The car industry A/B tested selling a car with and without CarPlay

Telluride/Palisade causing fires because they cheaped out on the current/torque sensors in the drive motors for the seats.

ICCU failures across their current EV platforms. No fix planned last I heard.

It hurts me to point this out because I really, REALLY like where their cars are going. Their new van is EXACTLY what we want, and I'd love an Ioniq 5N.

But those failures are critical and speak to a very deep engineering culture issue.

They apparently even took plans, detailed documentation, endless amounts of information to Hyundai. I'm not sure of the veracity of that information, but it sure explains how Hyundai became incredibly good, literally overnight.

They used to be a joke.

Some of these cars (older Kia Souls, for example) become a great value if you implement the countermeasures, and also because they have a lower cost of repairs than some Hondas and Toyotas.

I learned this because I seemed to find cars that had few problems that had nonetheless been given up for salvage. What I found was that if a stolen car is not recovered quickly enough, insurance will pay the (properly-insured) owner an amount close to the replacement value of the car; they may then recover the car later in the same shape it was stolen in other than a broken window, door handle and steering column cover. They then put it up for auction even though it would be better financially to work with a dealer or fleet network to cherry pick these high value cars that only need some simple fixes.

For example, my $2,220 bid won a 2015 Kia Soul+ (49K miles) at auction that a dealer had sold for ~$12,000 some months previous. Bidding competition was light primarily because of the "easily stolen" and "likely to burn oil" issues. But with fees and a few cheap repairs, I got a $12,000 dealer-prepped car for under $4,500. I added remote start, Android Auto and a backup camera, gave it a little ceramic spray coating and got a nice car for my wife.

I also threw in a fake $12 steering wheel lock bar as a deterrent. (It's a real bar, but I don't lock it because the "unable to unlock the cheap lock" risk is to me a more likely hassle than a broken window). I considered adding an immobilizer, but the car was stolen with one installed, and I could always add a switch to the battery under the hood in case better-prepared thieves than the "hoping for an easy hotwire" type show up.

I love digging into questions and seeing where they lead; this all started with a vague sense that dealers made a lot of money on a high volume of used cars via auction houses, and trying to learn how it worked. This also leads me to argue with AI quite a bit, and until recently, made the idea of AI "thinking" kind of laughable due to its many mistakes once you start following the chain of reasoning.

Similarly how every former reputable consumer electronic brand from 'The West' that sells consumer stuff today like Philips, GE, Thompson, Blaupunkt, Gigaset, etc is now just a brand label for a Chinese consortium that's fully designed and made in China with zero employees in their original western roots.

I think we might be coloring it as we’d like it to be, though. Only rarely does it end in brand death, more often they just get a bad reputation then keep going, sometimes not even less profitably. I think the intent might be more along the lines of recalibrating to a lower expectation of consumer discernment or rationality.

Oh wait was I not supposed to say that out loud?

Ask that 79% of car buyers if they would forego carplay for a $10-20k discount.

If the software is as good as Tesla's, I have no need for CarPlay. Having to buy from a dealership and spend a few hours there, having to pay monthly for software features like maps/remote start/phone key, and having to deal with ICE stuff ended up being far bigger issues.

Driving a Model 3, I disagree - having seats and basically everything else adjust as soon as you open the door is the biggest boon I can imagine. I totally wish the rearview mirror would adjust as well…

"What is the royalty associated with MFi accessories? This information is only available under NDA. You will be able to review this information once your application for the MFi License has been approved."

https://mfi.apple.com/faqs

Even “good” infotainment (tesla) is inferior to CarPlay in many ways, because it’s not your phone. You don’t get your maps app with everything magically synced and working.