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by jbl 1606 days ago
Re the odometers, in my 2018 Volvo and my Wife's 2019 XC40. They are all accurate, but for different purposes.

1. The standard "life of the car" odometer is permanently on the left gauge, top reading

2. There is one (two?) manually resettable trip odometers

3. There is an auto-resetting trip odometer - it resets when the car has been off for four hours.

You can configure which of the second two are displayed by going to in-dash "app" menu and selecting what you want in the "Trip" tab. On my car, this configures the lower displays on the left and right gauges.

Update Re: your high beams - It sounds like you have them on auto. There's a spring loaded ring on the left-hand stalk that engages auto vs. manual high beam. Twist it and the light-with-an-A sign on your dash should change to a normal light symbol. You can then use the twist knob with detents to select parking light vs. low beam and whether you want auto-on or manual on. High beams are engaged by pushing the lever (or you can pull to flash).
1 comments
chakintosh 1605 days ago
It's quite telling the fact I needed a 3 paragraph reply from a user on HN to explain to me how to use the odometers and lights in my car.

I had a Tucson before this Volvo and it was just so intuitive and easy to use. It's something that needs to be standardized, they are tools that no car would be street legal without and thus, should have identical interactions no matter the manufacturer.

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scraptor 1605 days ago
I'm confident you could have found all the information contained in those paragraphs in the manual if you had read it instead of complaining on HN.
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chakintosh 1604 days ago
I did actually look up the manual that's in the User Guide menu in the infotainment system and there is no mention of how to operate those things ...
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QuarterReptile 1605 days ago
OTOH, maybe the other problem is that you're buying cars too frequently to be willing to study the manual.

There are plenty of times when ergonomics and feature discoverability are at odds, and I heavily prioritize ergonomics when I'm driving a large, lethal object at super-human speeds.

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