A good car design shouldn’t require any writing or screens at all. It’s not safe to have drivers read while driving, or to assume the drivers language. The vintage 80s and older Volvos I have owned, where just looking them over is a masterclass in highly usable minimalist design, had almost zero writing anywhere, and all the controls were high quality mechanical switches with clear drawings that made them universally understandable to speakers of any language, and usable without taking your eyes off the road.
If Volvo wants to restore their image they should bring back a modern reinterpretation of the iconic 240, with the same level of usability, quality, and design language and absolutely no screens anywhere.
I was recently in a friend’s Tesla model 3 for the first time and all the buttons on the doors simply had a dash “-“ on them. No information about what they were for at all. Same dash for opening the windows and the opening the door. But no indication of which was which.
If the Volvo 240 is an example of elegant functional and minimalist design, the Tesla Model 3 is something close to the exact opposite of that- almost every aspect is sloppily ill conceived and overly complicated, with essential functions that should be accessible in an instant without taking your eyes off the wheel hidden down menus on a touch screen. Saving a single dollar on a physical button at the expense of your safety.
Dunno why you’re being downvoted but I can’t think of four better reasons to not buy a vehicle, despite them being obvious leaders in EV tech, at least in the past.
I'm quite sure it's mostly because of the last reason. HN is full of the apologists.
But I'm also not sure if they're leaders in EV tech - they definitely used to be and I think Tesla broke the EV into a mainstream, made this a viable choice.
Yeah, they seem way behind, the fact that VAG (VW/Audi/Porsche) had 800v systems on production cars so many years before them is embarrassing for a company that being ahead of the tech curve is supposed to be their whole thing.
Also crazy that there are so many fascism apologists in the hacker community nowadays, given the proudly weird, subversive, inclusive, and anti-authoritarian roots of hacker culture and computer science. Our community needs to come together to be as unwelcoming as possible to Nazis. They should not just be unwelcome but afraid- hackers can find out who they are and out them personally and professionally so they can never work in tech again.
Inclusiveness is a social contract, it does not extend to people that make harming others their purpose.
It's called "Hacker News" but it's full of "Silicon Valley bros", and as far as I know, SV was originally hackers, but then someone noticed there's money to be made in the industry, and SV became attractive for money-and-power-hungry types. And HN too. Too many FAANG employees here preferring their 6-figure paychecks over morality...
There's movies as an art form, and there's movies as a vehicle to make money (Marvel, Star Wars, etc, etc franchises, anyone?)...
If Volvo wants to restore their image they should bring back a modern reinterpretation of the iconic 240, with the same level of usability, quality, and design language and absolutely no screens anywhere.