I wish there were software interfaces that let users enjoy the "soft"ness software can bring. I'd way rather be able to try out & maybe build my own apps for different car functions. I'd like control via other devices. I'd like to share control with other people & their devices when they're in the vehicle.
It was posed as a negative thing, but the "Jeep hack" of 2015 (affecting a much broader range of vehicles highlighted what a simple capable powerful bus underlies the car. It's just a DBus compatible interface for a huge range of the cars functions. Just exposing that would massively tip the balance back towards letting people have actual agency & control over their vehicles.
Ideally though we'd all get full root access to the Linux computer or computers running multi-seat In Vehicle Infotainment (IVI) to boot. So we can work these computers as we might. And ideally upgrade or replace the brains as we desire too.
If we want a really high tech transportation system it will be vastly more feasible in a greenfield city design that is a somewhat radical departure from typical assumptions.
Instead of 3000-4000 pound 7-10 passenger vehicles which more often than not carry one occupant, most vehicles should be very small and single passenger. So decrease the size of the vehicles by 10X.
These vehicles should not share the same physical space with pedestrians. Especially not in the current scenario where physics ensures severe injury or death in the event of a collision at any speed.
Vehicles should be fully autonomous. They should not need to drag their fuel around but rather have electricity supplied wirelessly.
There should be multiple levels of infrastructure so that even in dense areas you can be delivered almost door to door.
I have a lot of other ideas. Such as, buildings should be public megastructures designed to provide infrastructure for modular smaller buildings inside, with some open spaces and landscaping as well as reconfigurability. They would not need to provide a perfectly climatized space but try to make the baseline more comfortable.
Wireless electricity?
Been reading some of those nutty Tesla books again?
He was brilliant .. but not everything he wrote is feasible/smart :)
One man's "needless feature" is another man's "can't-live-without-it functionality"
Why doesn't every car:
- stop collecting and reporting my data to the manufacturer
- offer full diagnostic readouts of trouble codes
- come with one or more docking bays to mount and wireless charge phones
- come with a router for all occupants to share a powerful car based hotspot
- offer a manual transmission
- showcase my fuel efficiency rather than my rpms (who needs a giant rpm gauge anymore?)
- come with airplane style passenger monitors tied to individual phones
- support phone based entry and start
- support find my car
- include E-ZPass or equivalent
- stop micro-transactions
- allow self repair
The things I do like about my cars are:
- 5k or 15k miles between services
- backup cameras
- integrated mapping
- remembers my seat and mirror preferences
- AWD when I need/want it
- most people don't want (or need) a manual transmission - automatics are just plain better (as much fun as driving a manual can be, for ~97.3% of driving (even in a stick-shift), you're only in one gear anyway
- haven't seen a car that doesn't show (or offer to show) current mpg in probably 15 or more years
- the last thing we need are more screens that can have issues
- phone-based entry and start ... sounds good - until you forget your phone. Or replace your phone. Or want to loan your car to a friend.
- self-repair is "allowed" on pretty much any vehicle ... but no sane person wants to do most repair because it's neither time- nor cost-effective
Edit: unflagged, the intersection of these topics is really important after all and it was probably my own emotional response that made me flag this... thinking about this topic makes me tired and sometimes angry, but it comes up almost every day in some form.
