We bought a (non-peugeot) car with a physical dial in the end.
The last 'owned' car that I drove was my wife's quite-high-end Audi. It had a digital dashboard, which was OK and looked extremely cool... until those moments when it froze mid-drive, requiring an engine off/on cycle to recover. Which was really lovely on the highway, cruising along at an unknown speed... (Another charming feature of this car was that the AC would sometimes decide that going into full-blast, no-you-can't-turn-this-off, full-heat mode was a really great idea. This only took, like, five software updates and 18 months to be resolved. The issue where you couldn't cancel the keyfob-based seat personalization was never fixed, so whenever I (6'5") grabbed my wife's (5'2" on a warm day) car keys by mistake, there was lots of grinding of seat motors, trying to drive my knees and head into the car interior, while ignoring my desperate inputs to the 'move the seat back and down please' controls. Comfort feature indeed!)
Later Toyotas I’ve rented have full color screens. They work okay.
you DO NOT need a speedometer or any dash display at all to safely pull a car to the side of the road and stop. Therefore they should not be mandated under safety regulation, if you have a car with a digital display and it fails you pull your car to the side of the road, put on your hazards and call for a tow to the mechanic
Just like in a airplane if it has a problem you find the closest safe landing spot, put the plan down, and call for a mechanic.
If you do not have a feeling for the safety under which you are operating, then perhaps you should not be driving in the first place? Which I believe that is the underlying problem here, We are too lax with whom we issue driving licenses too.
Oh but it does! A blind corner will kill drivers going by feel alone, who don't have experience on that particular stretch of road. Feel alone doesn't inform you that you're in a school zone (until catastrophically too late). Remember, the driver isn't just a hazard to themselves, they're a hazard to everybody in their path.
How do you propose to limit licensing to experienced drivers in such a way that inexperienced drivers are capable of gaining the experience necessary to drive?
What exactly does not have to do with a speedometer? that is about road signs.
Knowing exactly what speed you are going has no bearing on your ability to navigate a blind corner. I am very confused by this statement
Based on visual cues alone you should know with in 10MPH how fast you are going anyway, if you can not tell how fast you are traveling generally with out looking at the speedometer you should not be driving
>How do you propose to limit licensing to experienced drivers in such a way that inexperienced drivers are capable of gaining the experience necessary to drive?
Well it seems to be popular in this thread to make flying a plan an analog for driving so how about simulators like they do for pilots, longer training, more time having to drive with an experienced driver. There are lots of things that could be done
How do you know your speed without a speedometer?
Your insistence that driving is just like flying and that cars only need to stop is a bit ludicrous. Your endurance on this thread alone is impressive. That's not a good thing, but thanks for all the chuckles.
You do if there isn't a good place to stop and you need (or would rather) keep driving for awhile first, say in the middle of an obnoxious construction zone with no shoulder, or on a mountain pass with no shoulder, or in a sketchy area in the middle of the night (summoning a tow truck can literally take hours depending on where you are), etc.
Still do not need a speedometer, you should be able to judge you speed with in 5-10mph by visual alone, if you can not you probably should not be driving in the first place.
You're perfectly find driving without a speedometer, till out of the construction zone.
I had a car with a busted one for a decade, and you know what I did? I drove with the flow of traffic.
Really, a dash display is not a safety feature.
Our 2013 Prius just had the center-dash unit crash likely due to the audio sub-system. And it would have burned but for a fuse blowing (replacing the fuse lead to smoking.) This took out the rear camera display along with climate controls, audio, ...
Fortunately someone at the Toyota shop we patronize had just replaced their same model year working unit with an iPad (hence learned that's a thing in the US even if illegal in the UK.) So what was going to be a ~$2,000 USD rebuilt unit (~$5,000 OEM new but a guy in town rebuilds them because there is apparently enough demand) was going to be less expensive.
Unfortunately, our Prius's unit seems to be unique to a particular finish/package for the model. And this particular unit type (a JBL variant) has connectors different from all other Toyota center console units.
Gist of the situation: failure of what is likely the audio section of the integrated center-dash unit took out rear camera, climate controls, audio, etc. with high price tag to repair when simple loss of audio unit would have been ignored.
We're way past that. All (to a rounding error) modern analogue dials are also controlled by software via the ECU. This has been true for decades now.
Few cars even have a mechanical throttle linkage anymore.
Even "analog" gauges have been software driven for a long time now. My simracing seat setup has a gauge cluster out of a mid-2000s VW Passat that runs entirely on CAN.
If it does a gauge sweep when you turn it in you can be pretty certain it's software controlled, even if it has physical dials. This obviously hasn't been a major problem, so software control is not the issue here, bad quality software control is.
So, wtf did you put up with all that (presuming it wasnt a company car)? And, even then, you should have a trail of paperwork a mile/ kilometre long to audi - publish all that.
However, I haven't looked to see if this is continues with the more recent models/focus line alternatives.
However, we've owned several Fords in the past 30 years (Sierra, Mondeo, and Fiesta) and they all have had a few reliability issues, mostly electric. I'm not sure I would buy another Ford today. I hope you have better luck. But I must say that in terms of driving comfort and driver experience, they've all been great.
I think digital dials and things like that are excellent and aren't a problem. These have been around for around 10 years now. They have clear benefits such as having navigation info up front, music info, customizable dials, speed as a number, etc.
Peugeot has always had shitty technology in their cars, they are a budget brand trying to be a premium brand.
These arguments always end up in this kind of hyper-specific realm where they seem to apply only to Tesla's particular design choices. But, in car maps are everywhere now (and, yes, Tesla's implementation is by far the best), and the natural way you use them is with touch. They absolutely make finding your way around easier and safer.
1. Voice control
2. Pull over
I also did most of the driving barefoot, which it turns out actually is not actually illegal as many urban legends would have you believe. That too gave me much better control modulating the clutch, handy for things like rough dirt roads.
I try to avoid using the knob while in motion as well.
Why is "Tesla" being held to a different standard than UPS/FedEx/Amazon/Uber/Doordash/etc...?
The argument started by asking why windshield wipers, environment controls or basic radio functions need to be buried in a touch screen.
Also most vehicles limit what's allowed in navigation screens while the vehicle is moving. Which is annoying when it prevents a passenger get from using it but sensible when there is a single driver.
Navy ditches touchscreens for knobs and dials after fatal crash
I went quickly to youtube to check, and pulled up this comparatively recent Mach-E video showing carplay. It's... janky and clumsy. Buttons take 300ms+ to actuate. See the sequence starting around 3:15. No wonder it feels unsafe: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ongr-sptxto
Now watch this one, which is actually two years old (not showing the current UI, and running on what is now one-generation-old MCU hardware):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGKOWyFzDBs
There are likely better examples, these are just ones that popped up first for me. But yeah, that's the state of in-car navigation UIs. And Tesla is absolutely the best.
There has to be a balance between the "always new" and "never updated" approaches here.
None of this stuff should ever, ever change in an update, without blaring, in your face, clear walkthroughs on the change.
And none of them should be forced, or preclude other updates. EG, by no means, should the control system of a car you paid tens of thousands for, suddenly change post sale.
Consumers first, safety first, cost savings and "cool factor" complete last.
How so? Not disputing, just curious what you mean.
If you frame it in other ways, it seems more obvious. Is anyone demanding that FedEx drivers or Doordashers use paper maps? Should your Uber driver pull over every time the route changes?
And when you don't see no named sign, it takes a lot more time to find the place on map.
Not that I necessarily support the legislation, I lean pretty libertarian, I just don’t take your argument that it’s ‘obviously’ safer to let people use phones in their cars because otherwise they’ll use paper maps. That’s just not what happens. What actually happens is either they interact with their phone more briefly and surreptitiously to avoid detection by police, or they just pull over and interact with their phone at the side of the road before getting going again. Either way I suspect the law has the desired effect of reducing the amount people are distracted while driving.
As certified by one of Musk's coffee mugs :).
For me the best place to show me the map while I drive is in front of my eyes or as close to that as possible. Maybe a HUD or in the instrument panel. The central console may be close enough but definitely not the best.
Tesla gets singled out because they pioneered and made popular this "big tablet" style central console containing almost all controls in touchscreen form. So this goes far beyond just the maps. With so many controls used during driving available only on the central console and requiring precise touch I also find it strange how arbitrary the law is when dealing with the exact same action, in the exact same conditions - big tablet dash vs. iPad. The risky implications of using them are the same, your attention is off the road, the very same thing the law is trying to avoid.
The law only applies to using a device held in your hand while driving.
Legality is irrelevant since the chance of being prosecuted for any driving offence, to any behaviour changing degree, is negligible.
Primarily though is the level of man-child, small man syndrome, penis envy behaviour that one has to encounter on a daily basis.
The average driver can not even manage physical indicator switches with any degree of competency , never mind anything so advanced as a touch screen.
There is a well known list of vehicle makes that are likely to contain occupants with a very low driving standard, as well as a high degree of bullying tendencies, and Tesla isn't on it, as far as I am aware?
The most worrying increase I see around here is the use of a vehicle as an assault weapon. I think it was popularized by ISIS terrorists (Nice and Berlin IIRC), but over the past year we've had multiple incidents of people driving into crowds or cops over a previous altercation. I cannot fathom why such an offense does not lead to a lifelong driving ban.
But that's not really on-topic when discussing driving controls: luckily, most vehicle crashes are still accidents, not attempted homicides. And for these cases, whether the car has buttons or a touch screen does matter.
I'd hope that someone who consciously drives a car into another person would spend the rest of their life in prison (which effectively includes a driving ban)
In the past few years no other brand demographic comes close with the possible exception of lifted full size trucks and Chargers, but they are a ways back.
People may have sold subscription services for cars before 2010, but they were luxuries and without "teeth". This is different.
Here are things which were actually shipped for decades prior to internet restrictions:
* charging for updates to mapping, and later GPS, software
* restricting features based on physical dongles
* restricting features based on dates (don’t forget that times can be set passively using radio so you can’t just easily roll the clock back)
* restricting features based on use counts (anyone think some MBA isn’t dreaming of “pay $1000 for 200 crush-it™ acceleration boosts!”)
* having some indicator of feature use (burnt out fuse, EEPROM, etc.) so using something you haven’t licensed means you can’t get any official service or warranty claims
Beyond that, we’re talking about controls. Touchscreens are not internet access and there’s no reason to think the two would be linked here when they aren’t in any other area.
Only issue is the lane assist switch 1. is not a physical toggle (it's a change mode button which doesn't change position) and 2. it's the same shape and around the buttons for quick beam adjustment and dash lighting level
Though none of the three is utterly critical, and all three are rather well notified through the dashboard (a little icon is displayed for dipped beams) so even if you get it wrong by sole touch it's not really critical.
The somewhat sadder part is as a rental (and thus entry level) only like 5 of the 8 possible buttons under the touchscreen have a function associated. Seems a bit of a shame to not put some more minor function on the last 3.
The designers also put the "mute" function on pressing both "volume up" and "volume down" at the same time, which is easy to mistakenly do (they're at the end of the same stalk, the position is convenient but it's very easy to hit both when trying to increase or decrease volume).
Why does the EU believe every facet of life needs to be ordered and control by government regulation, is there any area of life at all in the EU that should be free from government interference? That is an honest question because every time anything comes up the first response from citizens of the EU is to declare government should be the right and proper resolution to the problem
Ironic since safety laws is what put the screens in the cars in the first place, the regulation requiring backup camera's which required large screen to show the picture.
>>in the case of USB-C charging e-waste
lol, yea that is not the reason for USB-C regulation, nor was that needed at all, and that will handicap either the EU or global innovation. What ever comes next to replace USB-C either now will never be made and will be stuck (I hope not, because USB-C is terrible) or the EU will be left behind has the rest of the world moves on to the better thing
> Ironic since safety laws is what put the screens in the cars in the first place
Screens themselves aren't the issue. They didn't mandate touch screens, or the removal of non-touch controls.
(EDIT: in fact, the removal of non-touch controls in place of touch controls is a perfect example of the market resulting in a race-to-the-bottom cost-saving measure that you're in denial of in your other comments).
> lol, yea that is not the reason for USB-C regulation
Care to elaborate on what the reason is then? Because that's the reason I've seen given.
> What ever comes next to replace USB-C either now will never be made and will be stuck
This is misleading. The law is flexible in that regard, and in fact the commission will be required to regularly amend the law.
> or the EU will be left behind has the rest of the world moves on to the better thing
Fortunately, the EU market is too big to ignore.
>They didn't mandate touch screens
ofcourse... they just mandated a large expensive screen that naturally the automakers and consumers would love to have right up front visible to the driver for about 10secs per use of the vehicle and be used for nothing else ever.
This is the kind of "forethought" that makes for terrible regulation, and unintended consequences, I bet you would make for a great elected official, ever consider running for office?
If you are going to mandate some large and expensive be put in a predominant spot of a product, that thing is going to be used for multiple functions, it is unrealistic, and a denial of reality to expect anything less
>>Care to elaborate on what the reason is then? Because that's the reason I've seen given.
I am sure that is the stated reason, there is no actual data to back that up since converters to and from the various charging standards are easily available there is no reason to believe that a device having or not having USB-C contributes at all to ewaste. No one is toss out their iPhone because it has a lighting cable, and most are not even tossing the chargers as for less than $5 you can get any adapter to any other port...
EU addiction to regulation is a real problem.
>>Fortunately, the EU market is too big to ignore.
For now, the EU economy has been largely stagnant since about 2008, Though this year seems to have has a bump largely due to inflation which means it is still flat.
EU is not really a growth market for any one.
nominal gdp went from 11 tril in 2008 to 14.5 tril in 2021, averaging about 1.66% per year. That's not flat. Are you using some different kind of metric?
PS more to the point, the next entity that comes anywhere close to that number is Japan and its several times smaller, so eu will remain relevant for a while even if it completely stops growing.
You must have forgotten the days where all chargers had a molded cable instead of the USB-A socket that is standard these days, and the plug was different for each and every brand. So each phone came with both a custom cable and a custom charger.
Then came micro USB, which was used for ALOT of devices, and still is
Then came Apple brought Lightening which USB then responded with USB-C
>> where all chargers had a molded cable
So, you can still put an adapter on the end.
> So, you can still put an adapter on the end.
So you have changed your problem from finding one of N charger to finding one of N(N-1) adapters, assuming someone actually built and sold for example a Samsung-to-LG adapter. Not a great improvement.
Im fine with that and maybe music playlist control
But for the rest traditional are better
The ggp post was about EU requirements. A backup camera is not required in the EU, that's a US requirement. EU requires a warning system when going backwards, but that's beeping, not showing a picture (a camera/screen wouldn't satisfy the warning-requirement).
Some cars put the picture from the backup camera in the rearview mirror. There was no mandate to use a big tablet size screen anywhere.
This is yet another unintended consequence of government regulations, where by now people want to use government regulation to "fix" the problems the regulation caused in the first place, which will cause even more problems as regulation always does
>>"to the market" is always a race to the bottom
Absolutely false, the market more than anything in human society has driven more wealth, and higher standards of living. If it incredibly ignorant to say the market is a "race the to bottom" backed by ZERO data or facts
The market being a race to the bottom is visible in every single space where only a few companies control an entire industry. From supermarkets to cars, from soft drinks to tech, when competition dies down market regulation is the only way to get the interest or the general population taken care of. I'm 100% certain PepsiCo and Big Tobacco would market to toddlers if we allowed them to. Car companies have started to move to electric not because Tesla's cars were such a good business model but because governments are moving to ban internal combustion engines somewhere within the next decade; regulation is forcing these companies to innovate in ways that don't provide an immediate financial profit.
Obviously a state controlled market will always fail, but a purely free market has proven to only serve the richest of the rich. Balanced regulation is key. In my opinion, cars that put common driving controls on touch screen a should never been allowed on the road.
I feel like we are now into the absurd... You know what kills competition. REGULATION.
Every industry where you can cite limited competition I can tell you the regulations that killed that competition.
Unregulated industries have LOTS of innovation and competition. Regulated industries have slow innovation and no competition.
Free market work because of competition, no competition no free market.
>>Car companies have started to move to electric not because Tesla's cars were such a good business model but because governments are moving to ban internal combustion engines somewhere within the next decade;
This is a complete revisionist history, and it is very very very very unlikely any nation will actually ban ICE cars in the next decade.
While I will not deny regulation played some role in the speed of transition, it is unlikely that role would be more than moving the needle more 5 years ahead of where it would have naturally gone anyway.
Electric cars where being made long before the Tesla, Tesla simply timed the market correctly at the same time technology got to the point where an BEV was even possible.
To put 100% of the transition to BEV on government is simply false, and in fact I can make a good case that government accelerating the natural progression is in the long run going to be HARMFUL and may even set back the transition in many ways
Unregulated industries have LOTS of leeway to prioritize profits over their environment. Case in point: look up the article yesterday about Salt Lake being drained for agriculture, risking millions of homes' access to drinking water.
People like you went on about how regulation would kill the industry and hurt the market, but what was really killed was more than 8,000 infants (ibn one year alone)[0].
Industry does not care about your life or your family or babies because they have no feelings. They exist to compete and win, at any cost.
Without something (democratic government is a good option for this) looking out for consumers, and for the other market players, your Ayn Randian fantasy will come about, and it will not be the utopia of consumer choice and meritocracy, it will be the later 1800s all over again, with most people poor to the point they are feeding their children milk with plaster in it, and a few robber barons controlling entire industries and killing competition before it can compete.
Do not look at 'free markets' with some rose colored glasses, because without ensuring industry deals with externalities and without ensuring that competition can happen by preventing on company from owning entire supply chains or cartels setting prices and preventing innovation, then the market would not be fair a t all, and most people's lives would be exponentially more miserable.
I dont know if that is the shining example of government protection, nor the indictment of free markets you think it is.
>>your Ayn Randian fantasy
Nope, not an Objectivist. I am small l libertarian, very different from Objectivism which is Randian philosophy. Rand hated libertarians.
I am also not opposed to all government, or government regulation. I am opposed to extreme amounts of regulations (like regulation what type of interface a car must have be it touch screen or buttons), and I prefer the government to get out of my life. and I believe we have become a massively over regulated and criminalized society that in large part has created many of the problems we have today such as these huge corporations.
Some basic minimalist safety regulations are ok. Regulation numbers in the billions of pages where no one human can ever know and understand them all... Hard pass on that.
Notice I mentioned the FDA -- which has as a mandate to ensure safe food and drink, not the local official who had no such mandate and powered monied interested held more sway than poor dead infants. You use a local official as evidence of a regulatory body in a time when local officials were actors for industry -- and expect me to think you spent more than 3 seconds thinking critically about that?
> I am small l libertarian
And, like most libertarians, (who are not just closet fascists calling themselves libertarians because libertarians don't bother to exclude them), your definition of 'extreme' could be anything from 'driver's licenses' to 'not being able to sell your own children', so who knows what line you stand on. Whatever it is, I would like you to remove yourself from all of the government protections you disagree with and see how long you and your libertarian friends last. Hint -- it has been tried numerous times, and always ends in hilarity and completely predictable outcomes.
Just two off the top of my head...
* https://boingboing.net/2020/10/19/libertarians-exit-pursued-...
Facism which is a totalitarian collectivist ideology has nothing in common with libertarianism, your assertion there are closet fascist calling themselves libertarians is plainly false most likely because you misapply the term fascist due your are probably complete ignorance of both. Which is common today where alot of people that seem to have world view closely aligned with classic fascist leaders proclaim themselves to be "anti-fascist" unironically.
>so who knows what line you stand on.
well if you had read my entire comment instead of cherry picking the quote you wanted you find where my line is.
> well if you had read my entire comment instead of cherry picking the quote you wanted you find where my line is.
I read your comment -- you used the term 'extreme' and then said the government over-regulates, and you want 'minimal safety' regulations. However, your arguments do not line up with this, since I have read your comments and they are quite a bit more on the 'let corporations do what they wish' than 'the government is too damn nanny-state'.
So, forgive me if I don't take you at your word. My experiences with libertarians has led me to just assume that your 'line' is whatever you feel like, that benefits you, until it doesn't anymore, then you are on the other side of it.
Yikes. Hard pass on being a poison-tester for every entrepreneur that dreams up a cost-cutting measure to increase their profits selling me food. Looks like it took years for the image of milk to recover.
That is absurd.
Regulation takes many forms, and if you think that monopolies are only broken by reducing regulation, then there isn't any point in continuing this conversation.
Backup cameras were mandated in the US in 2018. Almost every vehicle on the market had a touchscreen years before that. The few vehicles I can think of that didn't yet have a screen as standard by that point got in-mirror camera displays to comply.
A government regulation that was announced in 2014 and took effect in 2018 had nothing to do with my 2015 Fiesta, which does not have a backup camera, having the same touch screen a 2010 model had.
Ford introduced MyFordTouch in 2010. Chrysler's Uconnect system came out in 2011, GM's various systems (CUE, MyLink, etc) in 2012, and of course the big daddy of stupid touch-focused designs the Tesla Model S came out in 2013. All of these were well established across entire lineups by the time backup camera regulations were being discussed.
The primary reason for the current state of automotive touch interfaces is entirely capitalism doing what it does. Touch interfaces are more expensive than a few buttons, but they can replace hundreds of individual controls and components that all have their own design, testing, and production requirements with one where almost everything about it can be changed on the fly. A model that offers options for heated seats as well as heated/cooled seats means you have three different sets of buttons for whatever panel those go in, three different sets of control boards, etc. With touch controls, as bad as they are to use those three variants are now effectively free to the manufacturer. They "cost" a few if()s in software.
Regulation is in fact the only reason this nonsense hasn't gotten even stupider. Tesla's new models have a set of hidden controls for drive mode selection and hazard lights, which are primarily intended to be controlled via the touch screen, because they are legally required to have something that would work without the screen.
https://www.motortrend.com/news/tesla-model-s-plaid-shifter/
Let me repeat that, Tesla does not want to have these controls, the only reason they have them is because regulation forces them to. Tell me again how the big bad government is ruining Tesla's freedom to do the stupidest things...
You think the stupidest thing, I am not anti-touch screen like most here are. In-fact I replaced alot of the factory buttons in my older car with a Aftermarket Large display that is basically a huge android tablet that controls alot of the car functions (including HVAC)
I prefer touch controls.
Why the government preventing me from choosing the control I like the best, and then you can feel free to not buy a car that does not have physical controls.
That is the market. that is how it should be.
For the same reason you can't drive while on the phone or drunk. If it's less safe than buttons, it's putting others in unnecessary danger.
It should be incumbent upon the driver to learn how to operate their car safely. If our ultimate goals are to maximize highway safety, we should be punishing reckless driving. It shouldn't matter if it's caused by alcohol, sleep deprivation, prescription medication, text messaging, or Touch Screens. If lawmakers want to stick it to dangerous drivers who threaten everyone else on the road, they can dial up the civil and criminal liability for reckless driving, especially in cases that result in injury or property damage.
The punishable act should be violating road rules or causing an accident, not the factors that led to those offenses.
//Some statements herein are rephrased / updated statements from "Abolish Drunk Driving Laws" https://reason.com/2010/10/11/abolish-drunk-driving-laws-2/
I'm not even convinced you're arguing in good faith any more, because frankly I can't imagine how a rational and empathetic individual could have reasoned themselves into these opinions.
I'm not going to argue with you any more, because you're either a troll, or someone to who can't be reasoned out of their opinions simply because they didn't reason themselves into them.
Empathy and rationality are often in conflict, you seem to side more on the empathetic side where I do not. I am purely on the logical / rational side and freely admit to having very low Empathy.
>>someone to who can't be reasoned out of their opinions simply because they didn't reason themselves
I literally linked to a site called Reason.com.... It provides a very reasoned case for the abolishment of Drunk driving laws, and the unintended consequences to civil liberties those laws have created. (similar to the consequence to civil liberties the war on drugs has caused)
I think I have very reasoned and logical positions that are not based at all in empathy or emotion, which IMO is where all government regulation and law should be, devoid of emotion. Laws created because of emotional response are almost universally bad laws.
That being said, one does not need to be empath to value not causing accidents to other people. "This will lead to more accidents" is both logical and rational claim.
The ideological investment into idea that one must be selfish to max to look "logical" is irrational.
I fail to see how advocating for very harsh punishment for people that cause accidents to other people, including prison and revocation of driving license has been twisted here to be something that is illogical and disregarding to others.
I also fail to understand why a person should not have the responsibility upon buying a vehicle to understand how to operate it safely, no matter if the interface is a Button or Touch screen. Do we give a pass to someone if they were fumbling with buttons? It is insanity to me how much society has drifted away from personal responsibility to everything being everyone else's fault
Then you created dichotomy between "empathy" and rationality, while responding to person accusing you of missing both.
Then you literally made strawman arguing I wrote something else then I wrote.
A rational actor tries to maximize profits, and that involves either cost-cutting while minimally passing on cost savings; or disruption.
Disruption is what has driven wealth, but an unregulated market is terrible at encouraging risk taking.
The easier path is to make things cheaper (to make), and the evidence is every off-shored manufacturing and industry over decades.
Now you’ll say that this cost increase is due to regulations; but the argument against that is even Chinese labor has become expensive and that’s simply due to a rising middle class. The market.
But like the US once had, they have the manufacturing knowledge and scale that we’ve foolishly given up a long time ago so US businesses can’t simply lift and shift.
To the point where I doubt our ability to wage a long-term war.
Competition occurs because it is promoted through regulations. Contracts, private property, stock markets, etc. all exist due to regulations. If competition tends to stop (e.g. a company cornering a market), then regulators can step in to change things so that competition is once more possible. If your goal is to increase wealth and standards of living, you should support regulations making that possible.
And it's because, as Milton Friedman once said, "a corporation's responsibility is to make as much money for the stockholders as possible."
Without a counter balance you wouldn't have seat belts, crumple zones, fuel efficiency standards, the list goes on and on. Safety is not the responsibility of the corporation. Their only priority is profit.
That is an over simplification of his Position, and often misused as you have here, just like people that misuse Poppers paradox of tolerance to justify censorship of people they dislike, you misuse Friedman to criticize a economic system you dislike
>>Safety is not the responsibility of the corporation.
Yes and no. They still face liability if not protected by the government. Which often time government regulation come with liability shields protecting said corporations that is why large corporations like regulation; as it often prevents competition while at the same time protecting them from liability
Further they face competition based on safety, automotive companies compete widely on the safety records of their vehicles with many marketing the features and safety testing results that exceed government requirements, this means there is a MARKET driver to increase safety and it is not just government regulations that drive safety.
Infact some automakers are at odds over the government because technology in the area of safety (lighting is the big one) is changing faster than regulations can keep up and many manufacturers would like to make changes to their cars that would make them safer but are prohibited because of regulations.
Consumers need protection from people who make selfish decisions.
Legislating UI seems... weird? If people feel uncomfortable driving with touch screens, they may choose not to buy cars with touch screens.
I don't care about how comfortable or uncomfortable this makes people with touch screens driving, there's large evidence for them being more dangerous.
It doesn't, the author is just projecting their authoritarian nanny state fantasies.
The EU regulates the internal market and sets minimal common standards for example for medication, food safety and allowed pesticides and fertilizers etc. These are necessary for the well functioning of the common market and need to be specified to a high degree of detail, otherwise states would try to cheat and flood the common market with products grown with the cheapest most toxic methods, and you wouldn't be able to remove them from your national market without breaking the free trade rules.
This nature of the internal competition needs detailed regulations that states need to negotiate and specify very well (and then try to cheat anyway), and it's unlike a national unified market like the US has. This gives the appearance of over-regulation, but in reality the UE is quite neoliberal and doesn't give a fuck about your car controls.
You don't mention purpose or outcomes at all, just "ordered and control by government" and "interference".
Obviously it comes down to government competence but the EU has shown itself to be mostly competent.
Government regulations are a last resort, not the first as you insinuate.
An example is roaming charges. The EU warned phone companies that it would regulate in the absence of reforms. They did nothing and the EU rolled out regulations that have benefited everyone who uses a phone across borders at almost no additional cost. Very inexpensive plans are still available as always (for example I have a 2.65 euro plan that gives me 1GB of data each month, with full EU roaming).
In respect to cars, if there are safety regulations that err on the side of being a bit onerous, then so be it, but there's no evidence they are problematic.
An example is my 2016 Kia Rio. I paid approximately $12,500 (about 11,000 euros at the time). The EU mandates that all new cars must have tire pressure monitoring, anti-lock braking and stability control. Because this is existing, mature technology the added cost to the car is marginal, and very cheap cars are still available, such as my Kia.
Meanwhile, those car features have definitely saved my life on 4 separate occasions.
Free markets are not some panacea for the world's ills. They work well in most cases but since there is no perfect market there will always be market regulation. The extent and the development of smart regulations requires good goverment, and that's where our responsibility to be politically engaged comes in. Government is a tool like any other, imperfect as it is, but we can influence its form.
The car industry spends so much money on supposedly relevant things and yet it's a disaster.
App Store and Google Play consoles are also utterly insanely bad.
I think what happens is there is nobody responsible for the experience, just for the function.
It does A, B and C, it looks 'cool' and so that's that.
Of course the US should enforce this as well.
But cost savings and “muh futuristic Ironman UI”.
This is exaggerated and inaccurate. I have a recent BMW and it has numerous physical controls for climate, radio and various settings like auto-hold or disable engine auto-stop/start.
The multifunction puck in BMWs is fantastic, it even allows for text entry while looking at the road. I have trained myself to not use the touchscreen as much as possible and now feel very comfortable even navigating Apple Carplay with it.
I also have a recent model Audi, which is far more egregious with the touch screen. Disabling auto-stop/start cannot be done persistently and it is a touch screen button, along with hill descent. Climate controls have their own dedicated touch panel, and there is no real alternative to touching anything like iDrive. The exception is that it does have an actual volume knob with on/off and next-prev functionality.
It’s also worth noting that both cars also have audio controls on the steering wheel itself.
Honestly having the m3 dash clear of the clutter and most features on automatic gives me personally more focus on road and those around me. But yeah hitting the rear defroster is more inconvenient.
Maybe a senior mode with big touch buttons and text and less of the bling would work for me or as someone else suggested some sort of USB add on with physical switches which integrated with the bottom of the touchscreen. Im not holding out much hope for either though.
Window elevators. Butt heater. Trip counter. Warning blinkers. Horn.
That might be it?
Horn and hazard lights.
The very last thing I want is some authority forcing the car makers to fill the dashboard with buttons or require some ghastly centre console.
You drive different models from different vendors all the time. Everything is slightly different. The IVI system has commonly incomprehensible UX with deep menus. It mostly feels designed by committee (which it is, I worked on one such system for the flagship modes of one of the top German car makers a few years ago and good deep insight into the process).
Physical, standardized buttons would go a long way.
If you buy a car you'll have an initial learniung curve and while it sucks you can cope.
As a occasional user, you're in a world of pain. I don't understand why vendors do not do IVI firmware that is tailored for the car sharing/car renting market.
It needs two buttons after booting up (and they can be on a touch screen even):
1. Connect phone (Android Auto/Apple CarPlay)
2. Connect Bluetooth
That's it. Many cars still do not offer the former at all. Either way, the latter or both options are commonly hidden deep in nested menus in the IVI's preferences.
Early on, there were attempts. For example, car2go (now ShareNow) which was owned by Daimler, had a function, ca. 2014/2015, where it would remember the radio statio based on who was using the car.
I.e. the IVI firmware of the Smart car (they only had Smarts then) was somehow integrated with the car sharing app/user profile. And it was location based. Driving car2go in Milan, Italy the cars recalled my fav. radio station there but when I was coming back to Berlin, the station I had set using a car there was automatically on.
And then the next generation of Smarts was rolled out and the feature was not only gone, the firmware the cars had was just stock standard. I.e. they didn't add something like the bluetooth shortcut I mentioned above which I had expected and deprecated the feature the previous model had.
It's almost a decade later and nothing has improved -- rather the opposite.
Any function that needs to be invoked or setting that needs to be changed by a reasonable person while driving should have dedicated hardware in a predictable position. So, that's direction indicators, outside lights (incl. high beams and fog lights), windshield wipers, cruise control, window defrost/defog, interior temperature/fan, media volume (am I forgetting anything?).
There is nothing more utterly annoying and outright dangerous than having to navigate some crappy touchscreen when your windows start fogging up or you need to turn off the radio in order to talk to that nice cop that just pulled you over.
Offenders here do not only include the T-brand, but also the B-brand, which has seen it fit to replace most of the controls in some of its cars with a single multi-function stalk (iDrive, I think?) that isn't good for anything, except as a reason to return your car for a refund...