There's a fortune to be made for whomever produces a car that has minimal features, and and electric-drivetrain with onboard gasoline generator. No screens, knobs and buttons, no assists. Extra fortune if you can licence designs and revive some of the old-and-loved classics with new safety features.

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mdasen 3 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> electric-drivetrain with onboard gasoline generator

Generally speaking, it's more efficient to power a car using a series-parallel hybrid system than an electric drivetrain with generator (series hybrid) while not really being any more complicated.

In a series hybrid (electric with generator), you're losing energy converting the rotational energy into electric energy. It's better to use the engine's output to power the wheels while it's in an efficient range. It's why Toyota's series-parallel hybrid design offered better mileage than vehicles that (primarily or fully) operated as series hybrids like the Chevy Volt.

> No screens

You can't really sell a car without a screen due to government regulations which require backup cameras (since 2018 in North America, since 2022 in the EU and Japan).

> no assists

Automatic Emergency Braking is going to be required in the US in 2029 (detecting frontal crashes about to happen and automatically braking, including pedestrian detection).

The EU requires even more including blind spot detection and lane-keeping assist.

I certainly agree that cars need knobs and buttons for controls like AC/heat, music, etc. However, it'd be hard to make a car where you aren't putting in a screen and assistive technology. I think a better argument would be to make a car where the screen was simply Apple CarPlay/Android Auto and a backup camera - rather than shoving a lot of garbage UX into it.

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ErroneousBosh 3 hours ago | parent [-]

> Automatic Emergency Braking is going to be required in the US in 2029 (detecting frontal crashes about to happen and automatically braking, including pedestrian detection).

I'm never going to want to drive a car that has that.

	▲	advisedwang 2 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Why? You presumably don't enjoy get into frontal crashes, are you worried about it doing false positives? Is that a significant issue?
	▲	ssl-3 2 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		I guess you know your cutoff date, then. My own perspective differs. A couple of years ago, I was involved in a stupid car crash that probably would have been prevented by this kind of system. Everyone was pretty much OK (yay), but both vehicles were ruined. And for me, at least, it was a complete and utter pain in the ass to find something else to drive that fit my intended use. 0/10. Would rather be annoyed by false positives.

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Mathnerd314 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It is probably like with smart TV's where the value of the telemetry data ends up subsidizing a significant fraction of the hardware. Car manufacturers seem to be doing a lot of experiments with what they can charge for in terms of ongoing subscriptions. I am sure if they could show ads without it being considered distracting they would.

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bobro 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I think the problem is there isn't a fortune there. It would be a successful endeavor, but not something to rake in huge piles of cash. The kinds of leaders and investors who could pull off what you're describing are instead working where they can make multi-millions rather that multi-hundreds of thousands.

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bdamm 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Well, Bollinger Motors tried just that, but they couldn't make it fly.

However, you now have a chance to buy one of the rare prototypes!

https://finance.yahoo.com/sectors/technology/articles/bollin...