Ugh the glass roofs. I don't know why people like them. "Why yes sir, I would love to get beat down on by the hot sun while lacking airflow over me and risk an expensive repair bill from a falling walnut!"
johanvts 15 hours ago [-]
I love it, makes the interior feel light and open and i never experienced it being super hot or baking my scalp, there is a coating on it making it very different from just a clear pane. Model 3, 195cm.
jerlam 14 hours ago [-]
It's fine for a passenger, especially in the back seat. But as a driver, it adds a potentially bright source of light right at the top of your vision, and that can be annoying as hell. I covered my roof and I felt more relaxed since my eyes didn't have to adjust if I accidentally looked too far upwards.
Indoors, we avoid lighting a room with single bright overhead source of light. But this glass roof fad adds it to cars.
goda90 15 hours ago [-]
Not to mention how easy it is for T-rex to smash through.
clueless 15 hours ago [-]
This is the most important reason not to have them...
fuzzfactor 12 hours ago [-]
I think we're all aware of the number of vehicles out there having the strongly reinforced solid hardtop plus the heavy-duty luggage rack, who never seem to be carrying any luggage up there. Obviously to mitigate a potentially more damaging brontosaurus incident.
seanmcdirmid 14 hours ago [-]
I can't imagine these are very popular in Arizona, but in the PNW the sun isn't a big problem for 10 months out of the year.
paradox460 13 hours ago [-]
Which part of the pnw? Because in the mid Columbia you get 300+ days of sun and summer temperatures in the low 100s
seanmcdirmid 11 hours ago [-]
Having lived in West Richland before (in the Tri-cities, on Red Mountain, scrub and all), I don't think thats really true. Well, it is definitely sunnier than Seattle, but nowhere near Phoenix. It is more normal than special.
Barring that, 80%+ of the people in the PNW live near the coast.
paradox460 10 hours ago [-]
Tourism board proudly advertises the 300 days of sun on big bill boards at the airport in Pasco, and the hot summers are honestly worse than Phoenix, as there's humidity
sublinear 5 hours ago [-]
Phoenix can stay hot at night in the summer. Tonight is a good example. It's 90 all night and won't hit the low of 80 until 7am. This is borderline uninhabitable for many.
If you want the worst of both worlds with that kind of oppressive heat 24/7 and high humidity, take a look at Houston.
PNW isn't anywhere close to that.
seanmcdirmid 9 hours ago [-]
[dead]
sublinear 4 hours ago [-]
Can you share a link to a timeseries graph on weather.gov or similar? I'm not finding any proof of what you're saying.
epolanski 15 hours ago [-]
Suddenly everyone is putting them on cars.
I went to test the new electric BMW iX3 and it had it.
It was funny because it was July in Southern Europe so it was quite obvious why it was the worst idea in the world.
ActorNightly 15 hours ago [-]
Most people don't utilize them fully.
- In the winter, if there is sun, and you have like black leather interior, it actually helps warm the car up.
-For trucks, having a glass roof is almost essential for seeing if you will fit into a parking garage. Having lived in Seattle, Im glad my truck had one.
- Opening the roof and setting AC to use outside air is the fastest way to vent the car. It doesn't create as many vorticies as opening the windows.
mikestew 14 hours ago [-]
For trucks, having a glass roof is almost essential for seeing if you will fit into a parking garage.
If your truck is that tall, I suggest measuring it and recording the height. After that, you'll find that just about every low-hanging garage, drive-up, bridge, etc. has a height listed. Over 9.5'? Don't try and drive through the Arboretum, as the signs will tell you.
Opening the roof...
That's a sunroof, not a panoramic glass roof being discussed.
darth_avocado 15 hours ago [-]
What you’re describing is a sunroof that’s useful for a small set of use cases. Panoramic roofs that don’t open are different.
xethos 8 hours ago [-]
> What you’re describing is a sunroof
Pedantic, but more likely to be a moonroof. A sunroof is opaque, while a moonroof is the clear or mild-to-moderately tinted glass panel we've all grown used to.
munificent 14 hours ago [-]
I currently live in Seattle and drive a 4WD Toyota Tacoma with a rooftop tent on the back and frequently enter parking garages. I know the height of my truck and was careful to get a setup where the rooftop tent isn't gratuitously high. I think everything is still a little under 6' which is fine in just about every parking garage.
Even if my setup was taller, garages here are pretty good at having the height listed when you enter and anyone with a tall truck really should know exactly how tall it is.
I don't think a sunroof would help me. If I was ever in a situation where it did, I would already be taking too much of a risk of damaging something.
15 hours ago [-]
galenelias 15 hours ago [-]
Similar to the 'EV Stupidity Checklist' from John Siracusa:
Cool, my EV checks all these boxes. And as for the rear view mirror, I have the best of both worlds. Regular mirror, but if my back is full to the top (wagon), I flip a switch and it's a screen. I guess I got lucky since I didn't even know of any of these pitfalls when I impulse bought my EV strictly for the acceleration.
api 13 hours ago [-]
My 2021 Nissan Leaf checks everything, though the manual charge port release is hard to get to and under the hood so it only kind of counts. You can use it in a pinch.
Utterly maintenance free. Utterly reliable. Drives great. 220 miles range on a full charge and it does about get that if you're not using HVAC heavily, not driving with a lead foot, and it's not extremely cold. Not horribly expensive. Would buy again, and plan to keep until it dies which for this thing might be a while.
Only bad thing is the ChaDeMO (or however you caps it) fast charging port. If I needed to fast charge a lot I'd buy a CCS dongle. They are now made but aren't cheap since it can't just be a dumb dongle, but apparently they work. I also think there are NACS dongles, or you can double-dongle that (NACS->CCS->ChaDeMO) if you really want to go there. Lol.
fho 4 hours ago [-]
Re physical buttons: I always wonder why there are no "modal buttons" in cars. E.g. 4 buttons on the left, 4 on the right.
The ones on the left open "submenus" the ones on the right trigger an action from the submenu.
Can be visual, but should not depend in the GUI to keep up.
Examples: Left 1 puts you in the audio menu, Right 1 increases volume. Left 2 puts you in the cruise control menu, Right 1 activates.
Humans are actually pretty good at learning simple patterns like that.
4x4 gives you 16 functions on the wheel. Going one level deeper (left, right, left) would give you 64 possible results. That should be enough to cover all bases.
_nalply 3 hours ago [-]
I got a car whose cruise control state was never displayed (the mechanic used the wrong dashboard), but since it worked anyway, I accepted it. So that's a data point (me) that modal buttons do work.
But "should not depend in the GUI to keep up" is wrong, I think. It needs at least one LED per mode. Because sometimes it's a bit annoying. Rarely cruise control doesn't engage or turns off by itself or something caused the cruise control mode diverge from what I have in mind, and a quick glance would help to resync.
fho 2 hours ago [-]
I am not ruling out the GUI. I just should not be required to look at it. The GUI is a necessity for learning, but once you know a key sequence there must not be a delay before the second click can be made.
The menus should be shown on the dashboard (not on the central screen). I would argue that that would be even safer than trying to look at the symbols in the wheel/stalks while driving.
plqbfbv 14 hours ago [-]
I own a Tesla M3 2019, and recently drove 2-3yo MG HS as rental.
Glass roof: agree.
Buttons: yes, if Tesla would have kept the stalks and added 3-4 programmable buttons, I might rate them higher for a next car. That said, with the MG HS I guess I should have read 20+ pages of manual just to operate the 4-axis 3-rings windshield wipers stalk, not to mention that I could never engage cruise control at all despite trying; so my take on buttons is: something more than Tesla, way less than full-optional/overloaded car. At least with Tesla there's aftermarket options.
Smartphone/NFC: with the MG HS I had to perform a 4-point checklist every time I started it or parked it, and after 7y of Tesla it felt like a huge chore (esp. for quick stops). I've been very happy with Tesla and smartphone (failed maybe twice in 7y), and keep on me the Tesla card as backup (never needed it in the end). A key fob wouldn't annoy me if it worked just like the smartphone on my Tesla: if I don't have to do anything but keep it in my pocket, it'd be fine.
Door handles: the M3 handles are at the right intersection for me to be minimal, efficient and still mostly understandable (push, grab and pull). I can understand they're not regular grab and pull and not everyone is happy about it. I accidentally set off the MG HS alarm while the door and car were already unlocked by pressing the small button on the handle, which after seeing it for 10+y on many cars I still have absolutely no clue what it does (and most times it's only a placeholder for the small button).
Poorly calibrated ADAS: my experience with Tesla is extremely good and again strikes a good balance, while extremely poor applies to Hyundai i10, MG HS and others that I've driven recently. Also: the latter list seems to treat "silent ADAS" as a feature, while Tesla explicitly tells you whether auto-steer or cruise are being engaged or disconnecting, which seems a way better UX. I stopped using the lane assist on the MG HS because it'd randomly drop out even in mild curves without any clue whatsoever. The "auto-enable on restart" for these things is a reason I'll immediately drop the brand from the list of cars I may consider in the future (Hyundai i10).
One pedal: agree.
jp191919 14 hours ago [-]
Newer Tesla glass roofs don't radiate any heat. So I've heard.
paradox460 13 hours ago [-]
Tesla has managed to violate the laws of thermodynamics?
high_na_euv 13 hours ago [-]
Believe it or not, calls!
TheCowboy 14 hours ago [-]
Add automatic high beams to the list.
They just don't work half as well as when people did it manually.
Before the pandemic, it was rare to get blinded by a person's brights. Now if I drive at night it's just non-stop, and I live in an area with street lighting. (Some of this is also due to after market LEDs and possibly lost driving manners.)
It's extra obnoxious as a pedestrian because at best they get turned off way too late, or frequently not at all.
mikestew 14 hours ago [-]
Add automatic high beams to the list.
You mean to say "automatic high beams on Teslas". The ones on our Hyundai Ioniq work just fine, and have never blinded anyone. But in Redmond, WA, Teslas are everywhere and 90% if you're getting beamed, it's a Tesla. Their headlights are, in many cases, improperly aimed out of the factory and their shit auto high beams only make it worse.
TheCowboy 13 hours ago [-]
It's not just Teslas. It's also hard to take an inventory of each vehicle blinding me because I'm being blinded while still paying attention to everything else.
There's also the issue where most people who use them clearly think they're fine, or they would stop.
plqbfbv 12 hours ago [-]
Interesting, my 2019 M3 deactivates high beams as soon as it sees the faintest of lights coming the opposite direction.
I think what you're really experiencing is default/shit calibration from factory (0/"highest it can get") + super-bright LED lights. The first 2 months I drove my M3 everyone was flashing me on the highway, and it took me a while to put that together and notice that it was me with low beams. I realized how bright the LED lights are the moment I saw the orange turn light brighten up a 5m overhead sign from 25m away, and then looked for calibration settings of the beams. Haven't been flashed since :)
wolrah 10 hours ago [-]
Can confirm, my Ioniq5's auto high beams are great. I've felt the need to manually override them twice in nearly a year of ownership, both times were cross traffic that didn't have enough visible reflectors for the car's cameras to tell they were there.
cyberax 14 hours ago [-]
Uh... Auto beams made driving definitely more pleasant around here.
On the other hand, extra-bright blue LED headlights compensated for this.
jrootabega 16 hours ago [-]
Combined turn signals and brake lights!
settsu 14 hours ago [-]
This or even properly dedicated indicators that aren't orange.
kazinator 14 hours ago [-]
One-pedal driving trains a driving habit that could lead to a regrettable mistake when getting used to a vehicle without it. The driver's seat is no place for poorly considered conveniences.
13 hours ago [-]
decryption 11 hours ago [-]
Does it really? I go between an ICE car and my EV every 2-3 weeks and switching between the two isn't much of a mental challenge. I just prefer OPD.
kazinator 10 hours ago [-]
I wouldn't suspect someone switching every few weeks would have a problem.
Other cases will arise: someone driving nothing but one-pedal for 7 years, suddenly finding themselves without it.
There are going to be new drivers who learn on one-pedal and drive nothing but that for years, so all their core habits are formed around that.
ryan_glass 15 hours ago [-]
A sim card which connects the car to the internet.
moribvndvs 15 hours ago [-]
I got a used 2023 Chevy Bolt and initially disregarded one pedal driving was an absurd and unnecessary feature, but now I think I would skip a car that doesn’t have it.
hangonhn 14 hours ago [-]
I've never tried it but can you explain why you like it?
The idea is a bit hard for me to comprehend because there are definitely occasions that I would tap my brake kind of hard and then immediately speed up again. Perhaps my mental model is still very much ICE engine and torque converter oriented and that's holding me back from understanding this. From an abstract point of view, it seems there is only one variable I'm controlling for, which is acceleration, so having two pedals is just doing the same thing with more steps (literally). One pedal should give me everything I need.
Fwirt 14 hours ago [-]
Anecdotally, to me it's just more fun. It increases range by relying entirely on the regenerative braking and relegating the disc brakes to an "emergency" role. For freeway driving in traffic it's also more intuitive, since you don't have to balance coasting/braking and can just ease off the pedal more to slow down quickly. Muscle memory can definitely be hard to break though, when I'm in a hurry I sometimes forget to enable single-pedal and drive for a bit before I realize it. The car we have (Chevy Bolt) has a separate regenerative brake control as a paddle on the back of the steering wheel for use in "regular" mode, but it's awkwardly placed.
mikestew 14 hours ago [-]
It increases range by relying entirely on the regenerative braking and relegating the disc brakes to an "emergency" role.
I'm not sure about the Bolt, but most EVs work that way, one-pedal or not. Even a hybrid Prius doesn't seem to use the friction brakes unless it has to (emergency, coming to a low speed stop).
I don't like one-pedal on the Hyundai Ioniq if for no other reason than it uses both front/rear motors regardless. In contrast to Eco/Normal mode that uses the front motor only if it feels the need for moar power!!
moribvndvs 14 hours ago [-]
As you suggest, it smooths out your driving habits. You’re just focusing on balancing the accelerator with your desired velocity, that’s it. Need to go slower? Back off the pedal until you hit the mark. The regenerative braking kicks in so it slows down quickly, sort of like light-to-medium braking. It’s more responsive than you might think. Need to go faster? Press the accelerator as usual. No more going back and forth between gas and brake, which makes it less exhausting in stop-and-go traffic. You’re also maximizing regenerative breaking, so that’s increased efficiency and less brake wear. That’s particularly good when you’re doing down hill.
yolo3000 14 hours ago [-]
Does the one pedal drive activate the brake lights, or why does it feel that a lot of evs don't show the brake lights when 'braking', which is really annoying when you drive behind them.
jerlam 10 hours ago [-]
You are right, some EVs cut corners and don't activate the brake lights in these situations:
there's a big one that i'm surprised doesn't get more attention: motion sickness. Several friends of mine have commented that they avoid Uber's that are Teslas, because they are so jerky. Hard suspension, super torquey drivetrains, rigid chassis (good!), and spartan seats make for a pretty uncomfortable ride as a passenger.
i've never once been excited to ride in someone's ev, though they are fun to drive.
plqbfbv 12 hours ago [-]
> Several friends of mine have commented that they avoid Uber's that are Teslas, because they are so jerky.
You can definitely ride it smoother and I haven't had anybody complain so far, but I guess after hours of driving the real issue is the torque. On one hand you want to have it available to be able to merge into traffic ASAP and go on your way, on the other hand 500Nm torque means that in order to get gentle acceleration you have 3mm of play on the accelerator pedal, and you need to caress it rather than push it (own a M3). I guess after hours of driving one might be tired enough that their sensitivity is way lower than when they started in the morning.
magic5227 14 hours ago [-]
People write off the Chevy Bolt (as does GM) but it solves all of these issues and is what has kept me from "upgrading." Normal buttons, normal car, normal handles, simple, fast, zero maintenance, and because they aren't fancy incredibly cheap used-car prices with near new batteries.
api 14 hours ago [-]
Low cost and low maintenance is why they hate cars like this. They're not as profitable.
The ideal is a big overpriced car that depreciates rapidly and requires a lot of maintenance.
magic5227 12 hours ago [-]
Agree, not to mention the new ones all come with monthly subscriptions instead of CarPlay.
Fwirt 14 hours ago [-]
Unfortunately probably not available in Australia, but as I've mentioned in other comments, GM for all its faults has managed to check all these boxes with the Bolt EV. It feels pretty much like a normal, boring car, which is a great thing. The only thing that violates the author's must-haves is that they put the A/C, heat, and heated seat controls on the touchscreen, although the "auto" climate control works well and is operated with a physical knob. Also I believe we have the higher trim model and it does not have motorized seats or seat memory, thankfully my wife and I are similarly proportioned enough that I only have to move the seat forward when I drive. It is by far my favorite of all the vehicles we've owned in recent years, and it's very affordable in the US.
decryption 11 hours ago [-]
I am the author of the blog post and yep, the Chevy Bolt is basically the perfect car (for me at least). Ticks all the boxes. Apparently the 2027 Bolt RS has driver's seat memory.
But the Bolt isn't available in Australia! GM abandoned us when they shut down Holden. Ironically, it was designed for production based on a South Korean prototype in Port Melbourne, 40km from where I live! https://www.carsguide.com.au/car-news/chevrolet-bolt-reveale...
featwanz 10 hours ago [-]
This direction of "cool futurism" and turning every HID inside of a car into a giant iPad is only going to continue, I understand the appeal of EVs but physical buttons and less fancy eletrical-based comforts are the reason I will maintain a combustion vehicle until they are outlawed.
xethos 8 hours ago [-]
> until they are outlawed.
I don't actually ever expect this to happen in North America. Have you seen what motorists get away with? Everything from minor issues (mis-aligned headlights, dead brake lights) to major safety issues (tinted front windows preventing eye-contact with the driver, off-road bars on jeeps), to shit that is an easy pull for any cop (missing the required-in-BC front license plate).
We probably end up at the same place though, regardless of which of us is right: I think internal combustion will instead die a slow economic death, as gas stations become less common, the expertise to keep them running evaporates, and parts become harder to source when OEMs are no longer legally required to keep them available
Morromist 15 hours ago [-]
I wonder if there's a blog or something that tells the story of how good car design went off the rails. I'm pretty sure that there was a culture of design that gradually worked out what a great car is like until somewhere in the 2010s - and then got flushed down the toilet, but I don't know anything about it.
I can see how this might have happened. Tessla was a big deal and had those horrible door handles and companies probably wanted to look innovative rather than have good working designs. And physical buttons are more expensive to put in and don't look nearly as futuristic. I heard an add for a car a few days ago on NPR that was literally just "it has 30+ inches of screens!"
But perhaps the story is more about consumers who just want new, exciting things like weird door handles and 30 inches of screens, who cares what they do, and the car companies just threw up their hands and gave them what they wanted? I don't know. I would love to know the full story. I'm sure its documented somewhere.
decryption 10 hours ago [-]
I would also like to find out what happened here. Here's a video with a BMW designer where they're asked point blank about some design aspects of their new iX3 (which seems like an impressive car, total clean sheet EV design) and when asked about the door handles - which are flush, but pop out, which isn't too bad IMHO - basically said they do it because it looks cool, any aero benefits are just the cherry on top.
I blame Musk. Maybe I'm way off base, but most of these trends were first highly visible in Tesla products. They may not have created each dumb UX decision, but certainly were one of the first to put them all into a single car.
I remember the first time I tried to go to lunch in a friend's Tesla. I couldn't get in or out of the stupid thing without instructions. And getting in would be next to impossible for somebody with bad rheumatoid arthritis and bad fingers - the "push with thumb, while pulling with fingers" is awkward at best.
autoexec 10 hours ago [-]
> I heard an add for a car a few days ago on NPR that was literally just "it has 30+ inches of screens!" But perhaps the story is more about consumers who just want new, exciting things like weird door handles and 30 inches of screens
Be careful not to confuse what consumers want with what marketers try to make customers care about. Nobody cares about screen footage, but the ads will still push that as something that their car has over others or because they want to shift how consumers view the product. Convincing customers that a cheaper/worse design is actually a feature they should find desirable is an age old trick, so ads aren't a good indicator for what consumers want, at least not until they become successful enough that consumers start blindly requesting what the ads have trained them to look for. Then you get an "it's got electrolytes" situation.
pdimitar 15 hours ago [-]
> But perhaps the story is more about consumers who just want new, exciting things like weird door handles and 30 inches of screens
We should never underestimate people's weird desires but this is mostly not it IMO. There was a new generation that felt the need to rebel against old established stuff and of course is now painfully rediscovering why this stuff was established in the first place.
Infuriating to watch, mind you. But also predictable, like watching bots play StarCraft against each other.
clueless 15 hours ago [-]
One Pedal Drive Option tends to cause motion sickness.
decryption 10 hours ago [-]
It does if the person driving sucks at using it. I've been driving OPD since 2018 and friends that get sick in Teslas driven by Uber drivers have told me they didn't get sick and wondered what I was doing different. The difference is I know how to use it.
13 hours ago [-]
why_at 14 hours ago [-]
I agree with most of these but
>Smartphones and NFC cards instead of keyfob with buttons
Using a phone as a key is super convenient, and having a little credit card sized NFC key works great as a backup. I've rarely had any problems with it.
>Turning on/off headlights, auto lights are good but I still regularly need to manually control them.
Why? Auto headlights work 99.9% of the time in every car made in the last 20 years.
criemen 14 hours ago [-]
> Using a phone as a key is super convenient, and having a little credit card sized NFC key works great as a backup. I've rarely had any problems with it.
The author elaborates that it only works intermittently for them, providing a long list of links to similar complaints?
why_at 14 hours ago [-]
Sure but if we're comparing anecdotes all I'm saying is I've had a great experience.
The linked complaints are all for one specific car which I've never driven, so maybe there's some problem with that model or Volvo's software.
ak6te 11 hours ago [-]
The author also seems to drive an EX30. My mom bought one a year or two ago and I can attest that it is easily the shittiest software I have ever experienced in a car. Every single thing is half-baked. I'm sure that there are plenty of cars out there that can do this better.
decryption 10 hours ago [-]
This is correct (I'm the author the post). The EX30 could be a great car but the quality of the software really lets it down. Prior to this I owned a Tesla and while it was way better, it still had the occasional failure to recognise my iPhone as the key and wouldn't let me into the car. Maybe 1 in 10 occasions compared to 5 in 10 with the EX30.
trashb 15 hours ago [-]
I suppose as a band aid solution for the sunroof you could have the roof wrapped in the body color, an other color or even a funky design.
Also perhaps a hybrid would also fulfill the authors needs?
I do sympathize with the opinion that most new cars are not very attractive. At least to me as a petrol head.
hs586 15 hours ago [-]
As I was reading I thought “hey my Skoda seems to be ok with most of these things”, having gone for it more or less for the same reasons. Skoda seems to get it better. Is it because being a non-luxury tier car, they value function over form much more?
decryption 10 hours ago [-]
That correlates with my research too (which is at the end of the blog post if you read that far - fair enough if you didn't, it's a long post!). Skoda's design philosophy is "Simply Clever" and I guess they actually believe it rather than being a marketing gimmick.
Something that bothers me (even though I do not drive a car and do not intend to, but sometimes am a passenger) is windows that require electric controls to operate and cannot be operated manually.
hs586 15 hours ago [-]
The lack of buttons is also extremely annoying on kitchen appliances. To open my microwave door, I need to make sure my finger is clean (it’s a kitchen!) and also adds a very annoying latency between the “pressing” and the door opening.
semanticjudo 16 hours ago [-]
I recently bought a new car for the first time in 16 years. I had all the same concerns - my Acura MDX solved them all. It’s not perfect (has opaque shade for panoramic roof) but the number of physical buttons (dozens) is glorious. And the door handles are great.
xnx 14 hours ago [-]
Turning indicator stalks that don't allow soft-signaling (i.e. ability to nudge the stalk without snapping it into place).
losvedir 14 hours ago [-]
I don't get the allure of one pedal driving. I have a Model Y, so I use it, but I'm just kind of "meh" about it. I think they introduced it related to re-gen, but these days it's kind of an arbitrary UX choice - on the Tesla you can enable brake assist to mimic the one-pedal driving experience when it's cold or you have a 100% battery, and other cars (maybe Tesla?) will periodically use brakes instead of regen to dry them off or otherwise exercise them a bit.
So then, if it's not actually a "fly-by-wire" mechanical system, why would you choose that as the UX? It cramps my calf constantly keeping it partially activated and the pedal half way depressed. More often than not I'll relieve my foot by doing short stints of cruise control, but that's tedious to manage.
My dream set up would be the accelerator pedal is, well, an accelerator, and the brake is a decelerator, and if you're not pressing either the car maintains the current velocity. It feels like _most_ of the time that you're driving you're just trying to make it go the same speed, and then you can press whichever pedal you need if you're wanting to stop or start again.
I don't suppose any cars work like this? ICE vehicles more or less in the moment do but "coasting" does decelerate a small amount so that over time you have to push the pedal again.
plqbfbv 12 hours ago [-]
> and if you're not pressing either the car maintains the current velocity
That'd be horrible. A medical emergency of one would potentially turn into a medical emergency of many.
With a Tesla you can use cruise control without autosteer also on smaller roads, and it should also slow down for turns (since ~1.5y or so IIRC). Normally it's good enough that I don't mind.
mikestew 14 hours ago [-]
We've got one-pedal on the Ioniq. I've tried it, meh, I don't see the appeal. It's not horrible, but I'll probably never use it again for many of the same reasons you list.
My dream set up would be the accelerator pedal is, well, an accelerator, and the brake is a decelerator, and if you're not pressing either the car maintains the current velocity.
Sounds like cruise control, which many cars have.
cmoski 14 hours ago [-]
Subaru Trailseeker was the best I could find, for us.
kazinator 14 hours ago [-]
I hate the tall center storage boots that leave me with no room for my elbow. There is no reason for anything to be there in a front-wheel-drive vehicle.
Why do I have less elbow room than in some 60-year-old rear-wheel-drive that has a transmission and axle in that spot?
Short, tasteful drink tray and storage bin, please.
mochacosine1206 15 hours ago [-]
There are EVs with no sunroof.
decryption 10 hours ago [-]
Yes, but then they have other design flaws too. There's basically only 1 brand selling EVs in Australia that aren't a compromise (to me at least) in one way or another. Skoda and upcoming VW cars seem to be bucking the trend.
kmeisthax 14 hours ago [-]
I drive a Hyundai Elantra GT hatchback, and if there was a way to just rip out the engine and gas tank and replace them with an electric drivetrain and battery, I would. I literally do not need any more car than that, and every attempt to sell EVs on pointless futurism pisses me off.
The last time[0] I rented a car they tried to put me in a Tesla. I literally spent 30 minutes in the parking lot with my foot on the brake trying to figure out how to put it in park before giving up and engaging the parking brake buried three settings menus deep on the touchscreen. Walked back inside and they gave me some Kia EV that was about a million times better by virtue of having an almost-normal gear selector. The only real problem was that even the DC fast chargers took like an hour to get the car to full and "just charge it to 80% and top it off before you drop it off" is not an answer when your flight is at 8AM at JFK.
Related note: I'm not really interested in autonomous driving either. Cars that drive themselves are a band-aid solution for the underlying problem that cities build too much private car infrastructure and not enough transit infrastructure. People don't like sitting in traffic, they will actively avoid paying attention to the road when in traffic, and the easiest way to fix that traffic is to provide convenient alternatives to driving.
[0] Emphasis on last: this rental wound up being so comically overcharged that I am actively avoiding car rentals and taking public transit - or, worst case scenario, an Uber.
globular-toast 14 hours ago [-]
I thought this was going to be about the noise, pollution, danger, bullying etc. Ah, no, it's about things that annoy the person on the inside of the car. So if both the people outside and inside the car hate the things, why are we stuck with them?
You could easily avoid every single one of these issues by driving an older bog standard, cheap car rather than one costing tens of thousands. Seems like a no brainer really?
plqbfbv 12 hours ago [-]
> You could easily avoid every single one of these issues by driving an older bog standard, cheap car rather than one costing tens of thousands. Seems like a no brainer really?
We're already set to pass 1.5C warming in the next couple years, which was supposed to be the best-case scenario as of 10y ago. I don't know if you noticed, but batteries cost more to make because we're building the supply chain for them, after 100+y of "bog standard" vehicles left us with a world that each year registers new temperature records and increasingly violent weather events.
skywhopper 14 hours ago [-]
“ A Hyundai executive told the media in 2024, "we also tried out putting touchscreen-based controls, and people didn’t prefer that", "people get stressed, annoyed and steamed when they want to control something in a pinch but are unable to do so".”
I always wonder if the folks who make these decisions themselves ever drive a car. Because this nonsense is wildly irritating. No one who regularly drives long distances could possibly think these are positive features, right?
ErroneousBosh 14 hours ago [-]
I can tell you this annoyance - if you're behind a Kia Niro EV and you wonder why the driver is braking from 70 to 30 randomly all the way down a totally clear motorway, it's not the driver. The car's cameras have spotted a shadow across the road and decided it's an obstruction and panicked.
It's like being driven by an inexperienced and terribly stoned driver, paranoid, jumping at shadows, hallucinating shit all over the place.
The ones we have at work keep pinging and beeping about all sorts of shit - oh you're too close to that car over there! (Yeah the road is really narrow, shut up, you're the same width as my Range Rover, you fit just fine). Hey watch out for that twig that's 50 metres away across the field! Oh you wanted to change lanes? I don't think so! OMG WATCH OUT FOR THAT CAR YOU'RE ABOUT TO HIT! (yes because you steered back towards it you stupid machine).
Hey you look tired you should take a break right now so I'm going to ping and beep and make the instrument panel flash until you do, even though we only left five minutes ago and there's still over three hours to go!
Fuck everything to do with them. They're exhausting and stressful to drive. I don't know how anyone can cope with EVs.
DangitBobby 12 hours ago [-]
None of these are specific to EVs or necessary for EVs or really have anything to do with the car being an EV. You'll note that literally all of these things are both possible in an ICEV and are actually present in ICEVs.
ErroneousBosh 1 hours ago [-]
I have never driven an ICEV with them, but I take your point.
My current daily driver is a 30-year-old Range Rover that has none of the annoying beepy flashy distract-o-trons. It's far safer for other road users than the Kia because there's not much to do other than look out of the very large completely unobstructed windows and observe other traffic.
That's the other thing I missed out about the Kia - the whole middle third of the windscreen is completely blocked by this huge camera pod thing with a tiny little mirror at the bottom, about a hand's width above the dashboard.
This camera pod takes up the space on the windscreen where I actually need to look for pedestrians at crossings.
plqbfbv 12 hours ago [-]
> They're exhausting and stressful to drive. I don't know how anyone can cope with EVs.
It's specific brands, I'm happy with my Tesla (see my other comments).
ErroneousBosh 1 hours ago [-]
I've driven a couple of Teslas and I can't say I'm a fan of the interior. I mean, I'm not a fan of Elon Musk either, but let's leave that aside for now.
They feel really cheap and flimsy inside, definitely not an 80 grand car.
I don't like the gigantic screen in the middle. I don't want any kind of lit-up screen in my car, for anything.
Relectric 15 hours ago [-]
I am so happy to get rid of physical buttons. When entering a rental car I often feel like I've entered the cockpit of an airplane. I think Toyota bz4x has 20 separate buttons on the steering wheel alone.
trashb 14 hours ago [-]
I am exactly opposite, I feel like touch screens in cars are especially bad ux. If I get into a rental especially I don't want to go hunting through all menus to find out where to set what settings, which tiny slider to pull to do change the volume. Where to turn off the lane keep assist or adaptive cruise control.
I rented a car not an ipad multimedia system, touch screens in cars are totally counter intuitive and often don't have the basic functionally easily accessible. Also usually the ui is laggy.
TheCowboy 14 hours ago [-]
Tactile buttons can be pressed while keeping your eyes on the road and your surroundings. Touchscreens are inherently visual and require looking. Relative positioning of differently shaped buttons help guide your fingers to what you need.
decryption 10 hours ago [-]
The bz4x is basically my canonical ideal car from an interior point of view! Thank god for consumer choice.
Rendered at 09:03:47 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
Indoors, we avoid lighting a room with single bright overhead source of light. But this glass roof fad adds it to cars.
Barring that, 80%+ of the people in the PNW live near the coast.
If you want the worst of both worlds with that kind of oppressive heat 24/7 and high humidity, take a look at Houston.
PNW isn't anywhere close to that.
I went to test the new electric BMW iX3 and it had it.
It was funny because it was July in Southern Europe so it was quite obvious why it was the worst idea in the world.
- In the winter, if there is sun, and you have like black leather interior, it actually helps warm the car up.
-For trucks, having a glass roof is almost essential for seeing if you will fit into a parking garage. Having lived in Seattle, Im glad my truck had one.
- Opening the roof and setting AC to use outside air is the fastest way to vent the car. It doesn't create as many vorticies as opening the windows.
If your truck is that tall, I suggest measuring it and recording the height. After that, you'll find that just about every low-hanging garage, drive-up, bridge, etc. has a height listed. Over 9.5'? Don't try and drive through the Arboretum, as the signs will tell you.
Opening the roof...
That's a sunroof, not a panoramic glass roof being discussed.
Pedantic, but more likely to be a moonroof. A sunroof is opaque, while a moonroof is the clear or mild-to-moderately tinted glass panel we've all grown used to.
Even if my setup was taller, garages here are pretty good at having the height listed when you enter and anyone with a tall truck really should know exactly how tall it is.
I don't think a sunroof would help me. If I was ever in a situation where it did, I would already be taking too much of a risk of damaging something.
https://hypercritical.co/2026/05/29/ev-stupidity-checklist
Utterly maintenance free. Utterly reliable. Drives great. 220 miles range on a full charge and it does about get that if you're not using HVAC heavily, not driving with a lead foot, and it's not extremely cold. Not horribly expensive. Would buy again, and plan to keep until it dies which for this thing might be a while.
Only bad thing is the ChaDeMO (or however you caps it) fast charging port. If I needed to fast charge a lot I'd buy a CCS dongle. They are now made but aren't cheap since it can't just be a dumb dongle, but apparently they work. I also think there are NACS dongles, or you can double-dongle that (NACS->CCS->ChaDeMO) if you really want to go there. Lol.
The ones on the left open "submenus" the ones on the right trigger an action from the submenu.
Can be visual, but should not depend in the GUI to keep up.
Examples: Left 1 puts you in the audio menu, Right 1 increases volume. Left 2 puts you in the cruise control menu, Right 1 activates.
Humans are actually pretty good at learning simple patterns like that.
4x4 gives you 16 functions on the wheel. Going one level deeper (left, right, left) would give you 64 possible results. That should be enough to cover all bases.
But "should not depend in the GUI to keep up" is wrong, I think. It needs at least one LED per mode. Because sometimes it's a bit annoying. Rarely cruise control doesn't engage or turns off by itself or something caused the cruise control mode diverge from what I have in mind, and a quick glance would help to resync.
The menus should be shown on the dashboard (not on the central screen). I would argue that that would be even safer than trying to look at the symbols in the wheel/stalks while driving.
Glass roof: agree.
Buttons: yes, if Tesla would have kept the stalks and added 3-4 programmable buttons, I might rate them higher for a next car. That said, with the MG HS I guess I should have read 20+ pages of manual just to operate the 4-axis 3-rings windshield wipers stalk, not to mention that I could never engage cruise control at all despite trying; so my take on buttons is: something more than Tesla, way less than full-optional/overloaded car. At least with Tesla there's aftermarket options.
Smartphone/NFC: with the MG HS I had to perform a 4-point checklist every time I started it or parked it, and after 7y of Tesla it felt like a huge chore (esp. for quick stops). I've been very happy with Tesla and smartphone (failed maybe twice in 7y), and keep on me the Tesla card as backup (never needed it in the end). A key fob wouldn't annoy me if it worked just like the smartphone on my Tesla: if I don't have to do anything but keep it in my pocket, it'd be fine.
Door handles: the M3 handles are at the right intersection for me to be minimal, efficient and still mostly understandable (push, grab and pull). I can understand they're not regular grab and pull and not everyone is happy about it. I accidentally set off the MG HS alarm while the door and car were already unlocked by pressing the small button on the handle, which after seeing it for 10+y on many cars I still have absolutely no clue what it does (and most times it's only a placeholder for the small button).
Poorly calibrated ADAS: my experience with Tesla is extremely good and again strikes a good balance, while extremely poor applies to Hyundai i10, MG HS and others that I've driven recently. Also: the latter list seems to treat "silent ADAS" as a feature, while Tesla explicitly tells you whether auto-steer or cruise are being engaged or disconnecting, which seems a way better UX. I stopped using the lane assist on the MG HS because it'd randomly drop out even in mild curves without any clue whatsoever. The "auto-enable on restart" for these things is a reason I'll immediately drop the brand from the list of cars I may consider in the future (Hyundai i10).
One pedal: agree.
They just don't work half as well as when people did it manually.
Before the pandemic, it was rare to get blinded by a person's brights. Now if I drive at night it's just non-stop, and I live in an area with street lighting. (Some of this is also due to after market LEDs and possibly lost driving manners.)
It's extra obnoxious as a pedestrian because at best they get turned off way too late, or frequently not at all.
You mean to say "automatic high beams on Teslas". The ones on our Hyundai Ioniq work just fine, and have never blinded anyone. But in Redmond, WA, Teslas are everywhere and 90% if you're getting beamed, it's a Tesla. Their headlights are, in many cases, improperly aimed out of the factory and their shit auto high beams only make it worse.
There's also the issue where most people who use them clearly think they're fine, or they would stop.
I think what you're really experiencing is default/shit calibration from factory (0/"highest it can get") + super-bright LED lights. The first 2 months I drove my M3 everyone was flashing me on the highway, and it took me a while to put that together and notice that it was me with low beams. I realized how bright the LED lights are the moment I saw the orange turn light brighten up a 5m overhead sign from 25m away, and then looked for calibration settings of the beams. Haven't been flashed since :)
On the other hand, extra-bright blue LED headlights compensated for this.
Other cases will arise: someone driving nothing but one-pedal for 7 years, suddenly finding themselves without it.
There are going to be new drivers who learn on one-pedal and drive nothing but that for years, so all their core habits are formed around that.
The idea is a bit hard for me to comprehend because there are definitely occasions that I would tap my brake kind of hard and then immediately speed up again. Perhaps my mental model is still very much ICE engine and torque converter oriented and that's holding me back from understanding this. From an abstract point of view, it seems there is only one variable I'm controlling for, which is acceleration, so having two pedals is just doing the same thing with more steps (literally). One pedal should give me everything I need.
I'm not sure about the Bolt, but most EVs work that way, one-pedal or not. Even a hybrid Prius doesn't seem to use the friction brakes unless it has to (emergency, coming to a low speed stop).
I don't like one-pedal on the Hyundai Ioniq if for no other reason than it uses both front/rear motors regardless. In contrast to Eco/Normal mode that uses the front motor only if it feels the need for moar power!!
https://youtu.be/U0YW7x9U5TQ?t=557&si=MCP_WBc7MR1mWhXj
i've never once been excited to ride in someone's ev, though they are fun to drive.
You can definitely ride it smoother and I haven't had anybody complain so far, but I guess after hours of driving the real issue is the torque. On one hand you want to have it available to be able to merge into traffic ASAP and go on your way, on the other hand 500Nm torque means that in order to get gentle acceleration you have 3mm of play on the accelerator pedal, and you need to caress it rather than push it (own a M3). I guess after hours of driving one might be tired enough that their sensitivity is way lower than when they started in the morning.
The ideal is a big overpriced car that depreciates rapidly and requires a lot of maintenance.
But the Bolt isn't available in Australia! GM abandoned us when they shut down Holden. Ironically, it was designed for production based on a South Korean prototype in Port Melbourne, 40km from where I live! https://www.carsguide.com.au/car-news/chevrolet-bolt-reveale...
I don't actually ever expect this to happen in North America. Have you seen what motorists get away with? Everything from minor issues (mis-aligned headlights, dead brake lights) to major safety issues (tinted front windows preventing eye-contact with the driver, off-road bars on jeeps), to shit that is an easy pull for any cop (missing the required-in-BC front license plate).
We probably end up at the same place though, regardless of which of us is right: I think internal combustion will instead die a slow economic death, as gas stations become less common, the expertise to keep them running evaporates, and parts become harder to source when OEMs are no longer legally required to keep them available
I can see how this might have happened. Tessla was a big deal and had those horrible door handles and companies probably wanted to look innovative rather than have good working designs. And physical buttons are more expensive to put in and don't look nearly as futuristic. I heard an add for a car a few days ago on NPR that was literally just "it has 30+ inches of screens!"
But perhaps the story is more about consumers who just want new, exciting things like weird door handles and 30 inches of screens, who cares what they do, and the car companies just threw up their hands and gave them what they wanted? I don't know. I would love to know the full story. I'm sure its documented somewhere.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=irPxEW0_dbQ
I remember the first time I tried to go to lunch in a friend's Tesla. I couldn't get in or out of the stupid thing without instructions. And getting in would be next to impossible for somebody with bad rheumatoid arthritis and bad fingers - the "push with thumb, while pulling with fingers" is awkward at best.
Be careful not to confuse what consumers want with what marketers try to make customers care about. Nobody cares about screen footage, but the ads will still push that as something that their car has over others or because they want to shift how consumers view the product. Convincing customers that a cheaper/worse design is actually a feature they should find desirable is an age old trick, so ads aren't a good indicator for what consumers want, at least not until they become successful enough that consumers start blindly requesting what the ads have trained them to look for. Then you get an "it's got electrolytes" situation.
We should never underestimate people's weird desires but this is mostly not it IMO. There was a new generation that felt the need to rebel against old established stuff and of course is now painfully rediscovering why this stuff was established in the first place.
Infuriating to watch, mind you. But also predictable, like watching bots play StarCraft against each other.
>Smartphones and NFC cards instead of keyfob with buttons
Using a phone as a key is super convenient, and having a little credit card sized NFC key works great as a backup. I've rarely had any problems with it.
>Turning on/off headlights, auto lights are good but I still regularly need to manually control them.
Why? Auto headlights work 99.9% of the time in every car made in the last 20 years.
The author elaborates that it only works intermittently for them, providing a long list of links to similar complaints?
The linked complaints are all for one specific car which I've never driven, so maybe there's some problem with that model or Volvo's software.
Also perhaps a hybrid would also fulfill the authors needs?
I do sympathize with the opinion that most new cars are not very attractive. At least to me as a petrol head.
https://www.skoda-auto.com/world/simply-clever
So then, if it's not actually a "fly-by-wire" mechanical system, why would you choose that as the UX? It cramps my calf constantly keeping it partially activated and the pedal half way depressed. More often than not I'll relieve my foot by doing short stints of cruise control, but that's tedious to manage.
My dream set up would be the accelerator pedal is, well, an accelerator, and the brake is a decelerator, and if you're not pressing either the car maintains the current velocity. It feels like _most_ of the time that you're driving you're just trying to make it go the same speed, and then you can press whichever pedal you need if you're wanting to stop or start again.
I don't suppose any cars work like this? ICE vehicles more or less in the moment do but "coasting" does decelerate a small amount so that over time you have to push the pedal again.
That'd be horrible. A medical emergency of one would potentially turn into a medical emergency of many.
With a Tesla you can use cruise control without autosteer also on smaller roads, and it should also slow down for turns (since ~1.5y or so IIRC). Normally it's good enough that I don't mind.
My dream set up would be the accelerator pedal is, well, an accelerator, and the brake is a decelerator, and if you're not pressing either the car maintains the current velocity.
Sounds like cruise control, which many cars have.
Why do I have less elbow room than in some 60-year-old rear-wheel-drive that has a transmission and axle in that spot?
Short, tasteful drink tray and storage bin, please.
The last time[0] I rented a car they tried to put me in a Tesla. I literally spent 30 minutes in the parking lot with my foot on the brake trying to figure out how to put it in park before giving up and engaging the parking brake buried three settings menus deep on the touchscreen. Walked back inside and they gave me some Kia EV that was about a million times better by virtue of having an almost-normal gear selector. The only real problem was that even the DC fast chargers took like an hour to get the car to full and "just charge it to 80% and top it off before you drop it off" is not an answer when your flight is at 8AM at JFK.
Related note: I'm not really interested in autonomous driving either. Cars that drive themselves are a band-aid solution for the underlying problem that cities build too much private car infrastructure and not enough transit infrastructure. People don't like sitting in traffic, they will actively avoid paying attention to the road when in traffic, and the easiest way to fix that traffic is to provide convenient alternatives to driving.
[0] Emphasis on last: this rental wound up being so comically overcharged that I am actively avoiding car rentals and taking public transit - or, worst case scenario, an Uber.
You could easily avoid every single one of these issues by driving an older bog standard, cheap car rather than one costing tens of thousands. Seems like a no brainer really?
We're already set to pass 1.5C warming in the next couple years, which was supposed to be the best-case scenario as of 10y ago. I don't know if you noticed, but batteries cost more to make because we're building the supply chain for them, after 100+y of "bog standard" vehicles left us with a world that each year registers new temperature records and increasingly violent weather events.
I always wonder if the folks who make these decisions themselves ever drive a car. Because this nonsense is wildly irritating. No one who regularly drives long distances could possibly think these are positive features, right?
It's like being driven by an inexperienced and terribly stoned driver, paranoid, jumping at shadows, hallucinating shit all over the place.
The ones we have at work keep pinging and beeping about all sorts of shit - oh you're too close to that car over there! (Yeah the road is really narrow, shut up, you're the same width as my Range Rover, you fit just fine). Hey watch out for that twig that's 50 metres away across the field! Oh you wanted to change lanes? I don't think so! OMG WATCH OUT FOR THAT CAR YOU'RE ABOUT TO HIT! (yes because you steered back towards it you stupid machine).
Hey you look tired you should take a break right now so I'm going to ping and beep and make the instrument panel flash until you do, even though we only left five minutes ago and there's still over three hours to go!
Fuck everything to do with them. They're exhausting and stressful to drive. I don't know how anyone can cope with EVs.
My current daily driver is a 30-year-old Range Rover that has none of the annoying beepy flashy distract-o-trons. It's far safer for other road users than the Kia because there's not much to do other than look out of the very large completely unobstructed windows and observe other traffic.
That's the other thing I missed out about the Kia - the whole middle third of the windscreen is completely blocked by this huge camera pod thing with a tiny little mirror at the bottom, about a hand's width above the dashboard.
This camera pod takes up the space on the windscreen where I actually need to look for pedestrians at crossings.
It's specific brands, I'm happy with my Tesla (see my other comments).
They feel really cheap and flimsy inside, definitely not an 80 grand car.
I don't like the gigantic screen in the middle. I don't want any kind of lit-up screen in my car, for anything.
I rented a car not an ipad multimedia system, touch screens in cars are totally counter intuitive and often don't have the basic functionally easily accessible. Also usually the ui is laggy.