Not Working Like They Used To

First - it’s been a while - I needed some time off after dealing with work and other issues closely related to the subject of this post - dealing with technology and support companies that have gone from providing prompt and competent support from dedicated teams to not even being able to check over your work on an install in less than two days, while the installation instructions for updates reference (now) missing sections and tell you to do things actively harmful to your servers if done in accordance with the directions.

And also - too much has been going on. Friends and family were not directly affected by Helene but that may not be true of Milton. If I wanted to write a bunch of current-day stuff, it would have been easy, but I’d have betrayed my purpose in writing these posts, and just wasn’t able to muster time and focus on games.

Which brings me to the focus of my current thoughts. A rental car.

Specifically a current year Jeep Compass, a “Stellantis” vehicle. A supreme example of how lack of attention to details and lessons learned results in some supreme fuckups.

Assistive Steering

The lane assist tries to warn you when you’re drifting across lane lines without signaling. Of course, it’s not content to do just that, it also tries to provide some corrective steering to coerce you into steering back. While it won’t provide corrective steering if safety systems are in effect - ABS, traction control, and so on - it was happy to do so when I was on damp road and it misread the lane markers because I was in a construction zone. I did not appreciate the feeling of the car trying to go where it wanted instead of where I wanted as the lane shifted.

Start/Stop Mode

Another common gas saving feature. according to the manual it won’t automatically shut down the engine if the A/C is set to MAX, but I don’t usually keep the A/C there, even in 90+ degree weather. Yet I still want the Air Conditioning running on such days.

Guess what shuts off with the engine? And guess what resets every time you start up the vehicle?

Main Info/Entertainment Display

Of the items above they range from mostly annoying to potentially causing handling issues. This is one of the two that really pissed me off.

The whole point of a modern entertainment display is to provide a large surface to show information and to make it easy for the driver to change modes safely with minimum visual attention to where he’s pointing - things much less necessary with a tactile control layout rather than a touchscreen, but I digress. Guess what was clunky and difficult to use?

A display and control system that is unresponsive over multiple presses and slow to respond is a safety hazard as the driver has a hard time even when the car is safely parked figuring out “did I miss the button zone? Did I not press hard enough? Perhaps it’s just slow or a software bug…”

It was the latter. Hooking up via android play or Apple CarPlay worked flawlessly (once you actually managed to switch over, after fighting with it to connect your phone). Anything in the main car system was slow, laggy, and unresponsive.

The Windshield Washer Fluid

Several birds decided to christen the windshield, and we used a lot of washer fluid getting it cleaned off before having a chance to pull over, so with the light coming on we bought a gallon or so to top it back off, and popped the hood.

Item 9 is the cap to the washer fluid, 8 is the battery, and 5 the power distribution center / fuses in the bay.

Or perhaps a better view

Yes, that is the cap and tube for washer fluid a mere few inches to the right of the exposed positive battery terminal, and a few inches forward of the fuse box. The latter wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the exposed wiring and screwed down termination points.

For comparison, a ‘98 Cherokee - the battery is all the way on the other side of the bay:

Compare that to a Honda CRV, a Toyota Corolla, a Ford Focus, or pretty much any car, and the place you pour conductive liquids is nowhere near where it can get splashed on exposed electrical terminals. The closest I’ve seen to this faux pas is on an Outback, where the windshield washer tube is indeed near the battery, but at least on the opposite side from the exposed terminal, and the fusebox is completely covered. Even with that setup very little care is required to prevent wetting the battery terminals even without a funnel one doesn’t pack on flights.

In the End

Some of my complaints here actually have safety implications, such as the dodgy behavior of the lane correction, and are not limited to just this make and model of car. That said, the specific implementations of these aren’t universal and I suspect here specifically the corrective steering torque isn’t mere haptic feedback I’ve seen elsewhere because the manual claims it’s disabled when traction and other safety controls are active. The fact that the motor is designed to cut off, but the AC wasn’t built to work even when the motor is off in hot weather is annoying but stupid. The screen responsiveness issue is less the touchscreen hardware - android/apple auto/play work just fine - but abysmal software, and a safety issue. An interface purportedly designed to allow operation with minimal attention now requires extra attention because the driver cannot be sure the system responded or acknowledged his input.

In the end it’s a pretty enough car but everywhere one turns corners are cut that tell me they don’t fundamentally care. Materials were not the root of most of my complaints with the vehicle. Instead it was shoddy software and bad decisions on implementing features or placing components that experience or people who actually use vehicles living with the consequences would have forestalled.

There’s a lot to be pointed to and it’s not unique to Jeep, or the brand owner Stellantis that has been… struggling. Boeing has notoriously had its difficulties - making the FAA’s statement that SpaceX should adopt their safety and testing culture laughable on its face - and everywhere one turns things just aren’t working as well as they used to. Service and quality in a number of industries has gone downhill. It’s getting more and more difficult to find software, hardware, or other products that simply do what is stated on the tin and does it well. There isn’t one cause. Some of them are at cross purposes even.

A huge part of fixing this can be answered with “skin in the game,” and a word that has been abused the last few decades, “sustainability.”

There is a difference between being invested in a company doing well and making a good product, and merely being invested in a company turning a profit. They have markedly different incentives, and different outcomes for screwing up or screwing people over. The former ties you to the organization, what it provides, its reputation, and its continued existence. The latter, well, you can always jump ship to another company or strip-mine its assets. The love of money may not be the root of all evil, but it certainly is the root of buying out successful companies and ruthlessly milking them, turning them into hollow shells with whatever workforce is still left demoralized or replaced by those with far less experience and tribal knowledge, and a compromised product or pricing scheme that treats customers as sheep to be fleeced, banking on the earned reputation until it, too, is degraded.

There is a difference between a plane manufacturer run by plane guys, and one run by accountants. One creates legends, the other, well, look at how Boeing has been doing the last couple years. And it also doesn’t help that some of the airlines buying their planes are infected with the same attitudes, and cut corners on maintenance and good personnel themselves.

That’s all for now. I’ll be returning to more gaming stuff soon.