One look and you can see it’s built for people who are more concerned about engine performance than what speed they’re actually travelling at. People on racetracks or Autobahns, for example. Great big tachometer in the middle, smaller speedometer off to the right.
Once upon a time Volvo drivers did not want ‘quirky’. There were Saabs for that. 
Seems Volvo is now aping the quirky Mini.
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Please excuse me for playing Devil’s advocate here for a moment.
That’s nice, but it drives up the cost for things like, oh, head lamps.
(Granted, those are most likely the fancy-pants LED assemblies, but still…)
And frankly, putting all that crap on the same CAN bus? with no firewalling or barriers between them? Do I really need the radio to have access to the ECM? or the head lights? I sure as fuck would not want anything that reaches out to the internet to have direct, unfettered access to the ECM, especially when the vehicle is doing 65+ down the freeway.
Sure it simplifies the wiring, but at what cost?
THIS. Even if it’s an LED, why should turn signals be on a CAN bus? Or headlights? or taillights? It just makes replacement parts more expensive, add complexity where it’s not needed, and causes more problems then it might solve.
That is smexy. what make/model is it?
Friend, you are merging the Heart Of Gold’s radio controls (the hand motion activated controls) with Disaster Area’s Sun Diver ship (which had everything in black due to the status of it’s owner.) (And a half coke for @sqlrob as I was differentiating the two a bit more cleanly.)
On which make and model of car? Are you absolutely certain that’s the same command for every single vehicle using a touchscreen control? /sarcasm
FTFY. 
Indeed: Volvos were, at least up to 2000/2001 when I rented one for a week, mostly boring, boxy affairs that were very practical, if not sexy. (my rental one had heated seats and I got spoiled from that, though…)
And the rant you probably knew was coming:
Call me a grump, call me an old fart, call me crotchity, but I neither need or want a friggen tablet in my car where all the controls have zero haptic feedback. GIVE. ME. TACTILE. BUTTONS. DAMMIT!!!
I’ll put up with a small screen for a back up camera, but I draw the line at having things like the fan or heating/cooling controls (and EVERYTHING that the driver uses to actually operate the car, like light switches, hazard lights, and volume controls) all parked in a nested menu of shit on a tablet that I have to look at in order to figure out if I’ve just pushed the “turn fan on” softkey, or the ‘turn the car off, lock all the doors, and lock all four wheels up’ softkey. Especially when I’m tooling down one of the more twisty parts of I-17 in the mountainous areas of Arizona and the nearest help is a 7 hour one way trip after I’ve flown off the road… /Excessive, heavy-handed, ‘beat you about the head and chest’ sarcasm
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1972 Porsche 911T Targa. Belonged to Ewan McGregor who was selling it.
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IMO the whole UX profession has a lot to answer for. They supposedly do ‘testing’, and then come up with shitty designs that violate fundamental principles of UI that were established by researchers at companies like Apple 30 years ago. (Oh - and that includes ^#$# Apple.)
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Well most cars now have a ‘lock rear windows’ switch under the driver’s control and many now also have sensors that will stop the window closing if any resistance is felt.
I once met the guy who designed the curves into more modern Volvos, but that was 20-ish years ago when Volvo was still Volvo (and they still made proper estate cars). Extremely interesting and talented chap. What was fascinating was the ‘design language’ or ‘character’ that was carried through from the boxes to the curvy versions.
Great rant, by the way.
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In Soviet Russia, buttons reach out and touch you?
I’m still glad that drive-by-wire is still illegal. I do not want my brakes controlled by electronics, thank you very much!
From the movie Crazy People, which satirized 80s advertising:
We know they’re not sexy. This is not a smart time to be sexy anyway, with so many new diseases around.
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Yes and.
No power?
No control: no touchscreen.
Heaven forfend that we need to control some thing that may save our life, save someone else’s life, in the event of a full shutdown, literally powerless situation.
Reflash the computer?
Find the right fuse? Pull it then put it back?
Replace it?
Ye gods I am unloving this timeline.
Et tu, Volvo?
I had a 240 DL wagon, 440 turbo sedan, etc. Was thinking of the Volvo EV at some point. But not now!
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I’ve had a car with a broken speedometer. You can absolutely know your speed based on the tachometer reading for any particular gear. Those police “you are speeding” rigs will help you calibrate for your particular vehicle.
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Oh indeed.
I meant that for the driver of this car, “how fast am I going, exactly?” doesn’t seem to be as important a question as “can I go faster in this gear without blowing up the engine?”
So, not a full-time commuter car. 
I love the look.
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Wow… it’s almost like the people who write on the main page of BB are not carbon copies of each other, but they all have their own POVs and interests… But that can’t be right? 
/s
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They sell a billion of the goddamn phones, and so many things about them are just awful. I swear Jony Ive simply shouldn’t be allowed near software. Removing every goddamn affordance in the entire GUI? Taking my lock the damn phone button off the top, and putting it on the side opposite the volume control buttons? I’ve taken so many accidental screenshots because of that. Complicating the UI to the point that you have to add a slash gesture just for room or more controls? I could rant for hours. I have ranted for hours about this. Grrrrrr!
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I do not see hypocrisy here.
I personally like the fancy features and google maps and the like, and I like to be able to change the radio station or mute the audio or turn up/down/on/off the air conditioning without having to look at the console.
Both of these things are true, and both of these preferences are valid.
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Wait what?
My understanding is that my Bolt has blended braking where it will use regenerative braking first, until pressing the brake pedal is asking to slow the car more/faster than the regenerative is able to and then it will engage the friction brakes. In all driving modes, not just one pedal mode.
I guess I don’t really know how it manages the connections from the brake pedal to the various components. Just that pressing the brake pedal doesn’t mean the friction brake will engage.
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CX-3 , did not work.
I’ve looked into ‘hacked’ firmware versions of the systems - minor menu-navigation improvements but still the same clunky Mazda crap as before. Plus bricking your vehicle is no laughing matter.
A piece of cardboard and a duct-tape hinge is the simplest solution.
Also navigation in a car these days is as useful as a Polaroid for a dashcam, updates are expensive and unless you pay for vehicle connectivity you don’t get info on traffic volumes and road closures. Total ripoff.
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Some production vehicles, including the 6600-lb Cybertruck, are 100% steer-by-wire and have no physical connection between the steering wheel and the wheels. Apparently they can get away with that legally due to some redundant systems but I definitely wouldn’t want to be driving one of those (or be in its path) if there was a freaky solar flare or whatever. And if the battery somehow goes totally dead while you’re driving on a mountain road, it won’t be the only thing going dead.
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I should have specified, that’s for the gen4 3. I checked and that turns off the music too, so perhaps not useful in any event.
Agreed re nav. I’ve switched to using iOS Maps these days. The only feature I like about the Mazda nav is the turn-by-turn instructions show up on the HUD, but even that’s not enough to make me switch.
At least we still have some buttons. Drilling down menus to do things that should feel intuitive like changing mirror angles or air temps is beyond dumb. It’ll be interesting to see if Mazda continues to fight that trend with their future EVs.
