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I really REALLY hope someone at some point starts a gasoline to electric car conversion company at some point.
I love my car because it has just the right amount of technology: Bluetooth connectivity for calls and music. That’s it. That’s all I need.
Yup. Unfortunately, since most people seem to prefer the dystopian futuretech, all auto manufacturers are going to employ it. Just like with cell phones. The last phone I know of with 16:9 aspect ratio and no blighted hole punch or notch was in 2018. There’s a market full of us luddites who prefer the old ways, but we’re invisible to manufacturers because it’s more profitable to make something that more people want to buy, and we’re forced to buy that garbage as well anyway.
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I hope so
It’s already started rich rebuild v8 swap a module s and is currently diseal swapping a module 3
You forgot about the programmed obsolescence.
Yeah, it goes further than just designing the hardware to only last a few years, all of these electronics ensure that the car is fucked as soon as the necessary online services go down. Meanwhile a well-maintained '93 Geo Metro, driven in the south where they don’t salt the roads every year, can last decades.
I’ve had my 2010 Mazda 3 for 13 years now and I’m taking every precaution to keep it as long as I can.
There are some positives and negatives to the desire for old form factors. Secondhand phones from 2018 cost much less than new ones but lack some of the new features like… I can’t think of any.
New features, like the absolute gutting of Tasker’s capabilities
forced to buy
the real mildlyinfuriating is always in the comments
There was some discussion on a post about gas to electric cars https://lemmy.world/post/5901284
There are likely a lot of complexities here.
Battery tech will need to improve greatly and be minimalized. EV batteries are currently massive, heavy, and generally engineered as long, wide, flat modules to be installed beneath the floor so they keep the center of gravity low and the vehicle balanced. That’s not really possible in an ICE vehicle with all the frame molding around existing exhaust and drivetrain components, and you most likely can’t just have some sort of modular battery and motor unit that you just drop into the engine bay, as that would put a ton (literally) of additional weight on one end and mess with the balance.
The draintrain components may need to be replaced or the motor outputs modulated to prevent the torque from ripping it apart.
Power steering and brakes will need to converted to electric assist. AC and heat would need to converted to electric.
Older cars (early 00’s and older) with cable throttles will need to be retrofitted with drive-by-wire, or use some sort of adapter module that connects the cable and converts it to digital inputs. Same with brakes.
All of the electronics (lights, wipers, windows, locks, radio, etc.) will need to be rewired since there’s no longer an alternator.
Probably will need upgraded suspension and brakes to handle the extra weight.
There’s probably a lot more I’m not thinking about or not even aware of. Unfortunately, I don’t think it’s going to happen outside of rich enthusiast circles, which is terribly sad, because I completely agree with you. Basically everything made after around 2010 is total dogshit.
Aaawwww Man. I hate to admit it but you’re absolutely right. It’s so much work it might not even be worth it.
Spaßbremse!
/s
Reality is often disappointing
It is, depending on the expectation
the only tech i need in my car is an aux port. i will forever buy used cars from before 2010 but after around 2004ish?
At some point, I’m sure they will, at some point.
Nah. It’s less profitable.
Depends on what kind of car you have. I know for a fact there is a company doing this with classic mini coopers.
I don’t even use BT in mine and don’t use the music system either. I stick to my phone. I just hope by the time I need to switch cars, I’ll be able to jailbreak it without bricking.
I LOVE HAVING CAR DEPENDENCY. I LOVE PAYING FOR LESS EFFICIENT TRANSPORT AND ALL OF MY OWN MAINTENANCE AND FOR THE PRIVILEGE OF HAVING MY DATA SOLD. I SPEND EVERY MOMENT NOT DRIVING WISHING I COULD BE BEHIND THE WHEEL AND DOING NOTHING ELSE BUT FOCUSING ON DRIVING WHILE ON MY WAY TO [CONSUME] AND MAKE DATA FOR [BRAND]. PLEASE, NO PUBLIC TRANSIT, I LIKE MY FREEDOM THANKS.
Personally, as a non-car owning person, I love how I have to stick to the narrow patch of walkway next to roads where I get to inhale exhaust fumes whether I like it or not, have to stop and yield to oncoming traffic when looking to cross the road, and leave my life and personal safety in the hands of people I don’t know and pray they pay attention and don’t hit me.
I hate it as a driver. I would love to walk or bike more, but I’m far enough from anywhere I want to go that it doesn’t make any practical sense to. I strongly dislike driving everywhere, and I wish our pedestrian and bike infrastructure (and public transit) didn’t suck so bad. I wouldn’t mind using the bicycle gutter, if I had one, but I’d be very nervous to let my kids use it because I don’t trust the magic paint strip.
I drive a hybrid in rural areas, and I try to always flip the car into electric only mode when I see a cyclist coming up so they don’t have to inhale my tailpipe. I’m sure it isn’t much in the grand scheme, but I hope they at least breathe a little better.
Imagine being so braindead that “going for a drive” is a legitimate form of entertainment that you get excited about.
Other people don’t enjoy the same things I do! Harrumph!
I get the sentiment but have you ever driven a fun car on a beautiful night? Driving a topless Jeep through the twisty highway in the redwoods of Northern California or a Camaro through the wide open Nevada desert? High schoolers driving their bro dozer around town in circles, yeah, I get that.
This but motorcycles for me. Cars with the windows down are a limp substitute for hitting the bottom of a hill in a fall or spring morning on a motorbike.
Obviously you’ve never went for a good ole drive before
Or driven a fun car.
Not every car is a 1.5 liter Chevy Equinox.
I (maybe naively) believe a healthy society could find a way to build a robust public transport network and still accommodate the minority of enthusiasts who drive and work on cars for fun.
Engineers aren’t just dry husks of people, robotically creating solutions to meet needs. The drive to create cars, planes, and motorbikes, which have significant technical overlap with trains, buses, and mobility aids, is at least partially borne from the thrill of piloting machines that extend human capabilities.
You can’t download a car, but you sure can brick it.
That was a very scary and dystopian read, but thank you!
Holy cow.
And nobody can jailbreak and disable these “features”?
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I’m kind of surprised that car technology is so awful. How the fuck am I paying $35k for a car and they’re still like “lets run the UI off a potato via the least responsive touch screen possible”? At some point I’d rather they just gave up on providing a UX themselves and just ran everything through Android Auto.
I don’t mind having a UI for things like navigation or android auto. What gets me is why do things like climate control need to be buried in a UI? If my windscreen starts to steam up mid-jourmey, the last thing I need is to take my attention off the road to change the climate settings in the UI where dials and buttons will do the job much faster without needing to take my attention off the road.
Yes! I hate having everything in the UI. I’d much prefer a physical control set for A/C and even basic volume control at least.
You can’t sense a flat touch screen, but we are really good at sensing knobs and switches. It’s much safer for the driver to feel for a control rather than look at it.
My 09 VW CC has knobs for bass, treble, and mid, in addition to volume. Seat heaters, AC, everything is tactile and I can operate anything without looking.
I know it’s manufacturers wanting to save money, but it’s so annoying that we’re going backwards. Touchscreen is a form of input. Just because it’s higher tech doesn’t mean it should replace tactile inputs in all applications ffs.
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Where the FOSS cars at?
Exactly. Just slap a few electric motors on those wheels and maybe an inflatable horse for the lulz and you’re good to go.
These electric motors, you are winding the coils yourself from a FOSS design? And the batteries to drive them, we going with voltaic piles, or a lithium refinery?
Brother is building from source
Yep. Have to travel a bit for the lithium, but it’s worth it to be free from the enshittification of daily life. Mining and smelting the copper myself too.
Well only until 12 pm
Well only until 12 pm
People keep saying new cars are shit but nobody wants to trade me their new car for my 2004 Toyota 😄
That depends on what Toyota you’re talking about lol.
Wanna trade with my 1989 Toyota? 😄
Well yeah… they love buying new stuff every few years and that Toyota will probably bury you and your offspring before it needs an oil change.
I’m waiting for the day we have linux cars
It’s not Linux, but there’s an open source project available where you can build your own engine ECU with an Arduino https://hackaday.io/project/4413-speeduino
I get it, but I don’t feel comfortable putting my car in the hands of an Arduino.
Nothing against the open source software at all. It’s the fact that the Arduino is a consumer experimentation board, not an automotive rated component. I’m concerned for the reliability of the Arduino under the operating conditions of an automobile.
Pretty much every car is running Linux at this point.
That doesn’t mean it’s open and non shitty.
Tesla cars run on Linux, and have been doing for years https://cars.usnews.com/cars-trucks/features/what-os-does-tesla-use
Elon can go fuck himself tho
Well, Polestars run Android
Android Automotive, not to be confused with the entirely separate and unrelated Android Auto.
I’d love to be able to swap the engine. Or better - build it myself 👀
Or better - build it myself
That’s called a kit car.
They gotta get better collection systems of that sweet sweet sex you’re having in your car
I love my Subaru. But the infotainment system is awful. It’s slow and unresponsive, it frequently takes a few minutes to warm up to even be usable, which means usually when you can use it you’re already moving. It’s absolutely impossible to do anything outside of the touch screen.
The car is great, but that computer is a piece of crap
My Subaru made me drop Android and buy an iPhone. I hate the phone, but the infotainment system works drastically better. Android Auto was hot garbage.
Just out of curiosity, what android phone did you have before switching? I haven’t hadany issues with Android Auto the few times I’ve used it in a rental car. My car is too old for it but it’s going to be a variable in my next vehicle purchase which admittedly is very far away.
Android auto in isolation is generally fine. I’ve owned an aftermarket head unit that offered android auto and it worked flawlessly with my pixel phone.
When I bought a Subaru crosstrek, android auto using the same phone was terrible. It constantly disconnects and has strange audio issues all the time. Apple carplay works fine with my partners phone.
There is something about Subaru and their implementation that is total shit for android auto specifically. I wouldn’t recommend them for a good android infotainment experience.
Exactly. This is on a Legacy. I liked my Android phone way better but I was constantly messing with it while I was driving because of it.
I’ve had the exact opposite experience. My legacy (2021) has a much better experience on my phone with Android auto than on my wife’s iphone.
I’ve also never had an issue with Android Auto, my issues with the console are all exclusively within the computer itself
Hooking your car up to a phone regardless, is for the weak.
My mom has a ‘16 Subaru and the infotainment has been such a hassle. I had to constantly keep repairing her Bluetooth. It was so bad that my daughter, who has wanted a Subaru for years decided against one simply because of the infotainment.
It has sadly only gotten worse. Still not as bad as the Nissan I had, but it’s pushing it
She ended up getting a 2016 Nissan Rogue, but it did not have an infotainment system. It is a fairly simple system with Bluetooth connectivity for audio. I wish more companies would give us the ability to modify the systems, especially after they abandon them (my 2015 Toyota Tacoma’s last map update is from about 6 months before my truck was built.)
Yeah these infotainment systems are trash. I think the Subaru one is made by Denso. Like, Denso makes spark plugs and shit, stay in your line Denso! Thank fuck for Carplay/Android Auto.
Yeah spark plug divisions and companies should be making spark plugs and M3 submachine gun aka the Grease gun.
I cam confirm that the Subarus my inlaws have had over the last 5 years have the worst infotainment systems I have ever interacted with. Their current one keeps killing the battery. Not just draining, but actually damaging it. They have had a loaner from the dealer for the last 3 months.
Love how it drives, but the electronics are annoying to use, slow, and way too distracting.
Sometimes you can just tell something sucks without even using it… All you need to know comes from looking at the fonts and button designs. What car is this?
2023 Subaru Legacy
Know what I’m not getting for my next car 😂
Yeah. Thing that sucks is that it’s a good car though. The “infotainment” system is really the only thing I don’t like about it.
Vermont’s got you covered.
Why a car have to be connected to internet?
so the manufacturer can connect to your personal info
Featurrs
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Data therft
At least on the Gen 5 Outbacks the only way to do updates are offline via usb. Gen 6 might let you do it over wifi, not sure for those.
I have a Gen ?? Outback. It’s a nice 2002 and I just replaced the stock stereo with a new Bluetooth one so it’s dope. Running this thing until it dies.
Oh man, i’ve never been able to get over the: “i really want to play a game now that i have 30 minutes to spare and some energy left” ah fuck, 60gb update…fine i’m off to bed then.
Can’t imagine what i would do if a car update would come with the worst possible timing like having to take your partner to the hospital for an emergency.
Why the fuck would the engine be on?
To ensure that the update process finishes without interruption due to weak battery - if that happens it can brick your car. Tbf you can also just connect the battery to a power source and keep the engine off. Depending on update and car updates that take a few hours are not unheard of
This is such extremely poor engineering that it throws me into a rage. There is nothing to prevent them from installing the update in the background progressively while driving and then just switching to the new version in one swift atomic operation (like changing the name of a directory) when it’s ready
There’s two major things limiting them actually. Bad software developers and using the barest possible minimum on processors and RAM to run the systems.
I wonder if cut backs on the processing power had any relation to the chip supply chain issues over the past year or two?
Probably has more to do with the extreme penny pinching most auto manufacturers do
We both know that this will never happen. For the same reason why you can get a 300k$ car, and have an infotainment system that runs at 3fps. They don’t have any incentive to make it run better
That’s additional work. Easier to tell people to run the engines.
Backup cameras are mandatory by federal law. If your device is updating when you put the car in reverse then that wouldn’t be allowed.
It won’t be, if it’s done right.
It’s a mix of piece coat optimization and a lot of creep in what used to be a pretty lightweight process throwing it into the ditch.
The things that run software in cars largely fall into one of two camps: MCUs and SOCs. Think Arduinos and Raspberry PIs. Background programming, with an active and inactive partition, is absolutely possible on a SOC. They’re even file based, so you can do all kinds of clever things. Cars tend to not have many SOCs, so it’s not a monumental task to pitch having them each coat a little bit more for extra storage/processing. The biggest hurdles here are automotive grade and the very long development cycles. These both mean that the hardware is 3+ years old when it launches.
MCUs tend to have monolithic software builds (think literally everything gets compiled into a single .exe). There are a million billion of these things in a typical vehicle from most automotive OEMs. It’s… very hard to make them all have more capacity because you would take that cost and multiply it by 40 or so to get all the MCUs on a vehicle ‘upgraded’ for extra capacity.
If this all sounds a little crazy, it is. From two angles. First: do we really need as much software control in cars as we do? Marketing departments seem to think so. Second: the reason why there are so many small compute units in a car is the slow migration from mechanically controlled components to electrically controlled on. Back in the 80s the majory of automatic transmissions shifted based on a very complex mechanical system (look up a transmission valve body if you’re curious). Moving that to electronic control meant adding a computer to control that functional. Now take this and multiply it and you’ll kind of see the wreck in motion. Most OEMs are moving toward more centralized compute (fewer, larger, and smarter control units), but new electrical architectures take a lot of time/effort so it’s slow going.
I’m pretty sure that what’s being updated here is just the software for the infotainment display, which is likely a pretty powerful SOC that has nothing to do with any components that are necessary for driving the car.
Most OEMs usually show an update screen on their radio, even if something unrelated is being updated.
If the update is taking a long time it could be a really big file on a SOC. It could also be a smaller file being written to… very slow internal memory because when the part was sourced 8 years ago no one considered including memory read/write speed in the sourcing documentation. I’m betting the second, unless this OEM didn’t include background programming on SOCs, which is kind of foolish given how much easier it is on a SOC than MCU.
I can’t speak for this particular OEM, but 12 volt lead acid batteries don’t have very deep power reserves. The OEM choosing to leave the battery on during programming is likely a method of ensuring there’s enough juice to install the update and start the car on the next attempt.
Because oil companies pay them to keep it running sarcasm
And this is why the end user should be able to jaikbreak cars. Has anyone made an open source software for cars anyways?
Yes, absolutely. I do not, however, like the idea of “Pay us $1M or we disable your brakes on the highway” kind of ransomware attacks.
Is your point that you’re more likely to experience security vulnerabilities when using FOSS? Cause past a certain point of development that’s not generally the case.
I’m from an era where jailbreaking and installing whatever you’d like on a device was the wild west, and have seen nasty stuff accidentally sideloaded. Giving people the option to infect their cars with ransomware could get people killed, so not opening that can of worms isn’t the worst idea necessarily. That said, FOSS stuff is usually fine, but I highly doubt it would be a fully encompassed ecosystem that you’d be installing. It’ll have add-ons, other smaller projects. Tweaks. That’s where you’ll get into trouble.
speeduino is an open source ecm
