Yup. You can see it everywhere. Everything is fancier and nicer than it used to be. Just check out a 20 year old car to see how basic they used to be. I got in a new pickup truck yesterday and there were two switches for each heated seat. The back and the bottom could be controlled separately.
This is much too fancy for my tastes, but that's how the economy is evolving.
Every car has a screen now because California mandated back up cameras in new cars. It's bad business not to turn that thing into a touch screen and move controls to it.
The thing is that if you're going to put a video screen of any size (not sure what the actual backup camera requirements are), you're going to use it as a navigation system--probably with Apple Play or Google Play--which is probably going to be a non-negotiable requirement for a lot of people at that point so it's going to be a touch screen anyway. And that means a lot of buttons are going to just be additional cost at that point.
I agree manufacturers don't have to dispense with most buttons because they can. My Honda Passport actually strikes a pretty good balance. It would also be nice to have better voice control but that's been a hard problem with voice assistants generally.
This was exactly my point. I didn't mean to sound like I was happy with it but the lack of buttons is directly related to the presence of touch screens which is a result of the requirement to have the back up camera. I don't think the CA regulators would take back that requirement but you can definitely file this under "unintended consequences".
In my last vehicle, I definitely chose one that had more buttons/dials than some of my other choices and it was a surprisingly high priority.
I'm not sure that the rules don't still allow the backup camera to display on the rearview mirror. (Don't see anything definitive on this.) In any case, most consumers really want an in-dash nav display (and other infotainment) at this point.
But the backup camera requirement may have nudged things along a bit.
The navigation system on some cars are so atrocious. Impressively slow and inputting addresses can be a huge pain. I feel like a Raspberry Pi would have an order of magnitude better performance on many cars I have seen.
I haven't bought a car recently so I don't know what the landscape looks like, but I would think that even offering the possibility of a customization to have a more analog dashboard would be profitable. Even if you stick it behind a $1k upcharge I think you would see a surprising number of people opt for it. Doesn't need to replace the digital touchscreen in all cases necessarily, just be a secondary control mechanism.
Of course I'm sure we would run into situations where the analog buttons are an interface to the digital control system, so if the digital part is slow, some people might try to navigate using analog buttons too quickly. The digital interface hides that detail by design, if the menu isn't yet loaded, neither are the buttons you can click.
Car Play (and I assume Google Play) is a real game-changer. I understand Tesla's system is pretty good but any manufacturer system I tried to use in a rental car was awful.
I think most people are OK with a backup camera as it's a purely visual aid (an output), but putting actual controls of any sort (an input) on a touch screen in a vehicle is a terrible idea.
They need backup cameras because they have lost all the glass so they can pass the crash tests against the other 2,000-lb landwhales who also can't see them.
My number "2,000 lbs" was way off. That's the weight of a Fiat Panda. For another data point, the Hummer H2 is 6,000 lbs. Maybe I was thinking of kilogram figures? Anyway, you get my point.
Maybe not literally -- I'd take power windows and AC, that's it -- but I agree with your point.
Really, what dumbfuck decided that, because they're both "electronics", an electric car needs to be an iPad on wheels? Or that this concept is linked in some way with ADAS systems?
I listen to VW execs talking about how "EVs are software". Are they? Says who?
It's a fucking battery, a motor, a big-ass Buck/boost converter, and, in Tesla's case -- this element of complexity is legitimately good -- a heat pump. To exaggerate only slightly, I see no reason why any low-voltage ICs more complicated than an LM555 should be needed.
Chip shortage? We need high-performance MOSFETS, yeah, but the controller could come from a technology node circa 1979.
And then the insides are all "luxury". Everything comes with leather seats (which crack) and fancy interiors. No!! There is nothing wrong with the inside of a Camry. Give me that.
I thought Tesla started with a Lotus. Talk about bare-bones. What the hell happened?
Not just immediate sales, but a long term revenue stream. Toyota will make $0 off selling me replacement heated seat switches because I don't have them. Their only hope of a revenue stream is to carefully engineer the valve cover gasket to start leaking at 50K miles or similar.
Oh please. Go back a few decades and that car at 50K miles was probably ready for the junkyard, especially in areas with snow and salt. Arguing that modern cars are engineered to be unreliable is simply contrary to reality.
The pendulum is swinging back a bit, and old cars would generally make it to 100k, and some old models had no problem far exceeding that. Modern cars are all currently wrestling with carbon buildup on their valves due to gasoline direct injection, which is really not great for long term reliability. I have a friend who's relatively recently-made Hyundai (2015-2016?) barely crawled to 100k. The complexity of modern cars hasn't made them terrible from a reliability standpoint, however we are definitely seeing some backsliding on progress.
I do have to say that I had to buy a new vehicle last summer to replace a 13-year old one and the sheer number of sensors, motors, and other features--at least some of which seem rather gratuitous--gave me some pause. And this was a very middle-of-the-road Honda. Certainly a lot of modern vehicles are very reliable although I wonder if they could be even more reliable if, e.g. the side mirrors didn't tilt down every time you backed up.
Do you think these cars get crushed or are bought by someone who drives them until they are really dead?
I hate to be that guy but the whole automotive market has been like that for as long as there has been an automotive market. One person’s unreliable old car they bought new is someone else’s daily driver that they get their cousin to keep on the road for beers.
This really depends on the failure. In the specific case of gasoline direct injection, a motor which has had poor carbon buildup might need to be totally rebuilt. And given the complexity of the motors, it's not like rebuilding an old flathead Ford engine. I'm definitely not saying that old cars are good and new cars are bad. But some of the problems of modern cars make long-term usage costlier and more difficult in some cases. To be clear, cars today are much more reliable than decades ago. I'm just making a small case that this reliability has been sliding backwards in some instances. Some modern cars are less reliable than the same model 10 years ago, and even when the car is not a total wash there are more things that break, and the cost and complexity of repair is higher.
Direct injection allows them to do some magical things inside the combustion chamber for efficiency/performance gains with the trade off that the valves are ‘dry’ so will need some maintenance down the line. Maybe you save more on fuel than the cost of having to pop off the head(s) down the line, maybe you don’t. Same with the multitude of sensors, knowing what exactly the engine is doing lets them control it more optimally.
Though I do agree that they add too many unnecessary things like Heated Seats as a Service (looking at you BMW).
With one exception, it's never been the powertrain that has caused me to get a new vehicle--it's mostly been corrosion and issues related to corrosion that have led me to retire cars. It is a lot better than it used to be but cars still rust out and/or have things like fluid leaks related to rust that cause other problems.
I am pretty scared to see what happens to cars from the last 10 years as they age. The amount of computers im them is unbelievably high. Most of the chips will have been end of lifed, and whats to keep the car manufacturer making parts? Historically there was a lot of room for third parties tonmake repplacement parts, but it feels unapproachable.
Hopefully these thousands of microcontrollers all kust keep running for many decades & this is a non-issue.
When I bought a new vehicle last summer, I actually was persuaded to buy an extended warranty in part by the argument that there are so many computers in the car. I also got offered a (seemingly--I know I know) good deal.
You really think that 20 years ago people were driving sedans because they were trying to be environmentally friendly? It's far more likely that they never cared about it in the first place.
I’m paywalled but my initial confusion is what is gentrifying goods and services? Gentrification as to described neighborhoods describes a phenomenon where wealthy people pool ins a geographic area, causing businesses to cater to them and thereby drive poorer people out not just due to property values and rent increased but also due to lack of lower income services like cash 4 check and laundromats.
Does this mean there are less store brand grocery items or something?
Inflation + Inequality => consumerism must sell fewer, more expensive products to a shrinking number of increasingly wealthy people.
(for the time being, if you want cheap products, buy them directly from China or through one of a gazillion middlmen; the rest of the world cannot yet afford this kind of gentrification)
It is worth noting that while that's true, inflation as officially measured tends not to include things like housing costs - in the UK over the last 30 years or so we've seen wages flatline while house prices and rents rose. In "real" inflation, people have been losing purchasing power for almost the entire period from the last financial crisis to now. CPIH addresses this in a limited way, but in general inflation is also different for each wage bracket - and highest for those who have least in the first place, even while official figures are "on target".
TIL, that's an intriguing difference. Like I say, CPIH adjusts for this somewhat. It is a problem here because our 2% inflation target doesn't include housing. It also doesn't include the stock market etc, so we push inflation into these areas.
Maybe I'm being too British in saying this, but it is a rare occasion when I see the US being more sensible than the UK. This is definitely one of those moments.
A personal rant. 15 years ago middle of the road mountain bike could be bought for around 200 euros. Now similar class mtb is more like 600+ euros. Bicycle tires cost about the same as my car tires. This is turning into a rich-man hobby.
Uh no. That was not the case even 15 years ago, they were still expensive. Yes prices have definitely gone up, but at no point in the last 20 years has a middle of the road mountain bike costed $200.
Can you still get a mountain bike for €262 (inflation updated) that's about as good as one that would have cost €200 in 2008, but people's expectations are higher? Or is the same bike that would have sold for €200 now selling for €600+?
That may have been true 20 or 25 years ago but the technology gap technologically between a “cheap” bike and the highest end bike you could buy was much much smaller than it is today. Same with tires. You can still buy a 200 euro bike. It’ll be better than the 200 euro bike from before. You just don’t want it.
The decent but mid-tier at best mountain bike I bought 20 some years ago doesn't even have suspension. I'm not even sure you could buy a steel frame mountain bike without suspension (which otherwise had ~mid-range components) today--though I rarely ride these days and am far from an expert.
But to the parent point, I still probably paid more than $200 for it.
I bought a second hand mountain bike designed for riding single track around 2005 in the US for $600, what I wanted would have been $2000 and the best were $3000-4000 new. Today the high end is higher but the low end feels about the same, although technology has progressed and you get a more advanced bike for the money now.
> 15 years ago middle of the road mountain bike could be bought for around 200 euros
You couldn't ever buy a 'middle of the road' MTB, or any kind of bike, for €200. You could buy a piece of junk that falls apart in 2 years for that kind of money. A decent commuter bike starts at around €750.
> Bicycle tires cost about the same as my car tires.
Where do you get new car tires for ~€20 ?
> This is turning into a rich-man hobby.
Over here (the Netherlands) cycling is just a mode of transportation for most people. and it's by far the most affordable one there is.
https://imgur.com/a/Lzf4qzX
This is a bike I bought 2005 for about 180 euros. And I still use it today as a city bike. The picture is from around 2013 after I did some upgrades - second hand hydraulic brakes, new cassette, chain, etc.
simple trade, making products and selling products, by ordinary people, with their own money .. is endangered in California and elsewhere due to suffocating and inexorable taxes, permits and raw material flows. Moronic street gangs are stealing millions of dollars worth of high quality, low price, commodity goods that no regular person could make.. due to the overflowing amounts of them in circulation.. yet to make a simple product in a cottage way, or to sell a common product to your close neighbor, is not economically viable.
Service business had survived: travel tourism, food and beverage, sports... but those sectors have been crushed by lockdowns and new social practices. It may never return to what was common recently.
Large-scale circumstances where ordinary people who are "good enough" workers and responsible, unable to do basic commerce themselves, will economically strangle massive numbers of citizens over time. Humans are predatory and exist in large numbers. Healthy people will fight back rather than starve economically. $0.02 USA
Interesting. It's also ridiculously useful in most of the cases people use it for. Perhaps the WD-40 folks should release a new version of their all purpose lubricant. They could call it something memorable, like WD-40, so everyone knows to use it in the same way everyone uses WD-40. They could even use the same packaging.
WD-40 is a penetrating oil. It's pretty decent at that[1] and not badly priced. It's a pretty "middle of the road" product at its intended purpose: displacing water and rust to loosen stuck fasteners (and other items).
This is consistent with the upper middle class growing at the expense of the rest of the middle class: https://www.brookings.edu/research/squeezing-the-middle-clas.... This is partly the result of the shift to knowledge work, and partly the result of Reagan-era tax cuts to the upper middle class that have never been challenged by either party.
I’m convinced that the most significant and tangible aspect of income inequality in practice is not between the middle class and super rich, but between the middle class and the ordinary rich (I.e. Biden’s protected class of people making up to $400,000).
I live near Annapolis, which has always had plenty of old money yacht club types. But you could still buy a 3BR family home for under $300,000 even in 2015. Historically it’s been a place where military officers and GS-scale workers, farmers, and established tradespeople could own a nice house, a used boat, etc. It was only in the last few years, as more and more knowledge workers started moving outward from the DC area, that housing has increasingly become unaffordable. Similarly in Eugene Oregon where my wife grew up, housing prices have skyrocketed. Non-college educated but stably established folks in her family are having trouble finding affordable housing. The only billionaire there, Phil Knight, has been there forever. It’s all the yuppies from California that are the cause of the problem.
I think that’s the real story behind the growing frustration over “income inequality.” America has always had rich people. But Americans don’t really care what people do in the Hampton or in Beverly Hills do or buy. But the premiumization of the economy hits people at home.
At least some of this phenomenon is due to dual higher income earning couples pairing together at rates much higher than before, which obviously follows from the fact that more women are earning more money than ever before.
> It’s all the yuppies from California that are the cause of the problem
Yuppies may be a piece of the puzzle, but the massive surge in institional home ownership is surely the larger factor (the NIMBY obstruction of home construction is surely a factor too). Which means that it is indeed the billionaires fault, since it is their money backing it.
Not really. That is a local issue. People leaving the west coast have completely swamped everything from Nevada over.
Starter homes in the nice cities in Idaho went from $85k to $400k in 4+ years. It isn't corporations buying these homes, but rather people fleeing the west coast in massive droves. The same is true for the east coast.
Flights of large numbers of people from both coasts have put pressure inward, too. Nebraska, Minnesota, and Wisconsin have had large increases of people moving there with attendant pressures on housing prices and availability in those areas.
For one thing, institutional buyers don't buy up enough of the supply to really move the needle in most metro areas. For another, institutional buyers generally turn homes into rentals. They can't really overpay for the housing unless there's lots of yuppies around who can pay the high rents.
Supply shortages are certainly a factor, but they're related to the problem I pointed out. California knowledge worker yuppies are facing supply shortages in their own market, and getting pushed out to cheaper markets like Oregon. That has a particularly negative effect because they have so much more money than the people who are already living in those places.
It appears so. Plane travel is back to being expensive. Major event tickets are all scalped for wealthy people. Any hobby that requires space is unsustainable for city dweller as living space is at a severe premium.
Cars except the smallest are priced at what a small apartment went five years age
Some gadgetry is still priced for consumers, but it appears that next half generation won't afford a Playstation, won't eat out, and will be generally miserable.
But that is literally what a lot of us want, no? No one says it directly but when people talk about taxing carbon to fight climate change, this is exactly the consequence they are advocating for. You want to reduce carbon footprint? Make flying so expensive that only rich could afford it. You want to advocate for public transit and reduce cars in the cities? Only way to do so is make parking and gas expensive along with congestion tax and only rich could afford it. Need hobbies requiring space? But big houses have bigger carbon footprint so either go for shared spaces or find hobbies which need less space. But don't think about having a spare room in your house.
When you connect all the dots, fight for climate change is essentially about reducing carbon footprint by making everything (planes, personal cars, single family houses, ...) affordable only to the rich.
81 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 161 ms ] threadThis is much too fancy for my tastes, but that's how the economy is evolving.
I agree manufacturers don't have to dispense with most buttons because they can. My Honda Passport actually strikes a pretty good balance. It would also be nice to have better voice control but that's been a hard problem with voice assistants generally.
In my last vehicle, I definitely chose one that had more buttons/dials than some of my other choices and it was a surprisingly high priority.
But the backup camera requirement may have nudged things along a bit.
It _definitely_ had a major effect on the low end vehicles. It raised the floor more than it changed the ceiling.
I haven't bought a car recently so I don't know what the landscape looks like, but I would think that even offering the possibility of a customization to have a more analog dashboard would be profitable. Even if you stick it behind a $1k upcharge I think you would see a surprising number of people opt for it. Doesn't need to replace the digital touchscreen in all cases necessarily, just be a secondary control mechanism.
Of course I'm sure we would run into situations where the analog buttons are an interface to the digital control system, so if the digital part is slow, some people might try to navigate using analog buttons too quickly. The digital interface hides that detail by design, if the menu isn't yet loaded, neither are the buttons you can click.
Really, what dumbfuck decided that, because they're both "electronics", an electric car needs to be an iPad on wheels? Or that this concept is linked in some way with ADAS systems?
I listen to VW execs talking about how "EVs are software". Are they? Says who?
It's a fucking battery, a motor, a big-ass Buck/boost converter, and, in Tesla's case -- this element of complexity is legitimately good -- a heat pump. To exaggerate only slightly, I see no reason why any low-voltage ICs more complicated than an LM555 should be needed.
Chip shortage? We need high-performance MOSFETS, yeah, but the controller could come from a technology node circa 1979.
And then the insides are all "luxury". Everything comes with leather seats (which crack) and fancy interiors. No!! There is nothing wrong with the inside of a Camry. Give me that.
I thought Tesla started with a Lotus. Talk about bare-bones. What the hell happened?
It's why this planet is on the "highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator".
Luxury and convenience need energy. Most of the energy still comes from carbon. Ergo...
I hate to be that guy but the whole automotive market has been like that for as long as there has been an automotive market. One person’s unreliable old car they bought new is someone else’s daily driver that they get their cousin to keep on the road for beers.
Direct injection allows them to do some magical things inside the combustion chamber for efficiency/performance gains with the trade off that the valves are ‘dry’ so will need some maintenance down the line. Maybe you save more on fuel than the cost of having to pop off the head(s) down the line, maybe you don’t. Same with the multitude of sensors, knowing what exactly the engine is doing lets them control it more optimally.
Though I do agree that they add too many unnecessary things like Heated Seats as a Service (looking at you BMW).
Even in the 1980s a 100K mile walk normal min lifespan
Hopefully these thousands of microcontrollers all kust keep running for many decades & this is a non-issue.
Most new cars are either SUVs or mini-SUVs, with a lot of green washing, and we’re all forgetting about sustainability and carbon footprint…
Does this mean there are less store brand grocery items or something?
(for the time being, if you want cheap products, buy them directly from China or through one of a gazillion middlmen; the rest of the world cannot yet afford this kind of gentrification)
Really? In the US the standard CPI-U basket is 1/3 housing: https://www.bls.gov/news.release/cpi.t01.htm It's the single largest component.
Maybe I'm being too British in saying this, but it is a rare occasion when I see the US being more sensible than the UK. This is definitely one of those moments.
1. Increase production and sell goods to the masses at low prices. Leads to a higher quality of life for the society.
2. Decrease production and sell goods only the wealthy at high prices. Leads to class warfare.
There aren't enough rich people to sustain this. It'll work until another company comes in and out-prices them.
It will never get to that point because the wealthy have learned to spend on lobbying to protect their wealth.
The ROI of spending $15 million on lobbying > the ROI of spending $15 million on innovation/efficiency/new products.
But to the parent point, I still probably paid more than $200 for it.
You couldn't ever buy a 'middle of the road' MTB, or any kind of bike, for €200. You could buy a piece of junk that falls apart in 2 years for that kind of money. A decent commuter bike starts at around €750.
> Bicycle tires cost about the same as my car tires.
Where do you get new car tires for ~€20 ?
> This is turning into a rich-man hobby.
Over here (the Netherlands) cycling is just a mode of transportation for most people. and it's by far the most affordable one there is.
Service business had survived: travel tourism, food and beverage, sports... but those sectors have been crushed by lockdowns and new social practices. It may never return to what was common recently.
Large-scale circumstances where ordinary people who are "good enough" workers and responsible, unable to do basic commerce themselves, will economically strangle massive numbers of citizens over time. Humans are predatory and exist in large numbers. Healthy people will fight back rather than starve economically. $0.02 USA
IMHO you should not buy this stuff at all. Rather buy specific lubricants/solvers for the use case.
Yes you should. Just not a replacement for special purpose lubricants. Nobody is asking to use WD40 as bearing grease, it has its own unique uses.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUEob2oAKVs
I’m convinced that the most significant and tangible aspect of income inequality in practice is not between the middle class and super rich, but between the middle class and the ordinary rich (I.e. Biden’s protected class of people making up to $400,000).
I live near Annapolis, which has always had plenty of old money yacht club types. But you could still buy a 3BR family home for under $300,000 even in 2015. Historically it’s been a place where military officers and GS-scale workers, farmers, and established tradespeople could own a nice house, a used boat, etc. It was only in the last few years, as more and more knowledge workers started moving outward from the DC area, that housing has increasingly become unaffordable. Similarly in Eugene Oregon where my wife grew up, housing prices have skyrocketed. Non-college educated but stably established folks in her family are having trouble finding affordable housing. The only billionaire there, Phil Knight, has been there forever. It’s all the yuppies from California that are the cause of the problem.
I think that’s the real story behind the growing frustration over “income inequality.” America has always had rich people. But Americans don’t really care what people do in the Hampton or in Beverly Hills do or buy. But the premiumization of the economy hits people at home.
Yuppies may be a piece of the puzzle, but the massive surge in institional home ownership is surely the larger factor (the NIMBY obstruction of home construction is surely a factor too). Which means that it is indeed the billionaires fault, since it is their money backing it.
Starter homes in the nice cities in Idaho went from $85k to $400k in 4+ years. It isn't corporations buying these homes, but rather people fleeing the west coast in massive droves. The same is true for the east coast.
Flights of large numbers of people from both coasts have put pressure inward, too. Nebraska, Minnesota, and Wisconsin have had large increases of people moving there with attendant pressures on housing prices and availability in those areas.
For one thing, institutional buyers don't buy up enough of the supply to really move the needle in most metro areas. For another, institutional buyers generally turn homes into rentals. They can't really overpay for the housing unless there's lots of yuppies around who can pay the high rents.
Supply shortages are certainly a factor, but they're related to the problem I pointed out. California knowledge worker yuppies are facing supply shortages in their own market, and getting pushed out to cheaper markets like Oregon. That has a particularly negative effect because they have so much more money than the people who are already living in those places.
Cars except the smallest are priced at what a small apartment went five years age
Some gadgetry is still priced for consumers, but it appears that next half generation won't afford a Playstation, won't eat out, and will be generally miserable.
But that is literally what a lot of us want, no? No one says it directly but when people talk about taxing carbon to fight climate change, this is exactly the consequence they are advocating for. You want to reduce carbon footprint? Make flying so expensive that only rich could afford it. You want to advocate for public transit and reduce cars in the cities? Only way to do so is make parking and gas expensive along with congestion tax and only rich could afford it. Need hobbies requiring space? But big houses have bigger carbon footprint so either go for shared spaces or find hobbies which need less space. But don't think about having a spare room in your house.
When you connect all the dots, fight for climate change is essentially about reducing carbon footprint by making everything (planes, personal cars, single family houses, ...) affordable only to the rich.
This is also how food is distributed in wartime, in many occasions.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ration_stamp