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Welcome To Alphanumeric Car Hell (theverge.com)
Jason H. Harper, writing for The Verge: Et tu, Hyundai? Until recently, the Korean brand offered two upmarket cars, the Genesis and the Equus. The first name had biblical shades and the latter shared a title with a play where an adolescent likes to get naked and straddle horses. So while the connotations were a bit muddled, at least they were memorable. Now Hyundai has spun Genesis into its own luxury brand, akin to what Toyota did with Lexus decades ago. And in so doing, it has cast off those memorable names in favor of an alphanumeric naming strategy. The Hyundai Genesis is reborn as the Genesis G80 and the Equus sheds its horsey homage to become the G90, which guarantees that I won't remember the new names. I'll just call the G90 the Model-Formerly-Known-as-Equus. And while the two models seemed well differentiated before, now the distinctions are hazy. The G90 apparently has 10 more units of something over the G80. Perhaps it is 10 percent better. Ten percent bigger? Ten grand more expensive? Welcome to Alphanumeric Hell.The rest of the article is worth a read as well.
Weird names and letter combinations no one has a clue what any of them mean.
Worst article ever? What next? Some lazy ass complains that he can not understand numbers in clock?
Internet Man Confused By Numbers; New Media Sponsors Ramblings
The rest of the article is worth a read as well.
TFS wasn't worth the read, manishs. No need to bother going to The Verge to read the article.
wait till you see G100
Was their 120 20 per cent better than the 100?
Was their Twin Six twice as good as their plain six?
Is the AMD FX8350 twice anything of the FX4175?
What's your point?
"News nerds don't give a shit about. Stuff that matters only to marketdroids".
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
"The rest of the article is worth a read as well."
Well the summary was complete shit.
I think that's the point though...we are in post marketing times and people just don't care what the car is named and car makers are acting accordingly.
love is just extroverted narcissism
What the fuck is an article like this doing on here?
Whatever next, a review of Britney's new album, or an instructional video showing how to assemble IKEA furniture ?
No, English is imprecise. If the G80 is 80% good and the G90 is 90% good, than the G90 is 10% better than G80 even though G90 isn't 10% better than G80 is.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
why is this a worthy topic? why is this a worthy article?
Gosh, I miss the good old days where interesting things were discussed rather than these stupid topics.
No, it really isn't.
That would be 12.5% more, not 10% more
So long as there's rhyme and reason to the numbering scheme, I have no problem with it.
BMW does this, and it's awesome. The first digit is the body style (3 is small, 5 is mid, 7 is large), and the next 2 digits are the engine displacement. They add letters on the end for extra little features: i for Fuel Injection, s for Sport Package, L for Luxury Package, etc. So a 328is is a small car with a 2.8L engine, fuel injection and sport package.
They recently added even numbers to denote 2-door variants, and left odd numbers for 4-doors. They've also started putting x or i in front for SUVs or Electric/Hybrids respectively, but the concept holds. The alphanumeric scheme serves a purpose.
This signature is false.
Then, of course, the maker might get perverted into adding subversions. So we can go to G90.3.5
And maybe even take a hint from Apple's phones: G80.7+
There was a time when I paid attention to new graphic cards and all of their extra confusing numbering schemes. Looking back, I don't know why I wasted so much time on that. The only time it matters is when I'm shopping for a new one, which doesn't happen that often, and I buy a new graphic card way more often than I buy a new car.
... There is one thing though. Nvidia used to get a little sleazy when it comes to model numbers, rebadging previous generation GPUs as lower-end chips of the current generation. I don't know if they're still doing that, but it's something that's obviously intended to exploit the ignorant. Which is me, now. Probably not so much of an issue for cars.
Is inversely related to ones ability to math.
.357% 'better' than the G80. Probably not worth the added cost.
90 is actually 12.5% bigger than 80.
Unless of course they meant G80 and G90 as base-17 numbers, in which case, the G90 is really only
Take this sig and smoke it.
Because this kind of naming has worked out so poorly for brands like Mercedes and BMW . Not too mention Lexus and Acura with similar naming schemes for most of their cars.
Maybe Mr. Harper should pull his head out of his butthole?
Loose things are easy to lose. You're getting your hair cut. They're going there to see their aunt.
I think I gave up on this site because of censorship in their forums. They couldn't handle ideas contrary to their narrative. Not really surprised they are generating this kind of innanity.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Someone doesn't like the name of a car?
No, English is imprecise. If the G80 is 80% good and the G90 is 90% good, than the G90 is 10% better than G80 even though G90 isn't 10% better than G80 is.
90% of something is 12.5% more than 80% of something.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
Once upon a time, Volvos had a three-digit model number: the first digit was the series, the second the number of cylinders, and the third the number of doors. So you'd know just from the model that the 245 was the lower-end four-cylinder station wagon (the "fifth door").
When they ditched that system (in the '80s?), the first model was something like the 740; their own ad poked fun at themselves, asking "No doors?"
You save only 59 seconds over 8 miles by going 75 instead of 65. Do you really have to pass that guy? Do the Math!
Would the author prefer meaningful names like:
Lucid Lynx
Karmic Koala
Jaunty Jackalope
Intrepid Ibex
Hardy Heron
Gutsy Gibbon
Feisty Fawn
Edgy Eft
Yeah, I know they're sorted alphabetically. But which is Version 8.x, 9.x, etc?
I don't. But if you mentioned a Z/28 I might be with you.
In China in each body style adjustment after 2 or 3 years gets a new name. For example, what in the US is called the VW Jetta over the years is called Santana, Bora, Sagitar, Lavida, and several others I forget.
Hyunday already changed the internal design of its cars to be "restrained", like the German makers. Now they're changing the external layout. The next natural step is to change the names to be alphanumeric, like Mercedes/BMW/Audi.
just to watch it die. The radiator was blocking the view out the windshield. The Lexus had a slightly cracked plastic cover on it's bumper. Air bag didn't go off, wasn't needed. - Who cares - it was a Hyundai
Audi A4 2.0T quattro : Translated:
A4 = more expensive than A3, less expensive than A6
2.0 = 2.0 liter engine
T = Turbo
quattro = all wheel drive
It would be nice if they were all that straightforward.
- Vincit qui patitur.
If you're on SlashDot and driving a Hyundai, your time might be better spent upgrading your skills and/or switching jobs.
Maybe so, but those Genesis aren't the cheap Hyundai Excel many of us remember as a $5995 car. The cheaper G80 is a $47k car, not that I'd consider getting one.
- Vincit qui patitur.
which guarantees that I won't remember the new names
I don't care enough about cars to remember their names. I just need four wheels and a seat. I'm lucky if I remember the name when I really need to know it like communicating with a mechanic or my insurance.
And I'm happy that way!
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
The worst naming was a company that used rocks for their product names.
Granite, Amethyst, Quartz, Topaz. These were video encoders, transport stream processors, video servers, etc., but I was never able to remember which was which.
I agree, 80 to 90 doesn't tell you NEARLY as much information about the different cars as Genesis and Equus. What a well thought out criticism.
Genesis: The original humans were naked.
Equus: They learned to ride horses before they learned to put on clothes.
I should use this sig to advertise my book ISBN-13 : 978-1501515132.
If I remember Equus correctly, the young antagonist doesn't 'straddle' horses, he blinds them. That's a rather weird error to make.
The more people I meet, the better I like my dog.
Buying a new car is now just like buying a new GPU. Bigger numbers sometimes mean better, except when they don't.
It all points back to every luxury brand, regardless of origin, wanting to seem European, especially like German upscale brands. What the non-Euro brands rarely understood, or eventually forget, is that there is (or was) logic and meaning in the Deutsche-luxo name soup: it told you something about the car itself, usually something about size class and/or powertrain.
Some of the invented Japanese luxury brands got this, and mostly still do. Cadillac and Lincoln just need to stop trying to be non-American with their nonsense model names (MKZ? CTS4? WTF).
These Hyundai model names have no meaning because they're pure marketing constructs. Beyond "G is for Genesis" and a vague notion that 90 is somehow more than 80, they're empty.
Yep
Yes, but "10% better" English translated into math terms could mean add 0.1 OR multiply by 1.1. A mathematician would interpret it in the latter way, a common person may assume the former.
Yes it's an anecdote! Were you expecting original research in a Slashdot comment?
What cars do successful programmers drive? When is it too late to try to become one?
I made the mistake of dropping out of college with just an associates degree, to pursue a job outside of that industry that was offered to me. It was a big leap for the time and I was quite happy. Now I see what I've managed to do with it, and I'm no-longer so happy.
Jason is a moron. "Equus" is the genus that horses are in. Who cares that some nutbar named their book that.
I'm pretty sure people here are used to using (and certainly aren't afraid of) alpha-numeric strings.
Yaz
In the first 20 years, it went like this:
125
250
330
365
What that meant was displacement of each cylinder in CC. So a 250 was in reality a 3 liter engine. Then they had MM, TR, GTO tacked on after the number. The names and numbers didn't even appear on the cars. It's just what people called them.
Then in the 70's things got weird. a 512BB is a five liter flat 12.
A 512 TR is a 512BB hit repeatedly with an Ugly Stick.
A 308 is a 3 liter V8. A 288? 2.8 liter turbo v8. (they got that motor from Lancia when Lancia pulled out of F1)
F40? THeir 40th anniversary car, with the 288 engine, F50? That'd be thier 50th anniversary car, V12. Enzo? It was the F60. La Ferrari? That's the 70th anniversary car.
Now? Who knows! F12 means what? Front twelve? A 458 means what? Does FF start for Fast as Fuck? (it's a 4 wheel drive shooting brake).
Those Italians, no consistency! ;o)
Which one would I pick? 365 GTB/4. Daytonna with four cams. Or an F12, it's spiritual successor.
The "Civilized World" jumped the shark ca. 1973.
We appreciate that you are trying to improve /. and keep it going. We really do. But you need to hire a computer nerd that will slap you up aside the head when you try to post up TFAs that don't fit.
Like this one.
"The ferrets, they're every where I tell you!"
Nah - the first part of the article wasn't worth a read to begin with.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
on the other hand: "percent" is the unit, meaning "per hundred"
So 90 "per hundred" IS 10 "per hundred" better than 80 "per hundred". Note that the unit doesn't change in this case.
Of course or 90 pieces or 90 kg or 90 mp/h or 90 "cool" AREN'T 10% better than 90 pieces or 90 kg or 90 mp/h or 90 "cool".
But 90% are 10% better than 80%, the same sense that 90 mp/h are 10 mp/h better than 80 mp/h.
You're concerned about the naming convention of model numbers from a brand new car company? They have only 2 different models. If you want alphanumeric hell, just look at nVidia's GPUs! I challenge you to figure out what the numbers mean, and they have DOZENS of models.
All BMWs have injection so the i is superfluous. 3 is not small anymore, the 1 and 2 are. the 328is has a 2 liter 4-cylinder as does the 320i.
So long as there's rhyme and reason to the numbering scheme, I have no problem with it.
BMW does this, and it's awesome. The first digit is the body style (3 is small, 5 is mid, 7 is large), and the next 2 digits are the engine displacement. They add letters on the end for extra little features: i for Fuel Injection, s for Sport Package, L for Luxury Package, etc. So a 328is is a small car with a 2.8L engine, fuel injection and sport package.
Fair enough, but can you explain the monstrosity that is the M240i XDrive then? I'm not a BMW fan. I don't hate them. I just don't care about this kind of car. M apparently means Performance. OK.... I don't speak German so maybe in German using M for "Performance" is actually OK because for all I know the German word starts with M. Then we come to the 240 part, which according to you is the engine size. However, the M240i has a 3.0 liter engine. And you say that "i" means fuel injected. Really? Because if you go back in time like 20 years that actually would have meant something but as far as I know no major car manufacturer makes a carburetor any more so all cars are fuel injection now. So it's "fuel injection" as opposed to what exactly? I have no idea what xDrive even means but maybe that actually is helpful if you're familiar with line. To me that looks like a bunch of randomly chosen gibberish but you're welcome to educate me here if you disagree.
Rolls Royce for instance had a model named Silver Mist. It never sold in Germany. But not because someone was offended by the name, just because Mist in German means manure or garbage. Who would drive an expensive car and tell everyone that he drives manure?
I had had a Hyundai Elantra from 2002 that had impressed me greatly with its reliability and how it took everything I through at it from the DC Beltway to water crossings to some (small scale) off roading fun. I could afford something more expensive and "upscale" in 2010, but this met my needs at a much better price, so I am quite happy with it all.
I don't see the problem -- Genesis and Equus are just as opaque as G80 and G90, and I hadn't heard of any of those model until reading this article.
Most consumers only have one or two cars and only shop for a new car ever 5 -10 years, so they need to learn the current models when they shop, and they can learn alphanumeric models just as easy as unique model names. And if the increasing number signifies increasing cost, that sounds even better.
Unless manufacturers went with functional names "Ford Econobox", "Hyundai SmallSUV", "Toyota SmallHybrid", "Chevy HugeAssSUV", then there doesn't seem like much difference between using model numbers or model names.
G80 and G90 are *exactly* as meaningful as "Genesis" and "Equus", which is exactly no meaning whatsoever.
Odd. You're clearly obsessed with edgy, and it shows that edgy manufacturers know edgyfags want the edgiest letters, X and Z. You should be tickled stupid, mate.
I imagine everyone knew X has always been edgier than Z, but the gap is remarkable.
but in general, yes, it means Performance. :)
I agree, at this point the i for injected is somewhat a leftover. They have a pretty long history at making cars, and have stuck with it. :)
I actually haven't kept up with their model for the past 10 years or so. I've had a few BMWs. A 1988 528e sedan (5 series, e = efficient instead of performance), a 1997 318i sedan (3 series, 1.8 liter), and a 1988 M3. -- that one is special.
Yes, they haven't always strictly held to the naming convention, but you know basically what you are getting. If you say a BMW 3-series, you have a general idea what it is. The years for a model are designated by a generation you may hear about... e.g. E30 (3-series from 1982-1994) or E28 (5-series from 1981-1988). It's a pretty good system, and scales much easier than names do. But it can get pretty abstract. I have never heard of the model you mentioned.... but I would guess it is a 2-series (smaller than the 3 series, so likely a coupe - whereas the 3 is either coupe or sedan), not sure about the engine but you covered that... and xdrive I would guess is all-wheel-drive. They used to put an x in the badge for that back in the 80s.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Ah yes - the new standard in "journalism". "I'm an ignorant jackass and don't like what someone had done - and my personal tastes rule!"
Look jackass, companies have been using alphanumeric model indicators just about forever. Nobody but you seems to be confused by them, go away and get the fuck over yourself.
subject may be worth a cartoon (not one of xkcd hits though), but not an article. and certainly not a post here .
-
"The rest of the article is worth a read as well."
no.
that assumption says more about the interests and level of quality of editors here now.
Have gnu, will travel.
Number designations are good, provided they include information. None of the modern car manufacturers (except, possibly, M-B) have numeric designations that actually mean anything. Pulling a number and adding a letter or three to it is not clever, it's a reflection of a complete lack of intelligence and/or creativity.
Names are even less meaningful, unless they last a long time. GM is the grand master of random names on random cars. They have done it so much that I often learn of some flop they built under a name I never heard of that was only available in X markets. Toyota is close to them, with their wide array of almost indistinguishable cars (take a look at their economy car line and tell me how these are clearly differentiated...I dare you).
In my opinion, companies should use a size/class name or letter identifier, then a series of completely standardized numbers/characters to define the body style & propulsion, then a unique trim name/identifier. Tesla does about the best I've seen in recent years - "Model S P90D" = Model S, Performance configuration (P), 90kWh battery pack (90), and AWD (D). Maybe this is why they appeal to tech people so much, aside from the fact they're electric.
It used to be all of the desirable cars were named with a bunch of numbers and letters (mostly German and Japanese). This was probably due to those manufactures spending more resources designing cars than marketing them.
It makes perfect sense for a new brand to follow the strategy that is well established in people's brain.
One of our competitors trademarked the term "hypothesis". From now on, we will call them "boneheaded ideas".
Windows 1.0 /286 /386
Windows
Windows
Windows 3.0
Windows 3.1
Windows 3.11
Windows 95
Windows ME
Windows 2000
Windows XP
Windows Vista
Windows 7/8/9/10
Huyandai have had some aweful names in the past, like the "Terracan" SUV which was obviously a Can of Terror, and the Trajet people mover which was just Tragic!
Just put the word "anal" with any of the Ford Models; Edge, Focus, Probe, Excursion, Ranger. Who has the bigger problem naming cars?
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There is an interesting story behind the story. We have run out of words. It is true. In a world now run by unique Identifiers such as 32 character GUID strings. The world has just plain run out of words that can be re-purposed. Charles
Any Kiwis or Aussies here old enough to remember the Leyland P76?
The fact that marketing departments are stupid isn't really that important to us, really. It's old news. What's more important is that 90 is not 10% more than 80, but rather 12.5%.
While this is a questionable /. story (is it really news that somebody doesn't like letters and numbers?) ---
But I'll add this modernal social media "news"....
SAAB had the 90, 900, 9000 - and then had to wrap around with the next set of cars. So 90,000 became the 9-3, 9-5. I remember a somewhat humorous interview from them explaining it all.
Depends on what sort of scaling we're talking about. If it's a completely relative scale with no reference points, then any values for a and b where b=a*.125 would be just as valid and informative. If it's a scale using a number line, with or without a definite end point, then the actual distance between the two matters, and if it's a unit like percentage then each value's distance from the ends of the scale also is significant and meaningful.
However: Most likely marketing chose the numbers using the 10s die from a pair of percentile dice, and therefore the only thing that is meaningful here is that the one with the higher number is probably intended to be seen as the more upscale model. So the right answer is that the one with the higher number is intended to be approximately 10% cooler.
Wow, one strip that exemplifies almost everything that isn't funny about XKCD. It fits this article perfectly, which exemplifies everything that isn't worth reading about Slashdot.
and, extrapolating the above to your post...
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
X and Z are so 1980's. The 90's saw the rise of e and i (lowercase of course) as technology leaders, and with the 2000's v and g had a run at the title.
I'm not sure if we have landed on the coolest letters for this decade, maybe j and k?
Honestly, someone (raises voice enough for Munroe to hear) might be curious enough to take a look at the last decade's increased use of numbers and symbols in letter substitutions. Probably mostly movie titles. In the edgier genres. Loud trailers with lots of die-hard men, probably bald, shooting stuff and causing explosions and acting so alpha you run out and buy a truck while the protag delivers a badass oneliner right before the audio [almost] climaxes to abruptly cut to a single, echoing drum beat and the title hovers on black:
F U R 1 O U S
summer2017