I'm a UX designer and I've taken delivery of an XC40 Recharge two months ago, and I've never felt dumber in my life.

Don't get me wrong, the car is absolutely wonderful, but the UX is so badly designed it makes me question myself.

For starters, I have absolutely no clue how to use the lights, fans and wipers. Just last Saturday, a design oversight (and idiocy from my part) caused me to reverse into another car parked behind me, I reversed to leave the parking spot, then instead of switching to D, I forgot it on R all while the rearview camera is showing red lines. For a car equipped with driving assists (collision avoidance and line assists), it shouldn't have let me reverse any more as it was seeing a clear obstacle behind me or at least make me double check by beeping the rearview camera, it only beeps for 5 seconds when it sees an obstacle then stops, same for the open door and seatbelts.

There is also the odometer, there are 3 different odometers in the car and all of them are showing different values, one with a TM next to it, another one with this symbol Ø and a third one in the "Driver performance" tab. So which one is the real distance and what's the difference? Only the norse gods know.

Also, the charge and fuel left gauges adapt to your driving by going up or down instead of showing you the real amount of fuel/charge left. And it already nearly left me stranded on the highway with 5km left of fuel.

This car is amazing but there are a lot of design oversights when it comes to UX.

I get why, but my Volvo (2017) WILL NOT let me lock the keys in the car. Which is annoying if I'm trying to safely warm it up on a -15 Minnesota day and have the spare keys in the house. There's lots of forums detailing tricks involving rolling the windows down or locking the car from the back seat. I love all the tech automation and safety features, but at times I find myself befuddled by the designers choices.

Weird! My older (2007) Volvo doesn't let me change the station in reverse, but I can adjust the volume via a knob, or turn off the radio by pushing the knob/button.

Hopefully the system on your Volvo can be updated to fix what are presumably bugs in the system!

My Toyota's head unit bulldozes to reverse mode and if I was in reverse for 10 seconds, the song resumes 10 seconds as if its been playing in the background.

I had a rental V90 last year, and it was easily the dumbest smart car I've ever had the displeasure of driving. Comically bad in some cases. Death by a thousand cuts. Little things like you say, or the fact that it would blare about the front parking sensor detecting the wall when I put the car in reverse, etc. I ended up spending a few minutes going through all the menus turning stuff off.

I had a rental Camaro a couple years ago that would pop up a notification if you were driving a bit spirited that said "Sport Shifting Mode Engaged" or something to that effect. Which was prominently displayed on top of the speedometer.

In the US in May of 2018, a federal law went into effect saying all new cars require a backup camera. This means that there needs to be an LCD screen visible to the driver for the camera. This is sort of a slippery slope as far as feature creep. Now that you have this screen, aren't drivers going to expect to see something on it 99% of the time when they aren't backing up?

Actually this leads me to realize why some automakers like Ford integrate the screen into the rear view mirror, so when it isn't on, it disappears behind a one way mirror.

> I think manufacturers are hoping that certain aspects of the modern auto become "can't live withouts", e.g. bluetooth, which helps them smuggle all the other more marginally useful, security and ux intrusive features into your model.

I think that implies nefariousness that probably isn't there. It's more likely a combination of:

1. Marketing/sales wanting whiz-bang features to use in their pitches.

2. Copycatting competitors, also for marketing/sales pitches.

3. Customers that are often not aware of the downsides, have been conditioned to accept them (e.g. they'll all like that now), or are uncritically enthusiastic about shiny new things.

4. Lazy design thinking, of the kind that causes Mozilla to drop good features from Firefox.

5. Cost cutting, of the kind that causes almost all companies to consistently choose to make their products marginally worse over time (e.g. lets not pay for feature X, since the users can use a cheaper awkward workaround instead).

Personally, I think we should have some federal standards for car UX: a required set of standard physical controls for commonly used standard functions (e.g. car operation, climate control, audio entertainment) and plus minimum standards for screen UIs (e.g. touch sensitivity & accuracy, UX latency, etc.).

While I'm wishing, cell modems and other data transmitters should be required to be separately fused, and that the car should be required to operate without annoying error messages if that fuse is pulled.

So I wanted something like this when we were looking for a minivan I don't trust smart devices or vehicles as that's just one more thing that will break.

So we found a van didn't have those things but my wife insisted on BT and a backup cam. So we negotiated with the dealer and they were able to make a deal with us to have their shop install a backup cam and Bluetooth for cost, and we love the van ever since.

My point is that a lot of features can be put in the car after market and you don't have to deal with having to buy the whole upgraded package.

There are many cases where aftermarket versions of these features will perform as good or better than the OEM version. Granted, it's extra work to research and install them, but the end result can be great.

Personally, I will research used cars with top end factory trim packages, looking for models with either a DIN sized radio slot or readily available aftermarket upgrades.

By double checking for compatibility ahead of time you can then retrofit carplay, bluetooth, etc. into a "basic" car, for example: https://gromaudio.com/vline/index.html

I also prefer to shop for used cars because I see them as more "stable" than new cars.

What I mean by that is, major flaws in the model/year have been reported and ideally fixed (but are at least known) in the years since release. Common issues/symptoms and repair details are much easier to find online via forums, etc. after a car has been around for a few years.

Did you look into Subaru? They are still using physical controls for all car functionality. You can get heated seats, heated steering, stereoscopic lane keep assist & adaptive cruise control, etc. There is a touch screen, but I only use it for Apple Car Play.

> these unwanted smart features

Only within the niche HN-type tech crowd. Most people outside of this group want these features, even other techies, including myself.

It's the same discussion on any thread involving smart devices. People want this stuff, that's why there have been over 200M standalone smart speakers sold.

As far as why these things get bundled, that’s just how auto manufacturing works. Every unique configuration costs an additional overhead to the OEM. Bundling allows them to reduce this overhead.

Well-built cars are fundamentally durable, long-lasting machines.

So of course manufacturers are eager to sneak in anything to make a car seem "worn out" and in need of replacement sooner than later.

What's frustrating is there seems to be no shortage of willing buyers eating this crap up, apparently looking forward to replacing their vehicles in lockstep with their other consumer electronics.

> I wonder how well my car will age when miscellaneous sensor all over the car start failing.

That's just it, the tech is making the cars less reliable. Will all of these bespoke parts be available in 10, 15, 20 years? I would hate to have to dispose of a working car because the dead now obsolete chip on the bespoke LCD dash module shaped like the cars dashboard is no longer in production. I had cars who's odometers didn't roll 100k miles until they hit 15 years. I have a 2002 van that has 102k miles on it.

> Now as others have mentioned, these unwanted smart features might actually be required by law/regulation/tax-credit/legal-dept, so it's not bad programming/design but "design by committee" that's dooming our chances of a good dumb car.

None of that requires LCD dash boards, tablets, touch screens, phone home, internet, subscriptions, etc. Everyone is just high on the concept of rent seeking and perpetual cash flows. They hate the fact that you buy something and walk away from them. They want you on a leash like a dog and they've been doing a damn fine job leash training you and your children.

Opinion: Mandated lane keeping and other lane keeping/self driving safety garbage is papering over the failure of the human race to govern itself. The people who I see swerving all over the road are either selfish assholes who insist on playing with phones/speeding while piloting a 3000+ lb machine or people who should not be driving at all. Now we have TV commercials that show people diddling touch screens while driving. We have failed.

> I wonder how well my car will age when miscellaneous sensor all over the car start failing.

I predict that 50 years from now there will be more functioning cars from the 1960s than from the 2020s. With the combination of quickly obsoleting technology that won't be fixable and overly interconnected electronics that become impossible to diagnose after a while, there's not much hope for current and future cars to be anything but disposable.

Old mechanical cars though, can be kept running essentialy forever by just someone with access to a machine shop and some patience.

adding a backup cam is like $20, dude. it cost me a little more to put Bluetooth, Apple CarPlay, front and rear dashcams, and a touchscreen into my 97 Honda, but it still wasn't an unreasonable amount. my other car's a 97 BMW (with far less miles on it, well under 100K) and I'll do a slightly more deluxe version of all the same upgrades once the weather gets nice.

of course both my cars have power windows. the Honda interior is nothing to write home about but the BMW's all leather and wood. neither has heated seats, but I don't really need them where I live, and if I did, I'd just buy them on eBay.

it'll get harder in future, of course, but for now, if you want to skip all the excess computation in modern cars, all you have to do is know a little bit about cars. it's not rocket science.

what I'm really looking forward to is when electric vehicle aftermarket conversion kits become more common. you can find them for certain models already but it's very early days.

I looked at new Audi’s last year, and my main thing was I want physical gauges on the dashboard. The sales guy looked at me like I was from Mars and then showed me the stripped versions (which were, I gotta say, pretty nice)

I wonder how much all the screens have contributed to the increase in accidents in the last couple years

It's an interesting differentiation strategy though, and while cars are becoming more and more similar along some axis, there is a distinct different segmentation between manufacturers.

When shopping for minivans, they all "have" comparable features. But

Manufacturer A base model has no advanced safety features; you need to buy $10k of leather seats and chrome highlights to get them.

Manufacturer B offers a $2k safety pack to any and all levels.

Manufacturer C simply has those same safety features across all levels.

Similarly, features such as Android/Apple Car/Auto play; or Sirius XM; etc. The bundling strategy is completely different across manufacturers.

For us, the last three practical family cars we bought (as opposed to cars of desire:), were hugely influenced by which manufacturer had a bundling/segmentation/feature strategy that worked for us.

I can only imagine that there is some financial interest here. By forcing people to bundle in high-margin techno-junk, they can raise the overall profit margins cars relative to cost of living / inflation. That, and/or maybe there are high-value corporate partnerships involved.

The old notion that sensors always go bad in cars was never really accurate. People would see a check engine light, get the code read and see it says "O2 sensor" and replace the O2 sensor. Then the code happens again, they say "That damned O2 sensor on this stupid car" and replace the O2 sensor again. Rinse and repeat until you get a new car.

However, I'm willing to bet the O2 sensor was actually giving the correct read and was working fine, and the source of the issue is probably well upstream of the O2 sensor.

> if you want more a "dumb" car (UX occurs primarily outside of a touchscreen, no internet, no geolocation) you lose all potential for any nice non-smart features. So no heated/powered seats, no power windows,

You can have all that when you buy a "good" base and get your features on the aftermarket. For the definition of "good" also consult your mechanic, he should know which cars are easy/nice to work with. I've been looking at reliable 4x4s that I can trust for daily off-road use in the outskirts of the Sahara and I currently favor a UAZ (20k Euro) base and modifications for 5k Euro (more gas tanks, proper seats, navigation and entertainment system).

I did sort of miss losing blue tooth when switching to a newer work truck from a muscle car that had it. But it hasn't been an issue. I don't miss any of the other feature enough to pay for them (no key fob, no power seats, etc; but it has power windows and locks, so that's nice).

The quality of tactile representation and response on the knobs/buttons are not as good as my old 89 caprice was. But that's true of all cars today.

It’s not some grand conspiracy lol, it’s just that they bundle features together to save on costs. Henry Ford did this a century ago by only offering the color black.

> The only outstanding problem, however, is that American infrastructure has been deliberately designed solely around the car.

The problem is that "infrastructure" doesn't just mean roads. It's where houses are. Where schools are. Where food is transported. It's where water and electrical service runs. It's how property is zoned. It's how police, fire, and hospitals are located. It's how municipalities design snow removal and garbage pickup. It's where shops and services are.

In many ways, fixing the infrastructure problem in the US means razing the whole continent and starting over.

So we should redesign all streets and revitalize and redesign all public transportation systems before we can even talk about not making all cars operate like iPads (i.e. like they operated 10 years ago)?

If I complain that beef from a small oligopoly of suppliers is contaminated with E. Coli, will you recommend that we talk about turning the entire world vegan first?

edit: I do not own a car and have never had a driver's license. Your values are laudable, but are unrelated to the story.

I would absolutely love to ride a bike or say, roller skate to work, but as i live in a stroad infested car dependent mess of a town, that is sadly impractical at best and outright deadly at worst.

Public transportation is awful.

My car is clean, arrives and departs on my schedule, can go nearly everywhere, and is available at my doorstep. I don't have to deal with homeless people, sick people, poop, mystery fluids, or animals. And it can take me either down the street, or hundreds of miles away.

The automobile solves my problem, public transportation doesn't.

I live on London where we have "good" public transport.

Yes a bus or the tube "solves" these problems of not having a crap UI, but they also introduce so many more and worse problems that don't make up for it. Expensive, inconvenient, dirty, late and/or slow, uncomfortable. And at least a car with crap Aircon controls actually has Aircon at all!

What!? I have friends that live in Switzerland and value having a car. Wait until people realize that Europe has millions of cars. It’s not to downplay PT, which is awesome as well but this is just a delusion.

If anything, this is a distraction from real UX issues with cars. Classic switcheroo - “Lets not focus on improving cars because public transportation”. Infuriating, as if car UI/UX wasn’t infuriating enough!

I wish America had more bikeable cities and better public transport too, but I don't see what that has to do with the linked article. I would also really like a dumbcar.

Most people in America want to live in low-traffic suburbs, where public transport absolutely is impractical. The first step to get most people to stop having cars is to convince people that they're wrong for not wanting to raise a family in the inner city.

This is a very urban-centric point of view though. A large portion of the US doesn't live in cities. In more rural and many suburban areas biking/trains simply aren't viable.

Trains, bikes, buses, and street cars only solve urban problems.

And I know urban environments are overall better for the environment, but they're not better for people's psyche. They're crime ridden. Theyre smog ridden. Theyre awful environments to live in during a pandemic.

People were moving into cities until a pandemic struck and riots became commonplace. Then they started to leave with the speed in which they arrived.

Agreed, the best way to fix our problems with cars is to invest in public transportation and shifting car users to use bikes/e-bikes.

Must consoom

Honda has been moving in a similar direction as well it seems. Most of the Japanese marques besides Subaru have ditched all-touch layouts in favor of physical buttons due to poor focus group and customer response. The new Ford Maverick and Bronco also both come with extremely tactile interior layouts, which is a pleasant sight for touchscreen-sore eyes.

I really hope this is just another fad/trend in automotive design like 6-disc trunk CD changers or phosphor display gauges.

I hated that knob interface in my Mazda, and it seems less safe since I need to scroll and watch the screen to see when the item I want to click is highlighted. A touch screen seems less distracting. It's been a few years since I had it, but using it with Android Auto was super frustrating.

Bought a 2016 mazda this year for exactly the same reason. Perfect combination of nice, big, well positioned LED display but no touch screen. (Maybe you can use touch screen when parked? Never tried.) It's a little slow and the media units can fail, but I'd say all the tradeoffs are very well balanced.

I'm hoping Mazda can catch up with an electric drive train. They have pushed ICE exceptionally far, but without an electric drive train with an ICE power plant or an entirely electric offering, I don't know if they'll up for my next consideration. I say that as a happy owner of both a Mazda CX-5 and Mazda 3. The MX-30 might be interesting, but the maturity of Toyota, Tesla, Chevy in the EV space is hard to compete with.

> but analog type dials for spedo

Why is this considered an upside?

When I shopped for a car, I've specifically looked for one with a simple (uncluttered) large digital number-only speedometer. Ended up buying 2013 Civic, which is still bad in other regards but got this one right, with a large digital speedometer conveniently located not behind the steering wheel but right below the windshield (less eye travel; and still in peripheral vision even when looking at the road). https://www.extremetech.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Honda...

I can read a number in a few milliseconds, ending up with an exact reading. So, I instantly know e.g. if I'm at, below, or above the speed limit (or desired/safe speed).

All those analog gauges take me - personally - at least an order of magnitude longer to mentally process. I can get a rough idea (±5 or ±10 {mph,km/h} depending on the dials) relatively quick - but still much longer than it takes for me to digest a readily spelled out number. Or I can spend an eternity (2+ seconds) to get a more precise reading.

And it's not as if acceleration rate normally matters, so unlike some other instruments, ability to watch the speedometer needle moving doesn't make much sense to me.

---

Oh, and I can't say I want a "smart" car, I just have a pet peeve about an awful (IMHO) designs of instrument clusters in most cars. It's either a bunch of round analogue gauges straight from grandpa's dream car (with special love for a huge engine rpm indicator, no matter the type of transmission - I really don't get this) or cyberpunk neon all the way with so much visual clutter and total absence of any sane color coding, and pray to manufacturer they don't decide all that stuff goes onto that giant iPad strapped somewhere next to your knee (thanks, Elon! Although, to be fair, at least it's plain, large and black on white)

If you are thinking of buying the Porsche Tycan get the Audi e-Tron GT instead. It's the same platform but has way more physical buttons and switches unlike the Porsche which want mostly touch screen.

My 2018 CX5 has a touchscreen, but it's entirely disabled while the car is moving. So I've never used it. I just wish they saved the time and money not developing it, but I guess it's one of those marketing bullet points.

> But I want buttons and knobs for everything I use while driving.

My Subaru Impreza has a physical power/volume knob but it won't do anything when you start the car and then shift to reverse (to back out of the garage). It's like it's dedicating its resources to the rear view camera and doesn't have any cycles to handle the input events on the control knob. Also it decides to turn on the radio even if you weren't using the radio when you turned off the car. So, you have to listen to the radio blasting (at whatever the volume was when I got there, which might have been different media with lower volume such as a podcast) while you back up (might be a good time to be able to hear instead) until a few seconds after you shift to D. At that point, it processes the queued up inputs from the knob and will suddenly turn down or off depending on the inputs.

I would prefer it to be a variable (logarithmic, because that's how audio perception works) resistor directly controlling the amplifier or whatever, like radios used to be.

I love adaptive cruise. I use it 90%+ of the time. But this is also one more reason that I hate cars and will probably sell it soon. But I'll still have to deal with similar issues if I rent a ZipCar or something.

It falls into a larger category I've been thinking about a lot lately about how a lot of problems with technology these days is due to the difference in how the desires of software creators and those of users diverges and creates those problems. I'm leaning towards suggesting that everyone needs to write their own software, using shared knowledge, not just use software that other people wrote for you.

If all smart features would work perfectly, I wouldn’t mind either. But. - lane centering - in some cars for whatever reason drives to close to middle of the lane - emergency breaking - false positives sometimes. I was overtaking a cyclist, and although I kept lots of distance as the opposite lane was completely free, it made my car slow down a lot. Luckily nobody was behind me - tmps, it's fine till sensors work or detected properly - auto headlights - sometimes they are late, and drivers coming from opposite side are made. Hopefully matrix led will be better - auto wipers - the worst of the worst! Either too slow or too fast. Or not detecting the drizzle. WTF. Really, the best was the old school knob, which just turned right/left and allowed full control over the interval

Mercedes and Mazda have this in many of their models - mechanical rotary dials and real buttons for common controls.

ACC and LKAS on our 2019 Honda is so awful I simply can't use it.

When someone crosses 3 lanes in front of me ACC will hit the brakes hard to maintain the correct distance. It's jolting and scary.

LKAS only sees about 80% of the lanes. Rather than just driving like normal which I'm experienced with I have to sit there paranoid that something will go wrong and I'll need to react to a surprise event.

I don't know if it's the idea or the just the implementation that I hate. Am considering comma.ai

yes. totally agree. I LOVE adaptive cruise control, but also love/need the ability to work the music and environment selection buttons - switch stations, switch cds, change sources, turn heat up down etc - with just an instantaneous glance followed by touch only.

Smart cars will most likely go the way of intrusive surveillance smart TVs.

Are the features worth it?

"I like most of the "smart" features - lane centering, adaptive cruise, emergency braking ..."

Please drive your car.

I don't care what choices you make wrt bluetooth or heated seats or iphone integration ... but if you can't be bothered to drive the car then perhaps a different transport option would be a better choice for you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ESJH1NLMLs

"... as we look at this accident history what we find is that in 68% of these accidents, automation dependency plays a significant part ..."

"... automation dependent pilots allowed their airplanes to get much closer to the edge of the envelope than they should have ..."

The steering wheel in an F1 car only goes about 220 degrees in either direction (drivers have to keep their hands on the wheel and their arms aren't made of rubber). The steering in a regular car goes about 540 degrees in either direction (one and a half times around). When parallel parking you often have to turn the wheel three whole revolutions.

F1 steering https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RVz6IW_wegs&t=45s

Tesla steering https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWtJu0q3sBQ&t=44s

I think these gimmicks and the new touchscreen UI serve a purpose for Tesla. Their goal is to make the car so divorced from human input that (1) it becomes increasingly reasonable to claim that an unfinished self-driving system is no more dangerous than a human in the loop, and (2) their fan base is conditioned to accept the eventuality of having no meaningful input (or feedback) at all. As for part two, I noticed it a couple years ago with a relative who bought a Tesla and was still just awed by its features. But all the ones he was awed by were the ones that took power away from the driver. I wondered then, why would anyone want to own this car once it really does all the driving for you? No one will actually own a Tesla at that point, they'll just call one on an app. Except for maybe a few silly people who want to feel like they're telling it what to do with a joystick.

And all the buttons on the yoke are touch sensitive. That makes absolutely no sense for a control device.

Just like everything done by Tesla: they have absolutely no experience in making cars, and it shows really badly. Terrible construction quality that I don't even experience on a 10k € Dacia, touch screens everywhere (it's already bad enough when it's just the radio or Android Auto, but a bunch of critical features are on the touch screen), the yoke having no physical feedback and clearly no thought other than "wow futuristic" behind it.

Smoke and mirrors is Tesla's way of operating. Look at the coverage they got out of the yoke. Out of FSD. It doesn't matter that they are terrible: there'll be 100 articles about it releasing and 2 about it being a bad idea.

Elon is weirdly good at getting regulators to just let him do things.

FSD beta. The yoke steering wheel. Like a quarter of everything SpaceX does.

Does he just have really good lobbyists? Is his force of personality just that good? It’s kind of fascinating.

You rarely need to reverse F1 cars and if you do you probably have bigger problems. A round wheel does make so much more sense and is far more comfortable to handle.

Tesla is basically the 2000s prius. It is cool now, but in near future won't be anymore.

I've not seen any evidence that the yoke steering wheel is dangerous. The downside that you're describing can only happen at zero or near to zero speed. BMW doesn't even install turn signals at all so I think the occasional errant turn signal is fine. The reason the NHTSA hasn't "forbid" the yoke is because... it isn't unsafe, it's just stupid.

It would be significantly less stupid if it had physical buttons on the steering wheel.

And once you have a computer with an operating system, UI, and (wireless) serial connections most of those features become almost "free". As a result, from the automaker's position adding all those features someone might pay for is "cheaper" for total income than not. You can always disable the features in software and keep the SKU# constant.

Some of the original backup camera models (in ford cars at least) were integrated into the rear view mirror. Worked fine for its purpose and didn’t involve a central dash monitor.

You can get aftermarket camera kits for ~$150 that handle that for older model cars.

https://www.amazon.com/Vehicle-Backup-Cameras/b?ie=UTF8&node...

The backup camera genuinely is a great feature, but the touchscreen is itself awful. I agree with Mazda on this (and the US Navy, which is also replacing touchscreens with knobs).

I'm hoping we start seeing a renaissance of car customization -- for example I know that kit cars, almost all of which are pretty dumb - are gaining in popularity. One of the nice things about electric vehicles is the greatly simplified powertrain is going to create a lot of opportunities for customization and DIY, and I hope our regulatory environment is reformed to support that more. In the czech republic, everyone works on their own car and we have a friend who built his own car from scratch, but in the U.S. we see a lot less of that type of autonomy.

"Then we can charge them for our optional (mandatory, if you want even basic modern functionality, such as remote start) monthly/yearly subscription services! We'll call it Car+!"

Its too bad your experience with automatic climate control systems is so terrible. I'm of the exact opposite experience. I recently had to have my car in the shop and as a rental they gave me a mid-tier level Nissan Sentra with manual climate controls. I absolutely hated having to manually adjust the climate, usually 2-3 times every trip. Why would I want to fiddle with climate controls when it could be entirely automated?

I haven't really had to adjust the climate controls in my current car since I bought it, aside from pressing the defrost button a few times. During that time outside temperatures have ranged from 15F to 110F, and my car is always comfortable inside. Even the heated steering wheel and heated seats are automatic, I haven't had to manually control those either. Automatic climate control has worked very well for me across 4 different models of cars ranging from a 2000 Honda Accord, a 2012 Ford Focus, a 2017 Hyundai Santa Fe, and a 2021 Mustang Mache E. All of them pretty much never required me to adjust it day to day, and I would go weeks to months without needing to do anything.

Given that you're talking about only being able to set the temperature selector down to 65, it sounds like you're doing automatic climate control wrong. You're going to have a bad experience if you're always setting it to max cold or max heat instead of just picking a comfortable temperature in the middle and letting the car get to that temp. Sure, it'll take a minute or two before it starts blowing air, because usually the AC needs to really start cranking before its doing anything or it takes a bit for the heater core to warm. During that time you're not really doing much blowing around the air, in fact you might make the experience in the car worse blowing non-conditioned air around.

Just like in your house, setting your AC unit to 60F isn't going to make your AC unit run harder. Do you go to your home thermostat and drag it all the way one way when you're warm, then drag it all the way to the other direction when you're cold? No, you set it for a comfortable temperature and let the system hold it there.

My top gripe about my wife's smart car: She sometimes leaves it with the radio on. A few seconds after bootup (starting the car), the radio starts playing. But it won't listen to the on/off button yet, not for several more seconds. So if I don't want the radio on, I have no way to shut it off until it will let me.

Automatic climate control has been around for about 40 years and common for 20 years. There is no excuse for not getting it right in 2022. I had cars 20 years ago that had great auto climate control.

> I love having a dumb car.

Did you find a newish one?