A lot of manufacturers are exploring custom silicon instead, because that's a great way to avoid spending money.

I don't need to be entertained while I drive. I need to drive while I drive.

I do not need an infotainment system. Heck, I don't even need as much as I have.

I see these integrated remote phone-home TV systems that help you parallel park but shrink your windows so it feels like you're in a submarine, and it gives me the willies. We couldn't adjust the AC in my partner's Honda when her screen failed one summer and I thought, "Why are those things connected?!"

I don't have Bluetooth in my car. I don't even have an aux jack. I do have an MP3 CD player, a Garmin, and an unbeatable stereo, and I can operate all of the buttons and dials blindfolded, and they respond with no latency!

I'd take a Yaris over a Tesla, and I wouldn't be caught dead in a Yaris.

The manufacturers did not want to have to build these into every car, they wanted to keep charging a premium for it.

8,000 people in the US die every day -- that's as regular as you can get.

Children dying from a vehicle backing over them is _rare_. Obviously, any death or injury is awful, but we're never going to get the number to zero.

The fear of backovers is much greater than the reality.

> The manufacturers did not want to have to build these into every car, they wanted to keep charging a premium for it.

I think it's quite the reverse: now they can pocket that money from every car.

Why would they not want to make yesterday's premium option into today's standard non-option?

You know, the reason so few children die from backover is maybe due to people fearing it?

In general or in those stupid, oversized trucks/SUVs with utterly poor visibility?

Which popularity is due to Corporate Average Fuel Economy?

That being said, I'd take large European mirrors that know to go down when car is put in reverse and basic sensor over this any day.

(though, I'm now in Chile and amount of huge cars/SUVs/trucks/pick-ups on the street is simply mind-boggling... whhhhyyyy on earth one would drive this monstrosity in the city?!)

I also worry that there may be a point where android auto updates stop completely and the feature goes away altogether due to incompatibility overall... Likely even before the car is 6 years old. These cars aren't made to last anymore... I that case, they should cost a lot less than previous generations, or there should be a solid buyback program in place.

I don't want chat GPT, it is pretty much guaranteed to be obsolete in 4 years.... Just install a hot swappable PC in the car instead perhaps.

Sorry for the Amazon link, but I haven't had enough coffee to Google better: https://www.amazon.com/AUTO-VOX-T2-Monitor-Waterproof-Revers...

The videos in the reviews do a better job than the actual product videos of showing what is going on.

I feel that a good backup camera system gives you a better view of a wider area than just using the standard rearview mirror or than turning around and looking out the back of the car.

Some photos here: https://www.parkers.co.uk/volkswagen/e-up/review/interior/

I used to think that was a good idea. But now I have a car with both backup camera and sensors, and I find myself relying much more on the sensors than the camera. It helps that the implementation is intuitive -- slow beeps at 1 meter, then increasing frequency, then continuous beep, then automatic brake.

You might not remember it but back in the heyday of those old trucks people were flipping and rolling them on the freeway all the time--there are conditions and speeds that they just plain are not safe to drive, and a lot of that comes from their inherent design which Icon can't fix.

(In the mid/small size there's some unibody options like the Honda Ridgeline but that's nothing new. It's just a different type of vehicle, not something that's obsoleted a traditional truck.)

Coils on all four corners and I'm sure some better engineering helps quite a bit.

Going from digital to analog control is more likely to add weight and cost, so you aren't going to save in that regard. Specifically going back from the infotainment system to an old fashioned analog control panel would likely add more cost and weight than it saves.

I just meant going with cheaper and lighter.

Now, if you keep buying new cars to keep up with the latest features, that's a problem.

It depends on what happens to your old cars (and they're mileage ratings). Many people are driving more inefficient cars and would upgrade if affordable used cars were available. The market can absorb more than a few yearly upgraders, though of course after a point it is a waste.

https://www.alexanderrea.com/project/mcdonalds-happy-world/

Because what could be more fun than praying for autonomy at speed in a self-driving car while ordering a happy meal?

I'm happy they stopped at the concept.

Given the lack of regulation, I'm surprised we don't have drones dropping happy meals through moon-roofs in traffic like turkeys-via-chopper on WKRP in Cincinnati.

I asked: “You know how broken this feature is, right? Like if you even deviate from the simple announcement example in any way, you’ll probably be broken in a completely unknown way. We’re providing an ‘alternative’ that only implements a 1/10 of the scenarios but nonetheless exposes the same interface to users”

He said: “yeah, that’s fine. The most important thing is to deliver something for users to use. To even know if anyone wants this at all or if no one will use it”

I perplexedly asked: “but how would you know if people are not using it because they don’t want it, or if they are using it because they try and it’s hopelessly broken?”

He said: “We’ll fix it. If they are not using it because it rough or broken, then we’ll fix it. We will wait for feedback about what’s broken and fix the problem they run into. If people want to use something and they find issues, they’ll just report it.”

I said: “… do you do that? You try a feature in a new product or a tool or a feature, and when it doesn’t work at all, do you start file feedback items and work with that company to make sure their feature work? I know i don’t. I just move on until they fix it or find a competitor who has a better alternative”

He said: “no, most people will report problems and we can fix them as they come. Also we should tell from telemetry what people are trying and what’s not working and what we should fix vs not”

I said: “yeah, that makes sense.“, knowing that our telemetry is also generally broken because it’s implemented in the same way and generally we do the work when business folks come back asking for some data or complaining how the data we provide doesn’t add up.

Oh fun times.

If your users are forced to use your platform because you mainly sell to CTOs who only need a list of checkboxes checked, and they strike a deal with you, then yeah. It’s a great business model to check as many boxes as possible, get that contract, then figure out what those boxes actually mean later.

indeed, the concept of an "obviously broken" MVP is an oxymoron, since V stands for "viable"

when giving everybody everything they want becomes the priority, then "not perfect" stuff just gets re-dubbed "obviously broken" by 1 random person, which is actually the problem: it's better to ship something and get feedback and iterate on it than to ship nothing or to ship the wrong thing after a long development time or to ship at the end of however long it takes to satisfy everybody's desires

https://youtu.be/PVlMxQaAf-k

There still are some designs that are different. They just don't sell as well as the mainstream stuff.

The 1914 Alfa Aerodinamica by Castagna was closer to the optimum than anything from 2023.

Even engineless EVs persist with a long bonnet.

Additionally air intakes may not be more than 4 inches in height, steering wheels must be circular and at least 13 inches in diameter, and tires must not discharge materials towards the rear of the vehicle.

That covers most of it.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Chesterton%27s_fence

You are way off

Given that everyone else wants those bells and whistles, ironically you get more by paying less which means logically more bells and whistles is the better deal.

A logical person would in turn want the cars with "too much stuff". That is unless you're willing to pay more for less stuff.

I'd argue that almost nobody else wants all those bells and whistles, but most people want a couple of them. So you wind up with all of them, because people will walk away from a vehicle that doesn't have what they want more than walk away from a vehicle that has too many things they don't.

I could go on. :)

There might be an option to only add the two specific features but that means a custom order that will take months to arrive and probably won't end up saving you much money anyway.

In my circle I don't know anyone wanting "infotainmant" - just a regular car to which I can connect my mobile hassle-free without dumb TV screen smack in the middle of the car...

Same goes for mobile phones - most of the people I know want to have regular sized phones (~5-5,5") but now... it's easier to smack ~7" screen to the roof-tile (that they call "phone") and sell at a premium...

SUV's are very popular among women - 43% of buyers. The industry research says that women feel safer driving them - the size makes them feel more protected, and the ride height lets them see the road much better. (Lest it go unsaid, women are on average less tall than men)

These are the reasons my wife cites preferring her Honda Pilot to her previous cars.

The only advantage SUVs offer in safety is that they're likely to flatten the other car in a crash. The characteristics of an SUV make safety worse—they handle badly, tend to roll, and their design is unsafe to pedestrians or cyclists—so buying an SUV makes the roads as a whole less safe. It's a negative-sum arms race.

SUVs have atrocious visibility, and this has its cost in blood. They are so high off the ground it's impossible to see what is near to the vehicle. Thousands of children are injured every year from drivers not seeing them over the hood. Hundreds are killed. This kind of incident has a name: the frontover.

SUVs are a major cause of poor visibility. The need to see over other cars mainly exists because cars are so stupidly tall. Buying an SUV to see over other SUVs is another negative-sum arms race.

Driving is statistically one of the most dangerous things we do in life, and someone else being drunk/high/distracted/overly tired can end your life, or the life of a loved one, in an instant.

I don't feel bad driving a larger vehicle than other people. I will prioritize my safety.

But I don't think you can be let off that easy. You seem to have come up with some way to technically admit you are in the wrong without really confronting it. What is "totally cool" supposed to mean? Does being "totally cool" with something mean it is moral, or does it just mean you don't feel angry about it? Why would you defend a decision based on whether or not it makes you "feel bad"? These words are weaselly. They dismiss the moral element of your actions without really addressing it.

If you're in the right, prove it. If you're in the wrong, admit it.

All moral questions, like, "is it moral to drive an SUV?", are variants of the Trolley Problem. Whichever choice you make ends up hurting some people and helping some others. But different people have different moral axioms about how to calculate the balance of that equation.

For example, I could probably save 5 people right now by sacrificing myself and giving away my organs. The fact that I don't means that I value my own life more than those of 5 strangers.

In the same way, driving an SUV to reduce one's own risk is not surprising.

Your own morality may lead you to different choices. That's OK. My whole point is that there is no "correct" morality.

You can try to convince others to adopt your morality (which we call "proselytizing"); you can say that some beliefs are unpopular in this society (and thus demonized); you can even look down on people who don't share your morality (we all know people like that). But you can't say that they are objectively wrong. That's not how morality works.

You can ”legislature away” socially bad decisions, at least at scale, by sufficiently shifting incentives. You can also “legislature them in” the same way.

E.g., you can create a light truck loophole in safety and economy regulations nominally intended, but not carefully bounded, to exempt vehicles with commercial use, and thereby incentivize manufacturers to expend enormous resources on propaganda to create demand for a new class of personal vehicles that fit into that loophole, shifting the market so that even after the loopholes don’t work the same way, the demand remains.

My point was that jumping from some people have wrecks because they drive drunk/high/distracted/tired to we need more legislation doesn't make any sense. If we want to inform the public of the risks of driving impaired we absolutely can do that, it doesn't require laws and punishment to help educate people.

Assuming we can legislate away bad decisions is effectively agreeing that we'd prefer the state is powerful enough to take away any decision we may want to make but that they disagree with. Why not just expect the government to help research the risks and inform us, trusting us to make the best decision for ourselves?

Of course you can. Seatbelts and airbags don't sell cars nor make shareholders money, they're only there because they were forced by legislation.

My point was that you can't legislate away drivers' bad decisions. At best you can leverage the fact that many people would rather follow the rules, and that punishment will compel more to comply.

I'm kinda really fucking sick of this particular American mindset towards cars, school shootings, gerrymandering, corporate greed, and basically everything else that sucks about our society.

Research and education is a huge help, for example. What I can't get behind is the idea that we're all such helpless children than only government punishment can keep us from ruining everything. What happens when the authority given to that government lands in the hands of a person or pay with whom you fundamentally disagree?

First and foremost we need to educate or population better, but from there the government should rarely need to go beyond good faith research and trusting it's people to generally make the best decision for themselves.

By choosing to drive those in populated areas you're signalling a total disregard for lives of others.

Even if we go for the selfish perspective, rollover rates for SUVs are intrinsically higher, and it looks like the Hilux in particular hasn’t bothered fixing this design flaw in 9 years[2]. And that additional braking distance can be the difference between a massive headache from rear ending, or worse.

Driving defensively will increase your odds of survival per mile far more than any additional metal will.

[1] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00224...

[2] https://youtu.be/xoHbn8-ROiQ

FWIW you can always kill yourself after killing a child

The average number of death per km was decreasing until covid in Europe and countries that did not buy into the SUV trends, but started increasing in the US in the early 2010s and correlate with the percentage of SUVs.

It's very sad to see people being cool with that but I understand it's rational. You will likely not go to jail if you kill someone because of low visibility. The victim blaming culture will even try to convince you it's not your fault that you haven't seen a pedestrian or cyclist from the vehicle you have chosen to drive.

Unfortunately the way a lot of American culture works means that this is actually the desired outcome. Cars today are basically advertised on their pedestrian killing prowess and, unsurprisingly, have even been used as weapons of terror quite frequently recently.

I don’t know if you’d call my Subaru an SUV or not, but daily I’m transporting multiple kids, a cello, football gear, groceries, various things for work - there are lots of reasons why people need larger vehicles.

Also, the newest SUVs have lower rollover death rates than the newest cars.

Oh, and "pedestrian airbags" only help you avoid hitting the windshield. On most trucks and SUVs you don't even make it that far. You're just squashed like roadkill on their grills.

Something like this: https://goo.gl/maps/dmivYV7AzrDVmtBN6

Heavy marketing was done to make them popular, and once they reached a certain threshold, their size created an arms race, since they blocked visibility for everyone not also in an SUV.

Could survive with a Toyota Corolla? Definitely. Does the Highlander make life better? Yes.

Weird that heavy marketing would finally penetrate my brain the same year we had our first kid.

Nah, but that marketing, and the financial incentives which motivated it, and the arms race from a critical mass of larger vehicles affecting visibility because of it are why minivans and SUVs (the former popular first and then the latter later because of when each worked as a regulatory dodge) bevame the choice for those needs, which were once filled by station wagons.

I’m an SUV owner myself for very similar immediate reasons to the ones you cite. Nothing about that interferes with my ability to understand that the market context within which those preferences call for that result is a product of specific, well-documented interplay between regulation and profit-seeking business behavior over several decades.

1. The set of vehicles on the road and thus what your experience in different vehicles will be like, e.g., in terms of road visibility, and

2. The mix of specific vehicle models and features of each that are actually manufactured and available at the time you made thaf decision.

You know what is even easier for loading kind in a vehicle? Sliding doors.

I agree. I was "indifferent" between the Highlander and the Sienna which is its minivan counterpart.

The funny thing is for all the hate the SUVs get for being big and heavy, the Sienna is slightly bigger and heavier.

I have only seen this claim made by people who don't.

Ah... and then everyone will get a SUV with similar mentality and then we will get SUV-extra even higher and "sturdier" to feel even safer?

FFS... world is not hostile, riding in compact city-car is not harmful. At best it's the mentality that "everything outside wants to kill me" o_O Get a tank maybe?

This has to do with the power they're trying to cram into the phones. We've pretty much gotten transistors as small as we can, but manufacturers still need to sell new phones and the way they've done that for years is increase compute and camera power.

Why those big phones popular? Because CPU efficiency doesn't sell well but number do, so we have a race: more storage, more ram, more MP camera... and bigger screen. Those are the most visible and easiest to adjust things. And many people associate size with being "better"...

The only thing I like about this change is that there seems to be far less high pressure sales going on.

Mazda 3 is great, but it's ICE.

Pair your phone with BT and you'll never touch the infotainment again.

It's not cheap, but it's not overcomplicated in daily use if you ignore the infotainment.

Perhaps that is why. EVs kinda follow the "tyrrany of the rocket equation" because so much weight is their batteries (aka their rocket fuel). Taking a few pounds of features off also saves some battery that is no longer needed.

I mean, I would want one of those, but just one I'm in complete control over. A lightly De-Googled Android would be just fine.

A family jaguar had an absolutely enormous computer unit that had to get replaced, all for... A absolutely horrible infotainment system that literally singlehandedly drags down the consumer reports rating

The awful UIs and spam though... Yeah, make it dumber please.

Tesla's habit of shoehorning gadgets where they aren't needed isn't the cause of its horrid quality control, though. Pointless electronics wouldn't cause peeling paint or a leaky roof.

“I’m ok with spending on defence, social security and education” while another wants spending only on unemployment, health care and policing. That’s the paradox where a supermajority supports cutting spending and “streamlining” government but there isn’t majority support for cutting any one thing.

So it is with cars. You want a “tablet mount and good AC. Maybe power windows and nice speakers”. Some other consumer will say “I can’t get around without GPS so a good maps app on a large screen is non negotiable but get rid of everything else.” And so on. To make a car that appeals to everyone, you have to put most features in. Kinda like an American Congress Omnibus Bill.

They're really among the more reliable cars according to ADAC (German AAA): https://www.adac.de/rund-ums-fahrzeug/unfall-schaden-panne/a...

People only buy Dacia because they can't afford anything else. If they could you would see the Dacia market share shrink to almost zero.

Some people cope with "Dacia is just a cheap Renault" the same they cope with "Seat (Spanish brand) is just a cheap Volkswagen", but deep down inside them they know they can't buy the car they really wanted.

In much of Eastern Europe most people would just rather buy a beat up BMW or even a relatively decent one for 10-15k.

To be fair I kind of feel the same. Getting a 2-3 old car seems like a better option than a brand new Dacia

Let's be real here, new Dacias are bought by people who care about not visiting service every other month and total cost of ownership.

My point was that in a lot of places people who can’t afford a new car other than Dacia would still rather buy an older car from a more prestigious brand due to “reasons”.

For about 15 years I kept having a hyundai of one sort of another while my friend has Audis. Our regular planned maintenance and our repairs were about 500% different. Anecdata n=1 of course.

Not everyone wants a status symbol, and not everyone wants a Go Very Fast Very Loud car. Some people genuinely want a car that's comfortable, reliable, and good for the environment.

I am very skeptical that this is true.

I thought they went and robbed a couple of banks like I do.

It remains the cheapest car avaialble, though the 10,000 price point is a thing of the past.

Really? What about the Fiat Panda?

A Renault Clio is around 18,000 Euro, three, more likely four, months time to deliver.

The whole market is simply crazy in Italy right now, in the end we settled for a (more expensive, but actually also a little bit higher level) Hyundai I20, managed to get one in 10 days time (the only model they had available, with a few largely unneeded by us optionals) for around 23,000 Euro.

All the mentioned models are so-called "mild-hybrids", so - at least in the case of the Hyundai - you have an useless small battery that prevents from having a spare tire/wheel.

I only own it because it was dirt cheap second hand and was very satisfied with the previous gen model which was an actually good car. This one is not.

A 2019 one with relatively low mileage (50,000 to 60,000 km, maybe 70,000 km) is likely to be in the 9,000-10,000 Euro range.

I wouldn't however attribute the scarcity exclusively to high demand, for all we know it could simply be under-production (for whatever technical reason or as part of a plan to sell higher priced models).

Fuck me, 13,000 Euros is what the original owner of my used Panda paid for it back in 2013, while I got it in 2017 for 6000 Euros with full kit and an extra winter tire + wheel set. I'm guessing it was cheap because it hasn't got much demand for it on the used market so users wanting to get rid of it need to lower the price.

It's definitely not a 13000 car used.

But yeah, compact cars and hatchbacks are hardly a thing in the US and no sane person in Europe would buy a pickup truck unless they actually needed one for work.

Not the same ones.

The only brand popular in both the us and the Netherlands is probably Tesla.

Toyota is popular with the Yaris being highly rated and reliable as measured by ANWB (Dutch AAA). Anecdotally I see a lot of Hyundais around where I live; the EV6/Ionic is a popular eclectic model.

However the Honda Civic for instance seems to have had reasonably good sales figures in Europe between 2000 and ~2018 so there must still be some around.

Regarding overlap of non-pickups, usually the models that are popular in the Netherlands are different from the models in the us. E.g., Toyota Camry is very rare in the Netherlands, same for Honda Accord.

I thought we were talking about brands rather than specific models? But yeah the Camry is not that popular in Europe, RAV4 and Corolla are on both continents though.

The ford model even has the same engine and transmission as their pickups (last I read).

People skip over the minivan because it's not "cool" or "too soccer mom" but JFC it's the best vehicle I've used.

ngl, I occasionally ponder one

Inputting addresses is a pain, and UI responsivity is terrible (which is part of why people don't like it; it's also not pretty, but like who cares? Does the radio need a lovely background image; flat green is fine), but put in into the show the map on the left and the next three steps on the right, and it's way better than using my phone. It's been a while since I tried it, but Android Auto in a rental was worse than just using the phone, so I've avoided it since.

Also, I'm not willing to pay for maps updates every year, and XM for satellite traffic and compressed to hell music that cuts in and out all the time because I live where trees do.

Upcoming turns in the dash is nice too.

This is a killer feature for me, and I actually don't even use Carplay anymore. In other cars I've owned it's been Carplay or nothing, I even paid extra for it in this car. But I don't use it since they went above and beyond in implementing decent software.

* Location on the map and distance to turns is represented far more accurately

* Knows which way I am pointed and can give accurate directions as soon as I start navigation, while sometimes with my phone I need to move a bit for it to know which way I’m oriented

* Works in tunnels

* Tends to stick to main roads while Apple and Google maps are far too aggressive sending me down side roads or crossing over 2 lanes of traffic.

* Don’t need to pause navigation or mess around with my phone when getting in and out of the car for breaks

* Has detailed information about the services/stores/restaurants available at each rest stop along the highway, and distances to each stop

* Detailed information about lane closures, temporary speed limit reductions due to weather, chain restrictions, etc

* Displays accurate representations of street signs and 3d renderings of off ramps

* Displays landmarks at intersections (e.g. turn right before the ramen shop on the right)

* Much more customizable interface. I can choose whether I want it to display gas stations, convenience stores, parking, etc. on the map. How many prompts before a turn. I can enable or disable various features like split-screen turn guidance, etc.

I’m not saying that Google/Apple couldn’t build these features. Just that they haven’t.

There used to be an app that greatly simplified this process. Of course, it cost $20/month. It isn't supported anymore because a 2017 model was built with only 3G and my car can no longer connect to a network in the US.

Aside from the infotainment system, I love this car and will probably drive it until the wheels fall off. It is a Geeley product, so the wheels will fall off at some point unlike the battle tanks of old.

The step-by-step guiding is top-notch and well integrated in the dash infos, the physical knobs & buttons make it easy to use while driving, it can reroute me according to live traffic infos, and it meshes nicely with the rest of the UI.

I don't really see a reason to use CarPlay/Apple Maps in this case.

I navigate with Google maps all the time. The key is downloading offline maps. I've got multiple states on my phone and they take up surprisingly little space.

I still like my nav in the vehicle because of the larger screen, but I never use it to navigate.

Why don't we have more specialized vehicles catering to small, passionate niches?

A modern Jeep or Land Rover looks just like a modern BMW or Audi SUV. The former brands were made by offering minimal rugged off-roaders, the latter by offering luxury vehicles. Now they've been blended into the same bland category.

What about beach buggies, or even the Yaris/Matrix/Fit class of light get-arounds? Gone.

What about the old nimble 6'-bed Ford Rangers, Chevy S-10s, Toyota Pickups? Gone, replaced with monstrous lifted 4'-bed wannabe minivans.

I understand why we can't have a meaningful choice between different types of government in the same area. But why must it be that way with consumer products?

The answer is, there’s no future in serving tiny niches. Due to economies of scale it makes sense to target larger segments. Kinda like a government trying to please everyone.

I, and I suspect many others, would still pay $40K for a specialty base model which would only cost $30K if it sold in mass-market quantities.

Large companies in oligopolic positions won't try to produce those sorts of products, because it's risky and they have no reason to innovate or seek untapped markets.

It feels like it would be possible if we could incentivize competition and disincentive consolidation, though. Not just in the auto market, either.

"The Homer" -- https://simpsonswiki.com/wiki/The_Homer

The newer models seem to be trying to appeal to the “big truck” people, but in a way that those same people won’t want

Something that I can use 95% of the time to get groceries and not feel like it's overkill, but toss a couch, dirt bike or beehive in the back when the situation calls for it.

They're also not really pickup trucks, underneath they have the same SUV unibody as the Bronco (yikes) and the Escape.

Unibody vs body-on-frame. Many consider that "not a real truck".

those vehicles had horrendous safety records, and modern trucks are larger so as to allow for crumple zones. plastic shells, Styrofoam, and other improved materials allow them to be much larger but without being excessively heavier.

agree with your 4' bed and minivan comments, tho

> Why don't we have more specialized vehicles catering to small, passionate niches?

because large scale manufacturing, safety, liability, and hell just the plain ole logistics of getting stuff places means it's not cost effective. One-offs like the Rally Fighter go for 75k-100k and won't have support, warranty, or the build quality of brands like Ford or Toyota.

https://www.classic.com/m/local-motors/rally-fighter/

Thank you government, for producing a regulatory agency strong enough to direct the entire automobile industry, but weak enough to be bribed into near-uselessness by corporate interests.

I'm with your sentiment, but let's keep it real please.

If a manufacturer can save 900lbs they'll just put in a bigger battery instead. People are anxious about range, and manufacturers sell more long range cars.

And if they can knock $10k off the bill of materials they'll just make $10k more profit on the vehicle.

The choices that go into building a car are about driving mass market sales and increasing the bottom line. They aren't about catering to specific user needs.

Without getting into the details, automotive acts like a start up with money and no idea what to actually build. Even worse, they have established leadership who in all their hubris thinks they can navigate development in bleeding edge technology they haven't the first idea on how to go about it.

A feature in the infotainment system was my responsibility. I was writing services to consume opt-in data and give user feedback. They pivoted the tech available to me for development six times in a six month span when my deadline was around eight months. I couldn't get anyone to understand that good software takes time. Apparently the automotive veterans around me said that, "this is just how it is" and my resignation followed shortly after. But all this jank shit and half baked design of what you get as a package deal in your vehicle is the result of an industry that is woefully behind in terms of a well operating "tech" company. Those features you claim to want to get rid of are the same features that allow them to claim they are "luxury" and to justify the cost of a vehicle that probably should have taken a fraction of the effort and cost to make with any sort of competency.

This is ultimately why Tesla is a crying shame and I wonder what it would have looked like without Elon's interference.

Which is it? Directly cooling/heating the body through the seat seems like the fastest and most efficient way.

EV cars are not quite there yet on price and economies of scale, so they have to have all the "luxury" frills to justify the $10-15k higher price tag vs the same ICE car.

Something closer to what you want will come eventually though. We're just still early in the EV market as a % of overall vehicles sold. Prices have already come down a lot and will continue to do so in the future.

Don't worry, modern manufacturers have this figured out, too.

But there are tradeoffs: do you want comfort, or performance? You can't have both.