Air conditioning and touchscreens didn’t alter how cars drove but did revolutionize the driving experience.
Can we please make touchscreens for neccessary functionality illegal, like using phones while driving?
Yeah, buttons can be found without looking.
They also provide tactile feedback allowing you to be sure they have been pressed without even looking.
My parents’ Lexus has a button joystick kind of thing with similar resistance tech to the ps5 triggers for the navigation. It’s not bad.
The joystick is on the center console, so you can use it without looking.
How do you see what the joystick is pointing at without looking at the screen it’s controlling.
Radio volume, climate controls, and drive/transmission controls are all necessary for safe operation and should be able to be used without taking eyes off the road if needed. There should be federal mandates to keep those controls off of gaze required touch screens. (I’m looking at you VW, of which I own 3 classic examples, but would never consider a current gen one).
I think it’s just for changing inputs and radio, not climate, definitely not volume or transmission. You do need to look at the screen though.
THE reason i got a Mazda, after many years of Mercedes and BMW…
I feel like not enough people realize how amazingly simple and tactile the rotating dial is for doing anything in a car. And especially the placement being down by your arm makes it so easy. I can feel where all those buttons are without taking my eyes off the road.
Also make them illegal in aircraft! And spacecraft! Seriously stupid.
I vote for cheap PlayStation controllers.
Weren’t they using an Xbox controller for that Titan sub?
It was a Logitech F710.
Should have used a madcatz controller, then they would have had a turbo button.
No it was a PC controller in the form factor of a PlayStation controller
I suppose the advantage on aircraft and spacecraft is that they consolidate functions so you don’t have to have 90,000 switches in the cockpit, half of which you won’t ever need.
Anything you need to find in an emergency absolutely should be a physical switch but anything else can probably be a UI interface.
But in the car you need to keep your eyes on the road at all times, which isn’t so much of a requirement in the air.
I can’t think of a switch you won’t ever need. I think the “sce to aux” story is a good example of when you need it you need it.
If you can consolidate the UI to make it with work with touchscreen, you can make it work with something like Keyboard + trackball mouse and you can get rid of that touchscreen. I know it’s not the same stake situation but have people forgotten how much functionality blackberry had with QWERTY and few more buttons. Shame that the company went out the way it did
Also make them illegal in aircraft
Salty Boeing
So much this, it makes no sense for using a portable phone to be illegal while driving but yet my car stereo can be a full on entertainment system and require me to have zero feedback to change the channel or answer a call.
Or at the very least, do what modern airplane cockpits do and have a trackpad/trackball on the center console.
I’m pretty sure they are for safety critical controls, such as in an aircraft cockpit. In the automotive world, we like to keep it jazzy and smooth, like my romantic life.
They aren’t. Light ircraft now use touchscreens that you are supposed to use while bouncing around. They had a knob for a while but then it seemed touchscreens took over. With the knob you still had to look, it at least you didn’t have to aim at a bouncing spot on the screen.
Oh wow, you guys get the cool stuff too? That must add some much need spice to the humdrum activity of controlling a potentially lethal machine.
Can we have more mechanical posts like this?
No, you need 555 posts about the shit that a billionaire said about stuff he knows nothing about
And then someone saying something about Linux
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On Monday I’m going to tell my boss to fuck off. He isn’t going to blackmail me into doing high quality work with money. Honestly, fuck off.
Be the change you want to see!!
This requires educated users in their professions to read the news and share it to the public for free when not being paid.
A new mechanical motion is a seriously big deal and doesn’t happen often.
Now thar Hyundai has patented it, it will never become popular enough to impact the market and be standardized in more vehicles or change anything, similar to the Wankel engine.
similar to the Wankel engine
Was the Wankel engine really a step forward though? I’m a gearhead who does all his own car maintenance, up to and including engine swaps in the past and retro-modding bigger turbos and aftermarket fuel injection systems into my cars (Datsuns in the latter case). That being said, I only know the very basics about rotary engines. I’ve always admired the Mazda RX’s from afar.
Mazda, who by no means makes a bad gasoline engine, could never get a rotary motor to last well or to have anywhere near decent fuel economy. Also, the rotary design was tried for a while in at least refrigeration compressor applications, where it blew up there a lot more than the other types of compressors as well.
Yea. They have worse efficiency. To get better efficiency from them you would need to run them hotter (afaik), and if you do that they would last even shorter.
It’s great if you want a smaller but still strong engine, but it’s not efficient and those seals are a big problem.
The problem with the rotaries is a result of the technology of the time and funding.
They are inefficient because they lose compressed fuel and air as the seals pass over the holes for the spark plugs, which can be largely solved with laser ignition. They are less reliable because of the design of the apex seals, which can be solved by using a roller instead of a blade. Both of those major issues with the rotary could not be solved with the technology of the 60s-00s and the tiny budget available. There are other issues that hold back the design, but those come down to metallurgy and manufacturing processes. Mazda did a great job trying to make the rotary work and it almost killed them.
The other issue that gives then an unreliable reputation is because you can’t treat them like a piston engine and people treat them like a piston engine. Hard to fault the knife for breaking when it was used as a pry bar.
which can be largely solved with laser ignition
hoo lee I’ve never even thought about that, that sounds sick as hell
The argument is, though I’m not qualified to assess it, that Wankel engines are simpler, smaller, more power dense and, if allowed time to develop, would be an improvement on the traditional ICE. It’s very difficult to assess where we would have ended up and a little by the by, given we need to move away from burning fossil fuel.
That said, do check out LiquidPiston’s evolution of the Wankel engine. It does sort of look like they’ve solved a number of issues a traditional Wankel engine has.
if allowed time to develop
The basic problem with Wankels is that the geometry of the combustion chamber (such as it is) is constantly changing, which inevitably results in incomplete combustion compared to traditional ICEs. This leads to lowered fuel efficiency and greater emissions; the emissions problem is solved with an additional combustion chamber for the exhaust gases, but this consumes more fuel and lowers efficiency even more. It’s just a fundamental problem with the technology that no amount of development could ever fix.
It still has corners that need to have a moving seal. This is a huge issue.
But capitalism creates innovation!!!
Some people argue that intellectual property law is not free market capitalism, and is instead a regulation that benefits big business. I’m one of those people
While I’d agree in essence, in practice I don’t. They’re an offshoot of capitalism. The goal of capitalism is profit, and if you can create barriers to competition, that protects your profit. IP law is something created out of capitalism as a barrier. If it isn’t the government doing it, it’d be goons hired by those in power. They exist because of capitalism, not from something external to it. If the system were focused on doing good or creating utility, IP law wouldn’t be required.
Free market and capitalism are mutually exclusive as in the theoretical model that is the free market, with perfectly rational actors and information, a capitalist class cannot exist, they’d quickly get competed down to size.
Unregulated markets and capitalism, now that’s a lovechild, as without regulation real-world markets quickly turn into monopolistic shark-tanks instead of free markets, actors not being rational, information not being perfect and all. The role of regulation, indeed the state, is to correct for that factor and make the real-world market approximate the free market.
(This view of the world brought to you by ordoliberalism, the only sane liberal economic theory there ever was or probably will be – because they actually managed to side with the free market, and not capitalism, as the rest of them).
And regulations restrict both.
Cars should be able to pollute as much as the manufacturers want because innovation is all!
“Probably failed cuz they called it the wanker engine lmao. Now set aside another few milli for the copyright lawyers”
Indeed, nothing that is patented ever makes it to market…
Did none of you watch the video? The article is crap, but the video explains it well.
Go back and watch the video, ya old codgers!
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Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/Nd6C0y8xc20
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
I watched the video, but burying a good video under a trash article does not a good sauce make. OP should have just linked the fucking video.
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What a badly written article, wrongly explaining both the diff and the CV joint. That’s not what they do or how they work.
Yeah, skimmed and saw one of his other articles praising the cybertruck and realized this likely wasn’t a source worth absorbing.
One thing I took from the article is they’re trying to sale the idea of having MORE space in a car due to smaller transmission system. In 1 presentation, they show the idea of putting a FUCKING DOUBLE BED IN THE CAR!
I DON’T want MORE space in the SAME sized cars.
I want the SAME space but in SMALLER sized cars.
The space we have now is FINE, and the car sizes are TOO BIG.
STOP MAKING BIGGER CARS!
If we could get standardized and interoperable electric car parts, that’d be great.
Imagine that XKCD competing standards comic here
trying to sell* the idea
You’re complaining like this doesn’t also mean the same space in smaller cars. Improvement is improvement.
They have taken us for fools
Seems really cool. I will definitely not buy the first model vehicle to use this, though.
Surprisingly easy to understand video for a complex concept.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/Nd6C0y8xc20
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
It is made by Hyundai, I wouldn’t touch anything close to cutting edge they make.
I can already see this tech holding a yard sale on the freeway after a pothole.
After owning a Hyundai I won’t touch anything made by Ford or Chevy again. This car has had literally nothing wrong with it for over 70k miles. Except routine maintenance like brakes, oil changes, air filter and tires.
I worked in automotive for years. Hyundai/Kia fail spectacularly in ways no modern car should. Randomly catching fire to the point you are advised to not park inside, engines destroying themselves due to a manufacturing/design error they lied about, a faulty design in the transmission control unit that causes forward and reverse to invert should there be a short in the tail light, thousands of dollars in damage or engine loss due to a failure of a $0.50 motor that is not weatherproofed, among other things.
After the Theta II engines starting blowing up they came out with their 100k mile warranty. That is not a sign of confidence in their product, that is a confidence-man tactic.
If you’re gonna go through all this trouble, why not put motors directly into the wheels? Then you can bypass the drivetrain all together and directly power the wheels.
If you put the motor in the wheel you increase the unsuspended mass. Bad for handling and ride quality
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4 motors is more expensive than 1 motor and a bunch of gears
Do really need need 4?
If you cant get by on 2, you might have less power, but you can get better efficiency. With better efficiency you can have a smaller battery for the same range and reduce some of your increased cost that way.
And also, if one of the wheel motors breaks down will the inevitably obtuse software of the car allow me to drive on three wheels, or will it sit idle until a certified technician arrives and inputs a service code?
We both know the answer to that question. And boy howdy am I stoked for cars to get fully enshittified where you have to have a yearly subscription for the software that allows your tires to move, otherwise you functionally just bought a 45,000 dollar paperweight.
Not a new idea, military trucks used reduction gear drives in the wheels before WWII. Edit: Portal Gears.
One downside to doing this is adding unsprung weight, which is not a good idea.
And it will still need a CV at the wheel to accommodate suspension travel.
You’re right on unsprung weight, this is going to add quite a bit, especially if you fill the thing with oil.
Not sure how you still need a CV though, as this performs that function. Watch the video, there’s a good animation. Basically this is a reduction gear and CV joint in one unit.
Camber. It allows the wheels to tilt allowing them to keep their entire tread on the ground when only one side of the vehicles suspension is compressed, like during a turn.
Ah Good point, I had not considered camber. As it stands this looks like it would probably not be compatible with much camber flex if any.
Also need them to steer the car
I don’t understand how they are going to keep dust and dirt out of it. The point where the drive input goes in has so much movement.
It will have a boot or case on it and will be filled with grease. Just like a cv joint or ball joint.
Then how is it an improvement?
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I cannot think of a car company I’d trust less to do this than Hyundai/Kia.
Somebody better tell them
Hyundai/Kia owners have, in large numbers, told Kia Group about quality issues their cars have. Their usual response is to gaslight everyone until some government agency sues.
No I mean someone better tell them to stop development on the uni wheel because you disapprove
Somebody had* better tell them
So in short, this adds suspension directly to the wheel, at the cost of higher maintenance? That’s it?
While increasing energy efficiency and available space, both of which can be used for extending EV range (by adding more batteries that deplete more slowly) - one of the biggest EV issues right now.
Or you could just fit a mini party bus inside a hatchback, whichever you prefer.
To your point though, one of the othe big EV issues is cost (both purchase and maintenance) - even if a large chunk of it is artificial. Wonder what the price tag and lifespan on these things will be.
EV maintenance cost is quite low compared to ICE vehicles. Brakes and suspension are probably the biggest wear items, but brakes have comparatively less wear because of the regen braking.
Nope - the ~~ADAC ~~ (turns out, i was wrong about that) GDV in Germany did a study a few weeks ago and they found EV maintenance is actually higher, because parts are so much more expensive and also brakes are needed a lot more regularly. However, the last one could be just a german problem, because of our TÜV. Edit: https://www.gdv.de/gdv/medien/medieninformationen/studie-e-autos-sind-bei-der-reparatur-ein-drittel-teurer-als-vergleichbare-verbrenner-155216
The article talks about the cost of “repairs”, not “maintenance”. Those are two different things.
Yeah you have to look at lifetime cost
How are brakes needed more regularly? Most of the braking a normal driver would do is done by the motor(s). Sure, the vehicle is heavier than a similar sized ICE counterpart, but I would guess a typical driver is using one-pedal driving whenever possible. Anecdotally, I have an Ioniq 5 and brake almost exclusively with regen, whether it’s I-pedal, or shifting between the four levels of regen when decelerating from higher speeds.
Because they rust when you not use them and always use regen. And most BEV drivers do not “maintain” their brakes, as they do not brake more vigorously to free the rotors of rust. There’s a limit as to how much wear/grooves your disc can have and at least for many Teslas that’s one of the reasons why they fail their first TÜV check up after 3 years. (Not to mention the horrible quality of Tesla suspension and chassis components…)
Volt owner checking in. I do one pedal driving 95% of the time and you’re right. My brake disks are in rough shape because they see so little use.
You can’t always use regen as it doesn’t stop the car quickly enough in many cases. From my own experience, regen probably gets used about half the time when braking.
Could you link the study? The article I saw last week was just about the quantity of unplanned issues, with the overall cost being much lower for EVs. If you could link it we can compare and see if we’re taking about the same thing.
That study says nothing about maintenance but is about repair cost after accidents. Those are 1/3 higher for EV because also small damages to batteries can increase risk of fire and batteries are also more readily exchanged due to lack of experience of the shops.
Everyone is talking about breaks while the study doesn’t say anything about that.
It’s not suspension. It compacts down the differential and cv joint (linkage from the engine to the wheel).
It compacts the whole drivetrain, from engine to the wheel. The space saving they were showing was mostly from the miniaturization and splitting of the motor.
It’s pretty smart. It is like a wheel-motor but without all the unsprung weight.
Article made it sound like only front wheel drive exists now and that only front wheel drive cars use CV joints lol.
Honestly I don’t care at this point, I won’t buy anything from Hyundai.
I haven’t been paying attention to Hyundai, what did they do?
Locally (Baltimore MD), in the city at least, there’s been a plague of car thefts for a while, specifically of Hyundai and Kia models. I forget the exact details, but there’s a software glitch that basically makes them child’s play to hotwire and roll off with.
A lot don’t have immobilizers (the thing that locks the steering wheel) and you don’t need even need to hot wire, just rip out the guard under the steering wheel and put a USB plug in and turn (the plug fits the hole). It’s pretty bad, and it became more known after TikTok started sharing how easy it was to do.
Immobilisers are electronic chips in the key and ignition that pairs when brought together to allow you to start the car. A steering lock, locks the steering wheel.
And they didn’t really do much of anything to rectify it.
They sent me a claim form for a steering wheel lock. I traded the vehicle in for a Ford
Yeah I had heard about that. What a shit solution
I love this.
It sucks, because they seem to be great reliable economy cars, otherwise, from what I can tell. The fact that they are stolen so easily has kept me from looking into purchasing one.
They’re not very reliable either, but as long as you get rid of it before the 10 year mark when the warranty on the drivetrain expires, they aren’t entirely a bad option if you want something cheap.
Hello fellow Baltimorean!
How can you steer?
This is a Z-drive:
You can rotate the propeller about the vertical axis of the driveshaft running from B to C.
Now, imagine the propeller is your wheel.
