Of all the horrible things go on with privacy these days, this is the one I hate the most. I’m a “car guy”, but not the sort that obsesses over old cars (although I do love 60s and 80s cars). I like new tech, I like the advances in engineering we’ve made in new vehicles, I like EVs even.
Nonetheless I’ve been in the market for a new car for months and haven’t bought because it’s hard to find any cars that meet my requirements (after all most companies primarily make trucks and shitty crossovers, not even cars). The two things that consistently hold me back are either things like this (crazy telemetry / touchscreens everywhere / half-ass safety tech) or insane dealer markups. I’ve pretty much figured out the new Toyota GR Corolla is the perfect car for my needs, but you can’t find them anywhere without a $25K+ dealer markup and many dealers won’t sell them to out of state residents.
It’s truly a crazy time in the new car markets and the used market isn’t really any better.
I hate them so much. Otherwise great cars are completely ruined by touchscreens. What was wrong with tactile knobs you could operate one handed without looking? You’re driving for fuck’s sake.
It’s why things like the GR Corolla are nearly miraculous in 2023, it even comes stick shift only.
As an European, where we drive mostly stick, it's funny to observe the newfound US love for stick shifts. It's funny because it happened almost exactly when automatics became good!
Good dual clutch gearboxes are amazing, but even "classic" ones like BMW's ZF6 or ZF8 are really close. ZF8 is so good BMW uses it in the M3, instead of a dual clutch.
With these options, I'd never go back to stick shift. This after having half a million km driven on manual transmissions.
> it's funny to observe the newfound US love for stick shifts
Nobody in the US loves or drives stick shifts. There's been a steady drop in manual transmissions here from about 12% of the market in 2000 to 2% of the market today. The noise around them is just a very small vocal minority of enthusiasts who pine for the "old days". I'm definitely one of those enthusiasts, but I have to face reality that they're effectively gone. I haven't had a stick for a daily driver since about 2010. I do still have older manual sports cars that I can drive and enjoy when I wish.
Yeah, I certainly wouldn't knock those who love driving manual. Part of why I like riding my motorcycle is that it's a manual.
But in LA traffic, I'd rather drive an automatic so I can put my brain into "autopilot" while playing an audiobook rather than have to constantly be shifting by hand. It irks me how so many manual-lovers have this superiority complex over people who just want a car that will get them from A to B. Have fun with your manuals, but don't speak as if I'm an imbecile because I don't think driving manual is fun in heavy traffic.
I’ve driven manual my whole car life and in heavy US traffic. When you get accustomed, your brain goes into “auto-pilot” and does the shifting too anyway.
I had been riding in SoCal for a few years and I'd say doing the autopilot thing when split laning is not very safe. Too many folks trying to suddenly merge into HOV lane solid lines be damned
This is the exact reason I bought an automatic. I had a 1994 BMW 318is that I loved, but I spent probably a couple thousand hours on the 91 freeway in southern California pushing the clutch in and out. The BMW "sporty" clutch was a leg workout and a half. The return spring was super stiff. Sometimes I would play a game to see if I could stay in first and just let my lead distance increase enough to not have to stop at all, but it pissed people off so bad.
This is actually how you're supposed to drive in traffic.
Give more space to the car in front of you and try to stay at a constant speed. You will see truckers do this a lot.
It also is much better for your car and mental health. You don't need to accelerate to a complete stop over and over.
I do this every time I'm in very bad traffic (Think inching along and coming to a complete stop multiple times).
However about 10% of the time I get some idiot behind me that thinks that I'm going to slow so they speed around me just to come to a complete stop 2 seconds later.
I tried it once or twice. It was great for the first minute or so, until the lady in the car behind me started honking, screaming, revving her engine, and pretending like she was going to ram my bumper. People HATE when I try to reach average traffic speeds instead of just cramming my car as close to the one in front of me as I dare.
this was always a key point from people who drove automatics but claimed to like manuals. i daily drove a manual in some of the worst traffic the US has to offer. but so what, guess what else sucks in traffic? Automatics!! when you're stuck in traffic, everything sucks, so you might as well drive something thats enjoyable the rest of the time.
I've never really seen the issue with "manual in traffic" -- there's almost always a gear or two that allow you to go a the speed of traffic without tons of shifting. Stop and go? 2nd probably goes from "creep" to "moderate speed"
Anyhow, electric cars are better all around -- at least those with "one pedal driving" where the speed pedal goes all the way to zero or nearly zero.
My dislike of automatics is the indeterminate lag between request for a particular speed and when the car decides to shift to the appropriate gear to get to that speed as quickly as I've indicated I want to get there. Plus with ICE cars there's all sorts of other tedious inertia to contend with around engine RPM and turbo spool state and such. At least a manual provides better determinism around throttle behavior.
Ahh sweet summer child. Traffic that has a speed isn't really traffic in my book. It isn't really traffic until you spend more time stopped than moving.
Joking aside, the worst traffic is when you stop every 4 seconds and then creep forward ten feet before stopping again. If I wasn't planning to go car-less I think I would buy an electric car for that nonsense.
Oh, I live in metro boston and before that lived in the slurm of southern california, and have not at any time owned a car with an automatic transmission... The workload from gear shifting is more than zero, but not (for me) oppressively so.
Even "stop and go" traffic eventually has some average speed and sometimes it is low enough that you've got to clutch in to come to a full stop and clutch out to go faster; modern engine management's pretty good at keeping the motor from stalling. Probably I annoy people by letting the lead in front of me get to be a couple car lengths before I decide to go, but that's on them... we'll all get there eventually.
Electric cars are the best in that you're basically always in first gear, the redline is basically infinite, and the car doesn't stall when the engine's not moving, so you don't need a clutch.
I completely agree with you regarding the power lag on automatics. Currently I'm driving a Jeep Renegade with a 9 speed automatic transmission, and I live in a really hilly area. The transmission needs to downshift CONSTANTLY because it's tuned to try to cruise the highway at 1500 RPM to maximize fuel efficiency.
If I'm running the air conditioner, it steals enough power that it has to downshift an extra time. It's bad enough that the constant shifting makes my son carsick. Luckily, it has a manual mode I can use to just drop it into 5th gear and it has the torque to smoothly climb the hills on cruise control that way, eliminating my son's carsickness.
"Semi-automatic" cars (aka an automatic transmission with a manual gear override available) are a nice compromise for those of us who want the simple convenience most of the time, with the ability to take control when we want to. Plus once the order comes in, those servo motors can shift the gear way faster than I can depress a clutch.
I'm only 30, but at this point a 15 year old car still feels kinda "new" to me. Up until a few months ago, I drove a 2008 Lexus, felt perfectly modern.
But in regards to driving a manual in traffic, does a diesel not make it easier? An engine suited to lower RPMs, but with more torque, seems perfectly suited to clutching in/out to shuffle along.
When I still drove I hated the way I had to keep my foot on the clutch in traffic jams. Or constantly switch to neutral. The clutch on my car was heavy. That's why I got an automatic.
But now I live in a city where I can take the metro to work and I don't own a car anymore. I hope I'll never need to drive again, I hate driving so much.
Enjoy it while it lasts. As of a couple years ago, more than half of all new cars sold in Europe are automatics. That doesn't seem too surprising, I imagine the same logic that made manuals appealing in the past is why automatics are appealing today.
Automatics are more fuel efficient, and govenment keeps raising the efficiency requirements. Automatics do this by having a lot of gears and changing up very aggressively. It would suck to drive a 7 or 9 speed manual (maybe truck drivers feel differently; I think 5 is optimal for a car) but automatics can manage it and squeeeze out another tenth of an MPG.
I love manual transmissions and will never buy an automatic unless forced to. I'd rather buy a used car with a manual than anything new.
I assume the efficiency requirements are why my car doesn't provide a way to permanently turn off the auto idle start/stop. The button's to temporarily disable it is convenient enough to make it something of a reflex. But it's a feature I really don't like when I'm making an unprotected left hand turn for example.
My wife's car has that; I find that if I stop and keep my foot very lightly on the brake, just enough to stop the car rolling, it doesn't shut the engine off. If I step more firmly on the brake while I'm stopped, it shuts the engine off.
Also some of the diagnostic scanners will have a way to disable the auto stop/start, or so I've heard. I have a scanner but haven't tried it on her car.
Noooo. Manuals are on average much more efficient. I drive a 1st generation Honda Insight, and the manual version gets ~10 mpg more than the automatic.
Modern pickups have 8-10 speed transmissions. They do a better job of keeping you in the power band.
In addtion, no heavy duty pickup comes with a manual anymore, but the ones that did years ago, de-tuned the engines in the manuals, so people didn't burn up the clutch. Modern Diesel Heavy Duty pickups only put their full 1000 ft/lbs to the wheels in 3rd gear or higher, something they can't enforce in a manual. Also, in most manuals (granted, its been a few years since I drove one) with turbos, pushing the clutch stats unspooling the turbo, where in most automatics, it does not. (since its knows your shifting, and not just coasting)
Yes, these are all related to driver skill, and a skilled driver will not cause problems. But I wouldn't want to warranty the systems on an 'average' driver..
> Modern pickups have 8-10 speed transmissions. They do a better job of keeping you in the power band.
This is so true. As someone who owns a fairly modern truck (2019 F250) that missed the good transmission by a single year. My truck would dearly love to have at least one more gear between 2nd and 3rd when I'm going up the mountain. I end up having to choose between trying to keep my inertia high (tough with corners) or give up and let it drop down to 35-40 so that 2nd gear isn't trying to tear the engine off the mounts.
I may end up putting in shorter differential gears to work around that. Don't really want to fork out for a new truck.
Automatics have been more efficient (given their additional mass) than manuals, for all but the most skilled drivers (top 1% of manual drivers) for several decades already.
I'm on the side fostering that change. Ever since I got a Mini Countryman with a ZF6. I was forced into an automatic because the car was a hybrid, and now I wouldn't go back to manual.
The car was a little janky from a dead stop, when running solely on gas. I probably would miss the precision for maneuvering you get with a clutch. I didn't, actually, because of the electric motor doing these operations perfectly.
I assume a lot of it is a retro thing like film and vinyl.
I donated my 20 year old Honda Del Sol two-seater stick shortly before the pandemic. It had a lot of miles on it and, with no commute, I just wasn't getting the use out of it to make it worth keeping. It was fun but there's no way I'd buy a stick today even if I were to have a "fun" car.
A few years ago I got a 53 Chevrolet pickup with a 3 speed (and a nice BW overdrive attachment). Learned how to drive a manual in that truck and will never buy an automatic again as long as I can choose. Actually operating the vehicle is extremely satisfying and fun. I’m swapping out the C-4 in my 65 mustang for a T-5 as soon as I can spare the cash/time. For me it’s definitely not a matter of practicality but a “vinyl” type of thing. My DD has a CVT but at least emulates shifting with paddles
The difference between being forced to use one vs choosing to use one.
I’ve driven some real nice autos, but when it comes to a car I enjoy driving, give me a nice sloppy GM T-56 or the crisp shifts of a BMW ZF stick. They’re just more fun. It’s the reason why I don’t have a C8 corvette.
But when it comes to day to day puttering around, auto all the way, and give me as many convenience features as you have. Radar cruise control? Yes please. Nothing worse than riding your clutch for an hour straight every day.
That is something that exists entirely in the minds of auto journalists. The number of manually-shifted cars has been in steady decline for decades. These last several years, it went from something like 3.7 % of new cars to 2.4% to 0.7% to 1.9%. You can see how a deceptive headline could be manufactured around the last two years of data.
drivers that enjoy manuals have always been around. We’re just louder now because they almost don't make cars with manuals anymore, so when one does come along we rejoice.
Genuine question: What exactly do you enjoy? Twenty years go, you could do a mountain road engine braking with downshifts, getting then the perfect gear for the turn apex and coming out perfectly balanced. But cars have changed. Engine braking is a lot less effective today (different compression ratios, better mechanics). Automatics now have more gears and allow you to manually select the gear, so you can control available torque in the turn.
It seems the advantages of manual transmissions no longer exist.
I dislike indeterminate lag between input and action.
With an automatic, there's a threshold where the car decides to downshift when asking for a particular increase in forward velocity; that set point will wander depending on current RPM state and velocity and drive gear ratio.
Modern cars are bad enough with turbos and fancy valve timing and throttle by wire stuff where the behavior of the thing is a big stack of jitter, but adding a transmission to the mix makes the response times even more random.
At least with a manual transmission, the behavior of the throttle pedal is far more predictable and direct -- down the engine will go faster (modulo the current drive gear) and up the engine will slow down and slow the car down. Often you're in the incorrect gear for a particular desired acceleration but there's a feedback loop that you participate in to recognize / avoid the issue (mash pedal, not much happens because you're in the wrong gear, you get feedback and decide to change gears). With an automatic, you're just yelling down to the engine room asking the hamster to get on a different wheel.
Predictable, usually. Lag free? Not in my experience. Most of the time there’s a good quarter to half second between requesting the shift and the transmission acting.
For me at least, that lag is very effective at disconnecting me from the experience of driving.
Oh, I don't dispute that maybe very modern cars have addressed this. I don't swap cars too often and have been pretty happy with my "one transmission, a planetary reduction gearbox" car (maybe there are 2 transmissions, one on the front motor and another on the rear motor? Regardless, there's a static gear ratio that's always engaged).
The lag is only part of the issue -- it's the determinism of the lag -- the 125ms lag between "more power please" and getting more power is actually more lag than the instant ka-chugachug of asking for more power and getting feedback of "you're in the wrong gear, bubba" if you're in a manual transmission car.
As far as "I won't change gears for you unless you ask" transmissions -- I've never driven such a car, I'm sure they're quite nice. I somewhat dislike the gear changers with no affordance to indicate what gear you're in (this applies to wingding manumatic cars, motorcycles, and modern bicycles with thumb / finger triggers) -- I don't use them often enough to have the muscle memory of "up for lower gear ratio" or whatever, I have to think about it and look at an indicator and fiddle with it to get the right ratio for what I want.
I'm sure with practice it would eventually be fine; but in actuality I've found that the electric car is actually exactly what I want.
DSG are wonderful but an added complexity for the sake of what? Shaving 0.5sec 0-60mph? Saving the hassle of slow traffic driving? Both can be fixed by learning to drive.
It's probably true that once you (more or less) need a screen for a decent backup camera and most people like a screen for at least GPS, it must be pretty tempting to at least think about what physical buttons can reasonably be eliminated given that the touchscreen is a given. And I do think a lot of designs go too far.
personal anecdotes, but the vast majority of me being a passenger to someone else's driving, they all used their mobile device for GPS. even the couple of cars i owned that had a nav system, the GPS came from the mobile device. it required their app to be installed to input the destination, making the internal unit just a second screen for your mobile.
From my experience with two cars with factory nav, it's nice because it will show the next instructions in the the dash area, so when you're looking down to check speed you also get that. And, one of my cars has an option to show the next several instructions (Ford Sync2, which everybody hates because the UI is really slow, and kind of ugly). On the other hand, pay to play for data updates sucks. And most importantly, safety requirements mean you either have to yell at the car and deal with dated voice recognition or stop to adjust things; even if you have a responsible passenger who could use the touch screen.
Mostly, I just use my phone. It's simpler and faster. My cars are too old for carplay/android auto, and my experience with android auto was that it was worse than the phone in a clip or a cupholder, but carplay seems nice. For longer drives to unfamiliar places, I'll put the address in the car too, sometimes the phone gets tired of listening to GPS.
I was recently driving to visit a friend near Mt Baker, WA. and about 10 miles out, in a not particularly wooded area, the phone said 'lost GPS signal' and just assumed I had stopped moving, and wasn't able to pick up GPS again for the rest of the drive. Not a huge deal, because I was just following the road and only had one last turn to make, and I had directions from the car's nav anyway.
GPS seemed to work ok on the return trip. And I was getting an LTE signal for most of the drive too (gets pretty spotty at my friend's house, but I was streaming music when the GPS stopped, and that kept working)
Sorry, I don't have a debugging tale here; almost all of my excursions into figuring out why an Android device is doing something wrong leave me wondering if the device is doing anything right, and usually without any more insight into the original problem. Not going to try to do it, unless it's important, and probably not on a vacation.
so you're one of those that likes to make cute and endearing backstories to give sympathy to an inanimate object rather than getting irate at a mechanical something that you pay a monthly service not working correctly because the thing to get mad at is out of your realm of control and that anger serve no purpose.
I use CarPlay if I'm actually navigating, not the built-in Garmin. But it's an improvement over looking at the phone awkwardly clamped to an air vent.
I suspect most people don't use most of the native manufacturer apps even if they sort of need to provide them. Aside from rarely changing some settings, my touchscreen is mostly just a screen.
That's because in car GPS tech has historically been absolutely atrocious. An example: 2008-2012ish Toyota Camrys had a GPS system that used a DVD for map data. Not only was it out of date immediately (and cost $150 per new DVD from the dealer), it was insanely slow.
Nowadays, there's a few companies that actually seem to do a decent job of GPS in the car itself: Mercedes has a good tech in their new EVs that seems smooth. Android automotive (not auto) cars have built in Google maps such as Polestar, the new Cadillac EVs, and some other Chevy products do well. Although it's not much different than just having an android phone with android auto. And, of course, Teslas own system which is all inhouse.
There's little reason to use a phone in the traditional phone holders if you own one of those cars.
My dad, who's a fairly recently retired techy, is the only exception I know. I'm assuming it's based on perceived safety and less need to take his eyes off the road.
Granted, he took a long time getting a smart phone because they weren't allowed in his secured office, while dumb phones with no camera where allowed longer. On the other hand, he's also automated his home (a few times with updates), so it's really the one weird outlier.
The backup camera screen compliance was solved early on by just putting a 2-3 inch screen in the regular rear view mirror. There's no legal requirement to make it a big screen in the dash, that is 100% a design choice by the manufacturers unrelated to the backup camera.
I learned that very thing setting up my home automation. I was originally planning on designing and printing some sort of button arrangement. But I ended up buying a bunch of cheap Walmart tablets.
Easy to set up and keep updated. But... I'm not driving 70mph when I'm trying to dim the living room lights.
Volvo, the vehicle company that started out making bearings, used to make a big selling point in the 80's about their knobs, switches and buttons were good enough for people wearing gloves in the middle of the Scandinavian winters and intuitively placed for drivers to use without taking their eyes off the road. Saab were the same, but fast forward to today and the lunatics are calling the shots.
Even the flappy paddle gearboxes still have a weakness, namely they dont have a clutch peddle to dip when the traction control/esp decides to have a nightmare and ends up trying to cause accidents, where oil, ice or snow removes the grip and temporarily freewheeling is the fastest way to get the vehicle back under control before reengaging the drive system.
And these tablets like displays ruin the night vision, I actually liked the old Saab displays where you could press a button and it switched the lights off to loads of buttons and gauges for night driving.
Cars have got noticeably worse with these tablet displays.
I took advantage of the used car market to upgrade my 2021 Subaru to a 2024 (same car, better trim), there's actually MORE physical controls in the 2024 - hope isn't entirely lost!
In my experience in the USA, most fast food restaurants in the suburbs give away sauces for free, but the ones in cities charge for everything. Seems to also be correlated with whether or not the fast food restaurant has self serve soda fountains versus soda poured behind the counter.
In Poland I've experienced both ones that charge you per packet, and ones where asking for a packet will have the cashier grab a bunch of them without even counting, give them to you for free, and move on to handle another customer.
That applies only to ketchup packs, though - they always charge for sauces. The only place I ever got sauce containers by handful for free was in a KFC in Shenzhen, China.
Dealership margins, as I recall, are 10-20%, also not great.
Mfg margins have come up during the pandemic, interestingly, but historically have been very low[1]:
> While estimated aggregate industry operating profit margins are 6 to 7 percent (Exhibit 1), large variations in profitability exists across companies. For instance, some European niche, luxury companies make double-digit margins more akin to those of high-tech players, while mass-market (or value-focused) OEMs make 4 to 5 percent.
Their margins being thin is a matter of perspective. Most farms are running 1% profit margins on average and have massive variations in yield that auto production lacks.
Automotive grade controls are pretty expensive (it's not unreasonable to expect them to be operative from -40 to 140f, UV resistant, dust and vibration resistant, etc.), and as with all hardware, BOM cost is king. Even if the button can be stolen from an existing design, it still costs real money, and adds manufacturing labor costs.
The button then has to be tested, and kept in stock for service purposes. What if the button has silkscreen printing on it? It might be the same hardware button for the traction control and the trunk open button, but now they are different SKUs because the label is different.
So let's say I can eliminate 10 $1 buttons (that is an extraordinarily cheap button) by moving functionality to a touchscreen that is going to be in the car no matter what. I reduce the BOM cost by $10 per unit. That's a bunch of buttons that also aren't going to have warranty issues either. The wiring can all go straight to the head unit in a single bundle as well, and there are ten less connections for the assembly line to make. If I do that on a popular platform like the Corolla selling 750k units per year, I have just reduced expenses directly by 7.5 million, plus the cost of install, and simplified the supply chain.
I don't have the source but I read that in the process of designing a car there are different teams that design outer look, inner look, the actual functionality and at the time of designing interiors it isn't known where or how many buttons you need.
By having a huge touch-screen instead of knobs there is much less need to synchronize between the teams because the inheritor design team just needs to place the screen somewhere. And it's easy to imagine that it can significantly shorten the time to delivery and the costs.
Buttons are not just design, it’s more parts and assembly. On the high end it’s also a “less clean” look, unless you’re high enough for truly luxurious buttons and knobs’ designs and materials to be justifiable.
In every single car I've been in, the touchscreens are optional and you have some sort of knob you can use. This requires memorizing where things are in the software, however.
Touch-screens can be updated later, meaning you can release the broken version first, then get it working after the money starts rolling in. Knobs would require they get it right the first time. The horror!
I will never buy a car that forces me to navigate a menu to turn on my windshield wipers...
Problem is, they don’t actually upgrade the touchscreens. At least not after the first couple years. And most consumers don’t/won’t know how to upgrade them.
I think a lot of people miss the obvious reason: it's cheaper. People seem to think it's some misguided attempt to make things better but really it's just that they've identified a way to cut costs.
The brands don’t often listen to their customers, all of whom clamored for this car ever since it was shown. It only appeared in the “Entourage” movie and it’s a beaut. Nary a single bad review on the entire Internet, but tons of people begging Chrysler to release it and sites devoted to pretending it came out.
Car guys — what is the closest car one can get to this today, in all of human history? Go to Cuba and get some gas-guzzling illegal convertible with tailfins?
And please — no recordings of our conversations and sex in the car so they can send it off to others!
>Car guys — what is the closest car one can get to this today, in all of human history? Go to Cuba and get some gas-guzzling illegal convertible with tailfins?
Maybe not Cuba, but there's a new car restoration series on whichever streaming platform, I can't keep up, that's located in El Paso, TX. They go across the border and buy older cars, then import into the US.
Fwiw, teslas support pretty much everything via voice. You just press the right button on the wheel and say what you want it to do. I’m not disagreeing with your dislike for touch screens, but Tesla can do literally almost everything hands free using voice if that’s an option.
I'm mostly fine with the Tesla approach. The few tactile controls are basically enough for me, especially with the last few updates effectively adding more.
However, the voice controls have been basically useless for me. I wouldn't want to depend on them.
We just bought a 2023 Mazda CX-5 Select for $29k. No touchscreens in the whole car! And no dealer markup - we paid slightly under MSRP.
But... it is certainly satellite connected (you can manage locks, windows, etc. from your phone, as well as remote start). Wish it was included in this privacy investigation. I'd love to know more about what they do with what they know about our car and how we use it.
There’s a few threads linked in the top discussion (you may need to expand the massively downvoted responses, and some are deleted), but Mazda is known to use tracking data to deny warranty claims and share that data with insurers.
I was also stunned to learn salespeople’s commission is denied if they don’t get you on the app! Absolutely wild.
Meh - with a Miata you just zip out of their way.
Miata owner since 1998 and I even survived commuting for 22 years in Northern VA. Life is too short - get and enjoy a Miata!
I was also a Miata owner: An NB Madzaspeed. A lot of fun to drive, and it's nimbleness saved me from a couple of crazy accidents. Unfortunately the car has one major weakness: It doesn't matter if the car is very agile if you are surrounded by vehicles with far worse characteristics. The car was rammed 3 times in 12 years, either on the side or the back, by people in brodozers that either couldn't see it on the side, or had crappy braking performance. The person in front of me does an emergency-level stop, and with the Miata I stop too, 3 feet before I hit them. 3 seconds later The brodozer behind me, however, has failed to brake, and launches the Miata forward. I walk out fine, the car in front of me gets very minor damage, as I was stopped and with my foot on the brake pedal, but the Miata's frame is bent, and the repair estimate is over 5k.
Exactly this. And worse - I'm worried the lifted brodozer would come up onto the Miata and crush me. It's too bad, they are wonderful cars. At least we can still track 'em.
It's the times where I can't zip out of the way that I'm worried about. The these mall-crawler truck-bros really are obnoxious and intentionally aggressive towards small cars. I'll stick to my track only race car with full cage and fire suppression system.
I had a close in-law that had a total braking failure with their ~2017 Mazda Cx-9, which was one thing, but then the dealer was pretty horrible about acknowledging or even diagnosing it. In the end, they sold it off early instead of continuing to own it with the unknowns on the brakes. So it's an anecdote, but one that makes me look pretty seriously against Mazda - though maybe it was more the dealer than the company.
It's hard to say. Of course the OEM should care what their dealers do and how they treat customers, but ultimately the dealers decide how they are going to handle things.
I haven't had any failures on any of our Mazdas so far (2013 CX-5, though only had it for 2 years. I change cars like clothes, 2014 CX-5 - spouse had for ~70k / 6 years, 2015 Mazda 3 - had for 27k / 6 years). Only issue I had was a battery that died during the pandemic, and it didn't really die - I was able to nurse it back to health and then it kept working through when I sold the car 3 years later. All that to say, I haven't been able to test our dealership with a major failure. But the buying experience did exceed what we experienced at the other dealerships we visited (Hyundai, Chevrolet - lots of unwanted sales contact and in person pressure.)
Honestly it could have been something as simple as a a missed bleed of an air bubble in the brake lines. But this was on a less than 3 yr old car, and its been a while since we last discussed it, & I don't recall if they had any sort of brake service where that would be a possibility - either way after a scare like that, one expects your car maintainer (in this case the dealer) to be open to a bit of diagnostic work - even if only to maintain good relations for future purchases.
Just unplug the cellular modem.
I have three "dumb" cars and I'm going to continue to baby the crap out of them. I have zero interest in anything new. Maybe a Mazda if push came to shove.
There's a good chance the modem is on its own fuse. There's also a good chance the modem is 4g only, so whenever that gets shutdown, the car will be trackerless, as happened to cars with 2g or 3g modems. :D
Is this a US thing? I recently bought a reasonably high end Skoda (which I think would be made in the same factory as VW, SEAT etc). It has a big touch screen in the centre console, but that's really only used for the radio / media / phone calls etc. This is all non essential stuff and so I can deal with it being on a screen. Everything relating to driving is an old skool analogue control.
A couple of things I don't like is the pull switch for parking brake, it's the first car I've had without an old skool handbreak, it feels unnecessary, but ergonomically it's fine. Also it's a key less ignition with a button to start. Again I don't see why this benefits me, but I can deal with it. I do worry about having a smart key though as I'm often on the water kayaking/surfing but it's been ok in a waterproof case so far.
No, it's the same. You can control hidden things from the touch screen (like light length when opening the door for example) but most cars still have tactile nobs for everything outside of radio/bluetooth/media.
There are some cars that have touchscreen for essential things like climate control, but those are absolutely in the minority.
Thing is, those cars with touch screen climate controls will let you set a temperature target much like your home thermostat. Once you figure out the right temperature, you don't really ever have to change it. I haven't changed the temperature in my car for months. I'll probably adjust it as summer turns to fall but it will be a one or two degree change one time and then I won't touch it again unless my kid drove the car and messed with it.
Putting things like windshield wipers or headlights on a touch screen would be a nightmare though.
My current car (like all of the cars I've had since 2008) allows you to set a temperature target with physical controls. I don't change it as often as I changed the older direct controls, but I do change it often enough that I would hate to use a touchscreen for it.
For me controlling the radio using a touch screen is an issue - i cant take my eyes off the road, and using driving wheel buttons that require fiddling is not great either. I need buttons and dials that leverage muscle memory.
Volume should absolutely be a knob or, less ideally, a pair of buttons. But does anyone have a physical radio dial any longer? (Even my 1998 Toyota with no touchscreen I sold last year didn't.) I think at least one manufacturer was considering eliminating FM radio all together.
Every car I've driven that was made in the past decade has volume control as two buttons on the steering wheel. There may or may not be a knob but the knob is less convenient than using the buttons right next to your hands. My current cars will also let you cycle through the radio presets using the >> and << buttons.
interesting. maybe i blocked the FM part out, but i was distinctly remember AM. removing radio entirely makes sense, as i didn't really think that an FM only radio would be any cheaper than AM/FM would be.
>but I'm sure very few people use it.
The conservative side of the spectrum loves the AM band
I guess Ford at least is going to keep AM radio after all https://www.npr.org/2023/05/24/1177847361/ford-changes-direc... with the justification being it's an emergency alert system. I assume AM and FM antenna requirements are different and that's probably where the cost is.
I remember as a kid being fascinated with the first car that I saw that had the radio antenna embedded into the windscreen glass. All antennas I had seen were on top of houses, rabbit ears, or the long annoying things attached to cars/trucks. This tiny thin line that wasn't even exposed to air was the antenna? That opened up a rabbit hole.
I exclusively use streaming, and I still find that I want to control the volume, or skip to the next song, etc. Thankfully my car has a scroll wheel on the steering wheel to do that, or I'd be pretty irritated.
Handbrakes were mostly necessary for stickshifts starting on a hill but were kept around on a fair number of automatics even after they were unnecessary. (Though my emergency/parking brake has been a left foot pedal on my automatics for decades.)
It’s the same in the US, you just correctly identified that it’s not an issue for the vast majority of people outside of the data collection concerns (which most people also don’t care about)
I recently rented a cheap sedan and was shocked: there was a small screen for carplay that didn't interfere with the dashboard and all the other controls (volume, climate, etc) had hard buttons. After a couple of days of driving I could do everything without looking away from the road.
Meanwhile the expensive cars are frightening to drive as you need to look away from the road to do anything.
My understanding is that expensive cars have relatively good voice recognition that allows the driver to easily access functions that might be otherwise buried deep in a menu. This doesn't solve the discoverability issue, but it's good from an eyes-on-the-road perspective. I think it's also used as an excuse for why you need to pay a monthly fee for internet access.
I have cars with these services and in my experience they don't work. Even siri to carplay doesn't work very well. The cars are too noisy to even use the car's mic and speakers to make a call, much less talk to a robot.
My experience: Mercedes, Acura and various random rental cars. With a rental I always try to make a call to see if it's gotten any better.
I think they put in the touchscreens because it makes internationalization easier. No physical labels and OTA updates. Personally, I don’t think digital internationalization is good for the driver since it appeals to the lowest common denominator of interface while adding another expensive component to replace in case of damage.
I wouldn't even go that far: It's less wires to run.
Yea; my cars interface has had 3 radical redesigns since I got it (which I mostly appreciate), but think of how much easier to build a Model 3 is when it foregoes 95% of a cars normal physical buttons for a single screen.
It shouldn't be expensive to make an I2C smart-switch that allows you to place as many buttons as you want on a single set of 3 wires (or 4 if you want a simpler circuit).
Hum, it's terminated with resistors on both sides, so the boxes need power. That makes it 4 wires.
I imagine there's very little difference on cost between 3 or 4 wires. But the number of nodes described is not really compatible with making each button its own node.
I drive a Prius and while the actual implementation of the touchscreen leaves a lot to be desired (dodgy software and usual issues with obsolescence), I do like the way it splits between touchscreen and buttons.
Buttons: all car controls, audio volume and selection, temperature.
Touchscreen: GPS, setting radio presets, changing climate mode.
Now, it's not perfect -- there are some climate options I'd like on buttons. But in general that's pretty good.
The big flaw is the lack of upgradeability. It felt a decade old, stylistically, when it was new, and it will never get newer. You can't even pop in a new car stereo to replace the whole thing anymore - and it's a massive chunk of the dash. And has no support for Android Auto.
No, where I live it is illegal to use a phone for most of those (without hands-free methods). When occasionally I need a map with directions, I load it up and set the phone in place before leaving, so I never need to touch it. Sometimes I ask my phone ("Hey Google") to read my texts if I am on a long drive. But other than that, I never use it. This is the ideal (and again, the law in many places).
I take your point in that the built-in touchscreen is no worse for people who already text and drive, but we absolutely should be aiming for better. I certainly don't want to be forced to use a touchscreen for changing the AC settings, defogging the windshield, etc...
In the UK it’s illegal to touch your phone while driving (with some exceptions around hands free kits and payments). Even for things that are legal, the Highway Code is clear that you do not touch your radio while driving. I’d presume it would take a dim view of playing with other non-critical functions.
So no, just because it’s on your wheel, that doesn’t make it “safe.”
No. Using a phone while you're driving is peak stupid. I keep both hands on the wheel unless I'm operating the shifter or touching a knob, then both hands go back. This is how you are supposed to drive. If you need to take a call or change where you are navigating, you pull off in a gas station or parking lot for the couple of minutes needed before going back on the road.
The world will not end if you are not accessible via internet-based communications for an hour or less. You can wait to answer that text message.
> It reminds me of the complaining in the early iPhone days about lack of a physical keyboard.
I totally get that. People will always complain about some new design fad, whether it's actually good or not.
However... we're talking about heavy vehicles traveling at high speed with humans inside. You simply don't have to takes your eyes off the road as long with tactile controls as you do with touch screens.
My only experience with touchscreen cars is with the Model 3. You don't need the screen for operational stuff needed for driving. Off the top of my head, these are all on the steering wheel/stalks:
- Blinkers
- High beams
- Gearbox
- Climate control temperature up/down
- Cruise control enable/disable, speed change
- Media volume, media next/previous
- Phone call answer/hangup/volume
- Windshield wipers
On the next Model 3 version, they are moving the gearbox controls over to the screen. I have my doubts about that, but I'll complain once I have driven one.
That's great that Tesla puts those (physical) controls on the steering wheel.
But, think about this comment in context.
As a reminder: I was replying to someone who was arguing that the anti-touch-screen crowd is not justified in their hatred of touch screens in cars. My position is to agree with that crowd that touch screens in cars are bad UX.
With that in mind, your comment actually vindicates my position. Touch screens are dangerously stupid UX in a car. So much so that Tesla--which has an image of being futuristic, sleek, and minimal (aesthetically)--not only has the necessary-for-driving controls on the steering wheel, but also non-essentials like media controls. If touch screens weren't objectively worse than physical controls, is it too far of a stretch to think that Mr. Musk would've wanted them in the touch screen for even more sleekness and minimalism?
In any case, I think we're all agreeing in this thread that touch controls for these things would be unsafe and worse than physical controls.
The case now needs to be argued that touch screens are at least equally good as physical controls for those other operations in cars. But, I don't see how that line of argumentation can possibly go well after we've established that the important controls don't belong as touch buttons.
Physical knobs and buttons are great for muscle memory. How much of a muscle memory do you have for the controls setting mirror position? For setting fade/balance on the stereo? Enabling valet mode?
The UI question is only valid for controls used frequently. For everything else, I think it is already settled that they are better in the screen. At the very least, for the sake of UI simplicity. I can't imagine a physical interface for enabling or disabling every driving assistance option in a Tesla. It'd become an airliner button panel.
Fair point. We don't need dedicated, physical, buttons for infrequent or unimportant things.
But, to be fair, I don't think that most people who vocally hate touch screens in cars are upset that the car manufacturers are making them set their clock via touch buttons. I assume (and I could be wrong) that they're talking about things like A/C settings, radio tuning, etc. If they aren't, then at least I am. Being able to reach over with my muscle memory to change the radio to one of my presets (yeah, I'm some old-school weirdo who still listens to FM radio when I drive) is something I appreciate.
The primary issue with the touch screen in the Model 3 in my opinion, is actually the climate controls. You could argue that these aren't necessary to adjust while driving because the car is supposed to do it automatically, and/or you can use the admittedly terrible voice command system, but things like the recirculate button (I know I'm not the only one that uses it, my friend keeps tapping the physical button in his Honda and doesn't have to look at it to do this) are particularly annoying.The climate controls are in a drawer that is opened by a swipe up, and until the latest update, the recirculate button would highlight but not activate/toggle if pressed slightly off centre.
The other situations involving wipers are also annoying when the auto windshield wiper sensor becomes invisibly dirty. The wipers will activate nonstop during Autopilot or just on auto while driving in daylight sun, particularly at sunrise and sunset. It is an extreme frustration to have to look at the screen to click the slider to turn them off.
As of the current software version, the way the buttons on the stalk or the wheel work is they either activate something one off e.g. high beams for a moment, or wipe once, and/or they pop up a little menu on the bottom left corner of the screen where the media controls are, and you have to use the touchscreen to activate them. Recently a mechanism to press and hold the steering wheel scrollwheel to activate a menu was added, but it's just impossible to use without looking. I am not sure if I am special and/or are using it wrong or something, but the menu pops up in a location that is obscured normally by my arm/the wheel when holding the steering wheel at a normal and designed position with both hands. Annoyingly, this is also where the "Apply slight turning force to steering wheel" nag prompt appears, which is a terrible and unnoticeable place to put a safety related alert that is actually designed to have you keep your eyes on the road. This really should have the option to be an audible and friendly chime.
The lack of a turn signal sound when the computer crashes, is, by the way, another omission in my opinion, because the turn signal stalk is only a momentary button. The turn signals work but you'll have no clue while driving if they're actually on, without the screen and the sound.
I mean, maybe these are all normal and maybe I'm just really picky about things. I really do like the overall experience of using the large screen, as the GPS is much more glanceable with this setup and passengers can route plan or discuss the route. The apps are all terrible though, like Spotify/Apple Music, and they're unnecessarily slow and buggy with small touch targets as if they want to trick you into keeping your eyes off the road for more than a fraction of a second.
The UI design is kind of mixed, tbh. I'm sure some of these issues can be resolved by software, but at least there are the "S3XY Buttons", a third party accessories with a set of BLE buttons that you can stick anywhere you like that activate things using CAN bus injection.
Of course, that might (not sure, dont have this accessory) create synchronization bugs like (annoyingly, sometimes the car saying it is in reverse when it is in drive), but these happen anyway by itself.
> It is an extreme frustration to have to look at the screen to click the slider to turn them [wipers] off.
No need. Push the button on the left stalk, press the left scroll wheel to the left for a couple of seconds.
> Recently a mechanism to press and hold the steering wheel scrollwheel to activate a menu was added, but it's just impossible to use without looking
I have mine configured for climate control temperature. I don't look at the screen. Long press, two clicks up or two clicks down.
> The lack of a turn signal sound when the computer crashes
If you mean that the turn signal has no sound, you are mistaken. The turn signal has a sound. I have no idea, though, if it sounds when the computer crashes; mine never did.
Having driven a Tesla for three years now, I basically don’t use the screen while driving. The controls I actually use are on the steering wheel or column (cruise control settings, music control, turn signals) and I have never had a significant issue with leaving wipers, lights and climate on auto
I mostly agree, but it's that time of year again when I question my life choices. The rain has started, and suddenly I'm reminded how stupid the wipers can be. Elon keeps promising over and over that they're just about to fix them, but it never happens. It absolutely will be a factor in whether I buy another Tesla.
I was riding in a friend’s Tesla where the screen crashed while we were on the road. Just a black screen for some amount of time and had zero insight into the state of the car.
> That just does not happen with physical controls.
I was driving a car once where the handle to the stick shift literally popped off in my hand. So... no, that's just silly. Stuff breaks. Important stuff breaks. You deal with that with careful design and redundancy[1], not whining on the internet about touchscreens.
[1] Like how in the Tesla all the driving controls are, in fact, NOT connected to the touchscreen controlled by the MCU but to the AP computer.
Sure it does. Gauges are almost all driven electrically these days and not directly connected to a speed readout mechanically. If you have a problem with the gauge cluster, it's very common to have gauges malfunction. Sometimes they read incorrectly. Sometimes they read 0. If it's one of those multifunction displays, you could just have that display "crash" too.
Reminds me of when my then-new '98 (or was it '99?) Audi A4 cluster partially crapped out on the highway. The needles dropped to zero and several warning lights came on, but the car still drove normally.
I pulled over and called the dealer service department for advice, and we decided it was safe (for the car) to continue my journey. But with the partial instrumentation failure, the air-conditioning also refused to operate, so I had a sweaty summertime trip.
There is still going to be significantly better isolation than if it is all behind one pane of glass. If the radio is on the fritz, the hard-wired speedometer and windshield wipers should still be able to operate and accept commands.
A modern digital cluster is pretty much all operated off one little computer. Nobody's used hard wired speedometers in probably 20 years or more. And I can tell you that even back when we did have such things, it wasn't unheard of for the cluster to freak out. Had a ground wire crack on my '95 car and the gauges all started making very random readings. Some even looked plausible at first glance, which meant it took two trips to the dealer before they realized it was an electrical problem and not an actual malfunctioning cooling system.
In the case of the Tesla, BTW, the infotainment is 100% separate from the computer that controls the car. E.g. you loose the turn signal sounds, but the signals themselves work, etc. AP will continue to function, but you can't turn it on without the infotainment screen running. You can reboot the infotainment as you're driving down the street without it affecting your control of the car.
Physical controls are just inputs to some computer in the car. The risk of a reboot is still there and I'm guessing on many newer cars, the computer the physical controls is wired to is actually the same one that controls the touch screen. This would be needed so you can control the same item via voice/remote app, even if you never use this.
There's a gigantic difference. You stare at a handheld device when typing. When you're driving you need to feel what you're touching, otherwise you have to take your eyes off the road.
It really is imo. Good touchscreen UI is superior in many ways (though not all) to fixed control buttons. It’s why it dominates phones and why it’s winning in the market for cars as well (Model Y was top selling car on earth for Q1 2023).
Bad touchscreen UIs suck, but that’s also true of phones. Good tactile controls have some advantages, but ultimately they’re minor and worse on net than a good touchscreen interface.
People on HN will disagree (like people here disagree about everything), but the market will settle it.
A touchscreen UI is a visual medium. That is not what you want/need while operating a vehicle. You should be able to change the AC by feeling for the button and not taking your eyes off the road.
This isn't just HN being HN again. Driving enthusiasts are pushing back on touchscreens.
I'd bet most people look at the tactile buttons when adjusting them, to see the temperature, fanspeed, etc. and that the difference between this and swiping on the tesla display isn't an important difference.
I bet they don't. Muscle memory is a thing. Do you look down at your blinker lever to change it? How about your wipers? If you have controls on your steering wheel, do you look at those to press them?
I'd take that bet. The only controls I use muscle memory for are some of the steering wheel buttons (not all, e.g. I still have to look for the cruise control on/off for my F250) and the stalks. And even then, when I switch between cars I sometimes have to glance to remind myself which functionality the right stalk has. For climate controls and such, I pretty much always glance. The only knob I can reliably hit without a glance is the volume.
Maybe I've just been driving so long that the variety of cars has impeded my ability to develop muscle memory. But I doubt it.
The stuff on the steering wheel no, but the stuff on the dash (radio, aircon, fan, etc.) I did look at when I had tactile controls (this is primarily the stuff that's moved to the touchscreen, the wheel controls/levers let you do tactile actions without looking for more common stuff).
The iPhone works because it's a device you'll look at all the time while operating its touchscreen.
The car touchscreen doesn't work since you need to operate buttons without directly looking at them, purely by tactile feel.
This is not a problem touchscreens we're able to fix so far, and I don't think this will change any time soon since there's just not enough ways for a touchscreen to provide this level of tactile feedback.
The entire reason for touchscreens weren't because touch is better than tactile, it's because different apps will have different UI needs that cannot be predicted by the phones manufacturer. Steve Jobs says as much in the original keynote.
Cars don't really have this problem because they only have one primary job, and all other functions (eg climate control) are easily predicted by the manufacturer.
There's probably some truth in that. Admittedly, it's a self-selected group to some extent, but the couple people I know who own Teslas basically tell me the controls are fine.
The reality is also that, in my Honda, a bunch of the buttons that aren't on the steering wheel/column are things I touch once in a blue moon and there are probably buttons I haven't touched since I initially set up the car.
And I don't actually want to navigate using my phone which is precariously hanging off an air vent using some some accessory clamp. Or by all means go old school and navigate using a map open in your lap.
(That said, I do think a lot of car manufacturers should be more thoughtful about preserving certain tactile controls however.)
Even if the controls are "fine" that doesn't mean they're not worse than physical controls. Just because they haven't caused a problem yet doesn't mean they won't under less than ideal conditions.
I guess it depends? If it's something I fiddle with all the time while moving (volume, wipers, lights, etc.) then sure. (Though does anyone put those controls on the touchscreen?) Probably environmental. But lots of settings are basically set and forget. My car has physical buttons for various modes that I rarely touch and would likely never touch while driving at speed.
I don't know about their markups, but Mazda has been pulling out touchscreens and putting back buttons for audio and climate control purposes. Not sure how far it's made it through their models.
A 2022 Honda Passport has physical buttons for pretty much everything. The only thing I use the touchscreen for is as a display for maps from CarPlay (and the backup camera). So reliance on the touchscreen for things like environmental controls isn't universal even in new cars.
I love Honda interiors. The base models are almost always the best with big unique knobs and buttons. However, I'm really disappointed on their electrification. I would speculate that their misguided attempt to push Hydrogen is going to kill the Japanese companies if they don't invest in BEVs soon.
I would seriously consider a 300 mile range, electrified Honda Fit using Chevy's Ultium platform. But it seems car companies are too focused on SUVs and Crossovers to pad their nests. Make number go up strikes again!
I had a very efficient, fun, and great at squeezing into city parking spots stickshift Honda del Sol as a second car for about 20 years. Alas, as it got old and I stopped commuting, it was silly to pay for keeping a second car around for the <2,000 miles per year I was putting on it. But Fits are cute little cars. An EV version of something like that would make me as least think of using something like that for most of my local driving.
The bolt doesn't have the big knobs and buttons. Also it has those stupid displays that cost as much as the car is worth instead of a dashboard. Compare it to the controls for the Honda Fit here:
Sadly Mazda doesn’t make any AWD cars, only a crossover. AWD is a requirement for me. I loved a Mazda 2 I previously had and loved the Miata track car I sold when I moved last year. Mazda makes great cars but unfortunately none that meet my base requirements.
Edit: and seeing as you’re looking at a performance Corolla. You’d probably be interested in the Turbo AWD (250 hp and 320 lb-ft of torque). Car and Driver has an instrumented test. It’s not too far behind the GR and slightly cheaper
Instead they have somehow rationalized that a control wheel and featureless buttons down in the center console are safer for people to use while the vehicle is active.
Mazda still has a ton of physical buttons in addition to the screen though. The following are all _dedicated_ buttons / switches / knobs:
- Volume up/down (knob), press to mute
- Hazard lights (button)
- Windshield wipers (stalk) including front/rear, speed, intermittent, etc
- Headlights/highbeams (stalk)
- Turn signals
- AC on/off, fan speed, fresh air/recirc, seat warmers
- Temperature up/down is a dedicated, physical knob
- Driver/passenger windows
- Side mirror adjust
- Trunk open/close
- Cycle through backup camera views
- Parking sensor enable/disable
- Cruise control on/off/speed/distance
- Media controls (ff/rw/mute)
- There are even dedicated physical buttons for the touchscreen,eg. a button that always takes you to whatever map you're using (google/apple), a button that takes you to whatever is playing music (spotify/apple/podcast/etc)
Sorry if this sounds like I'm a mazda shill but every time this topic comes up on HN I am incredibly glad that I prioritized physical controls and IMHO they're really doing it correctly.
I really like most of the hardware buttons. But when I need to make adjustments to the map with CarPlay, the wheel control just takes too much attention with driving. "How many rotations, ohh to far too, okay zoom out, ohh okay reset the view". I wish in these cases it also allowed touch.
I've found that the wheel is much easier to use while driving than a touchscreen, since you don't have to look down or stretch your body away from the steering wheel.
And don't forget thwarting timing attacks from the bazillion cameras aimed at roadways.
Plus satellites.
If the car cannot defend against such basic attacks then you're best walking alone under cover of the trees, whispering your messages to distant dandelions.
I was planning to get a Nissan Leaf (worst privacy among all manufacturers in the round up) but luckily stumbled on a BMW i3 instead. They have the best telemetry story by far, and it has a well-implemented jog wheel instead of a touch screen. Also, it has a carbon-fiber frame. It looks like a tall econobox, but handles extremely well.
The i3 has been discontinued and the new models have a touch screen in addition to the jog wheel, so it's possible the jog wheel on those is poorly implemented, and not enough to actually use the car.
I haven't test driven one of the newer models, but I'd carefully check the computer UI before purchasing one.
Anyway, I'm hoping BMW succeeds with their contrarian approach of having physical controls, and not treating their customers terribly, and that the other manufacturers follow their lead.
Theres something to be said for old bangers. I had a 31 year old mx5 and now a 13 year old E class. They don't have the touch screen sillyness and tend to be much cheaper to run if you include depreciation. You have to get stuff fixed about once a year with those.
These markups are insane, and I wonder if anyone actually gets anywhere near paying them. I don’t really see the point since for those markups you can just get a nicer car. Unless car collectors really are that out of touch and flush with cash.
Unfortunately lots of people are happy to pay the markups. Some subreddits, including /r/rav4prime , will ban you for speaking negatively about dealer markups or those who pay them. Here's their hilariously condescendingly worded rule 4:
> No demonstrations of economic illiteracy. No negativity regarding markups. You are encouraged to post about current prices and markups and your dealership experiences, but please DO NOT express moral value judgments about markups or their absence (except those involving bait-and-switch).
I’m pretty sure most of the car subreddits are managed by dealership employees who benefit from markups via increased commissions. The fact that they make reference to complaining about price markups as economic illiteracy increases my confidence in this hypothesis.
I’m tempted to go make a post about rent seeking, deadweight loss and price collusion in oligopolistic conditions but somehow I feel my economic literacy will be found wanting.
> complaining about price markups as economic illiteracy
I mean, I hate dealer markups as much as the next person, but it is true. It's just supply and demand. Dealers wouldn't charge crazy markups if enough car buyers weren't out there paying them; and like another commenter said, in these supply-limited conditions, if price wasn't able to rise to a market-clearing level, you'd have shortages instead, and people would complain about that.
> rent seeking, deadweight loss and price collusion in oligopolistic conditions
Can the car market, both at the manufacturer level and the dealer level, really be described as an oligopolistic one, outside of isolated examples (e.g. you live in Elko, NV and there's only one Ford dealer within 100 miles)?
I don’t know if it’s a complaint, more being awe struck by others irrational behavior and how far they’ll go by overpaying. Censoring that observation is a little weird and does seem to favor the dealers grip on a subreddit.
I posted a very bad dealership experience I had to both /r/Kia and /r/askcarsales. The Kia thread had more than a hundred comments, 99% supporting me and my decision to shop elsewhere. The /r/askcarsales commenters immediately started making up scenarios in favor of the dealerships, assuming I was mean, condescending, arrogant; basically all of the characteristics the salesman actually demonstrated, they tried to pin on me.
The markups are a function of demand and are totally normal and expected market behavior. People who complain about it are almost exclusively people who don't understand how markets work. It's tiring listening to uneducated people constantly coming through and complaining.
If dealers weren't marking up the price, there would be no car at all available for sale. People mistakenly think that if there was no markup, they could buy the car at MSRP. No. There would be no supply at all. They would be sold out and you'd be on a waiting list at best.
This is the same dynamic as GPUs of 2021 and perpetually with concert tickets (venues will always have fewer seats than the number of fans in the area).
> The markups are a function of demand and are totally normal and expected market behavior. People who complain about it are almost exclusively people who don't understand how markets work. It's tiring listening to uneducated people constantly coming through and complaining.
1. I'm not uneducated or economically illiterate.
2. A 50% markup on an economy car, even in an upgraded trim, is absurd. This is not even remotely representative of "market conditions".
3. Inflation + supply chain issues provided a pathway for greedy businesses to justify price-gouging customers. There's a difference between supply/demand driving pricing and price-gouging, and it's pretty obvious the direction this went in the car market. There's a /huge/ difference (not just in dollars, but in percentage of MSRP) between a $5k or even $10k markup and a $25k markup on a car with a $50k MSRP. This is especially absurd when you consider MSRP went up across the board due to inflation at the same time. This is dealer's just trying to get an extra slice of pie.
Maybe don't boot-lick price-gougers and learn how supply/demand /actually/ works, and consider not calling people who understand economics "uneducated".
But the rub is that people are actually paying these marked up prices...
Complain all you want about how obscene, unethical, malevolent, greedy, gouged, or deranged these sellers are, but the fact of that matter is that they are making sales at those prices. The market is indeed supporting them.
I'm sorry, but if cannot grasp that something is worth what someone will pay, you do not in fact have a good economic grasp. If nothing else, at least be pissed at the buyers who are willing to pay those prices.
I have to agree, at least to a point. Nine times out of ten a person buying a car doesn't need it right away. Therefore if they don't like the mark-up they can just come back later when the market changes. If everybody did that then demand would go down and then so would the mark-up.
If you think my numbers are made up, take the effort to refute them.
Are you saying 9/10 people who buy a car are buying it because they got in an accident? There were 13.7 million new cars sold in 2022. I doubt you'll find 13.7 totaled cars in 2022.
And it still stands to reason that if somebody got in an accident, why would they turn around and buy a new car with a big mark up and massive waiting period when they can just walk onto a lot and get a good used car for much less?
> If you think my numbers are made up, take the effort to refute them.
So I'm required to make effort to refute numbers, but you're not required to make effort to substantiate them? Huh...
> Are you saying 9/10 people who buy a car are buying it because they got in an accident?
I never said any such thing. I just think the number is higher than 1/10.
> There were 13.7 million new cars sold in 2022. I doubt you'll find 13.7 totaled cars in 2022.
I wouldn't expect to. But I'd definitely expect the number to be over 1.37 million.
Hurricane Ian alone resulted in 400,000 vehicles damaged[1], and that was just one environmental event, before we look at collisions.
Washington State (with 2.3% of the US population) reported 104,000 collisions [2]. So we might extrapolate to somewhere in the order of 5 million collisions a year. Indeed, that number is probably closer to 6 million [3].
So we're already approaching 7 million vehicle 'incidents' a year including collisions and one 'act of god'. I think it's reasonable to set a number of 8 million when you factor in all the other tornados, hurricanes, hail storms and others.
It's hard to determine what fraction of those are total losses. However...
US insurers paid out $173B in losses. [4]
$173B across 8 million incidents is around $21,000. Now in a good number of those losses there are 2, or more vehicles involved, which increases the number some. But even if we assume that say 50% of collisions involved another vehicle, then we have an an average auto loss of $10K per vehicle per collision.
Most insurers work on a 70/75 rule for total loss, that is, if the cost to repair the vehicle exceeds 70 or 75% of its value, it is written off.
So if your collision results in "only" a $2-3K repair bill (which can be cheap these days), then you can see that there's a notable amount of payouts on total losses. (It's also hard to get a value of the average vehicle on the road in a given year - insurers are the only ones who'd likely be able to supply that information, and it would be buried somewhere in actuarial tables more than anything).
It's not 9/10. Nor did I ever say it was.
But if I had to make an estimate, I'd say it was closer to 2 or 3/10.
As dealer inventory starts to pile up, car prices are finally coming down. Anyone paying a markup in today's market just isn't doing their homework.
I've yet to pay MSRP or beyond for a car and I don't intend to start now!
Isn't it illegal in many/most states for a manufacturer to sell direct, not through a dealership? I read something like that when Tesla was starting to sell cars. It didn't sound like a "true" free market.
Very few things are in a "true" free market. But considering cars are (or should be, at any rate) substitutable goods, for most people, it should be pretty close to a free market.
I live in a small city (population under 200k), and there's five Ford dealerships, five Chevy, four Toyota, etc. So it's certainly not a free market by any definition if you want a very specific car, but if you want a certain category of car, the forces of competition will work for you.
I'm by no means an expert on cars, but my impression is that they're one of the worst cases of a class of product that should be substitutable, but isn't, because there probably is only one or two makes & models that are close to fulfilling one's list of requirements, and if those are not available, it becomes a painful exercise of letting go.
Unless we consider begrudgingly buying an option because you need something to be buying a substitutable good. Which I guess is fair in some sense, but makes it feel like buying things is a loser's game.
Dealers being able to insist on those huge markups ended a few months back. Overall, US auto dealerships now have more cars in stock than usual. Don't take those markups seriously.
I currently own a 2012 VW GTI that I bought new 11 years ago. It has 123k miles and lots of modifications. I recently compiled a short list of both EVs and ICE vehicles to compare against it; the Toyota GR Corolla was on my list:
I think the GR Corolla is great, but even after 11 years it's sadly not really a convincing upgrade for me. The GR Corolla is less powerful (in both torque and horsepower), it has one less cylinder and less displacement, it weighs more, it gets essentially the same mileage and has the same range, and it costs much more. The Corolla does have AWD though.
Again, the Golf R is also great, but it's also less powerful and weighs more. It gets slightly better mileage than my current car, but costs even more than the GR Corolla.
Finding something new that is "better" out of the box than my 11 year old GTI would cost me at least 56k (Toyota GR Supra RWD) or if I want AWD then it's more like 66k (Audi RS3 AWD). If I want something electric and "better" then it's at least 89k (Tesla Model S). These prices are really high to begin with; when you add in dealer markups they become insane propositions. For your money you'll also have to contend with with touch screens, capacitive buttons, and a bunch of other tech that you don't want or need. The market seems to be in a pretty sad state for car guys. Unless something changes I'll be rebuilding my engine with forged internals and continuing to drive my GTI.
FWIW, you’ve arrived at some of the same conclusions that I have. The only cars really in the running for me now are the GR Corolla, Golf R, RS3, and at least temporarily I’m probably going to start with a Mazda3 Turbo since it’s AWD now.
The touchscreen is great for some things of course, but most regular people that comment seem to agree that tactile controls for radio and HVAC are their preference. The only explanation for why manufacturers are dropping the tactile controls is for cost savings/higher profits. Because it sure doesn't seem like most people want those items on the screen.
Kia driver here. There is a screen in my car, but also actual knobs and steering wheel controls for everything I might need (audio controls, climate controls) and when I use the screen to project my phone, almost all functions there can be activated through voice control.
This is me. I bought two new cars every 2 years like clockwork. We replaced one car because we NEEDED a larger family car and have gone without the 2nd for over a year.
It feels impossibly hard to buy a great car today.
And how does that result in a more reasonable cost profile than paying an insane dealer markup that’s half the MSRP of the car? A Corolla shouldn’t cost $70k.
Yeah, that's interesting and it seems the report contradicts itself. They are indeed last on the list referenced, but when diving into their details for Tesla it says "So, how is Tesla at privacy? Well, they aren't the worst car company we reviewed"
As much as they charge for it, I would want to use it if I had a Tesla. But since I have severe trust issues with Tesla, I would never* buy an electric car from them anyway. * at least for the next 5 years, probably longer. I'm just glad I live far away from the places self-driving cars are common, for now.
Nonetheless I’ve been in the market for a new car for months and haven’t bought because it’s hard to find any cars that meet my requirements (after all most companies primarily make trucks and shitty crossovers, not even cars). The two things that consistently hold me back are either things like this (crazy telemetry / touchscreens everywhere / half-ass safety tech) or insane dealer markups. I’ve pretty much figured out the new Toyota GR Corolla is the perfect car for my needs, but you can’t find them anywhere without a $25K+ dealer markup and many dealers won’t sell them to out of state residents.
It’s truly a crazy time in the new car markets and the used market isn’t really any better.