Holy crap cars got complicated in the past 12 years.

[rmd]

Picked up the Fit. Between being more spacious, less zippy, and having a much mellower suspension, it's a bit like driving a couch in comparison to the Mini Cooper S. A friend of mine is buying the Mini, so that works out well. Now I need to work on getting rid of the truck in the next few months. (I want to get rid of it before the sticker needs to be replaced, in September)

But, my goodness. Car electronics got complicated. My stepmother bought a new Toyota Corolla recently, so I was aware of some of the touch-screen interface stuff and how cars have rear view cameras sometimes, but wow. Rear view camera is cool, but the right lane camera is a new bit of cool for me (particularly for driving around town - anything that makes it easier to track bicycles near my car is a good thing, and this should make a good addition to the right side mirror)

That said... WHAT JACKASS DECIDED THAT A FUCKING TOUCH SCREEN WOULD BE A GOOD INTERFACE FOR A CAR? Most of everything is doable with steering wheel controls, but still.

And the interior layout is so different. I don't know where everything goes yet! There's only one hardware design peeve and one easily-worked-around software peeve I have so far. The hardware peeve is that the "open gas cap" pull lever is next to my left ankle, which is out of reach without me opening the driver's door. Not a problem if I'm doing self-serve gas, but the station near my house is a full serve so this is a slight inconvenience. The software peeve is that it starts playing music (not necessarily any particular playlist) when it bluetooth pairs with my phone. Since I was already in the habit of leaving the volume way down when I shut down the car, that's no big deal to work around, and 'pause' is easy.

I guess I need a Honda Fit userpic.

Comments

[scliff.livejournal.com]

Damn, I had been thinking I had another new car generation left before I was going to be forced into that shit. Even in a Ford Fiesta, now? Fucking hell.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

One thing I did like is that as far as I can tell, it doesn't have a cell chip built in. It can do the 'hey, I think you were in an accident, so I'll call 911' thing if and only if you have a phone paired with it.

So, at least if someone is going to fuck with me via my car, they need to be close enough to hit it with bluetooth as opposed to, you know, anywhere at all.

[scliff.livejournal.com]

Aside from teh grump, grats on the new shiny! Yes, you need a pic, especially as you haven't even told us what color it is.

[rmd.livejournal.com]

silver/grey

[lillibet.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm still finding new tricks the E-Tron can do, months later. It's a brave new world.

[ceo]

Yup, our CR-V, bought last year, has all of that. I'm really liking the bluetooth pairing with my phone (and my phone having my entire music collection on it), having once installed a 10-disc remote CD changer in the back of my old Ford Probe.
The biggest UI fail in this car, and this is endemic to modern cars, is it's INCREDIBLY easy to drive around at night not realizing your headlights aren't on. The dashboard is lit up whether the lights are on or not, and the LED running lights provide some front illumination, so you have all of the "yes, my headlights are on" visual cues whether they're actually on or not.

[deguspice.livejournal.com]

I think my truck has a little "light" light on the side of the dash to let you know if your headlights are on or not.

[whitebird.livejournal.com]

My 2005 Mazda RX-8 has a "lights on" green light in the middle of the ancillary gauges area. So it's been around for a while now.

[ceo]

It does, but it's really easy to not notice it's not on.

[yesthattom.livejournal.com]

So true! We bought our first new car since 2002 and...

a) all the fancy new features we wanted are now standard.

b) all the technology (touch screens, etc.) is implemented badly

c) a lot of the features are "checkbox". BlueTooth? Yes, we can check that checkbox. Our implementation sucks, but you won't know until after you've bought the car.

Tom

[deguspice.livejournal.com]

I think they got their design cues from watching Star Trek. I always wondered how Chekov and Sulu could find the buttons on the smooth control panels.

[whitebird.livejournal.com]

Chekov and Sulu had actual buttons and toggle switches. Well, the original ones did.

Geordie and Data, however, had touch panels.