I hate "me too" posts, but this gives me so much rage that I can't help it. My car has a touch screen interface and I am puzzled why car manufacturers even bother. Who thinks the interface they made is even remotely good. It actively degrades the otherwise fine experience of my car. It is ugly, poorly made, and fails at even basic functionality.
I am truly puzzled why these car manufacturers released such terrible user facing features. Maybe it's better these days (my car is ~5 years old), but it's just impressively bad in my car at least.
My last car was a 2006 G35 with no screens as all, and a nice analog clock. I loved that about it so much.
I never understood why manufacturers tried to reinvent the wheel and not just use the phone for all things entertainment and navigation. I would never want GPS in my car, because they all were so horrifically bad.
Until I got the Model 3.
It take less than 1 second, literally two taps in almost exactly the same location on the screen, to activate GPS to my ‘Work’ or ‘Home’ presents. And if I do need to dial in an address it has a full keyboard, full POIs, and autocomplete which is as fast as Google Maps on my iPhone X. Traffic aware navigation which appears to use the same feed as Google Maps (estimates and routes seem to always match). The GPS on Model 3 is a joy to use, actually, truly.
The best part is that it implements very good interpolation when GPS drops out using compass and velocity, so going through tunnels tracks almost perfectly compared to Google Maps on iPhone which gets hopelessly stuck.
The interface is very reminiscent of an iPad, just as quick and responsive, and has a bunch of cool touches.
For example you can drag the media player to be hidden, to be just showing key info, or to nearly full screen, based on the level of interaction you need in it. The drag is a quick flick of the finger and doesn’t require precise targeting at all. It’s amazingly natural to navigate. While driving all the media control you need (volume and skip) is on the steering wheel. You get free Slacker and free LTE and I’ve really enjoyed the streaming music and have actually been introduced to some new artists I didn’t know before.
I never wanted a touchscreen in my car. Full stop. Until now. The fact that it’s all touch with consistent OTA upgrades give me confidence that it has staying power to remain functional, relevant, and looking elegant.
Particularly with the way Tesla designs their cars, I would be surprised if Model 3 wasn’t essentially the same interior design 10 years from now. I know they designed 3 in particular to have as little as possible that might look “dated” in the future.
I'm sure the recent crop of Audis and Mercedes are the same. The German brands seem to be finally getting on the voice assistant train with a "Hey Mercedes" or "Hey BMW" cue.
In return I'm a bit scared of buying a Tesla because I live in Europe and read quite bad stories about the service wait time here.
Just look at the historical shitpile that is printer drivers.
Or the software bundled with digital cameras.
Car companies are all hardware-oriented, with Tesla being the first and only mass-producing exception.
IBM saw itself as a hardware company when it came out with System/360. From what I've seen, System/360 was a good OS for its time.
Did they see themselves as a "hardware company", or as a "computer company" at a time when the hardware and the software all came together, and there wasn't really a separate software industry?
Which would make them the Apple of their time, where they built and sold the hardware needed to deliver the software?
I think they did see themselves as a hardware company. Software was something they had to make to make their hardware work, but they didn't think of it as a major part of their business. I happened to work for the "world's first software company" which was founded by a star IBM salesman. (Cincom Systems Inc. in 1968.) The Smithsonian has a write up on it. It was the first time that a company was intended to make all of its money from the sale of software, and succeeded in doing so.
The fact that I have to struggle to adjust the climate control while driving to click through their terrible interface is just insane.
IMHO, touch screen controls should be banned from cars, no matter how good. Tactile physical control based interfaces allow drivers to keep their eyes on the road. Touch screens inevitably take driver's eyes off the road and distract them, since they need to use those same eyes to figure out where on the screen they need to touch.
I honestly don't think it's getting any better. At best, it's just getting different - but maybe worse as manufacturers try to add more "smart" features.
Was a passenger in a <1 year old BMW 5 series for about a week this year for a roadtrip. There were so many stupid behaviours with the software that we effectively gave up using it for anything except bluetooth music. Trying to use the built in GPS navigation was awful.
Also a passenger in a new SUV style vehicle for two weeks last year, I forget what brand. It too had utterly bizarre behaviours that it wouldn't explain anywhere, and it took a variety of experimentation to figure out. For instance, Bluetooth pairing is disabled once the car is in put into gear, and is not re-enabled until you turn the car off and turn it back on again. However it doesn't tell you this, it just doesn't show bluetooth options in the menu anywhere. So I spent hours going through every menu item (as a passenger, mind) over a few days until I finally figured it out.
In every case, the number of either unlabelled or poorly labelled buttons is overwhelming.
That's not a bug, that's intentional, and saves lives.
> However it doesn't tell you this, it just doesn't show bluetooth options in the menu anywhere. So I spent hours going through every menu item
Greyed out menu item = This is where it is on the UI, but it's not allowed at present.
No menu item = maybe it's somewhere else?
If only there were some way that someone besides the driver could manipulate the in car system.
My Chevrolet handles this well, using the passenger seat occupancy sensor. If someone is sitting in a passenger seat, it gives the option "I am the passenger" to allow access to normally blocked-while-moving screens.
And the behavior the parent described is just annoying. The device has the capability to know if the car is in motion or not. Permanently locking out the function until the car is turned off and on is dumb.
That's the first thing I think about when I see new cars with their fancy displays. How will this look and perform in five years? In ten?
I wonder about the same. I think there is a good chance that cars will go the way of the computer where it’s almost inconceivable to use something that’s ten years old. So people may buy cars every five years and used cars will be recycled instead of being sold as used cars.
Their Apple Carplay adaptation is a least free as opposed to BMW charging some bogus subscription.
I think for SUV's (the new ones) backup cameras are pretty much a standard safety feature because you certainly can't see behind them whatsoever due to their shape.
But.
My Model S has a worse Bluetooth implementation than my Chevy Volt did.
Tesla’s software is objectively pretty terrible.
Sometimes my center console reboots randomly while I’m driving, which means I lose all audio, and the climate control shuts completely off for several minutes.
Tesla has not yet achieved Apple quality polish on their software.
I definitely don't love Tesla, but I guess I think of it like this: I suspect Tesla can improve their software (and deliver it to all existing customers) a lot more quickly that their non-software-focused competitors can. I still don't think Tesla will ever have full auto-driving, but I know my car's Bluetooth handling in my 2014 Toyota sucks, and will always suck. If a Tesla's Bluetooth handling suck, there's a good chance it won't in another 5 years.
And Tesla isn't even a company I'm eager to defend, but I think JLG is right: software-focused companies will eventually beat out those which aren't. It'll take a while, but it'll happen.
I'm happy with the bluetooth though, and I've never had a random reboot.
I used AA a TON in an Audi TT convertible and it would correctly understand me even while driving on the highway with the top down!
Funnily enough, the built-in voice recognition in the Audi was horrible and was hard to get working right even when sitting still.
That statement has underlying meaning. It implies that it has not worked perfectly and lag-free every single time. It implies you have identified ways it could be better.
Yet it also implies you are happy with its level of buggyness. You have come to terms with it. You don't complain when occasionally it won't connect without cycling Bluetooth off and on again, or when there's a slight glitch.
If I design or develop a technology, I would consider it a 100 percent failure if as well as there being bugs with it, users stop complaining about the bugs and they just become 'normal'.
I have a 3.5 year old Toyota Highlander. No issues with Bluetooth, ever.
Voice recognition just doesn’t work, period.
Often I have to hold my phone to my ear for a call because the audio doesn’t come out over the speakers. It’s random, though - Bluetooth sometimes works great.
I love the car because it’s fast and electric. But the software sucks. I was expecting better.
Tesla does try to produce a better experience, in theory, than everyone else. It's the small details and bugs that you'd likely only notice as an owner, which they seem to struggle with (or simply not care about).
Fixing bugs and regressions in the existing software? Not so much.
It was, however, in an entirely different conceptual category from its competitors.
The same could be said of Tesla, I guess, but I'm still very much a skeptic on Tesla. My point is just that being in a different conceptual category is a huge advantage. Perhaps Tesla will capitalize on that and come out on top (as Apple did), or perhaps it will be some other company (as Google did with Android), but I think it will happen.
This analog is disingenuous.
- Selling a $1k phone or a $2k computer is very different from selling a $80k luxury car
- A smartphone is a full fledge computer, which is a massive change from a dumb-phone (which capabilities were limited to calling and SMS). An electric car has the same features as a gas car, with the exception that its drive chain has a different source of power.
- Apple was an established business for 30 years before 2007, and navigated a software/hardware development environment (90's) that was very immature prior.
> software will eat this part of the world too.
Yet we're talking about a company that sells a big hunk of steel. The quote "software is eating the world" has to do with the replacement of human beings by software, not with "shiny new thing that still needs to be powered by energy".
PS - Tesla's fully autonomous (Level 5) solution is unproven. Until then, let's take the "software is eating the world" talk out the question.
I'm sorry, but this is the very blindness the old smartphone manufacturers exhibited. Nokia, Sony-Ericsson, RIM, they all had well-established offerings of smartphones with the on-paper capabilities matching, or rivaling, that of iPhone. Unified messaging, camera, keyboard, handwritten recognition, web browser, you name it. Even apps ecosystems. All good, right? And yet the iPhone won via software. And via the hype. And via the app store in the longer run. And via tight integration with other Apple offering in the longer run. And via upmarket, "cool" brand.
The customers were sold "the experience of future, today". Cringe? Sure, but it worked.
>An electric car has the same features as a gas car, with the exception that its drive chain has a different source of power.
Wrong, very very wrong. A gasoline car is goods sold via dealership network at about zero margins, with the tacit understanding the customer will be back frequently to change oil & filter & timing belt, service the engine (almost every new generation of ICE comes with serious deficiencies), upgrade firmware, and all the jazz. The money for the dealership is in the servicing, not in the initial sale.
An electric car is, for better or worse, mostly absent those services. You rotate tires, replace brake pads & shock absorbers once every several years, and that's that. Any money to be made is in the charging network, if at all.
There is a dual shift - software/perception/hype, and also the business model. The traditional vendors have already mostly figured out how to put electricity in cars (if at low efficiency); but they desperately need to un-learn how to sell cars via the legacy business model. Right now they aren't ready to ditch the dealerships, while at the same time they want to sell ever more of the dealership un-friendly electrics. Talk about stuck between rock and hard place.
Citation needed.
This quora answer claims net margins at 1-2% back in 2013 (a lifetime ago) but there is no citation: https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-profit-margin-of-a-new-car...
Especially at 30k/vehicle price points.
Point 1)
Tesla does not have SAE Level 5. It is an absolutely ridiculous claim. At most Level 3, but the SAE levels are kind of fuzzy between 2 and 3, so you could even argue level 2. [1]
Tesla Autopilot cannot and will not be able to deal with ALL situations that can possibly occur - which would be SAE Level 5. They are spouting marketing bullshit in face of their poor quarterly results. Most engineers in the space will agree that level 4 will be the highest level reached for decades - if ever. Showing an Autopilot in heavily trained-for area during perfect weather and road conditions with infinite retries for getting the video right means nothing.
This has to be viewed separate from some real progress and contributions that Tesla has made in the space. However, that doesn't mean they get to throw around the "Level 5" term yet. And they likely won't within the next decades. Level 5 is a whole other beast than Level 4 and nobody is even remotely close to get there.
Point 2)
Have you ever sat in a modern car beyond 1995? They ARE computers. And in most recent years, user access is widened. 10 years ago an onboard computer would calculate your air-fuel mix and you wouldn't ever interact directly with it. Today there are huge and ever growing interfaces and you can use voice control to make your car perform certain tasks.
So yes, software is eating up the industry. Doesn't mean the steel hunks disappear.
[1] https://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blog/2013/12/sae-levels-drivin...
Where did you see Tesla make the claim that they have SAE Level 5?
No, it was made by Marc Andreessen in reference to how software companies were taking over. It had nothing to do with replacement of humans.
https://a16z.com/2011/08/20/why-software-is-eating-the-world...
The OP's comments are spot on IMO.
Tesla is presenting a new model for automobiles where your car isn't outdated every year by a new trim design or every 5-7 years by a generational uplift. Instead your car evolves as you own it and enhancements are made incrementally both to the software and hardware rather than being held back for annual or generational releases.
In the less than 6 months I've had my Tesla Model 3 it has had software updates to:
- improve braking performance
- increase surpercharger performance
- increase power output, speed, and acceleration
- increase range
- enhanced automatic electronic braking
- enhanced lane departure warnings
- add dashcam recording capabilities
- add deterrence, video monitoring, and logging security features
- add climate control management for pets
With a traditional car company all of those things would be added incrementally in subsequent years or not at all.
*edited for clarity.
But I see the advantage of Tesla's approach. On the other hand I can sign up with our family Peugeot for regular updates for free for, it was, 2 years or so. Not over the air the registration is a pain. But it's not that it isn't there.
My Chevy Volt has had two software updates in the past 6 years.. not user noticeable improvements. I love my car but the car I was sold in 2013 is the same (problems and all) car I have now. My friends who have had their TM3s for over a year have drastically improved cars in almost every aspect.
Fundamentally, until we reach actual self-driving cars (which I believe to be far enough away that it does not merit much discussion of the current car market), cars need to drive first, software second. Given the shit show that is software updates on my workstation, I'm pretty sure I don't ever want my car to be that focused on software. There is something to be said for being careful -- I think the legacy manufacturers ought to embrace over-the-air updates because that just makes sense, but I hope they think more like aviation (but not Boeing ;-)) than silicon valley when they plan their release schedule.
For a tiny example of how I'm thinking: Apple introduced CarPlay, and it took years for car companies to be ready on their end. Super-long lead times seem like a good idea when you're talking about airline safety, but for bluetooth audio? For touch-screen user interface stuff? Think about how much iOS and Android have changed just in the last five years, and think about having everything delayed by five years because "we're a car company, not a computer company."
I don't just mean everything that happened in 2012 happens in 2017 instead, I mean that the first release is delayed by five years, which means that it isn't until that release hits the market that developers can see what direction to go in based on user feedback, and then there's another five years before that hits the market, and then competitors are also doing things, but it's another five years before that has any effect, and so on.
I'm as terrified as anyone ought to be about the idea that Tesla can over-the-air release a regression that drives someone into a concrete barrier it used to navigate properly, but the details of Tesla aside, the whole idea of focusing on software seems like a good move, and I think the car industry will (much more slowly) follow the phone industry overall pattern.
Sales are already faltering and money is getting very tight over at Tesla; one of the reasons I opted out of buying a P3D and instead am waiting for a Model Y is because by the time that hits the markets we'll have a better idea on whether Tesla has a real future or not.
However, Apple was profitable in 2007, which is a pretty significant difference...
Self-driving software is fundamentally different. A self-driving Tesla would have no significant UI or network effect, so users could easily switch and Tesla won't have a durable competitive advantage. As soon as there are two robo-taxi services, people will simply choose whichever one is cheaper. It will be a commodity service similar to air travel.
I'd live to see the Tesla announcement that from today on they will focus exclusively on X because of Y and the measureable and benefits will A, B and C til date D.
But all we get is "full self-driving next year" and "fleet of autonomous robo-taxis".
I almost prefer their approach of keeping things under wraps until they are ready, rather than pre-teasing stuff that might happen later than predicted.
To be fair to Tesla, they are not saying we will have full self driving next year... it is Elon making a prediction, not a promise, and he couched it many ways. Full self driving for Tesla development cars, basically, and robo-taxis possibly by the end of next year, with safety drivers, if you listen to what he said in response to an audience question... so his actual statements are pretty far removed from what you have dressed up as "quotes" right there.
(I get that calling vehicles polished is contrary to complaints about the radio, but they do a decent job at the main thing they do)
Hardware, specifically batteries and electric motors, seem just as fundamental to motor cars.
https://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughMuskSpam/comments/99sbwa/form...
I'm a huge skeptic when it comes to Tesla, but JLG raises a good point here. Apple had all sorts of problems in 2007, so many that established phone manufacturers largely brushed them off. A focus on software rewrote the mobile phone industry, and every day I get into my car and watch the onboard computer struggle to handle bluetooth properly.
I need to look beyond the obvious inanity of Musk and remember this shift: software will eat this part of the world too.