It would be worth it if it stopped that stupid warning that pops up on the screen every time you get in the car. Also, I now know why the Honda’s software is so buggy. (Half kidding).
Yeah, one of the things enabled by that link is a thing which automatically confirms that warning so you don’t need to deal with it.
For VW family vehicles, there are tools that allow you to access the car’s firmware via the OBD II port; you can do all sorts of easy and not so easy things, from changing how windows or lights work to some serious re-coding of stuff that you might not be really up to.I am sure that similar tools exist (hardware and software packages, usually) for pretty much every car now. It’s related to, but not identical to, the way the flash the ECU to give you more performance (at a price, of course; beyond what you pay for the flash, running your components above what they are specced for is always a “pay to play” risk, sort of like overclocking).
I don’t know if it was Apple’s fault, but the warning wouldn’t dismiss itself when I had Car Play on. I couldn’t see it, but it was still active and it would completely lock up the console’s controls until it was dismissed (the Home button would still work thankfully).
I really hated that whole center console by the end of my year with the Civic. All those silly touch controls and not enough real buttons and dials. Oh and in the summer, since the drink holder shelf thingy doesn’t lock in place, the heat would make it slide really easy. Have a drink in it and accelerate too hard and the whole drink thing goes sliding back until your drink hits the arm rest. Not a problem really unless your drink is very full and/or the lid is high enough its not the part striking the arm rest. So many bad design decisions by Honda in that car.
I don’t really mind the console’s lack of dials, given the steering wheel has controls for basically everything.
I like the center arm rest storage, but haven’t had any issues with the cup holder thing being loose. It’s fairly tightly set in there and requires a decent amount of force to slide back and forth.
No experience with apple car play, but Android auto works fine, which is really the only thing i ever have on the console screen.
I don’t eat or drink in my car. That solves any issues with cup holders.
So we need more detail, is this because you take nothing but short driving trips? Do you work somewhere that has food provided for you, so you eat while at work?
I mean I walk from the house into my vehicle, start it up, and am already reaching for my ice tea/water/fizzy beverage.
Oh, it’s definitely my idiosyncratic lifestyle, not a supercilious condemnation of anyone else’s habits. I drive maybe 8000 miles a year, almost all of it in short trips of like twenty miles total to and from work. When I had real commutes, two or three hours each way, I would definitely eat and drink, as I would on long trips back in the day. But I never liked eating in the car, even then.
I drive a stick shift, too, and though after many decades of driving a clutch I know how to juggle food and shifting, I prefer not to.
I’m the same way. For me, it was the realization that no matter how damn careful I was (or my passengers), little crumbs are going to fall, and spills will happen. And when you have a nice car, that will not be tolerated!
I mean, my current car is 21 years old, and I still won’t eat or drink in it.
Then again, I do let the dogs ride in it. But really, they are cleaner and more considerate than most of my friends were back in the day.
Audi’s CEO has just been arrested due to a high risk of tampering with evidence.
Why is it that the best cars come from the sleaziest companies. Sigh.
Shit, can’t we just give them all a pass, just this one time? The only ones who are really going to feel the monetary punishments handed out are the consumers who love the cars these companies produce. Those costs just get passed down.
Well, these companies committed pretty egregious offenses, not only in terms of environmental impact but in terms of sheer, breathtaking arrogance in their disregard for the rule of law. And they did them knowingly and with malice aforethought, as it were. Corporations are already so arrogant and full of themselves that it takes a nuclear option to get them to pay attention, sadly.
I hope this was a joke.
On some level, VW’s impressive in their ability to engineer a solution that detected it was being monitored and totally shift how its powertrain functioned.
In other news, took the civic for its first long trip, around 350 miles, and it pulled around 36 mpg, which was cool. Higher actually, that’s just what the average is currently for the total time owned.
It started out that way, but as I typed the first sentence, I got depressed, thinking that the second part is true. So while I don’t think that they should get a pass, I don’t really think these monetary fines hurt them as much as they do us. But that’s just the cynic in me. I really don’t have any idea how all this works. In the past, it seems like every time I watch a big corporation get into trouble, they seem to bounce back just fine. The cynic in me I guess just assumes that the customer picks up the tab in the form of higher prices.
Maybe - the auto industry is still quite competitive, and not everyone cheated. It’s possible that VW could get away with raising their prices, but I’m not sure that’s a winning strategy.
Or if not the customers, then their workers, or the quality of the components. In my mind, corporations will do anything they can to pass shit like this down to someone else.
Again though, that’s just my cynicism. I’m not basing that on anything I know as fact.