There is nothing appealing to me about new cars at all, and the look of the car is utterly irrelevant to my purchasing decisions. I don’t want a subscription to use hardware that I purchased in my...
There is nothing appealing to me about new cars at all, and the look of the car is utterly irrelevant to my purchasing decisions.
I don’t want a subscription to use hardware that I purchased in my car. I don't want to deal with firmware updates going out to my car. I don't want to have to control everything with an infotainment system that I can't use while focusing on the road.
Car makers have forgotten that, for most people, the car is like a lawn mower. It exists as a way to complete chores (getting groceries, driving to work, taking people to appointments) rather than it being a hobby. It should be designed to be as comfortable as possible without getting in the way of doing those chores.
I'm mechanically adept and aside from not having the money for a new car, I have zero desire to purchase something new. My lowest mileage car right now has 130k miles and I intend to keep all of...
I'm mechanically adept and aside from not having the money for a new car, I have zero desire to purchase something new. My lowest mileage car right now has 130k miles and I intend to keep all of them going for as long as I can (basically as long as I can still get parts.)
They aren't refined, they tend to be noisy and don't necessarily ride the best, but they're mine, they're cheap to maintain and they don't have a bunch of unnecessary stuff or planned obsolescence to them. If my 231k mile van dies in the near future, I'll see if I can get a new engine or transmission at the junkyard. Failing that, I'll buy something slightly newer than that without all the crap attached.
In the same boat. There are very few recent trends that have made cars more desirable. I cannot stand the screens, lack of tactile buttons, that almost everything is an SUV. Probably the worst...
In the same boat. There are very few recent trends that have made cars more desirable. I cannot stand the screens, lack of tactile buttons, that almost everything is an SUV. Probably the worst thing is replacing the shifter with a knob.
I was going to say more but the last paragraph really says exactly what I wanted to say: New cars look like cartoons nowadays. It seems the designers building modern cars don't know what people...
I was going to say more but the last paragraph really says exactly what I wanted to say:
The survey tells us a lot of what we already know. The average punter isn't in love with the designs of the modern crop of cars, and they hate dodgy infotainment systems that don't work well. Automakers could do well to respond to the prevailing feeling by giving people what they want. Future surveys will tell us how they fare at doing that.
New cars look like cartoons nowadays. It seems the designers building modern cars don't know what people find appealing today. Honestly, I probably wouldn't buy a new Kia simply because the new logo is so incredibly bad. Someone needs to smack these people and tell them they're not supposed to be designing an artpiece, they're supposed to be making something people want to drive. There have been so many stupid design trends for cars over the years, but that doesn't mean that every car has to have every one of them.
I wouldn't have a problem with the entertainment systems if they were still replaceable without getting rid of some of the car's features. On my Bolt, there are buttons to turn on and adjust the climate control, but the only way to turn it off is a button on the touchscreen. The touchscreen also has the only buttons to turn the heated seating on or off, and contains the only means of adjusting a number of the car's charging, convenience, and safety features. Even if I was OK with getting rid of those features, it's a big touchscreen so it obviously does not have the bracket to install a standard car stereo into it. It's buggy, and I actually had to replace it about a week after I bought the car because one of the features stopped working.
Regarding the seat warmers - I know of two people that have gotten so annoyed at not being able to control those without digging through touchscreen menus that they ran wires to the seats and...
Regarding the seat warmers - I know of two people that have gotten so annoyed at not being able to control those without digging through touchscreen menus that they ran wires to the seats and added their own toggle switches. It is absurd that someone can design a system and get it through to production and have a product be so unusable.
It really isn't even a case of just poor design decisions; it's more that these companies have decided it's more profitable to go with a cheaper touch screen than dedicated mechanical controls....
It really isn't even a case of just poor design decisions; it's more that these companies have decided it's more profitable to go with a cheaper touch screen than dedicated mechanical controls. Car designers and customers generally don't want to use off the shelf generic toggle switches to turn things on. If they're going to have physical buttons, they want each to be unique and specially crafted. They can't just put 50 generic toggle switches on the dash board, as people wouldn't be able to operate those without looking at them. Thus, designing a tactile interface that can be operated without looking at it requires a lot of careful design and custom-made parts. Those small parts have to be all custom made and installed. With how cheap touch screens are now, the tactile interface is just way more expensive.
But another key thing is baked into the car fashion cycle. Automakers feel that each model year needs to have some noticeable differences from the previous year, and for each model to be distinct. You could solve the issue of expensive tactile interfaces by creating a standard design that you then just copied between models and years. Even if that interface had to use a ton of custom-made parts, it would be manageable if the design could be used in all models and years. Ford could spend a ton of money building the perfect tactile interface, and then just copy that interface between all of their models. But that would interfere with branding. The guy paying $70k for a new decked-out pickup truck doesn't want to see that their big macho truck has the same button interfaces as a compact econobox.
And that's where the touch screens come in. Touch screens, like smart phones, have their interfaces controlled largely by software. And you can completely reskin a car's touch screen infotainment system software for a tiny, tiny fraction of the cost it would take to design a whole new mechanical interface.
Here's the thing though....these things have already been designed. Decades ago. Maybe if they stopped trying to re-style everything every few years, it wouldn't be a problem. I sit in a 2009...
Here's the thing though....these things have already been designed. Decades ago. Maybe if they stopped trying to re-style everything every few years, it wouldn't be a problem.
I sit in a 2009 midrange car and it is still more or less the same as a high end car today..at least in terms of features that you should be able to adjust while driving.
I think we'd probably all be better off if new car designs only came out every 5 years instead of annually. Give more time between prototype and production.
I work for an OEM, what came out this year has been in design for at least 5 years. It’s not timing that’s an issue, it’s bad decision making by managers that have lost touch with reality. As the...
I work for an OEM, what came out this year has been in design for at least 5 years. It’s not timing that’s an issue, it’s bad decision making by managers that have lost touch with reality. As the article states, car makers have lost touch with what consumers want.
Another thing for the touch screens, they allow you to link those features into the subscription phone app. Yeah, touchscreen seat warmers are hard to use... But if you pay for the app, you can...
Another thing for the touch screens, they allow you to link those features into the subscription phone app. Yeah, touchscreen seat warmers are hard to use... But if you pay for the app, you can have your seats prewarmed by the time you reach the car!
Touch screen climate controls? Terrible while driving but now you can tell your car to blast the air cold when it's 100+ outside! Then you can just set it to auto and drive.
These problems were solved decades ago though, so car makers decided to create new ones to charge more for newer cars. They decided that even though these touchscreens are massively inferior for...
These problems were solved decades ago though, so car makers decided to create new ones to charge more for newer cars.
They decided that even though these touchscreens are massively inferior for like all of the things you actually need in a car dash, they were new tech they needed to shoehorn into new cars.
My car (Mazda MX-5) has a touch screen, but it's disabled while the car is in motion so there are physical buttons for most of what I need. There are times I wish I could control the touch screen,...
Regarding the seat warmers - I know of two people that have gotten so annoyed at not being able to control those without digging through touchscreen menus that they ran wires to the seats and added their own toggle switches. It is absurd that someone can design a system and get it through to production and have a product be so unusable.
My car (Mazda MX-5) has a touch screen, but it's disabled while the car is in motion so there are physical buttons for most of what I need. There are times I wish I could control the touch screen, but hearing about basic functionality like heaters and wipers being hidden in touch screen menus makes me quite content with what I have. Most of the things I can't control with buttons I can do with Siri through carplay, and if really necessary I can always pull over to the side of the road - I've had to do this a few times when Google Maps has done something annoying.
Edit: And it makes me wonder how many accidents are caused by people flipping through touch screen menus. We know how bad phones are for distracted driving, is a touch screen any better?
The one positive about them being on the touchscreen is that they are on a bar that is always on the bottom of the screen. The seat heaters are on the two corners so it's possible to activate them...
The one positive about them being on the touchscreen is that they are on a bar that is always on the bottom of the screen. The seat heaters are on the two corners so it's possible to activate them without looking at the screen, but the off button for the climate control is near the center so you do have to look at the screen to hit it. The other settings are under menus, but they aren't the type you would need to adjust while driving.
I bought a 2023 XLT Ecoboost Ford Maverick this year, and I'm mostly in love with it. I like the way it looks, and the infotainment system is mostly straightforward. However, most importantly, it...
I bought a 2023 XLT Ecoboost Ford Maverick this year, and I'm mostly in love with it. I like the way it looks, and the infotainment system is mostly straightforward. However, most importantly, it was cheap & gets great mileage, and the off road package gets me where I need to be without buying such an impractical truck.
These small trucks seem to be resonating with consumers. They're cheaper, straightforward pieces of machinery that do their expected job well. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles of my buddy's F250 Platinum, but I don't need it and I'm happy with my sub $400 a month payment.
It gets decent mileage for a truck, but isn't it the same size as an F-150/250 used to be--or maybe even larger--and not actually a small truck in any way?
It gets decent mileage for a truck, but isn't it the same size as an F-150/250 used to be--or maybe even larger--and not actually a small truck in any way?
Personally, I would call the mileage quite good. I have had very long stretches of highway at 30-40mpg, and I averaged 21mpg towing a 2500 U-Haul with a canoe strapped on top for about 1000 miles,...
Personally, I would call the mileage quite good. I have had very long stretches of highway at 30-40mpg, and I averaged 21mpg towing a 2500 U-Haul with a canoe strapped on top for about 1000 miles, mostly uphill.
It depends on the year and specific make, but most F150s going back to the early 2000s would be quite larger. Doubly so if you want more of an apples to apples comparison (XLT model w/ an extended cab and AWD / 4WD). It more or less shares the dimensions with the old Ford ranger. I don't think there's an argument to be made that it's not a small truck.
You may be thinking of the current year Rangers which are quite larger than the old rangers, and indeed, old F150s. I was very disappointed with the new ranger model, since I grew up driving a 2002 ranger. My Maverick definitely brings me back to driving that thing around - just with a larger cab and smaller bed.
Not sure how big or small older f150s/250s used to be, but have you seen the truck market out there lately? All the full-sized trucks like the f150, silverado, or tundra are huge, and then the...
Not sure how big or small older f150s/250s used to be, but have you seen the truck market out there lately? All the full-sized trucks like the f150, silverado, or tundra are huge, and then the mid-size ones like the ranger, colorado, or tacoma are still pretty darn big. The maverick is tiny compared to its competitors. The only ones that come close to it in size are the ridgeline (still a bit bigger) and the santa cruz (looks more like an suv with the back chopped off), but both are significantly more expensive than the maverick. It's no wonder that the maverick seems to be very popular considering it's both cheap and small relative to pretty much everything else out there that has become both huge and expensive.
Exactly this. My wife had a small Toyota pickup for a brief time back in the 90s - a few years ago we looked for one (or something like it) as a light-utility vehicle for our rural property, and...
Exactly this. My wife had a small Toyota pickup for a brief time back in the 90s - a few years ago we looked for one (or something like it) as a light-utility vehicle for our rural property, and there was simply nothing along those lines to be had. We ended up going w/ an early-90s full-size F150 that's frankly given us nothing but trouble (even though the full size turned out to be really handy on a couple of occasions).
I've pretty much decided that my next car will likely just be a used, low-mileage 5-10 year old vehicle just to avoid all the new smart-ification of more recent ones. Give me physical buttons, not...
I've pretty much decided that my next car will likely just be a used, low-mileage 5-10 year old vehicle just to avoid all the new smart-ification of more recent ones. Give me physical buttons, not touch screens. Give me a USB port, not a crappy infotainment system.
I want my driving experience to be as low-friction as possible and what I find is, as with a lot of "smart technology", smarter isn't always better, and often adds friction. My toaster doesn't need a damn touch screen. My fridge doesn't need wifi.
Some features honestly are simply just made for the company's bottom line more than they are made for the actual person using them. Smarter becomes an excuse to add tons of half-assed unnecessary dreck that's only good for marketing. Just more things to fail and require expensive replacement
I still have an early 2000s corolla. Stick a bluetooth transmitter in the lighter socket to connect to the radio from my phone so I can play music and directions and I'm good.
I still have an early 2000s corolla.
Stick a bluetooth transmitter in the lighter socket to connect to the radio from my phone so I can play music and directions and I'm good.
Yeah I have an early 2010s era car that indexes MP3s off of a huge flash drive and then I can select folders, playlists, artists, etc. and even use voice control- one of the few "smart" things I...
Yeah I have an early 2010s era car that indexes MP3s off of a huge flash drive and then I can select folders, playlists, artists, etc. and even use voice control- one of the few "smart" things I find simple and useful. It has no touch screens or any other mess, just physical dials and so forth
I recently got a 23 Impreza, on purpose because the 24 has touch screen climate control, and I have to agree. There wasn't really a world of improvement over my 13 Accent. It's still a car....
I recently got a 23 Impreza, on purpose because the 24 has touch screen climate control, and I have to agree. There wasn't really a world of improvement over my 13 Accent. It's still a car. Adaptive cruise and lane keep assist? Fancy but honestly I prefer them off. The adaptive cruise brakes too late for my comfort anyway.
I know mechanically that it's likely a better machine than my Accent (and less likely to get a broken window) but it's still just a car and most of the features are just things they're trying to sell me... Like the remote start that's already installed on my car. My car that I own, not lease.
I don't know specifically about Subaru's adaptive cruise system, but most systems allow you to change the following distance to be closer or further. I fucking love adaptive cruise on my car.
I don't know specifically about Subaru's adaptive cruise system, but most systems allow you to change the following distance to be closer or further. I fucking love adaptive cruise on my car.
There is nothing appealing to me about new cars at all, and the look of the car is utterly irrelevant to my purchasing decisions.
I don’t want a subscription to use hardware that I purchased in my car. I don't want to deal with firmware updates going out to my car. I don't want to have to control everything with an infotainment system that I can't use while focusing on the road.
Car makers have forgotten that, for most people, the car is like a lawn mower. It exists as a way to complete chores (getting groceries, driving to work, taking people to appointments) rather than it being a hobby. It should be designed to be as comfortable as possible without getting in the way of doing those chores.
I'm mechanically adept and aside from not having the money for a new car, I have zero desire to purchase something new. My lowest mileage car right now has 130k miles and I intend to keep all of them going for as long as I can (basically as long as I can still get parts.)
They aren't refined, they tend to be noisy and don't necessarily ride the best, but they're mine, they're cheap to maintain and they don't have a bunch of unnecessary stuff or planned obsolescence to them. If my 231k mile van dies in the near future, I'll see if I can get a new engine or transmission at the junkyard. Failing that, I'll buy something slightly newer than that without all the crap attached.
In the same boat. There are very few recent trends that have made cars more desirable. I cannot stand the screens, lack of tactile buttons, that almost everything is an SUV. Probably the worst thing is replacing the shifter with a knob.
Push button to start is kinda cool I will admit.
I was going to say more but the last paragraph really says exactly what I wanted to say:
New cars look like cartoons nowadays. It seems the designers building modern cars don't know what people find appealing today. Honestly, I probably wouldn't buy a new Kia simply because the new logo is so incredibly bad. Someone needs to smack these people and tell them they're not supposed to be designing an artpiece, they're supposed to be making something people want to drive. There have been so many stupid design trends for cars over the years, but that doesn't mean that every car has to have every one of them.
I wouldn't have a problem with the entertainment systems if they were still replaceable without getting rid of some of the car's features. On my Bolt, there are buttons to turn on and adjust the climate control, but the only way to turn it off is a button on the touchscreen. The touchscreen also has the only buttons to turn the heated seating on or off, and contains the only means of adjusting a number of the car's charging, convenience, and safety features. Even if I was OK with getting rid of those features, it's a big touchscreen so it obviously does not have the bracket to install a standard car stereo into it. It's buggy, and I actually had to replace it about a week after I bought the car because one of the features stopped working.
Regarding the seat warmers - I know of two people that have gotten so annoyed at not being able to control those without digging through touchscreen menus that they ran wires to the seats and added their own toggle switches. It is absurd that someone can design a system and get it through to production and have a product be so unusable.
It really isn't even a case of just poor design decisions; it's more that these companies have decided it's more profitable to go with a cheaper touch screen than dedicated mechanical controls. Car designers and customers generally don't want to use off the shelf generic toggle switches to turn things on. If they're going to have physical buttons, they want each to be unique and specially crafted. They can't just put 50 generic toggle switches on the dash board, as people wouldn't be able to operate those without looking at them. Thus, designing a tactile interface that can be operated without looking at it requires a lot of careful design and custom-made parts. Those small parts have to be all custom made and installed. With how cheap touch screens are now, the tactile interface is just way more expensive.
But another key thing is baked into the car fashion cycle. Automakers feel that each model year needs to have some noticeable differences from the previous year, and for each model to be distinct. You could solve the issue of expensive tactile interfaces by creating a standard design that you then just copied between models and years. Even if that interface had to use a ton of custom-made parts, it would be manageable if the design could be used in all models and years. Ford could spend a ton of money building the perfect tactile interface, and then just copy that interface between all of their models. But that would interfere with branding. The guy paying $70k for a new decked-out pickup truck doesn't want to see that their big macho truck has the same button interfaces as a compact econobox.
And that's where the touch screens come in. Touch screens, like smart phones, have their interfaces controlled largely by software. And you can completely reskin a car's touch screen infotainment system software for a tiny, tiny fraction of the cost it would take to design a whole new mechanical interface.
Here's the thing though....these things have already been designed. Decades ago. Maybe if they stopped trying to re-style everything every few years, it wouldn't be a problem.
I sit in a 2009 midrange car and it is still more or less the same as a high end car today..at least in terms of features that you should be able to adjust while driving.
I think we'd probably all be better off if new car designs only came out every 5 years instead of annually. Give more time between prototype and production.
I work for an OEM, what came out this year has been in design for at least 5 years. It’s not timing that’s an issue, it’s bad decision making by managers that have lost touch with reality. As the article states, car makers have lost touch with what consumers want.
Another thing for the touch screens, they allow you to link those features into the subscription phone app. Yeah, touchscreen seat warmers are hard to use... But if you pay for the app, you can have your seats prewarmed by the time you reach the car!
Touch screen climate controls? Terrible while driving but now you can tell your car to blast the air cold when it's 100+ outside! Then you can just set it to auto and drive.
It's horrible and I hate it.
These problems were solved decades ago though, so car makers decided to create new ones to charge more for newer cars.
They decided that even though these touchscreens are massively inferior for like all of the things you actually need in a car dash, they were new tech they needed to shoehorn into new cars.
My car (Mazda MX-5) has a touch screen, but it's disabled while the car is in motion so there are physical buttons for most of what I need. There are times I wish I could control the touch screen, but hearing about basic functionality like heaters and wipers being hidden in touch screen menus makes me quite content with what I have. Most of the things I can't control with buttons I can do with Siri through carplay, and if really necessary I can always pull over to the side of the road - I've had to do this a few times when Google Maps has done something annoying.
Edit: And it makes me wonder how many accidents are caused by people flipping through touch screen menus. We know how bad phones are for distracted driving, is a touch screen any better?
The one positive about them being on the touchscreen is that they are on a bar that is always on the bottom of the screen. The seat heaters are on the two corners so it's possible to activate them without looking at the screen, but the off button for the climate control is near the center so you do have to look at the screen to hit it. The other settings are under menus, but they aren't the type you would need to adjust while driving.
What year Bolt do you have?
I have a 2023 Bolt EV 2LT and it has physical buttons for turning climate off and seat/steering wheel warmers on/off.
I bought a 2023 XLT Ecoboost Ford Maverick this year, and I'm mostly in love with it. I like the way it looks, and the infotainment system is mostly straightforward. However, most importantly, it was cheap & gets great mileage, and the off road package gets me where I need to be without buying such an impractical truck.
These small trucks seem to be resonating with consumers. They're cheaper, straightforward pieces of machinery that do their expected job well. It doesn't have all the bells and whistles of my buddy's F250 Platinum, but I don't need it and I'm happy with my sub $400 a month payment.
I am hearing a lot of positive things about the Maverick.
It gets decent mileage for a truck, but isn't it the same size as an F-150/250 used to be--or maybe even larger--and not actually a small truck in any way?
Personally, I would call the mileage quite good. I have had very long stretches of highway at 30-40mpg, and I averaged 21mpg towing a 2500 U-Haul with a canoe strapped on top for about 1000 miles, mostly uphill.
It depends on the year and specific make, but most F150s going back to the early 2000s would be quite larger. Doubly so if you want more of an apples to apples comparison (XLT model w/ an extended cab and AWD / 4WD). It more or less shares the dimensions with the old Ford ranger. I don't think there's an argument to be made that it's not a small truck.
You may be thinking of the current year Rangers which are quite larger than the old rangers, and indeed, old F150s. I was very disappointed with the new ranger model, since I grew up driving a 2002 ranger. My Maverick definitely brings me back to driving that thing around - just with a larger cab and smaller bed.
Not sure how big or small older f150s/250s used to be, but have you seen the truck market out there lately? All the full-sized trucks like the f150, silverado, or tundra are huge, and then the mid-size ones like the ranger, colorado, or tacoma are still pretty darn big. The maverick is tiny compared to its competitors. The only ones that come close to it in size are the ridgeline (still a bit bigger) and the santa cruz (looks more like an suv with the back chopped off), but both are significantly more expensive than the maverick. It's no wonder that the maverick seems to be very popular considering it's both cheap and small relative to pretty much everything else out there that has become both huge and expensive.
Yes, that was my point. Just because the others are huge doesn't make it small. Smaller perhaps, but definitely not small.
Exactly this. My wife had a small Toyota pickup for a brief time back in the 90s - a few years ago we looked for one (or something like it) as a light-utility vehicle for our rural property, and there was simply nothing along those lines to be had. We ended up going w/ an early-90s full-size F150 that's frankly given us nothing but trouble (even though the full size turned out to be really handy on a couple of occasions).
I've pretty much decided that my next car will likely just be a used, low-mileage 5-10 year old vehicle just to avoid all the new smart-ification of more recent ones. Give me physical buttons, not touch screens. Give me a USB port, not a crappy infotainment system.
I want my driving experience to be as low-friction as possible and what I find is, as with a lot of "smart technology", smarter isn't always better, and often adds friction. My toaster doesn't need a damn touch screen. My fridge doesn't need wifi.
Some features honestly are simply just made for the company's bottom line more than they are made for the actual person using them. Smarter becomes an excuse to add tons of half-assed unnecessary dreck that's only good for marketing. Just more things to fail and require expensive replacement
I still have an early 2000s corolla.
Stick a bluetooth transmitter in the lighter socket to connect to the radio from my phone so I can play music and directions and I'm good.
Yeah I have an early 2010s era car that indexes MP3s off of a huge flash drive and then I can select folders, playlists, artists, etc. and even use voice control- one of the few "smart" things I find simple and useful. It has no touch screens or any other mess, just physical dials and so forth
I recently got a 23 Impreza, on purpose because the 24 has touch screen climate control, and I have to agree. There wasn't really a world of improvement over my 13 Accent. It's still a car. Adaptive cruise and lane keep assist? Fancy but honestly I prefer them off. The adaptive cruise brakes too late for my comfort anyway.
I know mechanically that it's likely a better machine than my Accent (and less likely to get a broken window) but it's still just a car and most of the features are just things they're trying to sell me... Like the remote start that's already installed on my car. My car that I own, not lease.
I don't know specifically about Subaru's adaptive cruise system, but most systems allow you to change the following distance to be closer or further. I fucking love adaptive cruise on my car.
You can change the follow distance but even at max distance it still feels way too close. That's probably part me though.