You know what I would really hate? Automatic diagnostics on my dashboard. Nah. Please make those as LED blinks where the mechanic has to supply his own LED, Jerry rigged to the obd connector. And make it so that only one guy in Minnesota has the manual. Every mechanic has to contact that guy. Then the mechanic has to interpret the LED Morse code manually. Oh yes this would be so useful. And to add a 3Ghz motherboard with only access to Apple music. Totally awesome. Make the display show a video of “all I want for Christmas is you” I’ll certainly be making use of that.
Can we address headlights that are brighter than the sun now?
SHUT UP ABOUT THE SUN
Damn, why’d you have to bring up the sun again?
IT ALL GOES BACK TO THE SUN
That and buttons that are almost as flat as touchscreens.
I want my clickety-click Fallout and Star Wars rugged industrial feeling.
Never had an issue with them but then I live in Europe, where auto-adjusting/adaptive lights aren’t just legal it’s a requirement if you want to make the headlights permanent high-beams.
I wish adaptive lights were legal in the USA. Manufacturers like BMW have to disable the feature at the factory because their implementation isn’t approved for usage in the USA.
I saw this, but apparently the European ones don’t meet the US guidelines, and the Euro manufacturers aren’t yet redesigning and recertifying their headlights to meet the US guidelines. The two brands I was looking at (BMW and Porsche) both still have this feature disabled on their 2025 US models.
Its worse in the rain and even worse still in the snow.
And for some reason my state still doesn’t have properly reflecting paint, so everyone drives with their high-beams on because otherwise you can’t see the lanes. The net result is that nobody can see anything because they’re constantly being blinded by oncoming traffic.
It sucks all the way down…
my issue isn’t really with the brightness, it’s the height. Don’t get me wrong bright headlights are annoying as fuck, but a huge ass truck behind me with their headlights literally higher than my back window is insane.
I don’t know the white point on some of the LED headlights is extremely taxing to look at at night.
My point exactly. The brightness is great, when it works in your favor. But when a modern car sits at such a height, where the low-beams shine directly over the top of my car, it’s obnoxious
That, and people don’t know how to adjust them, or are unwilling to. My parents’ cars have a dial to adjust the headlight angle for when carrying weight in the back of the car, or when towing, but they never touch the setting.
I miss that in my old car. When I’m drivng around in the city and don’t rally need much headlighting I’d angle them all the way down. When I’m in a dark area where there’s enough people that I can’t use my brights I’d just angle them up. My current car has stupid self leveling headlights so I don’t get any of that fun :(
Especially when people fuck with the ride height on their trucks. They almost always end up with the front higher than the back, relative to it’s stock setting. Then don’t bother to adjust the head light angle to compensate.
Then, on I need a massive light bar on the top of my truck. Never mind that I never take this thing off road or do any work with it. It looks cool and it’s bright and shiny.
Fuck off. Can we just tax these things properly and not v give them a lower tax rate since their classed as commercial vehicles. No one buying these massive boats uses them for more than going to home Depot once a year to buy some leaf bags.
/Rant
My car has adjustable headlight height and I love it. I put em all the way down because they’re stupid bright.
I hope European-style adaptive headlights become the norm in the USA eventually. Some higher-end cars have a matrix of LEDs instead of one bulb per headlight, and they can programmatically dim just some of the LEDs. If you have your headlights on but there’s a car in front of you (or on the other side of the road, whatever), the high beam will dim just the area the car is in. This happens automatically while you’re driving.
This is an option in some European vehicles (or may be standard on high end ones) but they have to explicitly disable the feature when exporting to the USA.
The USA did approve something relating to this, but it must not be sufficient since the European manufacturers are still disabling the feature in the USA.
From personal experience in Europe, I can tell you that it sounds great in theory, but it’s horrible in practise. I get routinely blinded by headlights here and I feel like it has only gotten worse with the advent of LED headlights.
Not all manufacturers use adaptive headlights, and on some cars it’s only available as an upgrade whereas there’s a lot of people driving base models.
Interesting, I have those on my car and I actively avoid using them.
It can’t cope with anything more than a simple scenario (dim around car in front, deal with on coming car in other lane). If you also have pedestrians and vehicles on side junctions, then you burn their eyes.
So, I’d assumed it was a US feature (straight, wide roads) brought over here
except at rivian. they have stated future models will have an all touchscreen dashboard
They can state all they want, if their clients don’t pay for it they’d sell their firstborn son to get the numbers back up
Vote with your wallet.
always have for the most part
Vote with your 6 ton 4000 VDC truck mounted electromagnet
Honestly at this point just make a mobile app to control it.
thank fuck
Finally!
I’m so glad I kept my car and weathered through this shitty phase of car manufacturing.
If only there was hope for weathering through the data collection, subscription-based features and the death of sedans though…
Get any Infiniti with a 3g antenna. The network doesn’t exist anymore so it can’t phone home.
Well, there are some strategies:
- data collection - remove/disable the antenna/broadcasting chip - in some cars it’s as easy as removing a fuse, in others you need to take things apart to remove the TCU or modem
- subscription-based features - don’t buy them and look for hacks to enabled them w/o buying
- death of sedans - buy sedans
Unfortunately, that’s a drop in the bucket since it seems the market in general wants larger cars with more spyware, and aren’t pushing back enough on subscription BS.
I’m actively looking for a car, and unfortunately the process is:
- find models we want to try out
- look up online about how to disable the spyware nonsense
- actually go look at cars
- repeat from 1 as necessary
- play dealership games because the private used market is essentially gone
- actually remove spyware
We’re on step 3, and I’m not looking forward to step 5. I’ve actually never purchased from a dealer before, because I’ve bought everything before now from a private seller. Wish me luck…
Can I suggest auction sites for used cars. Government is always getting rid of old cars.
I’ll have to check those out, I keep forgetting all about them. We don’t urgently need a new car, so that’s probably a good idea.
I asked a dealer for a dumb-car. No fucking auto 911 dialing, bluetooth enabled, GPS service horseshit, just a normal car and he shot me
I think you want a 2007 Toyota Corolla lol
I’ve currently got a 2012 Mazda 3 but swapped the radio for one that supports Android Auto and Apple CarPlay. No other fancy features.
I hope that Mazda isn’t a diesel one.
We’re looking for a new car, but unfortunately there’s nothing between “sedan” and “minivan” that we want. We have three kids and a minivan, and we hardly use the extra seats or storage. It’s still working fine (it’s a mid-2000s Sienna), but my wife and I hate driving it, it has terrible gas mileage (20-ish MPG), we don’t need the space 99% of the time, and we never need the storage space and people space simultaneously.
What I want is:
- AWD
- >30mpg, ideally 35+
- flip-up third row (will be used like 1-2x/year, if that)
- >30 cubic feet storage w/ third row unused (Prius is super close)
- as small as possible
- if I have to get an SUV, at least 1500lbs towing capacity (prefer >3000lbs)
If they still made them, a station wagon would absolutely fit the bill. But now, I can’t have that, so I’m stuck in SUV-land.
So my plan is to completely abandon the third row and get a compact hybrid SUV. If we buy new, it’ll be a Rav4 hybrid (the CR-V hybrid has a dinky 1000 lbs towing capacity, and if I have to get an SUV, I want the option). If we buy used, it’ll probably be a Ford Escape hybrid, not because it’s good, but because it’s cheap and good enough (Escape and Rav4 can both do 1500lbs towing). I don’t want either, but since there’s pretty much nothing in the sedan w/ storage space market (and I want more than suitcase storage, we camp quite a bit), I’m essentially being forced to get an SUV.
I hate SUVs, but I guess that’s what we’re getting. I’ll probably get an EV for the second car (currently a Prius), if only for the convenience of never having to fill up gas again.
Toyota RAV4 is nice. Especially the hybrid
Edit: never mind you mentioned that
Yup, they’re just a bit hard to get ATM because they’re super popular, so I’m not going to be able to haggle much to get a better deal. Used Rav4s go for the same if not more than new Rav4s.
The Ford Escape, however, is pretty decent and a lot more available than the Rav4, so I can probably get a decent discount. There are several 3-4yo Ford Escapes at $10-15k less than new that look interesting in my area.
That said, neither the Rav4 or the Ford Escape has an option for a third row/jump seats, which sucks.
I really just want a station wagon…
It might be too large for your use case, but have you looked at the Kia EV9? The EV6 might be worth looking at too.
EV won’t work because we do road trips quite a bit, charging infrastructure in the US sucks, and range would suck in the winter. If I’m going to get an EV, I’d need about double that range for a family car since we regularly go about 300-400 miles between charges, and often 800 miles in a day (takes about 13-14 hours driving). An EV would add a day to those trips, as well as require longer stops.
I’m planning on getting an EV for my commuter (only need about 150-200 miles of range), but not for our family car until range improves significantly.
and often 800 miles in a day (takes about 13-14 hours driving)
Oh wow. After my last trip that was supposed to take like 9 hours and ended up more like 12, I decided to never do that to myself ever again. But I guess if you have multiple drivers that can share the burden, such along day on the road is still an option.
Eh, I usually drive the whole way because I often get carsick if someone else drives, though my SO is there if I need a break. I grew up doing that, and started driving most (if not all) of the way as young as 16, so I’m used to it. We’re pretty efficient at it (get gas and go to the bathroom, then get back driving), and my kids basically just read, watch videos, or play video games in the backseat.
It’s a lot cheaper than flying and honestly less stressful than flying (no TSA, listening for boarding call, etc) and we don’t need to rent a car at the destination, though it takes a lot longer.
We’ll also do “shorter” trips at like 200-400 miles (i.e. visit nearby state and national parks), and an EV with 200-300 miles range would make that annoying (we’d have to recharge just before getting there). And the charging infrastructure to those places is spotty at best. An EV would be totally fine for around town driving, but not for road trips, so I either need <200 miles range, or >400.
Makes sense.
My wife and I don’t commute very far so an EV is fine for us even if we can only charge it with 120V initially (until we install a proper charger in our garage). We’ve got a BMW iX on order.
Tesla is opening superchargers to all brands eventually. That’ll help a lot, as will the inevitable changes that’ll happen to gas stations where they replace some pumps with EV chargers.
Range is definitely an issue, but it’s improving over time. 10 years ago, the average EV range was around 100 miles. I know BMW have tested a prototype car with ~600 mile range, and that tech should hopefully come with their Neue Klasse vehicles some time in 2026/2027. The Lucid Air gets around 500 miles range. Our current gas car (2012 Mazda 3) only gets around 360 miles until the gas light comes on, so it’s not actually that different for us.
Yeah, we’re right in that awkward window where EVs are almost good enough to replace the family car, but not quite.
We can usually get 400 miles out of our minivan, and filling up gas only takes a couple minutes. We usually pack lunches and whatnot for these road trips, so there’s really no reason to stop any longer than that. I guess it’s nice to stretch our legs or whatever, but we’d really rather just get to our destination and relax there.
With an EV, we’d probably get about 250 miles range since highway speeds are about 70-80mph in my area (probably a little less since fast charges aren’t everywhere), and then 20-30 min waiting to charge. For a typical 700-800 mile trip, that’s 3-4 stops, so if it’s 30 min each time, it would add 2 hours to the trip.
If we could get 400-500 miles range, we could recharge once, which is totally reasonable. But we’re not there yet, so we’re looking at hybrids for the family car and an EV for around town driving.
Also, bring back gauges, instead of idiot-lights. It’s nice to know when a problem is beginning (overheating, etc) before it becomes a crisis when you have no choice but to pull over.
Yeah I hate it when information is hidden in the name of minimalism. I’d rather have a plane cockpit UI than a bicycle UI, even if it means I feel like an idiot at various points when I discover new things I could have been doing the whole time.
The feeling like an idiot is how people learn.
Yeah, realizing I was an idiot implies I’m a bit less of one than I was before I realized.
My hybrid dash is anything but minimal. I have a zillion selections to show me a slew of random things. None of them are an engine temperature reading. So frustrating.
If it hasn’t happened already, it wouldn’t surprise me if useful instrumentation space is reallocated to advertisement space at some point. Though hopefully the consumer rage in response would end whatever company tries that first.
It’ll start as a feature. When you need gas we’ll automatically show you the cheapest gas stations around you. People will gobble it up.
I recently learned that in my car the same light is used to indicate that the parking brake is on and that the brake fluid is low. Nothing bad happened, and it’s getting worked on, but my first thought was that the sensor on the brake must be broken. It’s poor design, seemingly without reason.
Great! Now bring back phones with physical QWERTY keyboards.
Why not just a case with a slide out Bluetooth keyboard in the back?
Pair a full size Bluetooth keyboard to your phone
Now I want to see a full-size keyboard with a special place to mount a phone and a shoulder strap. Maybe some wheels so it could double as a skateboard and you’ll be an 80s/90s image of a hacker.
Hack the planet!
(Except those were roller blades because 90s)
That’d be cool, but compatibility is a huge issue. I’ve looked into buying one, and there’s no model available for my device.
I’m just saying it seems like a more obtainable ask.
I can appreciate that you want them available but I’d love not to be forced to have one. My fingers are too large for those tiny things.
Yeah I’ve gotten pretty good with swipe typing
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It looks nice but I’m sure they lean towards cool colors because they’re better at keeping you awake.
I just hope they don’t go overboard one way or another. All touchscreen was too much but all buttons would be excessive too
The touch screen should be used for entertainment.
I disagree because you probably use the entertainment buttons more than anything. For instance, my wife’s car has the volume control on the touchscreen, which is super annoying because it’s something I like to manually adjust a lot.
I honestly can’t think of what I would prefer be touch screen…really it should just display on a touch screen so I can use it if I want, but everything should be controllable through physical buttons too.
Touchscreen should just be for guidance. Maps, cameras, overlays, caller info, etc.
There shouldn’t be any “entertainment” in it other than the radio info.
Touch screen should have maintenance/status display and diagnostics and settings for things you’d take care of while the vehicle isn’t moving. Like seat/mirror positioning presets, ride height, towing mode, etc.
Touch screens are shit tor buttons. They can be hacked. They can be unresponsive.
There’s a load of other reasons, but either or both are enough to realise that a physical button is much safer. Perfect example of safety being lost in technology. Just because we can, doesn’t mean we should.
Drivers will see this and say hell yeah
Plotnick, an associate professor of cinema and media studies at Indiana University in Bloomington, is the leading expert on buttons and how people interact with them.
I like that being a leading expert on buttons is a profession that exists in this world. You go Rachel Plotnick.
Fucking YES
