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Fear of cheap Chinese EVs spurs automaker dash for affordable cars
(www.reuters.com)
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this post was submitted on 10 Dec 2023
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Honestly, just take a basic normal car, and replace its engine with an electric one. No on screen entertainment, no cameras, no AI bull shit, no self driving. Just as basic as it gets.
Backup cameras are required on all 2018 or newer vehicles in the US and Canada, so you will need at least one in the back and a small screen for that, maybe hide that screen in the review.
This imaginary basic car should also come with a double-din radio so it can be upgraded like the old days.
I wish they sold me just a double din hole with cables ready for connection. All stock radios single or double din suck ballsack for what they are charging.
With more and more cars these days, you've got more than radio controls in the OSD.
The steering wheel heater of all things can only be accessed through the infotainment system on my Dad's F-150. It's beneath the Bluetooth button.
Yes, the absolute basic required technology to make it road legal, physical switches and either physical gauges or a non-touch screen for gauges if that's cheaper.
Physical switches > screens. It's much harder to develop the muscle memory for a screen. I don't have to look away from the road with switches.
Absolutely, they're so much better
The reason everything is on a touch screen now is that it's cheaper than physical switches, as ridiculous as that seems. And yes, I greatly prefer physical switches.
Buy and wire multiple switches on every car, requiring wiring harnesses, ECM IO pins etc. or pay an intern a minimal sum once so he can put "designed Chevrolet in-dash console" on his resume. Then never update it even though it supports OTA updates and is a glitchy mess, Chevy
This is the same reason so many products come with a stupid Bluetooth app now rather than more than one button. Pay once rather than pay on every unit.
Hmm. In that case, physical buttons is the one luxury I'd pay a premium for.
Maybe something like the SEXY buttons for Teslas actually become a more common thing. Wireless buttons that you can stick almost anywhere you want and set up to control what you want.
Wireless implies batteries. Hell no.
IIRC one of the issues with the 737 Max was that it had wireless internal components whose lithium ion batteries could catch fire. If you can't even get batteries right on a product constantly maintained by a professional crew, what are the odds of it working out well in a car?
If it's BLE, it could last years on a coincell battery. I don't find that to be a problem if it can give a warning in advance of running out.
They don't know how to market something that doesn't have a bunch of gimmicky bullshit.
"Get your cheap, reliable EVs here!" Done. You can pay me that $100k marketing salary whenever it's convenient.
The problem is you can’t efficiently electrify a vehicle designed for fossil fuels. The requirements differ too much.
Actually EV conversions were common before we got intentionally designed EVs and the original Tesla roadster was built on a standard Lotus body and frame, but luckily we’re beyond that now.
You can still choose to electrify a vehicle now but you get poor performance and range, unbalanced handling, and pay way too much for a mediocre vehicle. It’s bot worth it
That would be pretty dumb. It's entirely possible to use AI in the design and engineering phase without AI being in the product that's delivered to the customer. It's also entirely possible for AI to be used in areas like crash mitigation, improving the handling in poor road conditions, or optimizing charging speed to improve battery life. Those uses of AI are largely invisible but offer a tangible improvement to the vehicle without being what anyone would consider luxurious. Choosing to ignore a design option because it sounds like something trendy is a great way to design a product that's a worse value for the money.
AI in the vehicle, he means. Obviously ML models are useful for crash data, don't be a pedant.
Sir, this is the internet.
I mean, I interpreted it the way they seem to have as well. Not being a pedant, I literally just read it different.
OP could have been more clear, but it's not unusual for people to take the worst possible interpretation in order to debate something no one was arguing.
What this entire thread is about is just giving us a 2005-2010 era car that's electric. An audio deck with B/T only. No wifi, no Internet connectivity to the manufacturer, all the Laas nonsense with the updates and shit.
Just a vehicle that happens to be electric, not a computer on wheels.
Think this is the idea behind the GM Ultium platform (and probably others). They always held out “skateboard” as the goal, although I don’t know if that’s still a thing. Create essentially wheels and a plank that include all the power and drive components, modify to a small set of sizes, and crank them out by the millions. Then each car is a unique body and interior on top of the “skateboard”. As the platform gets to scale, you can drive the cost down, while still making unique cars on top of it - including low end cars
Batteries will need a frame change if you don't want to sacrifice the trunk or something. And range will be bad unless you improve areo dynamics and heating. But I think the Bolt and the Nero are pretty close to their ice counterparts.
Yeah that was the problem with the Nissan Leaf. It basically used the same frame as an ICE car, (and it wasn't like it was a big SUV either) so all the batteries had to go in the back, and you had no storage and also there wasn't really enough space in the back to have enough batteries to make it have decent range.
They did make the leaf plus that has decent range with the same formfactor though. Also I'm quite sure the batteries are not in the trunk, unless that's where they put the extras in the plus version or something? Our 2015 leaf had significantly more trunk space than our brand new bolt despite being of similar dimensions. The bolt does have better rear leg room though.
The main issues with the leaf stem from not having any active heating/cooling for the battery and using an uncommon plug for level 3 charging that is going the way of the dodo. If you live in a temporate climate and don't need to fast charge for road trips the leaf is a totally acceptable car IMO.
What's the incentive? Most people will have to buy a car anyways, so without a different incentive, it's better for every manufacturer to sell you a 60k+ car where the margins are way higher. If profit is the sole motive it's a no brainer.
The incentive is going to be undercutting the competition. It's going to happen someday, might as well be you, car company.
The Citroen ec3 would be the car for you, but Stelantis doesn't sell it in the US.. Just the overpriced Fiat 500e that is pretty worthless
Everything Stelantis does sell in the US is junk, and has been for 20 years. Chrysler, Dodge, Fiat...all junk.
That's basically the Mini Cooper EV. Took the guts of a BMW i3 and dropped it in the shell of a Cooper S. They even left the engine vent on the hood.
It's a fun car, and relatively inexpensive for the current crop of EVs, but its range is limited. We're already moving past the era where this is a good idea.
Its a nice idea which probably has a lot of complex implications. It would probably be a huge pain to figure out dimensions and compatible electric motors for every brand of non-electric vehicle, so the production of replacements would become very wide. Typically, the battery of an EV isn't just a brick in the engine room, but it's a whole range of cells along the length of the vehicle. Using the same space as the combustion engine might leave you with a vehicle with terrible range. Also, the safety of a car takes the engine into account. Replacing a combustion engine with an electrical engine would likely require a whole new safety overview for each individual model.
I honestly really hope that your suggestion would work, but I'm not expecting to see this becoming a wide solution before EVs dominate the market anyway.
I don't think he meant to literally take the ice out of a camera and replace it with a motor and battery.
But rather he meant, make a new ev, on an EV chassis, but without all the nonsense that drives up costs without adding significant value.
I don't need touch screen everything with 3d gaming built in, gull wing doors, and custom flush door handles that don't work if you have a hand injury or any type of disability.
You can buy aftermarket android touch screen headunits with cameras for £150, they are not expensive at all, just a basic android tablet with a few extra ports