this post was submitted on 23 Apr 2024
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Electric Vehicles
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Cars in the US are required to have rear-facing cameras. There's going to be a screen for that. It makes sense to incorporate some things into that screen, because that's what people expect now. Android Auto/Car Play for sure. Doesn't have to be a touchscreen; Mazda does that right with a center console knob and buttons.
OTA software updates are a good thing, to be able to address service issues without having to go to a dealership. Previously, car computer updates had to be done with a USB stick.
Electric motors are super reliable and hardly ever need servicing. Batteries are getting better, but as of right now, you have to replace the entire battery pack, at great cost. I'd love to see a more modular battery configuration with replaceable cells.
Adaptive cruise control is a game changer in every way. It makes driving so much safer. The radar is already there, might as well using it for lane departure and steering assist.
Seriously where did they get that electric motors aren't reliable? The same motor technology has been powering diesel-electric locomotives for nearly a hundred years and those traction motors really rack up the miles...
Not to mention that the basic underlying premise of an electric motor is dead simple in comparison to an ICE.
Sure, it gets more complex the more you scale it up, etc. But at the end of the day, an eight year old can build an approximation of a motor.
Assisted driving is now evaluated as a safety feature by the certifications agency.
So unfortunately not adding adaptive cruise control, crash detection and all that would means degrading the safety rating of the car and no manufacturer would do that.
Just to clarify, I didn't mean that electric engines weren't reliable. It was more of a combination of things I'd like to see in an EV. And I'm all down for all those other features too! I just would like a barebones option for us poors, you know? You can have different tiered options, and maybe getting rid of all the extra features can make for a reliable cheaper car. And in a barebones model, why would you need constant OS updates? Just have the engine tuned like other things in a car like electric fuel injection. Everything else should be like clockwork.
Oh, I agree. I think the electric car market is way too "tech heavy," certainly for my liking, but I also think that at present, reducing the amount of fiddly tech stuff wouldn't reduce the price of the vehicle by very much. "Well, if I just pay a little bit more, I get a whole lot more."
The battery is what costs. And people who are going to buy a cheap electric car are going to be people for whom that is their only car, so it needs to do a lot of things, including going on long trips, which means having a long range. A 100-mile range commuter car would be perfect for a whole lot of people, except for that one time they might want to go on a vacation in it, or load it up with luggage and take three or four people to the airport.
I use a Gen 1 Nissan Leaf as a commuter car that I got for $9k. The average sales price for a new vehicle in general is around $40k these days. Get a used Chevy Bolt would be my recommendation, better range than the Leaf, CCS charging, and the price is probably around $12-14k.
It's an OS. It needs constant updates.
Open-source code is generally better, but your response time needs to be immediate. If you're not patching, be worried.
Why? Before you answer - no it doesn't. Cars have been doing fine by virtue of staying offline. You're advocating for a fix to the exact problem described by OP
Then comes the question of how long will you receive support? When is EoL?
I would almost like a larger backer supporting it but obviously we don't want most of the existing large tech companies for fear of injecting ads directly onto your display or data mining or worse.
Which I would vastly prefer over someone bricking my car remotely because some intern fat-fingered a command.