
Cars are getting weird - jordigh
http://kottke.org/16/06/cars-are-getting-weird
======
walrus01
I don't think it's "cars" are getting weird, it's just this one weird Tesla
and their business model... The article says:

"Cars are big computers, and have been for a while"

Doesn't mean we need to treat them like software development platforms. Most
of the challenges are still at OSI layer 1 and most of the problems to deal
with are mechanical: Tire still wear out, disc brakes still function much as
they did 10 or 15 years ago (and wear out), wheel bearings, hydraulic systems
for power steering, etc.

Given that cars have much longer lifespans than typical consumer electronics,
the _last_ thing I want is a car with a built in 10" touchscreen running some
ancient version of Android. I'd rather have some sort of standardized modular
system where I can put my own tablet-sized computer in an appropriate place
and have it get power, audio sync with the car's speakers. Look at the crap
infotainment systems built into 2015 and 2016 model Toyotas, Hondas and
Nissans and compare it with a good $400 Android 6.x tablet. Do you really want
that same un-updated OS and software for ten years?

The idea of the "double DIN" size car stereo mounting location was a good one,
but we need something bigger than this, and with standardized cable
connectors:

[http://www.autodvdgps.com/ebay/ZC620/ebay-3.jpg](http://www.autodvdgps.com/ebay/ZC620/ebay-3.jpg)

Carmakers, please find a way to separate the 'infotainment' part of the car's
computer from the embedded computer that's actually required for the car to
run (engine timing/valves, fuel injectors, mixture, emissions monitoring,
intake oxygen sensor, etc).

~~~
douche
I would really like a 100% mechanical automobile, with no computers involved,
designed such that when something breaks and you're fifty miles away from
anything, you can actually crawl underneath and fix it. Analog radio, crank
windows, keyhole locks on every door, real guages. I'll concede the electric
starter and the windshield wipers, since I'm not _that_ nostalgic for the days
of the Model T.

Completely off-topic, but if I saw a new truck with the old-style floor-
mounted stomp pedal for the dimmer switch, it'd almost be a shut-up-and-take-
my-money situation. I cannot comprehend why automakers keep piling more stuff
into the steering wheel. Some of the little sedans have handles and buttons
coming off them every which way.

~~~
tadfisher
I've found computer-controlled electronic fuel injection much more reliable
than carburetors. And OBDII is very handy for diagnosing mechanical problems,
even with the manufacturer idiosyncrasies.

~~~
nommm-nommm
I sense some rose colored glasses.

Cars are so much more reliable than they were even 25 years ago. Reliable and
longer lasting. My first car broke down if you looked at it wrong. My current
car does not have that problem even though it is just as old/has just as many
miles on it than my first car did at the time. Breaking down on the side of
the road used to be a common part of my life, now it hasn't happened to me in
the last 8 years.

------
sandworm101
Am I the only poor man here? Am I the only one who expects their car to last
fifteen, twenty years, even longer with good maintenance? I see people talking
of cars depreciating into worthlessness faster than I go through laptops. A
toyota or BMW bought today will probably still be on the road come 2035.
That's what makes them good cars. Nothing changes overnight in this field. No
matter which fancy autodrive scheme you think is or isn't the second coming,
these are massive blocks of moving parts. Throwing them away every five or ten
years is ridiculous.

Tesla may be all cool and willing to update software, but it's very easy to be
that when your fleet is all shiny. Come back when someone finds a security
flaw in the 25 year-old model that is now in the hands a highschool kid as his
first car. Come back when the 4g antenna in the dashboard can no longer
communicate over the now-standard 67gxrr mobile network. That's why there are
warehouses stacked full of parts all over the country. That's the car biz.

~~~
_lm_
Man, my newest car is 25 years old and I do all the maintenance on all of them
(25 years, 30 years, and 32 years old) myself, aside from safety inspections
and alignments. I recently had one fail safety for two small things and the
shop quoted me $1k to fix it--$250 parts, $750 labor. That $250 is going to be
more like $50 for me since I know what parts need replacing and I know how to
make a bushing for my steering rack rather than replacing the whole rack.

If I didn't have that know-how (or a friend or family member who could help me
out), I'd be SOL. And this is hardly a one-off thing, and hardly specific to
me. Plenty of people are only able to afford cars if they can fix them
themselves.

Moreover, I hope to keep these cars running 10 or 20 years further down the
road. The only reason I can hope to do this is because of aftermarket
manufacturers and no technical restrictions on what I can replace, upgrade, or
re-make on my cars.

A friend of mine has had weird problems on his relatively modern car because
of what's probably a cold solder in the fuse box on his car. That fuse box
costs $700 to replace PLUS whatever the dealer is going to charge you to
reprogram the computer in it. Why does a fuse box need a computer in it? Hell
if I know. How do you fix this once the dealer no longer keeps around the
cables and software to reprogram that computer? Either replace every single
computer in the car with computers from a car with a working fuse box, or
reverse-engineer the proprietary protocol the fuse box talks and re-engineer a
replacement.

Oh, except that latter choice is legally questionable, thanks to the DMCA.

I expect a lot more cars from this era to end up as fancy bricks.

That's a damn shame; there's no reason to discard a nearly-functional pile of
parts just because some auto manufacturer is too stingy to help you fix, or
not hinder you from fixing, the thing they built and sold you. I recall a
study that showed that keeping an old car functioning was just as efficient
pollution-wise than building a whole new car to replace it with.

I guess the upside here is that there's going to be a decent amount of demand
for folks like me who have both mechanical and electrical chops in the car
repair scene in a few years.

------
tadfisher
I'm reminded of the $50 upgrade to fully unlock your Pentium G6951 CPU:
[https://www.engadget.com/2010/09/18/intel-wants-to-
charge-50...](https://www.engadget.com/2010/09/18/intel-wants-to-charge-50-to-
unlock-stuff-your-cpu-can-already-d/)

This is the sort of thing economies of scale bring. It's evidenced by CPU and
GPU binning, whereby it's cheaper for the manufacturer to make one part and
segment the market with simple switches to disable functionality (in some
cases, disabling parts of the chip with flaws which render it otherwise
unsellable).

Car makers have been doing this for ages with simpler features, such as
including air conditioning or intermittent wipers but requiring the user to
pay exorbitant amounts for the switch on the dash to activate them.

~~~
makomk
This is the sort of thing that economies of scale bring when paired with a
lack of effective competition. If there's effective competition, then some
company can and will cut into all the other companies' sales by selling a
fully-unlocked version of their hardware at close to the price of the locked
version.

~~~
rcthompson
Economies of scale by themselves cause lack of effective competition, because
the biggest company automatically wins by taking advantage of the economies of
scale and the rest go out of business. That's why an industry with significant
economies of scale is called a "natural monopoly".

------
Reason077
If you look at this as a $6000 or so discount on a new Tesla, it actually
seems like a pretty good deal.

A 75kWh battery pack that is limited to 60kWh is better than having a real
60kWh pack.

The extra over-capacity means that it won't be charging to it's true 100%
capacity, and not discharging to 0%. That puts less wear on the cells, and
means faster charging. (The sweet spot for charging is in the middle of the
battery's capacity - charging speed is slower if the battery is near 0% or
near 100%.)

~~~
dangrossman
This means a 2016 S60 will still have 208 miles of EPA rated range when it's
off-lease or up for resale in 2019, whereas a 2013 S60 most likely has a
smaller range than when it was new.

Tesla cars will depreciate more slowly, with resale prices closer to original
MSRP. That's all good news for their leasing program, their resale value
guarantee program, and their certified pre-owned program.

There are a lot of upsides to reducing battery wear. Battery wear is a big
reason my 2012 Nissan Leaf is worth less than 1/3rd of its original MSRP.

~~~
ams6110
Most 2012 cars are not worth more than a third of the original MSRP,
especially if you're looking at typical trade-in value.

If I were in the market for a car right now I'd be looking for about a 2008
model year. All the significant depreciation has already been realized and you
can find some real values in good condition with a lot of life left if you
shop around a bit.

------
Animats
The user interface for automatic driving is still in flux. The user interface
for semi-automatic driving needs to be standardized. There was that episode a
few weeks ago where someone in a Tesla rear-ended another car because they
didn't know that in firmware revision 6.22 and later, a tap on the brakes
disables automatic braking. This needs to be standardized before such cars
start appearing in airport rental lots.

~~~
mschuster91
You should not rely on emergency auto-brake systems anyway!

These are systems designed to prevent accidents in case the driver misses
something, but NOT for daily use!

~~~
radarsat1
> You should not rely on emergency auto-brake systems anyway! > > These are
> systems designed to prevent accidents in case the driver misses something,
> but NOT for daily use!

But you know people _will_. That's what happens with affordances. Design. It
changes how people interact with things, and not always in the intended way.
It's _very_ important to consider when you're talking about the operation of
machines that can kill.

Indeed, the presence of emergency brakes could very well reduce the number of
accidents, while at the same time making people rather lazy and eventually
_causing_ some. Like taking bigger risks on your bicycle when you're wearing a
helmet.

~~~
Nadya
_> Indeed, the presence of emergency brakes could very well reduce the number
of accidents, while at the same time making people rather lazy and eventually
_causing_ some._

Is there a psychological term for this thought process?

The thought process: People killing people is _" okay"_ but people killing
(overall) fewer people because they are relying on "emergency auto-brake
systems" is _" not okay"_.

For me, it is a no brainer to reduce human casualties as much as possible. But
it seems others disagree with that if some automated system is responsible for
deaths instead of a human. Is it because blame is harder to place?

~~~
Natanael_L
Static risk tolerance + altered risk perception.

People are only as careful as they think they need to be, because they're
lazy.

This causes your behavior baseline to change as a result of new safety
measures, perhaps too far in the wrong direction.

Found this - procedural drift (aviation):
[http://www.cognitivesystemsdesign.net/Papers/Johnston%20(200...](http://www.cognitivesystemsdesign.net/Papers/Johnston%20\(2003\).pdf)

~~~
Nadya
Not quite what I was thinking of, so I'll make up a scenario and numbers.

Take any technology that automates a task. Say it has a 0.00005% failure rate
which results in death of a random passerby at the time it occurs. Then take
any human being in charge of that same task. Say the risk is 0.05% human error
which results in death of a random passerby at the time it occurs.

There are people who will argue that the 0.05% is acceptable and will
vehemently disagree with and prevent any attempt to switch to the 0.00005%
failure rate because the machine killing someone is _unacceptable_ while a
human killing 1,000-fold more people is somehow _acceptable_. Even if human
laziness of an _assisted_ (not completely automated) version of the same task
had a 0.005% risk it would still be unacceptable when compared with the 100%
human-error rate.

Morally, I can't wrap my head around the reasoning. More deaths seems to be
acceptable as long as _some person can be "at fault"_. The moment the death is
"blameless" it cannot be allowed.

In other words: 10,000 "someone can be blamed" deaths is _better_ than 10 "who
is to blame?" deaths.

~~~
Natanael_L
Empathy with the human, fear of change, fear of the unknown, a need to have
somebody to blame...

------
outworlder
> The cheaper car ($66K base price) has a software block on its battery which
> limits its range to 208 miles on a full charge

Is that really true? Are the batteries otherwise identical and you can get
stranded with plenty of reserve power?

~~~
beachstartup
it probably limits how much it charges, not the output of the battery.

~~~
outworlder
Which would have the effect of increasing the longevity of the "smaller"
battery. If what the article says is true, then this could be the motivation.

~~~
chipperyman573
But if you pay 9 grand to bypass this limit, it becomes the regular car.

------
justinsingh
I felt like the second half of the post took on a totally different theme from
the first half. Maybe I'm missing the point of the article.

But as for the second half.. I feel that cars are going to adapt to us, rather
than us adapting to cars. It's already happening, as the Volvo steering wheel
example describes.

------
Spooky23
I think there is going to be a huge market for used 2005-2010 vehicles without
the big brother tracking and obnoxious touch screens everywhere.

Take a few hundred thousand, buy a collection of low mileage pickup trucks and
Honda Accords and store them for 10 years. I bet you'd 10x your investment.

------
syngrog66
There is a cost diff for Tesla, between these two scenarios. But it is subtle.
In the cheaper variant of the two he cited, that battery is going to have
(possibly) more charge buffer remaining when it's ostensibly "empty". AFAICT.
Whereas that more expensive variant will not. Again, assuming otherwise
identical. So in theory that more expensive variant is more likely to have
more customers who reach empty, get stuck, need towing, complain, etc. Again
this is just AFAICT based on info at hand. In this theory, Tesla is saying,
"Fine if you truly want to squeeze out more miles, we'll let you, but to
compensate us for risk of more complaints, we'd like a little more money."

again, just a theory. may be more complex than this.

------
jakeogh
I want a analog car with full mechanical linkage.

~~~
gerbilly
>full mechanical linkage.

Not even hydraulics?

~~~
kylecordes
I drove a car with a manual transmission and no power steering in the early
1990s, a Honda Civic of some kind. Primitive, but it was also a bit of a
delight. A very physical and mechanical thing. The lack of power automation
was rarely a problem. However, it asked more of the driver them I amused to
nowadays, and would be extremely unpopular if they even still made such a
thing.

~~~
walrus01
You have just described a car like a Suzuki Mehran (manufactured today in
Karachi, Pakistan) and similar small cars manufactured in India. They're
immensely popular in the developing world because such cars are frequently the
first proper enclosed, 4-seat vehicle a newly middle class family can afford.

------
drdeadringer
> "Cars are big computers, and have been for a while"

IIRC, it's been said by Cory Doctorow that a pacemaker is a computer I put
into my body, and a car is a computer I put my body into.

------
kaonashi
This kind of engineered inefficiency for market segmentation purposes
irritates me to no end.

------
ARothfusz
This happened long ago with the turn signal solenoid. That clicky sound when
you flip your trafficator? That used to be a real physical switch opening and
closing with electromagnets. Now most people have forgotten what it really
sounded like and they're satisfied with a gentle, fake click-click recording.

------
lechevalierd3on
It remind a lot of AMD disabling some of it CPU cores on some models.

~~~
efoto
As well as Intel 486DX/SX saga.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_80486SX](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_80486SX)

~~~
JadeNB
Ha, I was wondering if I was the only one here old enough to remember it! I
couldn't imagine a tech writer not leaping for this analogy.

