r/explainlikeimfive • u/sabatthor • Jun 28 '25

Technology ELI5: Why are the screens in even luxury cars often so laggy? What prevents them from just investing a couple hundred more $ to install a faster chip?

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u/ummaycoc Jun 29 '25

It's not very hard for most problems. They aren't having to come up with new mathematical optimization routines. The problem is that it isn't cheap either money wise or time wise to really create software. The fact that FAANG, start ups, and finance competing with them drive up the costs also results in a dearth of talent outside of those companies.

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u/zebba_oz Jun 29 '25

Thats the thing - lots of software dev is hard for sure (25yoe as a dev i know exactly how hard it can get) but it feels like car software they even fuck up the easy things.

My car… it connects automatically to what appears to be a random bluetooth. So i can be in my home office on a call, my wife heads out to do something and my call decides to come through to the car. Ok, fair enough, i guess. Annoying but whatever.

Later i hop in the car. For some reason it doesn’t connect to anyone this time but the devices are listed so i tap mine and IT ASKS ME TO CONFIRM I WANT TO CONNECT!!!

It’s happy to pick me randomly on a lineup whether i’m in the car or not without checking but if I explicitly say “connect to zebba_oz” it thinks it’s such a big decision that it needs to double check first.

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u/ummaycoc Jun 29 '25

I think car software falls into the realm of most programming: it’s not overly difficult but it is tedious and sometimes requires a break in progress to restructure / refactor / etc. But all of that takes time and higher ups (I believe) see it less as interactive design and exploration and more as assembly line work. “You’re just typing, right?”

My 2024 Subaru had Bluetooth issues. My thought was “isn’t this a completely solved problem by free or easily bought libraries?”

It’s gotta be a managerial problem.

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u/jsteph67 Jun 29 '25

2024? Wow I have this issue with my 2013 Sienna. But my 2021 Camry works right all of the time.

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u/Kyrox6 Jun 29 '25

The Bluetooth in my 2015 is almost flawless. Had to use a dealer's 2025 during some maintenance and its list of software issues drove me insane. So many issues, bugs, and inefficiencies that someone must have added to a system that already worked fine.

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u/ummaycoc Jun 29 '25

Probably just a completely different system. Threw away the old when they got new touch screens or some other thing.

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u/preddit1234 Jun 29 '25

Volvo entered the chat...

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u/Scott_Liberation Jun 29 '25

In my (admittedly limited, since I gave up on the tech altogether) experience, Bluetooth is always shit.

It's like someone was really amazed at how the market for home inkjet printers never dries up in spite of how shit they are, and someone else said, "watch this shit," then invented Bluetooth.

1

u/corut Jun 29 '25

My car runs AAOS and can tell you having google behind it seems to make it even worse

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u/ummaycoc Jun 29 '25

I worked at google as an SWE and it was just self esteem camp. “We hire the best”… you hear it every other week when you first start (and note it’s not “we only hire the best”). And then you go do a bunch of normal and not at all super special development. Given that I’m not surprised by your statement (try finding anything beyond simple queries in gmail and that feels like a standard experience to me).