Technology

I've been watching a lot of car reviews lately and yeah, I think you're right on all points. I watched a review of the new BMW 7 series and even the air control vents are capacitive sensors refer than little levers and it just seems unnecessary. What was hilarious was that the door release is right by the air vent control, so the review I watched saw the reviewer accidentally open the door when they were trying to control the air vent.

There's way way way too much reliance on touch screens in cars. I'm not even sure if you'd legally be allowed to use them in some countries, I feel like you'd have to pull over to just change the HVAC settings! You'd swear it was designed by someone that's never driven a car. They're decisions that are probably coming right from the top and the actual interior designers are pulling their hair out.

There's also a common theme across manufacturers where settings for features are lost when the car is switched off. So you have to go into the settings and change them back every single time you get into the car.

If I were in the market for a car (specifically electric), I'd probably go for Kia. The ev6 and ev9 look really nice. I've seen a couple of EV9s on the road recently and I was surprised at how much smaller they actually seem than on videos.

Like you though we're going to keep our car (Nissan Quashqai) as long as possible. There's no bullshit and it's practical and comfortable.

Those grills are going to be modder meme material, they are basically ai designed grills anyway. Think cartoonesque, Roger rabbit ultra-exaggerated grills with detail highlighted.

Haha are you me?!

I’ve just got a Landrover Defender 2023 (75th) and was so glad is just had buttons for everything. I had a touch screen but other than navigation no need to touch it. Even optional analog dials instead of digital.

Was looking at the van equivalent of the new mercedes (v-class) but same ipad horror on the inside. Glad some brand are reversing this silly phase.

And was long time BMW driver before that but I quit 5 series before electric and the hideous grills. Such a shame.

Lul, yeah. (And with a dash of subjective beauty standards + stuff like how the design is gonna & then actually does age - like I can tell which good looking new Alfa Romeo will age horribly as a design, and which not ... or like when manufactures keep too many old-gen equipment/parts though new designs, like how Mercedes milked their models in the previous decade.)

And then there are some brands that produced like one good looking model, just to prove they could, but then immediately continue with only ugly ones & refuse to elaborate on the matter.

It feels like the car has finally had as much love poured into it as they do their 911s. People should watch Engineering Explained’s technical overview of it, it’s staggering how much they’ve improved it.

This one?

But Porsche is somewhat niche anyway, they’re not enough to make the overall German car market look better.

I wouldn't mind the dominant VAG-internal top-down trickle moving from Audi->VW to Porsche->VW.

Also for the record Porsches are about as common in Germany as Teslas. More common than Mazda or Mitsubishi. Granted, about 50% of those are Cayennes and Macans so that Bildungsbürger mums can drive Anne-Luisa to the farmer's market.

Look at how long people thought Skoda was a crappy brand for!

Because it was, until the Czech moved from "VW but with less fuss, a proper Slav doesn't need no fancy stuff but a workhorse" to "Eh the Wolfsburg guys are getting too crappy let's get Bohemian". It's all VAG in the end but the brands do have their pride and independence.