Are Cars Just Smartphones on Wheels? The Driving Soul Debate
www.carsandhorsepower.com
Cars are evolving into “smartphones on wheels” with apps, updates, and subscriptions. But are we sacrificing the soul of driving for digital convenience?

For over a century, the automobile has represented freedom, power, and the thrill of mechanical mastery. The connection between driver, machine, and road defined what it meant to own and love a car. But in today’s digital era, a different trend is unfolding. Cars are no longer just machines designed to take us from point A to point B. Increasingly, they resemble something else entirely: smartphones on wheels.

  • brucethemoose@lemmy.worldEnglish
    23·
    3 days ago

    The sad thing is ‘smartphone on wheels’ is a slur.

    Smartphones don’t have to be soulless and uniform and enshittified and subscription based and completely inaccessible and straight up anti-consumer/designed to fail, but here we are.

    I really hope Slate takes off though (and they make a nimble hatchback for their next chassis). It feels like the antithesis of all this.

    • JoshuaFalken@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4·
      3 days ago

      The simplicity of the Slate interior is fantastic. They developed a screenless touch screen that you can rotate without even looking at them. I wish I were in the market for this type of vehicle.

      Interior photo

      • brucethemoose@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        3 days ago

        Yeah, that is so perfect.

        Imagine a sedan or hatchback. It would be light as a feather (in terms of curb weight) and still feel spacious being so ‘clean’ inside.