We got taught to be helpless by the industry, so they can help us out.

industry is pretty damn good at figuring out what customers actually want, instead of just what customer say they want and then don't actually buy.

cars are the way they are because that's what the overwhelming majority of car buyers actually want. The average driver doesn't want their car spitting out error codes, they want a check engine light to tell them to take it to a mechanic, and any information beyond that is confusing.

Calling bs.

It takes more effort to implement proprietary protocols and codes in addition to the globally mandated obd2 protocol. You can extend obd2 with additional codes that could be read by a simple device. It costs money to run servers that check your license to read those proprietary codes. It's not laziness.

The black market on stolen parts isn't affected by this. Catalytic converter are stolen and resold all the time and swapping one doesn't require anything more complex than a socket set and a new gasket (assuming the thief didn't use a cutting tool, but then you just weld). Cats also get sold for scrap, so not sure what the software lock is gonna do for that.

Hellcat engines get swapped all the time. ECUs get flashed by the black market regardless of the software locks.

But what we see this proprietary software get used for is blocking the ability to swap brake pads and block heated seats.

So it's not crime, but I'll agree on greed.

We do have bicycle ambulance which carry a defibrillator [0]

The 40 paramedics attend over 17,000 calls a year and the average response time is 6 minutes.

[0] https://www.londonambulance.nhs.uk/calling-us/who-will-treat...

More bicycles, metros and buses leaves more space on the street for emergency vehicles

> (not counting emergency and service vehicles)

Just gotta read the last line too :P

If you give the difference in weight as a percentage, it is sort of surprising that the percentage is higher for heavier vehicles, right? Or at least I don’t get it. I’d expect the EV to be a constant factor heavier, a total weight of combustion_vehicle*1.1 or something.

I had a 2010s Civic and moved to a Model 3. The curb weight difference was only ~3-400 lbs (about 10%), but the larger battery capacity, large SUV offerings are significantly heavier than ICE options (the F150 Lightning is about 2,000 pounds heavier than an ICE F150, for example, 5,000 -> 7,000 lbs.).

I love the idea of these tiny EVs. Apparently the EU's making some legislation for them so that they can go without much of the expensive 'safety' equipment such as driver tracking.

Parking cars in cities not designed for them is a nightmare, but getting around with a car is so much faster than public transport, even if your city's is fairly decent.

Looks interesting, I wonder to what extent they really want to make cars DIY-able again (as they state). On the one hand, they mention servicing is "easy" — just turn to their partner repair shop chain! On the other hand, there's Slate University and mention of repairability. I haven't followed development of this at all, so I'm genuinely curious. Hope it's not just "you can swap in and out our proprietary modules".

I really want to like the slate but their speakers and tablet holder concept actually are awful. Just a super basic off the shelf din rail hole and aux in and slap the most basic touch screen with physical control stereo you can find in there that does air play and car play works for me.

also stereo speakers in the glove box is...what

I like the idea of a slate but the truck bed just makes no sense at that size. I don’t understand why it’s not defaulted to another row of seats or hatchback, with the option to convert to truck. 5 ft bed without extension is kind of pointless as a bed, but huge as a trunk.

I worry about the Slate truck being DOA with expiration of incentives for EVs. Someone please tell me I'm wrong, because if they do deliver as promised, I'll be excited to buy one.

For me, I'm hoping it fills the mid-90s Isuzu Pup sized hole in my heart.

I was going to make this exact comment. The RX-8 had excellent stability control. Saved my ass at least once going too fast around a 90 degree corner. It also behaved really well on icy roads. It was pretty incredible for a rear wheel drive sports car, especially impressive at the time compared to every other car on the road back then.

Rwd is definitely sketchier in certain circumstances, especially going uphill in low traction. Also pretty bad in the snow generally. but I’ve only had issues going around corners when it was very wet and I was driving faster that the speed limit. If you are running into traction issues driving normally (ie not flooring it) I would recommend having your tires and alignment checked, even with RWD that should not be happening in my experience.

You should look into different tires perhaps.

Backup cameras are required by regulation since the late 2010s. You can’t sell a car with no screen.

Oh, I see. I don't know. I doubt it. That wasn't something I was interested in; I use navigation very often. But it's my navigation tool, not theirs.

Sometimes real estate agents do a lot. Anecdote of course, but my real estate agent spent a few hours basically every weekend with us for like 2-3 months as we toured 25 houses, went over ~10 inspection reports, and made 3-4 offers. And he and his team got roughly 20k. In a better housing market I think they do a lot less, but I know ours did a lot of work.

Same. Something like the Citroen AMI but with better range and speed, probably slighty bigger and around 10K.

I doubt it's going to happen because that would kill a large part of the market : every familly that needs 2 cars just because they go to work to different places but would only use a single car for the heavy duty or long range needs. At the start it would be a hard sell for many because of social status but overtime people end up voting with their wallet, so it could work. But that would be a pretty bad deal for the industry, so they'll only turn to that if they can't sell anything else.

Nowadays even the smallest cars starts around 20k, which is absurd and it even affect the second hand market because cars maintain their value better thanks to this pricing.

I was hoping secondhand Nisan Leaf’s would fit those criteria by now.

The Nissan Leaf’s biggest problem is it’s the only vehicle in its class worth considering, or available at all, so secondhand ones are sold at whatever the market will bear.

There’s the Prius, but whoever is responsible for its styling will be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.

My point was you can buy a car that is primarily safety+capability and not luxury+subscription. My rav4 has a touchscreen and power windows but that’s literally it as far as convenience/luxury. ~28k a couple years ago, no subscription.

Anything heated, remote, touch to start, etc is in the luxury category what gp was asking about avoiding.

> It depends. What else is included in that subscription? Mirror and seat heating by any chance?

Are you saying it is? Or is this a rhetorical question?

Either way, those are again luxury features. If someone is in the market for those features they’re not really looking for the base model any more.

> Then you allow both to evolve at a reasonable rate (maybe 10 years

Automakers already get 10-15 years or more out of their platforms. The same series of engines will be used across the their lineup for a very long time. Transmissions are shared across car makers, and so on.

That’s not a problem. The request above was for all auto manufacturers to have to fit into a standardized format.

It would be like telling Intel, AMD and Apple that they all had to use the same CPU socket for 5 years and they all had to be interchangeable.

Do you think we’d have MacBook Pros with all day battery life that also have 500MB/s of memory bandwidth if the company was forced to use a standard CPU socket that all manufacturers agreed on? Definitely would not. Some other country without such requirements would be enjoying them, though.

It’s a demand that makes less sense the closer you are to the subject matter.

I'm sorry, but I'm not being obtuse nor making strawman arguments. I'm trying to explain an industry I'm familiar with. If you're going to start with personal attacks or calling my input "silly" I don't know why I bother, but here goes:

> Laptops for the most part are put together from standardized parts and you can exchange the major ones (CPU, RAM, storage and often even the displays) from one brand to another and it will work. And if you go to desktop computers the range of parts that can be swapped out between manufacturers increases even further (power supplies, graphics cards, etc).

You cannot swap CPUs between laptops, obviously, unless you get the exact same generation CPU with the same footprint. This fact helps basically nobody. It is true that some laptops are built around the same CPUs from a common vendor, but the same thing happens in cars too!

Major parts like transmissions are shared across many vehicles and vendors. The popular ZF 8HP transmission can be found in cars from Dodge, Audi, Jaguar, BMW, Porsche, Land Rover, Jeep, Volkswagen, and others for example.

This patterns repeats across many major components like Bosch ECUs. Automakers aren’t dumb. They’re not custom making every part for no good reason.

Many of the sensors and small pieces used in cars are generic and interchangeable. They're also available across a range of generic vendors.

Common parts like wheels and tires are standardized with small variations, much like the different RAM speeds in computers. Windshield wipers are generic. Cars take generic fuel and oil.

The point is: There are a lot of shared and common parts in the automative world already. Like your CNC example, there are some common parts where it makes sense, but you can't take the motor controller board out of a Haas and drop it into Mazak. You're familiar with this industry so I think you can see why demanding that all CNC vendors standardize their motor controllers and everything else would be a silly proposition. Likewise, I'm familiar with the automotive world and I'm trying to explain that cars do share a lot of parts already, but demanding that everyone conform to a single set of standards is a silly proposition.

Nope

This is the original 500 https://www.autocar.co.uk/sites/autocar.co.uk/files/images/c...

This is the new 500 https://www.actualidadmotor.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/F...

I'll ignore the 500X and 500L because, to me, they are completely different cars.

This is the original Panda from the 80s https://www.hagerty.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/The-ori...

This is the Panda from the early 2000s (the one I used to practice for my driving license) https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/09/2004_Fia...

This is the more recent model https://www.motornet.it/img/modelli/auto/FIA/PANDA%202021_1....

The Panda is a completely different design.