I’m genuinely on board with most of this, but it reads like satire.
On topic, it is wild how dated even brand new car consoles feel. Luxury brands do a bit better, but it’s still worse than my phone. Where do I sign up to overhaul vehicle UX?
On topic, it is wild how dated even brand new car consoles feel. Luxury brands do a bit better, but it’s still worse than my phone. Where do I sign up to overhaul vehicle UX?
I have read so many times where car enthusiasts complain that they can't get the options they want with a manual transmission. Well, it's perfectly logical - when one aspect of a product is the deciding factor for a subgroup of customers, and the seller knows it, it's more profitable to give them the worst of everything else. It's nothing personal, just optimization of the business.
I do actually think this is a special case. most people in america can't drive stick and don't want to learn either. for most cars that still have manual as an option, it saves you $800-1200 on the base trim of the car. so I imagine there's a weird bimodal distribution where one group of people wants manual just because it's the cheapest version of the car, while you also have enthusiasts who are willing to purchase a lot of the options (at least the performance related ones). either way, cars with manual transmissions are a fairly low volume market in the US. they can be pretty hard to move.
Other than a few fleet style trucks, most manual options in the usa are performance models.
Maybe, but in the city I live in, I hear more and more grumbling about the lack of manual transmissions over time as well.
I doubt that, the margin on the luxury options has got to be higher than on the base model.
It's probably more that they don't want to be stuck with a car on the lot that has a manual transmission and all the other luxury options maxed out, that they end up having to sell at a substantial discount to move (because most of their customers, particularly the ones willing to spend on the luxury options, want an auto box).
I will never buy a car with leather seats. I get sweaty and sticky when I sit on them.
Why can't I get a car with the features I want and nice cool breathable cloth seats?
Autogefühl [1] is a great YouTube channel for finding out if a new car is available with non-leather seats.
They also made an interesting video a few days ago [2] saying the leather industry is trying to pay YouTuber's to recommend leather seats in their car reviews.
I'm a fan of cloth or vinyl myself.
Funny thing is...in the past the only leather seats were for the driver (servants) and cloth was for the rich passengers.
Kinda like how lobster is now "fancy" food.
Fortunately Mazda seems to be listening. 2019 loses the touch panel entirely and relies fully on knob and buttons! In videos, the screen looks super responsive. So at least not all hope is lost with every manufacturer...
https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1122803944206544897
--- The two axioms that explain your experience with devices that contain software (except Teslas):
I. It takes extraordinary effort to make software that's not horribly difficult to use.
II. Companies whose main focus isn't software don't expend extraordinary effort on it.
Arguably the reason Tesla is an exception is that it is actually a software company. ---
It was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
If you can honestly make a claim that you can consistently and accurately change climate control on the bottom screen without taking your eyes off the road I will... well I don't even know. Disbelieve? :-/
https://www.caricos.com/cars/a/audi/2019_audi_a7/images/25.h...
On the other hand the new-looking Q5 I got as a loaner couple months ago had a perfectly fine physical button interface, with a little touchpad on the MMI comsole you could use to scroll around (and apparently even write). That was quite good.