from 2012 and prior vintage. A good low-mile example can last 10 more years without major issues.
The issue with your 2001 Mercury is brittle plastic. That era of cars had bad plastics that manifest as sticky buttons and various plastic connectors in the engine bay cracking. Fixable, but annoying to deal with.
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And I will gladly take care of those issues when they arise because they are simple fixes. Since owning the car (about a year now) some of these simple issues have arisen, mostly with cosmetic issues concerning the interior. I also spent $125 to have the car hot oiled, and will again in a few months before winter rolls around. The small amount of money I'll need to spend on these minor issues when they arise sure beats the hell out issues new car owners put up with today. My other car is a 2007 Pontiac Vibe
Environmental Control (Score:2)
The survey identified AI-based smart climate control as popular among users
This is so confusing to me. I HATE pretty much every "smart" climate control system I have ever used. I want to be able to control the air speed, which vents are in use, and the air temperature. That's it. I don't want some shitty touchscreen slider than lets me pick an exact-to-the-degree temperature and then tries, and fails, to make the car feel comfortable. Cars are not houses. Outside temperature, incoming sun, etc., play such a huge role in how you actually feel, and the "smart" climate control system
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I don't know, I have a Jeep Grand Cherokee and it's automatic climate system is amazing. It accounts for outside temp and condition and makes adjustments accordingly. I have been driving it for years now and I hardly ever do anything except move the temp up or down a degree or two year 'round. I live in Minnesota so we get the full array of weather. The only time I have ever taken it off of automatic was to try to defrost the windshield a little faster when I was in a hurry and didn't want to wait for the e
go back to basics (Score:3)
Give me a bunch of buttons, a couple of knobs, and a small non-touch screen. Simple, cheap, just works. And there is no need to save money with a shit processor, give the infotainment system some power and speed - it shouldn't feel slower than any phone.
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Modern buyers expect touchscreens and 8" isn't enough anymore, they expect 12"+. Manufacturers get to appeal to being trendy while lowering their costs and making the human interface experience in cars way worse.
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It would seem that you've never had one of these large touchscreens with no buttons and a single knob. You might think you want a tablet in your dash, but you'll find that its a slow piece of shit and next to useless. You'll be pining for the days when you could just turn a knob to change the airflow, without waiting after a screen touch for the knob to switch to the right function, like you can just turn the knob and the fan speed changes instantly like you expect.
Tech should make things easier, it should
My Honda keeps warning me to brake for ghosts (Score:2)
My Honda keeps warning me to brake for ghost vehicles.
I bought the vehicle for other reasons. The advanced sensing features weren't a factor in my buying decision, and I didn't really realize the consequences of Honda Sensing until after I bought it.
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Heck, turn it into a positive. Start a Youtube ghost hunting channel that stars your Honda as the ultimate ghost hunting machine. You don't need no stinking Ouija Board!
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Any way to disable this? Have a look into the user manual maybe, some of this functionality (such as auto-lane checking) can be toggled off/disabled.
And the point is? (Score:2)
However, facial recognition, fingerprint scanners, and gesture controls were largely viewed negatively.
Consumers need to get with the program here. Such features were never intended for them in the first place. They were intended to aid the corporate surveillance apparatus, to further the corporate control which results in companies effectively owning goods which customers pay for, and to get people more used to taking what they're given instead of demanding what they want and need.
The fact that a survey was required to ferret out this information tells you all you need to know. Instead of people voting with
The Best (Score:5, Interesting)
The best two new features I've used in cars are automatic cruise control and heads up speed display.
On a recent road trip, while using both, I managed to not put my foot on the brake or accelerator for a solid hour. I never took my eyes off the road to check my speed. I noticed a difference in how tired I was afterwards, too. It definitely took less mental effort, and I wasn't as tired as usual after a four hour drive.
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The best two new features I've used in cars are automatic cruise control and heads up speed display.
On a recent road trip, while using both, I managed to not put my foot on the brake or accelerator for a solid hour. I never took my eyes off the road to check my speed. I noticed a difference in how tired I was afterwards, too. It definitely took less mental effort, and I wasn't as tired as usual after a four hour drive.
Good HUDs save eye strain that comes from the brief refocus effort it takes to move your view between disparate distances. Now, not all of them are good at getting that "deep" focal point, and may induce just as much eye strain as the old dash display, but I'm a fan of HUD info systems so long as they don't obscure the entire view. Anything that gives me the info I want with minimal effort is a win.
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>Good HUDs save eye strain that comes from the brief refocus effort
>it takes to move your view between disparate distances.
and that stage of life where you can't read the smaller numbers on the dash without reading glasses, but the windshield and further on are quite clear . . .
not the I went through that, nah.
What is this garbage? (Score:4, Insightful)
The survey identified AI-based smart climate control as popular among
They had a lot of fairly believable stuff until we got to this. Did they really shove AI into climate controls? The things that can either use a marked slider or an actual temperature on a thermostat to control the internal temp? Why the FUCK would that need AI? It's been functioning just fine for as long as any of us have been alive. I've been investigating sixties/seventies new cars for a book I'm writing and the climate control thing was well solved even then. Why the fuck do we need AI? Is it for tracking? Are we data-aggregating climate control preferences? WTF?
Re:What is this garbage? (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a buzzword for "temperature sensors" I guess. Companies throw around the letters "AI" like it's some kind of crack for the customer. I avoid anything that manufacturers try to label as "AI". This just shows the level a company will go to to try and make their products sound somehow better. It's having the opposite effect.
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Oh I'm sure some moron threw AI into it. You can't even buy a power drill these days without some AI assist feature trying to guess and how deep you want to drive a screw. One of my friends recently complained her cordless drill wouldn't drive screws flush with the wood because of some AI feature (Bosch brand). So I looked up a few other drills. My favourite one is the Worx WX178.9 AI drill. My favourite thing about it is in the marketing video it shows how the drill repeatedly fails to flush up the screw h
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>The things that can either use a marked slider or an actual
>temperature on a thermostat to control the internal temp?
Cadillac introduced the thermostat climate control in *1964*. It's not that complicated dated; it doesn't even need a transistor, let alone a hyped up computer . . . .
Connected services is a plauge (Score:2)
Here is some safety tech ideas we could have (Score:3)
Brake too late/hard coming to cross streets/stop signs/cars in front - car penalizes you and make you sit there for a minute to think about what you did
Don't signal - car refuses to turn/change lanes and makes you go around the block
Tailgate too close - car backs you off and drives like grandma for the next five miles
Weaving lanes too much - car pulls over and gives you a timeout
Try to pass on the right - car backs off and refuses to pass the car until you properly signal, move left and pass that way
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All of these sound like they would make the roads MORE dangerous...
=Smidge=
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Tailgate too close - car backs you off and drives like grandma for the next five miles
Weaving lanes too much - car pulls over and gives you a timeout
Try to pass on the right - car backs off and refuses to pass the car until you properly signal, move left and pass that way
These, of course, are all actually problems with someone else's driving. How about:
Clog the left lane when not passing - Car immediately swerves off the road and puts you in a ditch where you belong
Failure to permit merging - Car immediately swerves off the road and puts you in a ditch where you belong
Slowing down while passing a truck - Car immediately swerves off the road and puts you in a ditch where you belong
Get over into the right lane like you're going to pass someone, then just pace them for miles i
Privacy is a lie. (Score:2)
People worry about their biometrics, like fingerprints, way too much. They don't realize they're leaving little copies on everything they touch already. Like footprint casts in sand at the beach.
And they think they're anonymous when they're not. When they've already given that 'right' away to umpteen companies they use regularly.
It's the 50s all over again (Score:2)
It's the equivalent of excessive chrome and tail fins in a desperate attempt by automakers to differentiate from each other, or justify higher prices or more frequent upgrades in general.
They haven't addressed the single biggest problem of car ownership - the dealer experience. It's always the same, every time, and it hasn't changed in 40 years. The fake sticker price, the huge markup for dealer added items that aren't actually on the car ('clear coat', etc.) the resulting haggle back down to the stic
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I hate dealerships too. The last time I went to one (at least 15 years ago now) I was browsing around the vehicles on the lot. A salesman kept insisting on my coming into the lobby and sitting down first before answering my questions about the vehicles. The son of a bitch wanted to run a credit check on me first to see if it was worth his time. I can read between the lines. I told him I knew what he was up to and promptly instructed him to do a few things that are more than likely illegal in few southern st
Bundling in a nutshell (Score:2)
Meaning if customers could pick and choose what they bought they wouldn't buy what is being forced on them. Imagine that.
Wonder how that could be fairly forced? Meaning open up many products so the incumbents must innovate in ways that matter, or simply be paid fairly for what little newly useful work that they did. And that customers can 'vote with their money' like how people seem to think would help free markets function correctly.
Or just stop lying about our goals and how our economy works. Kind of
I'd say more like 95% (Score:2)
Drivers don't need more distractions (Score:3)
In my wife's car, the radio and climate systems are controlled by a center-dash touchscreen. Sounds neat, right? Yeah. No tactile feedback, and things move from screen to screen, so your eyes go off the road multiple times for every change.
Give me a physical button or knob so I can do it by feel, and the distraction is minimized and I'm a safer driver.
I can also do without auto-dimming mirrors (that aren't as good as a cheap one with a mechanical lever to darken the rearview mirror's reflections). Or the stupid dash brightness control that thinks it knows better that I do how bright things should be. For some reason, GM things 'full brightness available at night but not during the day' is appropriate.
Corinthian Leather (Score:3)
Car manufacturers have been adding "unnecessary" features to cars forever so they could charge more.
Chrysler advertised "Fine Coninthian Leather" on its cars... this was just plastic.
My needs are simple (Score:2)
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That's about it. The rest is a bonus.
Tone-deaf (Score:2)
Even the new CAT pickup with a the 6.7 diesel has the monster dashboard laptop screen.
Maybe after all the tall-hats blow 90 grand on the luxury model they'll make a work truck for workmen.
Who were perfectly happy with a '75 Chevy.
Some good, some bad (Score:2)
Tech I love: PHEV, surround camera, adaptive cruise control
Tech I can live without: Voice control as a "solution" for everything being on the touch screen
Tech I hate: Subscriptions to enable features already built in, anything stopping me fixing the car myself
Tech I want: Active headlights that have been available everywhere but the US for a decade
Tech I want but will probably never happen: Blacking out the windshield where the sun is, relative to my and my front-seat passenger's eyes
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Also if something is *right* behind you, it's good to check it for anything that you can't see yourself because it's too close. Also good for lining up a tow hitch almost perfect the first time.
I generally use it when I'm backing into a spot after having seen that everything is clear, backing out of my driveway, but stopping when I get to the street to look for cross-traffic (though my car is also exceptionally good at detecting cross-traffic).
I love all around camera view for fine maneuvering, but recogni
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They're great for hooking up trailers.
Aligning the hitch is one-shot.
Also sees anything that is too low for you to see, be it a turtle, a skateboard, or a toddler.
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I actually have, but mostly because the stock mirrors SUCKED and I was attempting to back into a shaded archway and the color scheme of the innermost arch was so close to the shaded opening that I missed it. Bent the rear bumper of the pickup at the corner, which If fixed with a comealong and a tree that following weekend.
I've dailied vehicles manufactured in the seventies, the eighties, the nineties, the noughties, and the teens. In the late nineties and noughties the view out of new models started getti
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Who else remembers when right-hand side mirrors weren't included in cars?
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I've seen a few examples of this, but they were mostly Japanese vehicles from as new as the late eighties. The case that I remember being most prominent was when people hotrodding such cars put spoilers on them and were being cited for obstructing rear view because of the lack of side mirror once the windshield-mounted mirror had no view.
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Pre-1980 US vehicles commonly had no right side mirror. Before 1975 they mostly just didn't. Optional add on, and most avoided the cost. Driver's side mirrors themselves didn't become mandatory until 1965.
The standard passenger side mirror was an innovation relatively time-synced with Japanese (at least technical) dominance of the automotive market in the US. Ironically until 1983, Japanese side mirrors had to be fender-mounted (by Japanese government mandate), so they look kinda weird.
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I like my backup camera, but I use it as a supplement to my mirrors. I just treat the camera as a lower level mirror. The problem, as always, is relying on any one thing as your only source of information.
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I never, ever had a collision while backing up, until I started using backup cameras, and then had two within a couple of months in two different cars. I've stopped, and now turn the frick around and look behind me instead of using the camera. Haven't had another one since. Cameras make you complacent.
Backup cameras are like mirrors. You can use them to spot-check, but I've never seen one good enough I'd trust it for the whole visibility of the job. Even the Cadillac 360 view doesn't really work well enough to trust completely. It's nice for a quick glance at your current world, but you still need actual eyes on the direction of travel.
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If you are backing into a spot, generally the camera is pretty good, because the act of getting ready to back up has largely taken care of risk of traffic coming at you.
Problem is lack of peripheral vision, so you really have to look left and right to make sure you aren't backing out in front of someone. Of course your angle to see that generally sucks anyway, so the cross-traffic alert systems are probably doing a better job of looking around the car you are next to if you do back out (I always back in)
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While I do prefer windows and mirrors, I can see quite a few use cases for backup cameras, mostly involving vehicles that DONT have window and mirror lines of sight to what is needed or have extra crap in the way constantly or typically operate in areas where a more direct view is needed. For example, my "fishin' and huntin' and go to the dump" truck that just died ('93 Ranger) had a topper on it, and then on top of that the PO spray painted the windows of it with black paint. A $100 backup camera system