[garciansmith]

I've read so much knocking their appearance, which is so confusing to me. It's ultimately function over form in this case; who cares if you don't like how it looks? I can only dream that the visibility and safety of having features like such a low hood and large bumpers would be incorporated into other vehicles (i.e., every SUV ever).

[klik99]

Probably in the minority, but I actually like the look of them. I find so many modern car designs indistinguishable from each other. Cars such a narrow range of design that's considered "good aesthetics" that everything looks so uniform.

[mschuster91]

> Cars such a narrow range of design that's considered "good aesthetics" that everything looks so uniform.

The issue is fuel efficiency. Modern cars are all built to be as aerodynamic and fuel efficient as possible, and the constraints are virtually the same, so the designs are very similar as well.

However, these mail trucks don't travel 85 miles an hour, most of them will be on average less than 25 mp/h or less, where aerodynamics plainly just does not matter (it's v-squared), so they can prioritize safety and driver comfort over anything else.

[klik99]

I don't fully buy this - if you optimized for aerodynamics and safety you'd get cars so far outside the aesthetic it would be ridiculed. No-one is making fun of the new USPS trucks for lack of fuel efficiency, they're saying it looks like a platypus. I can see a weaker version of what you're saying, that the intersection between the aesthetics a mass car market would accept and an acceptable fuel efficiency/safety yields a very narrow design space.

[XorNot]

Not really sure what you think would change if you did this?

[klik99]

Maybe I wasn't clear because I wasn't talking about doing anything, or suggesting that car manufacturers do anything, just I don't think this comment is the full story:

> Modern cars are all built to be as aerodynamic and fuel efficient as possible, and the constraints are virtually the same, so the designs are very similar as well.

[abeppu]

I don't know that efficiency is really an explanation. If you look at a list of very aerodynamic cars, there are a bunch of older ones with very different designs. https://carbuzz.com/features/most-aerodynamic-cars/

And the still-not-released Aptera looks very distinctive and is claimed to have a drag coefficient of 0.13. https://electrek.co/2020/12/07/aptera-super-efficient-electr...

[bsder]

It's aerodynamics and safety combined.

Those bars that you smack into everytime you get into your car and those bars that give you enormous blind spots to hit pedestrians? Yeah, they're there because of safety regulations.

When you put the requirements to be able to roll over and not cave the roof along with aerodynamics, the design constraints are pretty heavy.

[Retric]

Being able to roll without crushing the cabin doesn’t take that much. It’s airbags that are causing wide blindspot inducing pillars and there’s options that maintain good visibility.

[ggreer]

Older cars had fewer safety regulations, so they could play around with more designs. Also a lot of the old photos in that post are of concept cars or race cars, not production vehicles.

The Aptera has a unique design because it is considered a motorcycle in the US, so most Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards don't apply to it.

[m463]

I think when it comes to vans they've kind of let go of traditional designs.

like https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/11/Dodge-Ra...

Now they've gotten the european influence to be very square:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/37/2015_For...

or like the european designed mercedes sprinter, very tall too:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f3/Mercedes...

[laurencerowe]

The European equivalents to the Dodge Ram Van are the smaller Transit Custom or VW Transporter

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Transit_Custom

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Transporter

The equivalent US trucks mostly used by FedEx and UPS are much squarer than the European designed Transit or Sprinter vans that are now replacing them.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:FedEx_Express_truck....

[yencabulator]

Ram Promaster is a rebranded Fiat Ducato. The European equivalent of it is thus a Fiat Ducato.

UPS uses plenty of Promasters.

[laurencerowe]

The Fiat Ducati / Ram Promaster is another Transit / Sprinter class van but the linked image with the “traditional design” in the post I responded to was of an older, smaller Dodge Ram Van.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dodge_Ram_Van

I was trying to point out that the Transit/Sprinter/Ducati class vans are replacing the larger and far more boxy FedEx and UPS vans like this:

https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:UPS_package_car.jp...

[ttepasse]

The main German postal service for a time manufactured their own e-vans, which where rather boxy:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StreetScooter

[Oarch]

Like wet putty

https://www.blackbirdspyplane.com/p/why-do-new-cars-look-lik...

[klik99]

Good article, though I do like some matte paints and some of the dulled color looks. The problem for me is not that these aren't good paint choices by themselves, but how uniformly dull every car is. Most cars come in 3-4 shades of grey or a dull red, if there is color more often than not it's that wet putty look. I legit felt sad a couple of times looking at a big parking lot and the total lack of color. If people had a variety of color cars, then a few of those wet putty dulled out versions would be part of that variety.

There's almost certainly strong market and logistical reasons for this trend, and I bet some HN reader knows why to an unreasonable detail (I'd be interested to hear it!), but it still bums me out.

[shiroiushi]

I think there's two parts:

1) A lot of car buyers worry about resale value. For the same reason a house with a purple and pink paint scheme won't sell at top price, a car with strong colors won't either. You might like seeing cars in a variety of colors like bright orange, bright green, etc., but those colors will absolutely turn away a significant fraction of the potential buyers, thus lowering resale value. If you could just press a button inside the car to change its color, it wouldn't be this way, but as it is, repainting a car is prohibitively expensive.

2) Just look at the way people dress these days. Boring colors are in, bright and bold colors are out and generally associated with the 1960s. We're in a very bad time now as far as color palettes and styles go.

[chongli]

Is that writer from Philadelphia? Very quirky and colourful writing style!

[telcal]

Was it the jawn? That article was by Jonah Weiner who grew up in NYC.

[chongli]

Yep!

[grogenaut]

If successful and widely deployed they'll become iconic and part of the gestalt. And if the pattern holds I'll be dead before the replacement is put in place.

[tim333]

Yeah I think the kids would like it. It's a bit reminicent of Postman Pat's van https://content.instructables.com/FRX/AYCQ/JASJWQW4/FRXAYCQJ...

[duskwuff]

> I've read so much knocking their appearance, which is so confusing to me.

Especially since the old LLVs were pretty ugly in their own way. We've just gotten used to seeing them over the last 38 years.

[tantalor]

> It's ultimately form over function in this case

Doesn't "form over function" mean the opposite of your usage?

Form = appearance

Function = usefulness

[garciansmith]

Yes, I just reversed it by mistake!

[jackcosgrove]

I think it's a misquote of the phrase "Form ever follows function", commonly attributed to architect Louis Sullivan. It's an odd sentence structure, where the leader comes second in the phrasing, that trips people up.

[PittleyDunkin]

I took this to mean that critiquing appearance is itself form over function.

[tantalor]

Oh. What does that even mean? Saying something is "form over function" is not derogatory. Lots of great inventions prioritize form over function (iPod comes to mind).

[bdavbdav]

I’m not convinced the iPod was. Everything else was pretty terrible at that time. The iPod did it right (and arguably still does)

[phil21]

iPod was famously both though? The click-wheel was pretty unique and worked great to make an accessible UIx for the masses.

It may have been somewhat limiting in edge cases, but for normal usage I don't recall anyone complaining about it outside of hardcore tech circles.

[tantalor]

"No wireless? Less space than a Nomad? Lame"

Seriously though, the iTunes integration and cross platform compatibility kind of sucked. It would have been much more useful if you could just mount it like a hard drive without special library management software.

The click wheel was cool.

[PrismCrystal]

> It would have been much more useful if you could just mount it like a hard drive without special library management software.

When I got my first iPod in 2006, I immediately put Rockbox on it, where the iPod indeed mounted like a hard drive and files (including all my .oggs, remember those?) could be dropped right onto the device. Never used Apple’s own UI even once.

I still miss the iPod. It let you really immerse yourself in the music without all the distractions inherent in a smartphone. I occasionally considered getting a used one and installing larger storage and a new battery, but by now I think that ship has sailed.

[PittleyDunkin]

> Seriously though, the iTunes integration and cross platform compatibility kind of sucked. It would have been much more useful if you could just mount it like a hard drive without special library management software.

I very much preferred this, actually. file management is really annoying compared to custom-built software with all the tagging etc built-in. Subjective, obviously, but I really miss that every time I'm managing music on linux or windows and get frustrated when labeling invariably changes (even if only subtly) when moved to a device.

Granted, itunes could have also done a much better of unifying the tagging etc with the files to avoid this entire fiasco.

[VogonPoetry]

I think that making the iPod mount like a filesystem would have had significant impact on other aspects of the device.

There is no filesystem level abstraction over USB (or Firewire). So plugging in presents as a hard drive / block device, which then means it needs to have a filesystem. For "built-in" cross OS compatibility that means it would be have to be a FAT filesystem. If you change these decisions either a new filesystem or device driver would need to be installed for some machines.

Most devices that present a FAT filesystem when plugged in stop working like they do when unplugged. i.e. the device itself and the connected computer cannot access the data at the same time. For the iPod this would mean it wouldn't be possible to play music while syncing.

I think it might be possible to build a "fake" drive and FAT filesystem when plugged in, but it would take quite a bit of work and have lots of odd corner cases. For example, the user on the computer attempting to re-format the drive, perhaps with a different filesystem.

[EasyMark]

But it's okay to call them ugly. People get used to a certain look of things and then you introduce something that look like what an 8 year old would draw (this mail truck, Musk's cybertruck) and you'll get some flack. It's utterly meaningless in the end, and just bar talk. If these are reliable and make the postal workers' lives better I'm all for it, but they are imo ugly as sin.

[techjamie]

The low hood is almost definitely to help prevent scraping mailboxes and other objects, but especially mailboxes. My dad was a rural USPS carrier that used his own vehicle, and despite him having been an excellent driver with no accidents on record in his life, he still ended up swapping minor paint with mailboxes a few times.

Can't imagine how often it happens across the country.

[reaperducer]

The low hood is almost definitely to help prevent scraping mailboxes and other objects, but especially mailboxes.

The USPS states that it's to keep from hitting pedestrians.

[dylan604]

for utilitarian purposes, like the guy was quoted "it gets the job done", but for soccer moms and their SUV looks are important.

[bryanlarsen]

Safety should be even more important than both, but it obviously isn't since only the USPS trucks have a pedestrian safe design.

[dylan604]

If safety were more important than looks, the stilleto would be banned.

[Terr_]

Vehicle choice is probably much more of a personal-identity / status thing for the soccer-mom.

To riff off of a Bujold quote about uniforms: "Fleet vehicles are always correct, or, if not exactly correct, clearly not the driver's fault, since they have no choice."

[8ytecoder]

Subarus use a boxer engine that drastically increases the visibility. I have a short torso with long legs and finding a car where I felt comfortable with visibility was a priority for me. I settled on the Subaru Impreza 10 years ago. Still has the best visibility of all the cars I’ve driven. I’d expect EVs to also have better visibility - may be eventually - since they can drop the height of the hood as well.

[potato3732842]

They're just as tall as anything these days.

[andrewflnr]

Well, they're mostly not qualified to comment on the function, are they?

[euroderf]

For an institution that was the origin of the term "going postal", it's a wonderfully human-oriented design.

[browningstreet]

A few ideas:

1) it kinda resembles Le Car

2) the junk in the frunk

3) and plus that extra forward bumper looks a bit like a telemark ski binding clip, and those ski folk never really looked especially smooth

4) it came out during DeJoy’s tenure, so it’s easy to imagine this is actually a shaming design

5) there are some very cute and charming EV designs out for Amazon FedEx UPS right now, and this isn’t up to the standard of those more forward looking (and admittedly bulbous but “of our time”) designs.

6) we’ll have to live, culturally, with this identity for a while. Seems a bit “meh”. I can see it now.. Kevin James as a future sitcom postal carrier and he will have a whole extra stage set up so he can have scenes in the enormous front cab of this thing. A la Art Carney as Ed Norton from the Honeymooners. We’ll get to visit the monstrosity during future Universal Studio backlot tours.

[stackedinserter]

Would you wear the same cloths but in clown colours?