The Great Button Purge is continuing unchecked. In the future we will ask ourselves how we could be so foolish to exchange the wonderful tactility of buttons merely to have slightly cleaner and infinitely more frustrating cockpits. Other issues with computers in your car include annoying beeping noises and every once in a while the car thinks it knows how to drive better than you. (i'm not really being fair, without ABS i'd probably be toast by now)
> every once in a while the car thinks it knows how to drive better than you
A few months ago I took a rental car - I don't drive much any more so I don't own one. On the (German) Autobahn there always is a lot of construction going on. There are yellow stripes overriding the white ones for where the lanes are, because often they reroute one or two lanes to the opposite side so the lanes get a lot more narrow for all. You still have four lanes but only 2/3rd of the width, while they work on the now free and unused part.
Unbeknown to me my car had active lane keeping assistance and I had a really hard time when it tried, with not insignificant force especially when it surprises you, to keep the car within the white stripes. I could have collided with the car next to me with a little bad luck there. It was not easy to force the steering wheel, against the power of the active system, with only one hand while using the other one to navigate the menus to turn off that darn dangerous system. Or find one of the 50 buttons to do it.
The most dangerous part was the initial seconds when I crossed over to the lanes, following the yellow stripes, and suddenly somebody, some force, took the steering wheel and steered in the opposite direction. It took me a few seconds to understand what was going on, I did not expect that there would be a turned-on active system. I had only had experience with passive systems that would not interfere with steering, cruise control and distance-to-car-in-front control as the only active systems. But taking my steering wheel from me???
SEATBELT! - Yes, the car is stopped, I'm dropping my wife off at work and she clicked out one second too soon.
SEATBELT! - Hold on, she's trying to tell me something.
SEATBELT! - Ok, doing some destructive maintenance when we get home.
As someone who works in automotive on interface and infotainment, and can tell you it’s not continuing unchecked. We’re constantly looking at whether or not it makes sense to put something on a screen and why, and what other options exist for interacting with a feature.
If we get level 3+ self driving cars, which seems fairly inevitable at this point, the importance of a UX that can be used without stealing the driver’s focus becomes much less important.
Hope I'm staying on topic.
I hate to see such a huge influx of cars with touchscreen controls on the infotainment only. This should be banned and heavily regulated, nothing good can come out of it, same as we did with the phones while driving. Tesla is major example for this, such a bad design direction.
There are hundreds of chips in cars related to the computers that control every major system in a modern vehicle, even in a system with only knobs and buttons without a touchscreen in sight.
Modern vehicles are a network of ~20 different independent computer systems. The UI (regardless of touchscreen) is only one of them.
It wasn't until the 1980s that a passenger side door mirror became mandatory.
I think that these will be replaced with camera. A camera is cheaper than a car mirror at this point. It'll make the car slightly more aerodynamic.
Eventually a car maker will produce an economy car without a rear window. Glass is expensive. People just end up using the camera system anyway. It'll do better in a roll-over test, without the rear glass.
I live in a place with an actual winter. You know, the kind with sub-freezing temperatures and thigh-deep snow cover for a significant part of the year. It is my experience that under such conditions external cameras on cars are useless. The optics are almost always obscured by some form of the weather or road hazard. I certainly don't want my life to depend on technology that only works in fair weather, since that's when I least need it.
> A camera is cheaper than a car mirror at this point. It'll make the car slightly more aerodynamic.
It also requires electronics, a screen, wires and electricity to operate. A rube goldberg contraption that can fail in any number of ways. While my existing boring low tech mirrors just reflects existing photons without any aforementioned nonsense. Just why?
I’d like to hear more about the situation with integration.
Like you know if you take a look at the innards of a 80s pc (say 286) it will be chock full of discrete ICs. Caches, bus controllers. Now its just a handful of chips plus tons of firmware.
I find it strange that the number of features and sensors would so directly drive the number of semis. Maybe at first, but in the end a car will be a ”SoC” (or few) like everything else.
Distance and RFI. A desktop PC can realistically connect everything on one PCB, whereas something the size of a car needs wires to connect everything. If you want to compare a car to a computer, the better analogy would be a LAN.
A car being one chip makes as little sense as trying to hook up a whole office to one server, running all the display cables and USB for peripherals to one spot. Sure, it maybe could be done, but who wants to spend the money dragging all those wires vs one run of cat6? Same thing with cars. For instance, it isn't uncommon for the automatic window roll down feature to be implemented in the door itself. It's just easier to have more localized controllers that communicate over a network (CANBUS) than it is to run physical wiring to send every signal to where it needs to go.
Sure, it isn't uncommon to have very underpowered machines on people's desks that don't do much more than drive a monitor and process keyboard input, but there still needs to be some sort of machine to connect those peripherals and send info over the network. This isn't that different from a car, this is exactly how there end up being 30+ different modules in a vehicle.
Think of the automatic window roll down feature in the front passenger door. Thus relies on either sensing motor current or timing. It's way easier to throw a small microcontroller in there to accomplish this than run 20-30 feet of wiring in total to send all the signals back to one master controller. Wiring is way more expensive than most people realize, the wiring harness on a car is tremendously expensive to produce. Reducing wiring complexity saves enough money that it is easy to justify the engineering and BOM cost of an additional module.
I think you may be able to integrate modules, and thus reduce ICs by having general compute rather than a module for each purpose (Engine Control/Transmission Control/Body Control etc); however, the sensors have to exist in physical form at distinct locations on the vehicle, and those sensors will require chips.
I spend a good 10 mins staring at the figure just before the header "Electrification of Vehicles" (I wish the author had numbered his figures properly). I still don't really understand what this chart means or says. Can anyone explain?
The obvious parts are the progression of technology being added to cars over time, and the corresponding increase in cost. Some of the connectivity wasn't explained (V2I, V2V, V2P) but I assume Vehicle to Internet, Vehicle to Vehicle... OK I looked it up, and here's a full reference[1].
I'd day the "irrelevance of cars" as most will work from home (and many will have no work to go to) is just beginning...
Actually it's already on going, with less interest in car ownership in the 21st century, the advent of Uber and similar services, and renewed interest in modern public transportation, at least from countries that progress to the future (like China, India, and so on), not from countries that cling to the past and let their infrastructure deteriorate (US but also common in Europe, where several countries are basically shells of their 19th/20th century self, infrastructure, geo-politically, and demographics wise).
[+] [-] marshmallow_12|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nosianu|5 years ago|reply
A few months ago I took a rental car - I don't drive much any more so I don't own one. On the (German) Autobahn there always is a lot of construction going on. There are yellow stripes overriding the white ones for where the lanes are, because often they reroute one or two lanes to the opposite side so the lanes get a lot more narrow for all. You still have four lanes but only 2/3rd of the width, while they work on the now free and unused part.
Unbeknown to me my car had active lane keeping assistance and I had a really hard time when it tried, with not insignificant force especially when it surprises you, to keep the car within the white stripes. I could have collided with the car next to me with a little bad luck there. It was not easy to force the steering wheel, against the power of the active system, with only one hand while using the other one to navigate the menus to turn off that darn dangerous system. Or find one of the 50 buttons to do it.
The most dangerous part was the initial seconds when I crossed over to the lanes, following the yellow stripes, and suddenly somebody, some force, took the steering wheel and steered in the opposite direction. It took me a few seconds to understand what was going on, I did not expect that there would be a turned-on active system. I had only had experience with passive systems that would not interfere with steering, cruise control and distance-to-car-in-front control as the only active systems. But taking my steering wheel from me???
[+] [-] Grakel|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sircastor|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bradleyjg|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nixass|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] WestOaklandfan|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] sneak|5 years ago|reply
Modern vehicles are a network of ~20 different independent computer systems. The UI (regardless of touchscreen) is only one of them.
[+] [-] mymythisisthis|5 years ago|reply
Eventually a car maker will produce an economy car without a rear window. Glass is expensive. People just end up using the camera system anyway. It'll do better in a roll-over test, without the rear glass.
[+] [-] bregma|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MisterTea|5 years ago|reply
It also requires electronics, a screen, wires and electricity to operate. A rube goldberg contraption that can fail in any number of ways. While my existing boring low tech mirrors just reflects existing photons without any aforementioned nonsense. Just why?
[+] [-] artonge|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IshKebab|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vcxy|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] Pelam|5 years ago|reply
Like you know if you take a look at the innards of a 80s pc (say 286) it will be chock full of discrete ICs. Caches, bus controllers. Now its just a handful of chips plus tons of firmware.
I find it strange that the number of features and sensors would so directly drive the number of semis. Maybe at first, but in the end a car will be a ”SoC” (or few) like everything else.
What am I missing?
[+] [-] zrobotics|5 years ago|reply
A car being one chip makes as little sense as trying to hook up a whole office to one server, running all the display cables and USB for peripherals to one spot. Sure, it maybe could be done, but who wants to spend the money dragging all those wires vs one run of cat6? Same thing with cars. For instance, it isn't uncommon for the automatic window roll down feature to be implemented in the door itself. It's just easier to have more localized controllers that communicate over a network (CANBUS) than it is to run physical wiring to send every signal to where it needs to go.
Sure, it isn't uncommon to have very underpowered machines on people's desks that don't do much more than drive a monitor and process keyboard input, but there still needs to be some sort of machine to connect those peripherals and send info over the network. This isn't that different from a car, this is exactly how there end up being 30+ different modules in a vehicle.
Think of the automatic window roll down feature in the front passenger door. Thus relies on either sensing motor current or timing. It's way easier to throw a small microcontroller in there to accomplish this than run 20-30 feet of wiring in total to send all the signals back to one master controller. Wiring is way more expensive than most people realize, the wiring harness on a car is tremendously expensive to produce. Reducing wiring complexity saves enough money that it is easy to justify the engineering and BOM cost of an additional module.
[+] [-] csours|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] deepandmeaning|5 years ago|reply
- Would this drive up the cost of these vehicles?
- Is there likely to be a fundamental change in the way that these components are sourced, a move away from just in time?
- Is this mirrored in other industries?
[+] [-] roel_v|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neogodless|5 years ago|reply
The obvious parts are the progression of technology being added to cars over time, and the corresponding increase in cost. Some of the connectivity wasn't explained (V2I, V2V, V2P) but I assume Vehicle to Internet, Vehicle to Vehicle... OK I looked it up, and here's a full reference[1].
[0] https://www.eetimes.com/level-5-avs-unlikely-before-2035/
[1] https://www.auto-talks.com/technology/v2x-wiki/
[+] [-] coldtea|5 years ago|reply
Actually it's already on going, with less interest in car ownership in the 21st century, the advent of Uber and similar services, and renewed interest in modern public transportation, at least from countries that progress to the future (like China, India, and so on), not from countries that cling to the past and let their infrastructure deteriorate (US but also common in Europe, where several countries are basically shells of their 19th/20th century self, infrastructure, geo-politically, and demographics wise).
[+] [-] ljsocal|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ljsocal|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chadlavi|5 years ago|reply