Driving without a rear window isn’t a big deal - see, for example, nearly every cargo delivery van on Earth. I have to imagine the stubborn refusal to add standard physical controls back to the cockpit has more potential for trouble than an impeded rear view.
I wonder if there’s NHTSA data on this specifically for passenger cars? Maybe incidents caused by blocking the driver’s rear view (with furniture or people or whatever) versus fumbling around with a touchscreen or a joystick?
What I'd really like to see is less software in an EV, complete isolation between higher and lower functions, normal physical controls and an ability to run the thing entirely disconnected from the manufacturer's dragnet. It should be able to charge and be driven with all critical instruments working fully disconnected from anything and without software updates.
My colleagues who drive EVs regularly are always having a panic about software updates which break things.
I currently don't own a car as I live in a big city but I do rent one occasionally and did own a Model S for a very short time. If I was to buy a car I'd like an EV next time, but not in the current state of things.
Man, that’s just not true. I live in NYC and the number of things accessible to me and my family via public transit or bike is mind boggling. Then, when we want to leave the city for a few days we rent a car. Costs less than car insurance would be over a year, let alone maintainence, upfront cost, etc.
Everyone can live their life in the way of their own choosing, I don’t begrudge anyone who owns a car or anything like that. But I assure you it’s very, very possible to be free without owning a car.
New York is really the only exception in the US to this - world class public transportation system both within downtown areas and out to the suburbs and beyond (Acella is what all of AmTrak should have been like).
Even here in San Francisco you need a car to get around efficiently (or use Uber which comes to a point where you might as well pay for a car), plus it's impossible to fully enjoy the natural beauty further afield without a car.
Well, I wouldn't go that far. The Acella sucks if you have to depend on it. As does Amtrak. It's expensive and crappy. Public transportation is designed for getting people from the boroughs into the city center, not the other way around. If you use public trans for leaving the city it's very difficult to get from the train station to your final destination, there's just so few options.
I live in NYC (Upper East Side in Manhattan) and I don't think I could live without a car. It's just so nice to be able to leave whenever you want. On your schedule, in your own private space. I don't drive around in the city - driving here is stressful and a huge drag. But if you ever want to go hiking or biking outside the city, or leave for any reason, having your own car is a blessing.
I'm not saying you'll save money by owning a car here, that's definitely not true. It's a luxury item in this city. But it is very nice to have one at your disposal.
But I don’t “happen” to live in NYC. I wasn’t even born here, I chose to live here. While NYC is pretty rare in the US a walkable dense city isn’t rare worldwide.
My point is that freedom can come in different forms. A car is one route to one form of freedom but counter to the OPs assertion I’m absolutely not missing out not owning a car. I’ve just taken a different path, one that’s available to others too.
Congratulations, but this doesn't have anything to do with what they said.
My point is that freedom can come in different forms.
No one said anything about this.
They just said cars give people freedom of movement which is true. You're anecdotes about riding the subway doesn't impact this in one way or the other. I think you're making the common blunder of someone pointing out an effect and then misunderstanding that to mean only that thing has that effect.
OP said that I’m missing out by not having a car, my point was simply that I know I’m not missing out. I’m honestly kind of amazed we’re now four posts deep in what was a not particularly important comment chain, perhaps I should expected a snark-filled response when I invoked the dreaded letters “NYC”, I should have known better.
I think you should have expected something when you thought you taking a subway means there is no point to anyone being able to drive anywhere they want.
Strange because that’s very obviously not close to what I said. But you’ve clearly started at a conclusion then worked backwards from there, so who am I to correct a work of fiction?
In a big city, a car is a massive impediment as you have to find somewhere to put it. Every five years or so I forget this and drive into London for something and immediately regret it.
Yeah I hire one if I need it. Which is about 4 times a year max. I live in London UK and have a really damn good public transport system that stops outside my house, a bicycle and a massive airport on my doorstep. Incidentally I'm actually on a bus on the way to pick up a hire Polestar at the moment because I have a funeral to get to on Monday...
(Brit living in SF here) Given that this forum is slanted towards America, you have to appreciate that the quality of public transport in London is nothing like what we have here in the US other than New York City.
You're not wrong about London (I never owned a car when I lived there and that was a decade before Uber) but your worldview is skewed. If you look at American history from the last century, in cities like Los Angeles the car companies actually bought public transport railways and dismantled them in order to promote a car culture. And this is what we have.
If you live in any decent large city in Asia it's not an issue. I haven't owned a car in 12 years since I've moved to Singapore, then Bangkok and then Hong Kong. I wouldn't need a car in Tokyo, Seoul, Osaka, Taipei, Shanghai or Shenzhen either. Gosh, many people in Melbourne or Sydney don't have one.
Just because it can be done doesn’t mean it’s not a worse driving experience. Visibility has been getting gradually worse for a long time (I presume for crash safety reasons). I learned to drive on my dad's old early-90s era Maxima, which had the best visibility I've ever experienced in a car, and I still miss it!
Let me ask you this, how much do you drive? Although I don’t drive much anymore, just daily to and from work, there were periods I would have to drive 250-800km twice per week to get to site(Sweden is a pretty big country).
The rear view mirror is absolute advantage. It’s the only way to know wtf is going on right behind you.
Well, for one, I believe they’re using a digital mirror so the practical purpose of the rear view window is still present.
I actually don’t use the rear view most days when driving. I’m planning to put a camper on my truck that would block the rear windows. Been giving it a test to make sure I’m okay without the read.
For the most part, I don’t really miss it. I have found that some small cars that ride my bumper tend to disappear - or at least require more visual searching.
The situation that I miss it the most is when I’m stopped at a light and visually checking that a car behind me isn’t going to come barreling into me.
What you say applies for the majority of driving time, but the question really is how it performs when a driver is in a situation with high risk of an accident.
Glancing , peripheral , situational awareness is important to avoid accidents. The once a couple of years situation
> Driving without a rear window isn’t a big deal - see, for example, nearly every cargo delivery van on Earth.
Yeah, it's totally fine, as long as you have both side mirrors. It'd be nice if they put bigger mirrors on the side if they're killing the rear window though. Although they're pushing a screen to replace the mirror, I guess.
I haven't used one of those in a while, but I did have a rental with a screen / mirror and found it really strained my eyes to change from far focus on driving to near focus on the screen... Might be better when the screen is not also a mirror, I could kind of see the mirrored image if I was far focused even if the screen was on... it was pretty distracting until I figured out how to turn off the screen part.
The “long as you have both side mirrors” is kind of interesting nuance. My 1980 civic back in the day only had driver side mirror from the factory which seems common-enough in older cars - it isn’t totally necessary anyway if there’s visibility. assume modern cars would only lack them if it’s damaged or similar.
> But in …Germany…etc... nobody would be refused their medicine because the payment system didn't work. Even if the computers didn't work.
If the computers didn’t work, it would be incredibly painful in Germany because most pharmacies don’t regularly stock most prescription drugs. They’re often ordered from central warehouses on demand - i.e. if you walk in with a prescription for Xanax in the morning, you’ll typically need to come back in the afternoon to pick it up.
That ordering process is entirely digital. If you suddenly switched to paper forms, phone calls, and faxes, it’d be a nightmare.
It's not really a "problem" because you can usually get them the same day, but I can assure you that it's a thing, especially if you take controlled medications like Methylphenidate.
An even more fun quirk is that because different pharmacies seem to use different distributors, you'll sometimes have to hop around until you find one whose distributor has whatever your medication is in stock. I once had to go to four different pharmacies in Mitte before I found one that could order Zolpidem.
> This is precisely the issue with UX-led processes. When you're dealing with very hard engineering problems, you really don't yet know enough to be designing a product.
I suppose we can get into the weeds on how you define "designing a product," but under the right circumstances targeting a specific experience and working backwards to the technology has pretty clear benefits.
Ignoring Apple - because this kind of over-the-top process is just how they're wired - look at something like a modern automatic defibrillator. Literally any human being can use one with zero training because the goal was "make a defibrillator that someone can operate with one button" from the beginning.
If your goal is instead e.g. "make this existing defibrillator easier to use," you might still end up with a really good product but you probably don't have something that my mom could reasonably be expected to deploy if she runs across someone having a heart attack on the street.
It’s interesting how context can change the perception of a system. Technologically, the Shed isn’t anything special - it’s more or less the same as a typical retractable roof at a sports stadium - but it feels novel because it’s on the ground right in front of you and not tucked away hundreds of feet above.
I was indeed something more in the line of this, where a building was excavated, put on rails, and moved 60m in order to make way for an extension of a train station:
I was under the impression that immediately-settled electronic transfers were Zelle’s raison d'être. I understand that it’s not universally available, but still.
I'm using "settled" in the colloquial "the money has been debited from the sender's account and has been credited to the receiver's account" sense, which for the purposes of this discussion is the definition that really matters.
You can't just unilaterally reverse a Zelle payment any more than you can a SEPA transfer.
My understanding is that Zelle transfers are just settled by ACH under the hood, which is the same system that settles checks.
However there is possibly some new "real-time payment" feature of the ACH network that could be equivalent to wire settlement, but I'm not sure Zelle actually uses it.
As far as I know Zelle prefers RTP[1] for settlements and falls back to ACH only when necessary, but I'm sure there's a Zelle employee on here who can confirm one way or the other.
There's also FedNow[2] but I don't know of any retail implementations yet.
> Checks also let you do fairly complex multiparty commerce without needing to spend millions of dollars engineering it, like an apartment broker requiring you to give them a check for deposit/first month’s rent and signed lease prior to releasing the keys to you.
You don’t need to spend millions of dollars engineering an electronic solution to this problem, you just need a legal agreement between the broker and the landlord allowing the broker to accept the deposit on the landlord’s behalf. That’s not exactly a stretch.
I don’t even know my current landlord’s name, to be honest. It’s on the lease, but my deposit and rent go to the management company that maintains the building.
Taylor Swift would take a big hit... Taylor's main fans are the tiktok generation, and if they don't hear that music multiple times a day they'll forget quickly (short attention span).
Sort of like Singapore Airlines, which is listed but majority-owned by one of Singapore’s sovereign wealth funds.