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122 points kcon | 3 comments | | HN request time: 0.795s | source

Nissan's official mobile app for their LEAF electric car doesn't have a widget for quickly checking the car's battery charge status on your phone's home screen, so for a fun side project I decided to make my own using free tools like GitHub Actions, Appium, Tailscale, and Apple Shortcuts.
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jdminhbg ◴[] No.43678012[source]
Nobody wants to hear it in 2025 but this is one of the reasons Tesla is still a much better experience than most of the legacy car manufacturers. Car People like to think of apps as a weird Tech People affectation, but in actual day-to-day usage, they're invaluable.
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serial_dev ◴[] No.43678140[source]
> apps as a weird Tech People affectation

Maybe I never had the right luxury brand car, but I still see it as such.

If I want to have an app for my car, I’m my opinion that car failed me to provide with a simple, convenient driving experience.

I want to get in the car, check if it’s charged / filled up enough, check for errors (as a routine, but there shouldn’t be any), and drive.

If I need to change anything (AC, light, volume) I should be able to do it without having to take my eyes off the road.

What features do you like so much that you consider them “invaluable”?

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jdminhbg ◴[] No.43678170[source]
I would say the place where I differ is here:

> I want to get in the car,

I don't want to have to get in the car to do any of this. I'm able to get the climate control started in the car by saying out loud "Hey Siri, warm up car" (a shortcut I set up exposed by the Tesla app). The location is always up-to-date so if my wife is driving the kids in it, I can see their current location and ETA. I want to be able to open the door without unlocking the car manually. I want to be able to close the trunk remotely if I carried in a load of groceries. Etc.

None of this is some kind of alien technology that Tesla invented, but rather the vast majority of legacy car manufacturer apps are just total garbage piles that were outsourced to some low-bidder somewhere. It shouldn't be that hard.

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delusional ◴[] No.43678694[source]
Finally I get to ask this of a real person.

How important are these things for you? If the automatic trunk motor broke, how much would you be willing to pay to fix it? What is the value difference for you to be able to heat up the car from outside the car?

My questions point towards some variation of my central question: why does any of those things matter to you in a car? The primary purpose of a car is to get me places, everything else is optional. Is it because all the cars are equally sufficient for getting you places or so you actually value remotely controlling your car higher than the cars ability to drive you places?

For myself all of those gimmicks are just more complication that can break. I value a car that is fun to drive and with minimal abstraction. It sounds like you value maximal abstraction, and that's quite odd to me. I wish to understand your viewpoint.

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1. larusso ◴[] No.43679623[source]
I want to chime in. I drive Skoda Enyaq (VW Family EV, think ID.4) and have all these gimmicks. I ruled out a Model 3 because at that time it didn’t come with some of these features like notarized trunk etc.

I have my car on a schedule and it automatically heats up, turns on the seat heaters and defrosts the windshield. By the time I leave the house I have seither a snuggly warm car or pre cooled car. That is a huge time saver for me. One annoying part on this car is the fact that the LED headlights don‘t defrost. It sounds like a real first world problem but when it’s real cold outside and the car warms up etc I need to manually scrape the ice from the headlights. I would pay some money to get this „fixed“…

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2. robertlagrant ◴[] No.43680927[source]
Pro tip: a sealable plastic sandwich bag filled with boiling water from the kettle. Rub it on the ice; watch the ice vanish extremely quickly.
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3. larusso ◴[] No.43683917[source]
Will try that next winter. The other annoying part is the fact that I back in reverse in my parking spot. So I usually don‘t see the headlights. I realize that something is off when I‘m already on the road.