I fail to see why I would want this. As others point out, your phone already does this. At this point in time smart home remain a gimmick and I don’t see many go beyond a smart light bulb.
Lights that change over the course of the day, or dim for movie time.
I have a smart plug / air quality monitor that, if it were properly configurable / configured, could power a fan to turn on when air needs to be circulated based on a variety of criteria
I have a wireless speaker setup that I also use as my morning alarm, but that allows me to set a reasonable volume on my speakers and have the same sound throughout the house.
My house is equipped with water sensors that will alert if there’s a leak when I’m out of the house, and can call the custodian to deal with it before it gets bad.
Many people have home security systems and Ring cameras.
Smart homes are alive and well to varying degrees of smartness with smart features.
I actually like the water sensor, and similarly gas sensors. I don’t really virw security cameras as a smart home thing.
Anyway, most people I’ve seen try to create a smart home end up spending a crazy amount of time managing it, while rarely using the stuff. I see it as adding complexity to my home, rather than making it simpler. Want to watch a movie? Close the blinds. Just set the timer on the washing machine, you don’t need it to be internet connected.
Interoptability is still low between manufacturers, price are to high and life time to sort. I was at a Microsoft presentation where they happily told us that their IOT OS woul get 10 years of security updates, great, but that it the absolute minimum I would expect for something like appliances, and no where near what I would demand for something built into my house.
It’s a gimmick because you need to interested in managing it and keeping it updated, which I am not. There’s enough complexity in our life, let’s not add more.
"One thing made by us will be able to control one thing made by us, so you should buy everything from us."
No. Put a general web browser in the car, make the devices controllable over the web by any general web browser, and you've got something much more useful.
Not even that. The phone is the center of our lives, so it really only needs to be on our phones (if people even care about IoT--this is an open question).
This is Mercedes Benz taking its internal worldview that the car is the center of our lives, making product decisions based on that, and trying to get people to buy into that worldview.
Ideally, one that isn't irreversably entangled in the CAN bus! So it can easily be upgraded to something that isn't as awful as nearly all auto mfg infotainment attempts, or isn't obsolete when the mfg doesn't bother with software updates to maintain compatibility with carplay updates, or high quality audio for audiophiles, or aftermarket infotainment with tactile knobs and buttons for us old farts who like to keep our eyes on the road while we're driving.
And letting customers buy lower-tier packages and install upgrades themselves? Or avoiding your car looking old after 3 years? Why? That’s the inly purpose. The only “innovation point” left for auto makers is features so they scramble year after year to show the latest trick sacrificing quality to balance the costs.
>The only “innovation point” left for auto makers is features so they scramble year after year to show the latest trick sacrificing quality to balance the costs.
Of course the latest gimmicks are a big part of why you'd buy a S-class, but it's not like the basics like seats and suspension haven't seen significant improvements generation after generation.
A great example would be the rear wheel steering they just introduced, not at all a gimmick.
I don't think sane people are shopping for a new car every 3 years because their "infotainment" looks old. Such features IMHO are for the comparison shoppers who will compare competing cars side by side and can be pushed either way by tiniest gimmicks.
There’s a valuable segment of car buyers who do change cars every 2, 3, or 4 years to always have the newest features. They often lease and are influenced in their overall decisions by the fact that cars do change. “I can’t have the old-looking tail lights and grill!”
Manufacturers almost surely tailor some of their product plans with this in mind.
Sure, people who lease will get a new car every time the lease term is up, but I am skeptical they do it for the new gadgets. It looks like that not having to care about maintenance and wear&tear as well as financial incentives are the major reasons to lease. Besides, the cars being leased are mostly expensive ones, with OTA software updates, why manufacturers would do that if their plan was to make you buy a new car for the new features?
Well, one of the(but definitely not the main) reasons why I replaced my perfectly functional 2016 Mercedes Benz was that my model missed the ability to have Android Auto/CarPlay by literally 2 weeks of production. It was impossible to add later without an extremely expensive head unit replacement.
Absolutely. Any money put into modifications like these is essentially lost, you won't get even a fraction of it back when it comes to time to sell the car. The modified head unit plus labour to fit it was worth about 9 months of payments on that car, so doing it would have been nuts.
So your German car depreciated less than 9 month of payments (supposedly on a 60 month loan with little down?) after being used? That's not my experience with German autos, was it some A-B Klasse that they don't sell in the US?
GLA45 AMG, 4 year PCP, £400/month. I have actually beaten the depreciation by about £4000 at the end of the contract, sold the car and was left with a massive chunk of money to put towards the next car. Buying the head unit would have effectively wiped all of that money out because its value on sale would have been exactly zero(in fact it would have been negative, as the car would have been now modified which has to be reported to insurers increasing your premium and putting off potential buyers).
It was absolutely not worth doing, in any conceivable scenario, not at the price Mercedes wanted for it.
But once again, like I said in my first post - this wasn't anywhere near the main reason for changing the car, but I would lie if I said I wasn't looking forward to finally having access to Android Auto.
I am still uncertain how your calculus work. In the US, at least, if you buy a car and sell it the same day you are still out of sales tax (depends on location), various fees and the depreciation due to not having a clean title. On German cars this is about 20% of the cost (again, depends on location). I am sure a CLA45 (I suppose you mean that, not GLA) head unit with labor is less than $10K you'd lose on selling a $50K car (as you said, 9 payments of 400 pounds). So, as it seems, it could not be a possible reason for a sane person (lose 10K vs lose 4K + some insurance premiums in the range of few hundred bucks over the life of the car).
No, a GLA45 - not sure why there's confusion, as a matter of fact I know a GLA45 is available in the US as well?
And.....well, I can present my maths clearer, sure. But I think you're missing the part where I said I had the car since 2016 - so obviously got 4 years of use out of it. Had I sold it day one then sure, I can't beat the depreciation. But assuming a well structured finance agreement you(with some luck) beat the depreciation around year 2-3. By year 4 you should be able to sell the car with some "profit" for yourself unless something bad happened.
I don't know the equivalent financial product in the US, but here in UK I had what's called a PCP - personal contract purchase. It means that the bank loans you money for a car, you buy it, it's in your name(not owned by the bank, it's not a lease), but you pay off what the bank assumes will be the depreciation over 4 years, and then after 4 years you can make the final "lump sum" payment of whatever remains and that's it, or you return the vehicle to the bank and pay nothing more. So it's in some ways similar to lease, but in some ways it's better(the car is always yours from the start so you are always free to sell it at any point without asking your bank for permission).
So in my specific case, I was paying £400 a month for 4 years, then the "lump sum" payment at the end of the PCP was set at £20k. I have reached the end of my agreement, but found a buyer willing to pay me £24k for the car - so I sold it to them, paid off the bank, and was left with a nice £4k in my account(which I then used to purchase another vehicle).
Now, MB UK wanted £3600 for fitting the new head unit(it was a lot of electical stuff in the car that would have to be replaced, tons of labour). Had I paid for it, that alone would have wiped off what I made/saved on selling the car at the end. It would have been(financially) an incredibly bad investment, as like I said, the value of such mod is zero or less.
And(once again, for the 3rd time), this wasn't a reason to swap. I have and am losing money on the next vehicle that is currently standing in my driveway. But certainly a lot less than on fitting a new headunit to my previous Benz.
My bad, I checked Costco website for the price and they only list GLA 250 trim in the GLA model, sorry about that.
> And(once again, for the 3rd time), this wasn't a reason to swap.
So why did you bring it up as a reason to swap? Obviously people lease or whatever their cars and get new cars after 3 years and the new cars have new features how does it contradict my point that people do not sell their cars for the gimmicks?
>>Well, one of the(but definitely not the main) reasons
I made a list of reasons - like, I'd like a car that uses less fuel. Car that doesn't wake up the neighberhood when I start it. Car that can actually take some shopping from IKEA. These were the main reasons for a swap. But obviously, there is a secondary list to this - car that doesn't have a shit audio system. Car that has comfortable seats.
Somwhere on that list is a car that has android auto support.
All of this has contributed to me swapping. But logically thinking, there was nothing wrong with the car - I could have just paid it off and kept it. It's very specifically not a lease so I don't have to hand the car back after 4 years, keeping it(either by paying it off or refinancing) is actually an option.
I think what I am saying is that the lack of something like android auto(in a scenario where it cannot be easily retroffited) can and does contribute to a decision to change the entire car - it's not just a stupid tech gimmick that no one cares about as some much earlier comments were trying to suggest.
Well, logically thinking, if you were completely satisfied with the car except for Android Auto and owned the car ( really owned, not PCP or whatever where you actually owe money to the bank and the car is a collateral on that loan) would you sell it? If not then can you really count it as a reason? This word implies it's a sufficient condition, but I am not in UK and not even native English speaker, so I might be wrong here.
And just FYI - you don't have to hand over a leased car, at least in the US, you can pay it off and keep it.
Dude, you're focusing on this one point too much. Yes, reasons can add up. No, a reason doesn't have to be sufficient on its own. The car having uncomfortable seats, loud exhaust or no android Auto are not a reason to swap cars alone, but in aggregate they are.
Like, think about houses - a small bedroom, noisy neighbour and no fast internet are probably no reasons to move houses on their own - if you told someone you moved houses just because your neighbour was loud people would think you're weird. But when you start listing other reasons in addition to that, people understand. Same for relationships(small reason to leave add up), changing employment or even changing your phone - once the list of reasons for changing is long enough, you make the jump, you can finish justify it to yourself.
And FYI - in UK you can't keep a lease, that's specifically the difference between a lease and a purchase contract. I'm also not a native English speaker so apologies for perhaps not explaining things clearer.
Dude, you returned a leased car (like 99% of people who lease) and then decided it would be a great argument to support somebody who believes that car manufacturers add gimmick features to the cars so people change them like cellphones.
I honestly forgot what the argument was about at this point. I thought it was me saying that the lack of android auto contributed to my decision to change the car. I don't recall supporting anyone, but then again it was a long time ago now.
'Need' is not the right word, since cars without any of this nonsense work just fine. You could perhaps argue the car itself is a luxury that isn't needed, but smartphone integration certainly isn't needed in any sense.
Homeassistant is opensource, controlls a bunch of different gadgets/smartdevices/switches/..., gets data from a bunch of different gadgets/sensors/smart devices, and has a bunch of apps using it's API.
Honestly, I only buy stuff, if I can integrate it into homeassistant (without using the devices cloud services)... sometimes that means soldering + flashing tasmota, but in the end, I get it to work.
Can't we just go back to plain, old cars and just add a simple, straightforward integration with your smartphone? The whole infotainment crap is a sure way to make your (otherwise perfectly functioning car) feel obsolete in 3 years. Not to mention that manufacturers will surely try to force you into some subscription to keep everything running.
What we need is modularity. For all of my cars so far I have upgraded the radio to support Bluetooth audio. I don't really need anything else. So far I've been able to choose from a wide variety of aftermarket head units or OEM units from other models. The aftermarket units are usually possible with an adapter to make it look nice, but it's not strictly necessary. I get the feeling the interfaces are reverse engineered, though.
When I see new car systems they look like a nightmare to upgrade. Maybe you'll be lucky and someone reverse engineers the interface but maybe not.
Many parts on cars do have standard sizes, but many do not. It would be nice if there was something like the ATX standard for cars. But maybe it would make cars cost twice as much and be less efficient? Who knows.
The answer is no. There was an article about this topic stating that German car makers are more than 5 years behind Tesla. This is not only software design, but also the overall architecture of the car with so so so many ECUs from so so so many different manufacturers making competing in software features and software updates impossible for traditional makers.
What we see there is yet another legacy vs. new tech phenomenon that we see in so many other industries - from telcos to neo-banks.
