Electric Vehicles

[bruto]

I just hit 100,000 miles on my Corolla, and I'm hoping it'll last another 10 years or so. I'm very hopeful my next car will be electric.

My Hyundai Accent is a couple of hundred shy of 100K now, which is well below some of its predecessors. The little Hun has been very reliable, though, and has only a little surface rust underneath, so I am expecting a few more years unless something major goes "iffy-plut" suddenly. It's one of the cheapest cars there is, with high quality control but pretty basic innards and cheap materials where it doesn't matter much. There's an all electric cousin to the Accent, I think, and that might be just the ticket if the price is right, but with luck I won't be needing it for a while.

I hate these newfangled cars that are like spaceships, and about as complicated as one. Even my wife's relatively sane Honda CRV has concealed electronics that give no indication what they're doing (you never know if and when it's shifted into 4WD, for example), and a climate control system that is baffling and almost impossible to control except by setting the temperature and trusting that somehow it will be done, but without any clue as to when or whether it decides to send the air to where you want it, or whether the AC is running or not. Fortunately Hondas are pretty reliable, so the stuff works.

But (slight off-topic rant) whoever thought of obligatory air-conditioned defrosting ought to be... Ok, I'm not really for shooting them but they should not be allowed to design a heater ever again.

So I'm hoping, probably in vain, that some cheapskate outfit like Hyundai will make its electric cars more basic and less gadgety than others. I'll be happy to skip the on line maps and stuff, just charge, run, and charge.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

So I'm hoping, probably in vain, that some cheapskate outfit like Hyundai will make its electric cars more basic and less gadgety than others. I'll be happy to skip the on line maps and stuff, just charge, run, and charge.

That is one thing I like about my Corolla. It's the base model with manual transmission, and it's a pretty basic car. No touch screen, and the panel contains a ton of blanks where premium features would be if I weren't such a miser. I wish the seats had better lumbar support, but beyond that I love the simplicity.

Even the traction control I can toggle off with the push of a button. It's funny, the cheaper model has dedicated buttons for everything, while the nicer models force you to use a big touchscreen for many important features. I much prefer just having buttons and knobs, but maybe that's just my age showing.

Right now most of the electric cars are luxury vehicles, and that means ridiculously overdone interiors designed for people with no compunction about dropping a few hundred bucks getting some gizmo repaired at the dealer. I'm hoping, like you, that increasing popularity will mean electric econoboxes will be more common.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Most of those "new fangled features" are mandatory safety features so we don't... ya know die.

 

[TurkeysGhost]

Most of those "new fangled features" are mandatory safety features so we don't... ya know die.

Well, I don't mean them. Most of them aren't really something you interact with directly. I'm glad my car has crumple zones and more airbags and antilock brakes standard.

I'm more complaining how some cars you can't turn the radio on or adjust the fan speed without using a touch screen. My FIL's car you can't close the rear door by hand because it might damage the self-closing motor.

I know this is my "old man yelling at cloud" gripe, but I really hate that kind of overengineering.

 

[Ziggurat]

I'm more complaining how some cars you can't turn the radio on or adjust the fan speed without using a touch screen.

One of the ironies is that touch screens are not actually touch friendly. You have to look at them, you can't navigate them by feel. On a car, I much prefer controls, even for stuff like the audio system or the AC, that you can use purely by feel.

 

[JoeMorgue]

I mean ideally you wouldn't be futzing with radios and climate when you are driving, so how ergonomic they are shouldn't matter. It's like saying your cup holders don't fit your beer bottles. That's not a bug, it's a feature.

Now I'm not stupid and know people do, but still.

 

[JoeMorgue]

Ideally my "dream car" would have all of the functions you actually need to use while driving on the steering wheel itself.

- Blinkers (not on stalks, on the actual wheel)
- Lights, including flashing your brights.
- BASIC radio and climate controls
- Wipers
- Cruise Control

And everything else would be through a touchscreen

 

[Ziggurat]

I mean ideally you wouldn't be futzing with radios and climate when you are driving, so how ergonomic they are shouldn't matter.

Uh, no. If you're driving cross country, that kind of operation is sometimes required. You can't just set it and forget it, like you can for a short trip to the grocery store.

 

[bruto]

Ideally my "dream car" would have all of the functions you actually need to use while driving on the steering wheel itself.

- Blinkers (not on stalks, on the actual wheel)
- Lights, including flashing your brights.
- BASIC radio and climate controls
- Wipers
- Cruise Control

And everything else would be through a touchscreen

I quite disagree on blinkers. A blinker stalk, which can be activated by pushing it in the direction the wheel rotates, is very easy to use, and easy to make cancelling when the wheel rotates back.

On some cars that have a lot of steering wheel controls, there are so many and they're so hard to differentiate, that it is actually more distracting to use them than it is to learn the location of the other ones. I never use the radio controls on my wife's Honda. I can't see them clearly without looking away from the road. Perhaps I'd remember which is the volume and which the tuning, and which doesn't exist at all, and which are multi-function, and so forth, but it's easier to reach over to the radio and turn the big round knobs. You don't have to look at the volume or tuning knobs to figure out which is which or whether you've hit the up or the down.

e.t.a. similarly the climate controls. It's really very easy to make a decent set of climate controls that can be operated with a glance or in total darkness by feel and position alone. Linear levers and detented rotating switches that you can operate without looking. A panel of identical switches with different logos on them are undecipherable without looking to see which is which, and the great versatility of some has little obvious logic.

I

 

[crescent]

One of the ironies is that touch screens are not actually touch friendly. You have to look at them, you can't navigate them by feel. On a car, I much prefer controls, even for stuff like the audio system or the AC, that you can use purely by feel.

The U.S. Navy is actually reverting some ships from touch screens back to physical levers and buttons and such for just that reason.

Navy Reverting DDGs Back to Physical Throttles, After Fleet Rejects Touchscreen Controls


When the USS John S. McCain crashed in the Pacific, the Navy blamed the destroyer’s crew for the loss of 10 sailors. The truth is the Navy’s flawed technology set the McCain up for disaster.

 

[Delvo]

Both the proliferation of touchscreens and the expected/desired proliferation of batteries have a similar production problem. They depend on rare elements that we might not have enough of, even if we don't care what we do to the environment to get them. (Lithium for current battery types, heavier things like indium for touchscreens)

 

[Roger Ramjets]

Both the proliferation of touchscreens and the expected/desired proliferation of batteries have a similar production problem. They depend on rare elements that we might not have enough of, even if we don't care what we do to the environment to get them. (Lithium for current battery types, heavier things like indium for touchscreens)

Lithium currently sells for ~US$26 per kg. It is not particularly rare and new sources are constantly being discovered. The lithium in electric vehicle batteries is 100% recyclable, and some car manufacturers (Nissan, Renault) are already doing it.

Indium currently costs US$447/kg, 127 times cheaper than Gold (another metal widely used in electronics) which is currently trading at US$57,000/kg. Indium Tin Oxide (ITO) is used to create the very thin transparent electrodes used on LCD screens. It makes up less than 1% of the cost of a typical LCD display. It could be recycled from used TVs etc. but at current prices mining is cheaper. If for some peculiar reason we 'ran out of' Indium then other materials would be used.

Your 'depends on rare elements that we might not have enough of, even if we don't care what we do to the environment to get them' is nothing more than FUD.

 

[Jack by the hedge]

Touchscreens are lighter than physical buttons and switches, and they're cheaper, and they're slimmer, taking up less depth behind the panel. But they're a terrible idea in cars.

Admittedly my main experience is using Android Auto with my phone in a holder, but it's supposed to be a car-friendly interface. So why the hell is every touch a repeat-three-times operation before the system realises I was trying to press a button and not slide it a tiny distance around the screen?

 

[The Don]

Touchscreens are lighter than physical buttons and switches, and they're cheaper, and they're slimmer, taking up less depth behind the panel. But they're a terrible idea in cars.

Admittedly my main experience is using Android Auto with my phone in a holder, but it's supposed to be a car-friendly interface. So why the hell is every touch a repeat-three-times operation before the system realises I was trying to press a button and not slide it a tiny distance around the screen?

I think that my current car, a Skoda Oktavia, has got the button/touchscreen balance about right. The major controls like lights, wipers, HVAC and radio on/off/volume are physical controls, detailed stuff like entertainment controls and phone controls is accessed via a touchscreen.

If I had radio and phone controls on the steering wheel then that would be perfect. More highly specced versions and more recent models have that as standard.

 

[Ziggurat]

I quite disagree on blinkers. A blinker stalk, which can be activated by pushing it in the direction the wheel rotates, is very easy to use, and easy to make cancelling when the wheel rotates back.

Even more importantly, it's already a standardized control, with basically all cars using them. Most people who get in a car without a blinker stalk would struggle to figure out how to activate the blinkers. Going against an already established, fully functional standard for a necessary control is a bad idea. Not as bad as switching the locations of gas and brake pedals, but bad enough that it shouldn't be done.

Also, even if there wasn't a current standard, putting the blinker controls on the steering wheel itself is a bad idea. Any controls that are on the steering wheel (not just the steering column) change position as you are steering, which makes them potentially hard to access quickly. That's not a big deal for something like volume control, which you really don't need to access quickly. Hell, it's not even bad for cruise control, since you can easily override it with brakes and/or gas pedals. But it is bad for controls that you should be able to access very quickly.

On some cars that have a lot of steering wheel controls, there are so many and they're so hard to differentiate, that it is actually more distracting to use them than it is to learn the location of the other ones. I never use the radio controls on my wife's Honda. I can't see them clearly without looking away from the road.

I use the steering wheel controls for my audio all the time. You have to learn them, but they can all be navigated by touch if you do, no looking required.

But here's the thing which differentiates them from blinkers: it's OK if you don't learn them, because it's OK if you don't use them at all. So it really doesn't matter if you can't do it by touch, and it doesn't matter that it's not all standardized.

 

[bruto]

Good points above. I would likely use the steering wheel radio controls more often if I drove my wife's car more often. As it is, I am more comfortable with the more old-fashioned controls. I'm rather far-sighted and, owing to added trochlear nerve issues, find it hard to focus on print and logos at the dashboard distance without taking a fair amount of attention away from the road, so I am much in favor of tactile knobs, levers, and buttons that are well placed.

 

[ZirconBlue]

But (slight off-topic rant) whoever thought of obligatory air-conditioned defrosting ought to be... Ok, I'm not really for shooting them but they should not be allowed to design a heater ever again.

Why? It still gets hot, but the AC dries the air to remove/prevent condensation on the inside of the window.

 

[bruto]

Why? It still gets hot, but the AC dries the air to remove/prevent condensation on the inside of the window.

Because in temperate cool climates, the defrost blows cold, and causes condensation on the outside of the cold window, requiring wipers, and as soon as you turn off the power-gobbling AC/defrost, the window fogs up worse than ever. So when it's 50 degrees out, you're stuck with an air conditioning addiction. In olden times you could crank up the fan with tepid air and blow the windshield clear and it would stay that way for a while. When heat is needed anyway, the heat dries the windshield, and does not have to compete with the cold AC to do so.

 

[ZirconBlue]

Because in temperate cool climates, the defrost blows cold, and causes condensation on the outside of the cold window, requiring wipers, and as soon as you turn off the power-gobbling AC/defrost, the window fogs up worse than ever. So when it's 50 degrees out, you're stuck with an air conditioning addiction. In olden times you could crank up the fan with tepid air and blow the windshield clear and it would stay that way for a while. When heat is needed anyway, the heat dries the windshield, and does not have to compete with the cold AC to do so.

I don't know what cars you've been driving, but any modern vehicle I have been in, the AC compressor running does not at all cool the defrost air. Coincidentally, I just got this tip from Consumer Reports earlier this week:

For a quick fix use the “Defrost” mode. This will automatically engage air conditioning and a high fan speed, directing warm, dry air to the windshield and often the front side windows. This can heat the glass to aid clearing snow and ice while removing condensation from the inside. As visibility returns, you can turn down the noisy fan.

Air conditioning is the key. Cold air may be the last thing you want in the winter, but remember, this mode isn’t called “chill”—it is “air conditioning” because it dehumidifies the air. You can still set the temperature to a comfortable level and enjoy warm, dry air from the vents.

 

[JoeMorgue]

I'm a smart, intelligent, educated person so it would be silly for me to spend 10 minutes futzing with temperatures trying to get my windows until I'm reduced to just moving knobs and dials at random until whatever magic mix of settings works.

It's a good thing that never happens. *Looks around nervously*