A lot more manual controls, in particular. I've never liked needing to use a touchscreen to manage functions of the car I might need to use while driving. Ioniq could actually go further still, some of the physical interface still uses a capacitive button rather than a physical button, but it is at least single-function so I can trace my hand along the bottom and the button I want is always in the same spot.
I like that by default it is set to two-pedal drive, especially in case I end up having to use an ICE or hybrid car (or have other drivers use my Ioniq). I like that I have a key fob and there's a physical interaction I need to make to turn the car on. I like that it supports Android Auto.
I think the styling is much better. I haven't sat in a Tesla long enough to give a direct comparison but the Ioniq interior is in the top quarter of cars I've driven.
It's not all roses, there's been Ioniq drivers run into ICCU issues that you don't really see the equivalent of with Tesla, but if I run into that then I'll just take it as a warranty item.
Edit: I forgot about the turn signal stalks but that was a primary thing for me as well, I literally thought it was some kind of anti-Tesla meme at first that they didn't have normal turn signals, until I verified it for myself.
I will stick to the Lightning since I know it best:
1. The Lightning auto-resumes lane centering after a lane switch, Tesla requires manually restarting (along with the annoyances which accompany that, like re-enabling auto wipers every single time).
2. CarPlay. (Which presumably Tesla is finally going to bring us.) Responding to text messages while driving is easier and less fussy with CarPlay (plus, if you are used to how CarPlay works, you will forget that after you dictate a reply to a text message in the Tesla you need to hit the send button on the screen). iMessages to non-phone recipients works with CarPlay but not at all with Tesla.
3. The Ford app lets me set a one-off "charge to 100%" flag which automatically resets to the previous setting after that charge.
4. And even though it is so obvious that it is probably boring to point out at this point, the rain sensing wipers on the Lightning actually work. The Tesla dry wipes, or not at all even when it is pouring, and everything in between.
5. The Lightning has radar. Without a lead car my Tesla remains prone to phantom braking at overpasses on bright sunny days. I have not ever had phantom braking on my pickup.
6. Windows. No amount of recalibration makes my Tesla windows go up exactly into the right position to be sealed. And pushing the button again just makes them lower slightly. So you have to monkey with it a couple times to make the sound of wind next to your ear go silent. I've never had a car amongst the dozens I've owned that got this basic functionality wrong, but both of my Teslas have struggled with it.
7. Comfort. Ford does not vertically integrate production of the interior and seats, and it shows. Nor do they cut corners on insulation. Someone else in this thread said that interiors were an inexpensive way for incumbents to differentiate from Tesla but I disagree on one point -- I think good interior design is expensive, which is exactly why Tesla does basically nothing. So the road noise is excessive and the flat, thin, barely bolstered seats are uncomfortable if you don't have enough built-in padding on your butt. Ford just outsources, probably to someone like Recaro, who has infinitely more experience making seats that don't suck.
First the Bolt, and then the Lightning has convinced me that there is no special sauce. I have a pickup that drives like my Tesla, but is still a pickup with all of the upsides and still has a comfy normal interior without the quirks. Tesla won't get any more of my business, for example, until they bring back the stalks and put in an IR rain sensor. They may eventually do both of these (I think they may have already started caving on the stalks). But now that I know that there are other options at least as good, I'm more picky and less accepting of the persistent cost cutting.
Since when is someone trying to build a difficult thing on a tight timeline referred to as a "promise"?
He sets extremely ambitious goals and usually/often misses them, but the end result is that despite missing the ambitious goal, something amazing is delivered still much faster than anyone else could do it.
In many parts of the world, you can walk into a Tesla store and tell them you're not interested in purchasing but would like to try it anyway. More likely than not, they will give you a free test drive. You'll be able to decide for yourself whether it's the future or a scam.
They literally sell BB-8 toys that can roll around and say on the blog that the Olaf robot is coming to Disneyland Paris and special appearances at Disneyland Hong Kong.
Much like Olaf (and many before him… dinosaurs, WALL-E, talking characters, etc), it was implied he’d wander around the parks. But it tends to happen for a short amount of time, mostly for events, and fade away quickly. (The blog post even says that: Olaf will be part of a 15 minute temporary show, and then will visit Hong Kong).
Maybe I’m wrong, but I’ve seen this exact thing happen a dozen times over the past 20+ years. (And watch the video I posted if you want to see more!)
> But it tends to happen for a short amount of time, mostly for events
I expect you're correct. While it's fantastic tech, it's also very expensive to keep highly-precise, carefully calibrated micro-machinery like this aligned and operating 12+ hours a day outdoors where temps vary from 50-110 degrees. Disney thinks in total cost of operation per hour and per customer-served.
While there's probably little that's more magical for a kid than coming across an expressively alive-seeming automaton operating in a free-form, uncontrolled environment, the cost is really high per audience member. Once there are 25 people crowded around, no new kid can see what all the commotion is about. That's why these kind of high-operating cost things tend to be found in stage and ride contexts, where the audience-served per peak hour can be in the hundreds or thousands. For outdoor free-form environments, the reality is it's still more economically viable to put humans in costumes. Especially when every high-end animatronic needs to always be accompanied by several human minders anyway.
Disney has problems with that. Their Galactic Starcruiser themed hotel experience cost more to the customer than a cruise on a real cruise ship, and Disney was still losing money on it. The cost merely to visit their parks is now too high for most Americans.
It's really hard to make money in mass market location-based entertainment. There have been many attempts, from flight simulators to escape rooms. Throughput is just too low, so cost per customer is too high.
A little mobile robot connected to an LLM chatbot, though - that's not too hard today. Probably coming to a mall near you soon. Many stores already have inventory bots cruising around. They're mobile bases with a tall column of cameras which scan the shelves.[2]
There's no reason they can't also answer questions about what's where in the store. They do know the inventory.
Similarly, I was talking with my then wife, who is a Star Trek fan about the Star Trek Experience in LV, she wasn't aware of it... we looked it up and discovered it was literally going to be the last day of it the next day... so we got up at 4:30am and drove from Prescott, AZ to LV, spent the day there and drove back that night... I don't recommend doing this in a single day... Was definitely fun.
I'm not sure that a Disney experience needs to be much more/different than this... and even maybe having smaller experiences that are similar... 1-2 rides and a restaurant, exhibit and shop as a single instance... spreading the destinations around instead of all in a single large park. This would mean much lower operational costs per location, being able to negotiate deals at a smaller level with more cities, and testing locations/themes beyond a large theme park expense.
Just a thought. Of course, I did also go to a "Marvel Experience" that seemed to be a mobile experience closer to a carnival that setup and moved to different locations. That was kind of an over-priced garbage experience that I wouldn't have done had I known ahead what it was like.
“ The cost merely to visit their parks is now too high for most Americans.”
I always wonder why people say things like this. It’s as if we’re just regurgitating stuff that feels right. Humans and LLMs behave the same sometimes.
Disneyworld alone gets 50 million visits a year. Magic Kingdom tickets are like $150. That’s approximately the average American’s monthly cell phone bill.
I don't think that's an incorrect statement to say it's too expensive for most Americans, even if there's still high traffic at the parks.
Disney has become significantly less accessible for the average family of 4. Aside from ticket costs, there's almost nothing free in the parks anymore... you have to pay for lightning lane passes for all the cool rides, there's minimal live entertainment, etc.
The demographics have significantly shifted. Only 1/3 visitors now come from households with children under 18, and millennials and gen z have started taking frequent trips (friend groups, couples, etc).
So while they still get the same number of "attendance", the demographics have started to shift toward older, more affluent repeat visitors.
The article you linked to indicates anything but how you’re portraying it.
First it talks about young adult who goes there several times a year, sometimes with her parents, because it’s cheaper than traveling overseas.
Then it says childless people have more discretionary income than parents (duh).
The general population, also, has drifted toward older people without kids. 20 years ago nearly 50% of Americans had a child under 18. Now it’s under 40%. So this whole article just indicates that the population is shifting and Disney is adapting to it by making the parks more palatable to single adults.
“In the last year, 93% of respondents in a consumer survey agreed that the cost of a Disney World vacation had become untenable for ‘average families’”. And yet the statistics indicate that more than 7% of families actually likely did go to a Disney park. (Presumably even more could afford it but just went somewhere else.)
Which illustrates my point, this is a thing that feels correct but likely isn’t, and part of the reason it feels correct is that people regurgitate it factlessly.
What's the cost to travel there? To sleep? To eat? What's the actual experience like with that $150 ticket vs the options that are more expensive? Will you spend your entire day there waiting in line?
Those 50 million visits are the sum of daily visits across four parks, so it’s probably at most 30 million people. Even if they were all American (they aren’t), that’s like 9% of the population.
The average cell phone bill you cite is for more than one person.
I think it’s entirely fair to say that “most” Americans would find it too expensive to visit Disneyworld.
Estimates put the percent of Americans who actually HAVE been to Disney north of 75%. So it would seem unfair to say most find it too expensive, most have done it.
30 million uniques at one Disney location (there are two in the country, I think the other one increases that to at least 40 million, or roughly 12% of the entire population) per year is pretty high so that stat isn’t unbelievable. I’m sure not everybody can afford to go there every year.
That’s also a drastic misstatement that illustrates what I’m talking about. A poll showed that the average persons specifically designated “emergency savings fund” is $600. Many people have lots of money but don’t specifically refer to some as an emergency fund.
Also thanks to credit one does not need to have $600 to spend $600. That’s why we’ve got so many people with no savings.
Somewhere between 70 and 90 percent of Americans have actually been to a Disney park. Does the fact that the vast majority of people have done something not prove that most people can afford it?
I’m not sure why the burden of proof falls not on the original comment (most Americans can’t afford to go to Disney) but rather the person asking for proof, but here you have it anyway.
Doing something once in a lifetime is far different than being able to regularly or even every few years. Also, $150 ea is just for the ticket into the park... you still need quite a bit more for food and drinks for the day and souvenirs. That also doesn't cover travel and hotel arrangements... For a family of 4, I'd be surprised if it didn't cost closer to $2500 for a Disney trip, if your family only earns the average national family income, that's a significant expense after housing, car(s), food and other bills.
So a family might have gone once, but that dpesn't mean they can do it anything resembling regularly. I went to Disneyland once as a kid (around 8yo)... th eonly time my family went growing up, and I haven't ever been back... My sister went as a young adult every year until she had kids, then it's been every few years... but she and her husband are doing much better than the typical American family.
But that’s the point. I didn’t make an unprovable assertion, I called someone out for doing so. I haven’t made a single point based on my own experience or anecdotes either.
People say things that “feel right”. This is a left leaning community, when the right is in power everything is a dumpster fire. Over on the right wing communities, the opposite is true.
None of it means anything. Data is the guide post.
See the link you just sent me which is people at Disney World who cannot afford to be at Disney!
while I haven't seen them at parks (I just don't make it to any), I have seen them at Star Wars events at my local MiLB team - BB-8 in the size of your video, somewhat interactive and autonomous, same with R2D2. there's usually a human nearby to monitor it, but they're definitely around.
R2D2 is an example of one that you can buy in the gift shop (for $20k!) that was promised to make it into the park but just comes out highly supervised, occasionally.
The problem is that websites don't respect the browser language but translate based on IP. Which is stupid for people who want to read the original English content in English and not their native language.
It's really difficult to give up the convenience of cloud-based accounts. It would be nice for regulators to step up and protect consumers when it comes to this kind of thing.
Does the site mention the budget and completion time/cost at all? I can't find it from a quick browse/search of the site. It's taking editorializing to a whole new level to add details that are not in the linked article or site at all.
The right thing to do in this case is find the best source for this information (about the budget, schedule and completion time/cost) and make that the URL of the submission. Please email us the best links you know of about this (hn@ycombinator.com) and we'll consider updating the URL.
The site doesn‘t mention it, I got that information from various german announcements. I fear there probably won‘t be an English announcement regarding the budget, though there will be many regarding the tunnel.
€5.5 billion in 2005 is €8 billion in 2025, so it can be either over or under budget depending on how you amortize the costs over the construction period.
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