Which @#$& side of the car is it [Fuel Socket] on. [LWN.net]

Which @#$& side of the car is it [Fuel Socket] on.

Posted Oct 21, 2024 0:30 UTC (Mon) by gmatht (subscriber, #58961)
In reply to: Core work still going on 33 years later by willy
Parent article: The long road to lazy preemption

Well, there should be a little symbol on your dashboard, either <[FuelPump] or [FuelPump]>. The fuel should be on the side the arrow is pointing to, so you shouldn't have to stop your car to get out and check on the way to the fuel station. Not sure having a little arrow pointing to either Plan9 or Unix would help much in our case though :P

Which @#$& side of the car is it [Fuel Socket] on.

Posted Oct 21, 2024 2:35 UTC (Mon) by sfeam (subscriber, #2841) [Link] (5 responses)

Yeah, great. Now how about the problem of finding where they put the little latch-release thingy that you have to pull before opening the cover to the fuel input. Under the seat? left or right? How far back? Or maybe it's under the dash. Or on the driver-side door. Or maybe there isn't one but the cover is stuck and needs to be pried. Or maybe it's a button on the key fob.

Which @#$& side of the car is it [Fuel Socket] on.

Posted Oct 21, 2024 13:43 UTC (Mon) by LtWorf (subscriber, #124958) [Link] (4 responses)

I've opened the engine compartment instead of the fuel lid a certain number of times.

Which @#$& side of the car is it [Fuel Socket] on.

Posted Oct 21, 2024 14:03 UTC (Mon) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link] (3 responses)

???

Ime, the engine cover lever is always in the passenger footwell by the door. While the fuel cover switch in my car is in the driver's door. And while I have little experience of said switches, I've never known them on the passenger side ...

My bug bear is "flash headlamps" and "wash windscreen". The number of times I've flashed people by mistake ...

Cheers,
Wol

Which @#$& side of the car is it [Fuel Socket] on.

Posted Oct 21, 2024 20:24 UTC (Mon) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (1 responses)

The engine cover lever has always been on the driver's side IME (US). AFAIK, it has always been a physical by-cable latch; the fuel door meanwhile is now a button and electronic in newer cars. No idea what a Tesla does; probably electronic though given that everything else is.

Which @#$& side of the car is it [Fuel Socket] on.

Posted Oct 22, 2024 8:13 UTC (Tue) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link]

The engine-hood lever is usually on the left side of a car because most cars have the driver sitting on the left, and given how rarely that lever is used there is no point in moving it to the right for the others because all that will achieve is to make building the cars more complicated. So in the UK it is on the passenger side, and in places like the USA and Germany it is on the driver's side.

We can probably count ourselves lucky, though, that in right-hand-side-driver cars the pedals aren't in reverse order.

Which @#$& side of the car is it [Fuel Socket] on.

Posted Oct 22, 2024 8:55 UTC (Tue) by farnz (subscriber, #17727) [Link]

IME, engine cover latch is on the left of the car in the footwell, and some cars have the fuel cover release on the frame next to the driver's seat. In UK versions, that puts the fuel cover release on the right of the car, but in the French market version of the same car, the engine cover release and the fuel cover release are on the same side of the car - engine cover by your left foot, fuel cover under your left shoulder when the door is open.

Which @#$& side of the car is it [Fuel Socket] on.

Posted Oct 21, 2024 3:44 UTC (Mon) by interalia (subscriber, #26615) [Link]

Plenty of older cars don't have such an arrow in my experience, it's definitely common to have one but plenty don't have it. It was a good innovation, the kind that's obvious in hindsight.