You can do a while lifetimes work, and yet sometimes it's a tiny action like this which can have the biggest benefit to mankind.
Just think how many billions of times someone has avoided pulling up to the wrong side of the pump because of this arrow - literal lifetimes of effort saved.
It's very weird that USB-C solved the problem of "we can't tell which way to insert the plug" by mandating that both orientations should work, as opposed to just making the exterior of the plug as asymmetrical as the interior.
2020s UX "experts" would bury the entire instrument cluster under a hamburger menu if they could get away with it.
The fuel gauge would be moved three menus deep and thus impossible to find, then removed in subsequent model years when their telemetry data "proved" no one used it anymore.
In the end, these engineers' job is make profit for the company. If the customer allows for all this crap, and still buys cars/fridges/tvs with such horrible UX, then it's the way forward.
Companies like Tesla and Rivian pioneered the trend of bringing webshit-as-an-instrument cluster to the mainstream. Everyone else rode the coattails and immediately copied it.
What is a customer supposed to do? Buy a Mitsubishi Mirage? Build their own instrument cluster?
It drives usage up! Seriously, I wonder whether this “Make things to annoy people” trend is a normal situation, or an emerging behavior due to our era, and whether it will be solved one day. Example: In 2003 all UX was abominable, programs were ugly and black and white and text and boring, then came the iPhone with the idea to hire designers for apps, it was entirely new and absolutely unseen before. It was necessary during the take off phase of our industry, but are we simply witnessing the regression to normal, with UX being driven by corporate suits?
Is the side to fill up evenly balanced between cars in average? I imagine there is value to make it close to 50/50 to simplify the logistics at the gas station. I was thinking car manufacturers perhaps had agreed so that some brands do it one way and some do it another
Even if there was a single side for filling, direction of approach being random is enough for 50/50 utilization of the pumps — so I’m not convinced there’s a pressure to spread which side the tank is on.
Which is great for new cars. I drove a 78 Buick Riviera. Friends couldn’t figure out how to fill it up. Because the gas cap was behind the license plate in the back!
On cars without the arrow they often follow the convention where the gas filler handle is depicted on the same side of the gas icon as the filler door is in the car.
Isnt it that nowadays usually on the side of the driving seat? Or does this apply only to EU vehicles?
That would mean designing two separate entire fuel tank placements, fuel lines, etc for cars that are available both in left- and right-hand drive variants, with different SKUs for each of the parts needed. There is no way a car manufacturer would do that.
It’s a coincidence because the UK uses the same cars and ours are mostly on the same side (because we’re right hand drive where you’re left hand drive).
I think it depends. Especially with PHEVs, which also have a charge port, whose location is determined by charging infrastructure, and which is not IME on the same side as the gas tank opening.
I was like 20 when I learned about this trick. Before then I'd only driven a few vehicles, and I just knew which side of the car the gas tank opening was on. A friend mentioned it when we were going to fill up a car a borrowed car and I asked which side it was on.
I've since met many adults who were unaware of this trick. It's like the real-world analog of an insufficiently discoverable UI functionality.
Nobody ever told me and I drove my first car for a long time, rarely drove other people’s cars, and did not have the kind of lifestyle that either supported or required rental cars.
I found out around age 35, I think. From reading it online. I’ve told a bunch of people who didn’t know.
That's funny, I know someone that's fairly famous in the product development world that claimed to be the inventor of the gas pump arrow. Weird thing to lie about.
My Dad explained to me what this symbol meant when I got my first car. We went to get gas, and I had no idea that I pulled up on the wrong side of the pump. He indicated that the symbol told you which side of the car the gas tank was on.
It's a convenient little invention but "the fact that there wasn't a simple way to know which side of a vehicle the gas tank was located on" is not quite true.
Usually, if the vehicle is of Japanese or British origin, the cap is on the left, otherwise it is on the right.
Source: I’ve driven dozens of different vehicle models all over Europe for decades. This rule always worked well enough for me.
And which side is the driver side? Surprise, it depends on the country. And a Japanese car manufacturer will move the driver controls to sell cars in USA/Continental Europe, but flipping everything else will cost more.
I've driven 2 models of an Italian brand, my previous car had the gas tank on the passenger side, and my current one has it on the driver side. I do wonder why they changed it.
There's also the issue of pulling to a small road side petrol station, having the fuel door on the passenger side means you don't have to be standing next to the busy road while refuelling.
Depending on model years, it could have something to do with Fiat merging with Chrysler in 2014. European brands usually have them on the passenger's side, while US brands have them on the driver's side. Maybe that new Fiat was designed in the US.
As it should be. If the Globalist cabal had their way, everyone would drive on the same side of the road (like mindless assembly line workers) and traffic signs would be completely standardized, and - yes - the fuel filler would be on the same side of every car (welcome to a monotonous Communist dystopia). They already came for Sweden ('Dagen H' Plan. Do your own research) /s
safest place is put it opposite of drivers side, because if you're out of gas on the side of the road and filling it up, you won't be standing right next to freeway traffic. Saab started this.
"... many European cars have the fuel door located on the passenger side, while many Japanese and American vehicles have the fuel door on the driver side. Both techniques have valid reasons. European automakers place the fuel filler on the passenger side for the sake of safety when a vehicle has run out of fuel and has pulled off onto the shoulder of the road to fill up from a canister. Meanwhile, American OEMs tend to place the fuel door on the driver side of the vehicle for convenience reasons, so that a driver doesn't have to walk around the vehicle when filling up at a gas station."[0]
Brings to mind the Dead Kennedys album name, "Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death"
They could design the fuel tank to be symmetrical about the axis parallel to the car’s axels. This would let it be flipped during installation at the factory to have the refueling port facing either side. Then the only difference would be the body panel and little door that covers the gas cap.
Many (mostly European and North American) manufacturers can’t even be bothered flipping the indicator and light controls around, there’s no way they’d flip the whole fuel tank.
They could but there are downstream packaging compromises that would cause. It is easier to design the vehicle without imposing that design constraint on yourself
My plug-in hybrid (Audi Q5) has the electric connector on the rear left (driver’s side) and the gasoline inlet on the rear right. I sure plug in way more than fill up.
Funny, my PHEV had it on the opposite side. Did you find it difficult to charge at stations, which are often designed for front-left or rear-right charge ports?
You can do a while lifetimes work, and yet sometimes it's a tiny action like this which can have the biggest benefit to mankind.
Just think how many billions of times someone has avoided pulling up to the wrong side of the pump because of this arrow - literal lifetimes of effort saved.
The person (committee?) who came up with USB A needs sanctions.
And Apple Needs more, for putting power buttons and key ports at that back.
No the people who decided that usb 3.2 gen 2x2 and usb 4 version 2.0 gen 4x2 were acceptable names are the ones who should be sanctioned
Which rear facing "key port" on a Mac are you suggesting should be on the front?
> Which rear facing "key port" on a Mac are you suggesting should be on the front?
USB.
I used iMacs, mini and pro machines. Any ports in the front would be nice.
My mini does have some front ports. It’s less of an issue with usb-c but the iMac presumably still rear mounts them.
whats wrong with usb-a? I feels more sturdy and less likely to have connection issues then usb-c in my experience.
> whats wrong with usb-a?
Which way up it should go.
PS/2, which USB all but replaced, solved this by visually keying one side of the connector as flat.
Where the logo is.
And when the port is vertical and you can’t see it?
I’m surprised how tolerable people seemed to find Apples rear ports.
The other way
No, the other other way.
It's very weird that USB-C solved the problem of "we can't tell which way to insert the plug" by mandating that both orientations should work, as opposed to just making the exterior of the plug as asymmetrical as the interior.
2020s UX "experts" would bury the entire instrument cluster under a hamburger menu if they could get away with it.
The fuel gauge would be moved three menus deep and thus impossible to find, then removed in subsequent model years when their telemetry data "proved" no one used it anymore.
In the end, these engineers' job is make profit for the company. If the customer allows for all this crap, and still buys cars/fridges/tvs with such horrible UX, then it's the way forward.
>If the customer allows for all this crap
You imply they ever had a choice.
Companies like Tesla and Rivian pioneered the trend of bringing webshit-as-an-instrument cluster to the mainstream. Everyone else rode the coattails and immediately copied it.
What is a customer supposed to do? Buy a Mitsubishi Mirage? Build their own instrument cluster?
It drives usage up! Seriously, I wonder whether this “Make things to annoy people” trend is a normal situation, or an emerging behavior due to our era, and whether it will be solved one day. Example: In 2003 all UX was abominable, programs were ugly and black and white and text and boring, then came the iPhone with the idea to hire designers for apps, it was entirely new and absolutely unseen before. It was necessary during the take off phase of our industry, but are we simply witnessing the regression to normal, with UX being driven by corporate suits?
Is the side to fill up evenly balanced between cars in average? I imagine there is value to make it close to 50/50 to simplify the logistics at the gas station. I was thinking car manufacturers perhaps had agreed so that some brands do it one way and some do it another
Even if there was a single side for filling, direction of approach being random is enough for 50/50 utilization of the pumps — so I’m not convinced there’s a pressure to spread which side the tank is on.
Which is great for new cars. I drove a 78 Buick Riviera. Friends couldn’t figure out how to fill it up. Because the gas cap was behind the license plate in the back!
Why didn't they just ask ChatGPT?
Oh wait.
For those curious, the first sentence of the response from ChatGPT gets it correct.
>On a 1978 Buick Riviera, the gas cap is hidden behind a flip-down license plate on the rear bumper.
I'm from the UK and had honestly not heard of the arrow.
I've checked my Toyota Yaris, and it's there!
On cars without the arrow they often follow the convention where the gas filler handle is depicted on the same side of the gas icon as the filler door is in the car.
I've heard that the gauge always points towards the side the cap is on when pointing to empty
First time I've heard of that convention.
Anybody else get confused by whether the arrow represents where the car should be or the pump?
No
Isnt it that nowadays usually on the side of the driving seat? Or does this apply only to EU vehicles?
Im not a regular car user, if at all Im renting - but the last 10 times(?) it was always just on the side of the driving seat
Isnt it that nowadays usually on the side of the driving seat? Or does this apply only to EU vehicles?
That would mean designing two separate entire fuel tank placements, fuel lines, etc for cars that are available both in left- and right-hand drive variants, with different SKUs for each of the parts needed. There is no way a car manufacturer would do that.
Im not aware of such a convention, I'm in the EU and most cars I've owned or driven has it on the opposite side of the driving seat.
Might just be a coincidence
It’s a coincidence because the UK uses the same cars and ours are mostly on the same side (because we’re right hand drive where you’re left hand drive).
I think it depends. Especially with PHEVs, which also have a charge port, whose location is determined by charging infrastructure, and which is not IME on the same side as the gas tank opening.
I think this is the source of me misinterpreting the symbol a few times, so yes.
I do. It is not obvious in any case
I agree. As much as people appreciate the factoid, it's not an example of good design.
I don't ever recall the arrow being paid attention to until listicles and other blog spam were born. It has all the elements of great clickbait.
I actually use it all the time when driving a rental.
I use it all the time because I switch between a lot of different cars a lot, and my memory is not that great.
That isn’t in conflict with it being bad design.
I use it regularly
It’s terrible design. Until I encountered one of these listicles I had no idea what that arrow was.
I was like 20 when I learned about this trick. Before then I'd only driven a few vehicles, and I just knew which side of the car the gas tank opening was on. A friend mentioned it when we were going to fill up a car a borrowed car and I asked which side it was on.
I've since met many adults who were unaware of this trick. It's like the real-world analog of an insufficiently discoverable UI functionality.
I had no idea till this moment that’s what the arrow was for…
I didn’t know it was possible to not know this.
Nobody ever told me and I drove my first car for a long time, rarely drove other people’s cars, and did not have the kind of lifestyle that either supported or required rental cars.
I found out around age 35, I think. From reading it online. I’ve told a bunch of people who didn’t know.
Who taught you? I didn't know until my 20s and have met many adults who didn't know.
I've encountered a few cars where the arrow points to the wrong side, and it's quite subtle if no one tells you.
I'm sure about 99% of people are in the same boat.
The signage is for cars, not boats.
One of the many patron saints of engineers!
If he so believed in it, may his arrow be pointing up! :)
That's funny, I know someone that's fairly famous in the product development world that claimed to be the inventor of the gas pump arrow. Weird thing to lie about.
“Moylan arrow”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuel_gauge#Moylan_arrow
https://www.vermeulenfh.com/obituaries/james-moylan-2/#!/Obi...
Another car thing that is named after someone:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monroney_sticker
Also known as the "Window Sticker"
Mansfield bars too, if you don’t mind getting ghoulish
I have never heard of that name before, and had to do a search. In case anyone else wants info too:
https://www.getgordon.com/faqs/what-is-mansfield-bar/
Sorry that was thoughtless of me to not provide a link
One of my previous cars didn't have the signaling arrow and I missed it instantly. Such a subtle great idea.
Wow! I just used this a few days ago when I rented a U-Haul van. Such a great user interface element.
My Dad explained to me what this symbol meant when I got my first car. We went to get gas, and I had no idea that I pulled up on the wrong side of the pump. He indicated that the symbol told you which side of the car the gas tank was on.
It was a 1994 Ford Taurus.
It's a convenient little invention but "the fact that there wasn't a simple way to know which side of a vehicle the gas tank was located on" is not quite true.
Usually, if the vehicle is of Japanese or British origin, the cap is on the left, otherwise it is on the right.
Source: I’ve driven dozens of different vehicle models all over Europe for decades. This rule always worked well enough for me.
A couple of other links:
https://archive.ph/pluwT
https://www.jalopnik.com/2061179/inventor-little-arrow-what-...
Why would you not just always put it on the driver's side, since they're the most likely to be doing the refueling?
And which side is the driver side? Surprise, it depends on the country. And a Japanese car manufacturer will move the driver controls to sell cars in USA/Continental Europe, but flipping everything else will cost more.
I've driven 2 models of an Italian brand, my previous car had the gas tank on the passenger side, and my current one has it on the driver side. I do wonder why they changed it.
There's also the issue of pulling to a small road side petrol station, having the fuel door on the passenger side means you don't have to be standing next to the busy road while refuelling.
I live in the UK (drive on the left) and my Honda had it on the passenger side while my VW has it on the driver's side.
> I do wonder why they changed it.
Depending on model years, it could have something to do with Fiat merging with Chrysler in 2014. European brands usually have them on the passenger's side, while US brands have them on the driver's side. Maybe that new Fiat was designed in the US.
As it should be. If the Globalist cabal had their way, everyone would drive on the same side of the road (like mindless assembly line workers) and traffic signs would be completely standardized, and - yes - the fuel filler would be on the same side of every car (welcome to a monotonous Communist dystopia). They already came for Sweden ('Dagen H' Plan. Do your own research) /s
safest place is put it opposite of drivers side, because if you're out of gas on the side of the road and filling it up, you won't be standing right next to freeway traffic. Saab started this.
A linked article agrees:
Brings to mind the Dead Kennedys album name, "Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death"[0] https://fordauthority.com/2020/08/ford-designer-credited-for...
thank you, didnt know that, although Im in EU :-))
Is that actually safer? Both you and drivers lose visibility which in my mind makes it more dangerous.
What happens when they sell the car in a country that drives on the other side of the road? They would have to move everything around.
They could design the fuel tank to be symmetrical about the axis parallel to the car’s axels. This would let it be flipped during installation at the factory to have the refueling port facing either side. Then the only difference would be the body panel and little door that covers the gas cap.
Many (mostly European and North American) manufacturers can’t even be bothered flipping the indicator and light controls around, there’s no way they’d flip the whole fuel tank.
They could but there are downstream packaging compromises that would cause. It is easier to design the vehicle without imposing that design constraint on yourself
They don’t. It stays on the same side as it was. They don’t move the bonnet opening lever or the indicator stalk either.
My plug-in hybrid (Audi Q5) has the electric connector on the rear left (driver’s side) and the gasoline inlet on the rear right. I sure plug in way more than fill up.
The fuel side indicator is quite helpful to me.
Funny, my PHEV had it on the opposite side. Did you find it difficult to charge at stations, which are often designed for front-left or rear-right charge ports?
Nobody getting gas at Costco cares.
Most people do, with the exception of the woman awkwardly stretching the long hose over the roof of her minivan, scratching it in the process.
What a letter. Clear, concise, just chef's kiss. I love that little indicator.
I only knew it because someone talked about that. Very useful. RIP.
I use his arrow all the time. I'm also a Ford Truck Fan. RIP James.