5 ms·

I don't have industry insight, so this is just my view as an opinionated consumer on specifically new car sales: Everyday consumer cars haven't offered anythin

by ehnto 7y ago

I don't have industry insight, so this is just my view as an opinionated consumer on specifically new car sales: Everyday consumer cars haven't offered anything interesting to the consumer for nearly 20 years, and I'm not sure what they could possibly offer. For the longest time the branding drive for cars has been about new technology, signaling success and personal branding. But I see a few shifts in society that make these less important: 1. New Technology is fun, but it's reached a peak of usefulness to the consumer in cars. For the vast majority of people, a car is a utility, and their basic usefulness isn't improving anymore. If you find your near new car isn't meeting your needs, it's a different model, not a new version that you want. 2. I wonder if the personal image of car ownership isn't being diminished. An awful lot of money to spend on something you don't do much with. For many it's just been assumed that you need a car and that it'll be expensive, so you'll get it financed, which hides the real cost of the car inside weekly expenses. I see that changing, not least because the middle class has less money than they used to. Just like inflated housing costs, the only reason we've been stomaching the cost of new cars is thanks to easy finance. When you live paycheck to paycheck, it's easy to mask the costs. But when people are getting squeezed, not even that works.

tonyedgecombe 7y ago
I wonder if the personal image of car ownership isn't being diminished. An upmarket car used to be an indication of your financial status, now it just shows you can put your signature on a loan application. The flashiest cars in my neighbourhood are parked outside the housing association properties.
grativo 7y ago
The website Asymco http://www.asymco.com/category/asymcar/ http://www.asymco.com/category/asymcar/ , run by Horace Dediu is a great resource for understanding the declining utility of cars. In many ways I feel like the automobile industry is linked with other industries, causing it to lag behind. As of now there is a slow pace towards newer technology, but the energy industry and automobile component manufactures do not seem to follow as enthusiastically.
- manigandham 7y ago
  The related podcast "Asymcar" by Horace and Jim Zellmer is great as well, although it ended in w018: http://5by5.tv/asymcar http://5by5.tv/asymcar
djaychela 7y ago
>Everyday consumer cars haven't offered anything interesting to the consumer for nearly 20 years (part time car dealer in the UK here) While I don't think that's completely true, I think it's pretty much right. Most cars just offer incremental improvements over the previous model, and styling changes. They're clearly better in most ways, but tend to be larger and heavier because of this. I have a 12 year old van (Renault trafic) as my daily transport (6 seater as my gf has 4 kids). Its got 230000 miles on it, drives perfectly and still does 40mpg. For work I sometimes hire a new equivalent (I play bass in the band of a 1970s rock star, and drive us to some UK gigs), and while it's a bit smoother and nicer to drive and had features like cruise control, to buy one would be about £25000... And the kicker? Worse on fuel than my own van! (I've hired several, across other manufacturers, none beat 35mpg,and that was on motorway runs). Cars have got to the same point Microsoft Word did in 97.
AnthonyMouse 7y ago
> Everyday consumer cars haven't offered anything interesting to the consumer for nearly 20 years, and I'm not sure what they could possibly offer. If you look back to the days when cars were less utilitarian and more sentimental, the key difference was that people would modify them. They'd put on bigger wheels and performance parts, cut them up and turn a truck into a camper or add aftermarket features to the interior. You ever see that show about Count's Customs? People used to do that at home. But basically every car on that show is 1980s or earlier for a reason. Modern cars are unibody, they don't have a separate frame so you can't put on a different one. Everything is not only done by computers but done by opaque undocumented non-standard computers. You can't so much as replace the entertainment system in your car because it's integrated with the climate controls and everything else. Some of that (like unibody) is for a reason, but most of it isn't. It doesn't have to be this way. And when it wasn't was when people actually cared about their cars. That's how you get people to pay you all of these maintenance dollars -- get them to push their cars hard on the track or off-roading or on cross-country road trips but then care enough about them to pay you the money to repair them when they wear out. Get people to love them because they have hundreds of hours into them and brand loyalty means something because all your spare parts and systems knowledge are for Chevys and not Hondas or vice versa. They all think they want to be Apple but more phones run Android and more servers run Linux and Tesla is already being Apple. Be something else. There are a lot of customers looking for something else and not a lot of competitors providing it.
- nickik 7y ago
  You really can't get around the Unibody when producing more then 50-80k cars. Trucks of course are the exception as you have to go with body-on-frame and in that case we do see a much larger modding community and a huge after market.
  - AnthonyMouse 7y ago
    Right, but why aren't they publishing RFCs for the APIs their different computers use to talk to each other, and releasing most of their code under a license that says something like "modify or distribute this code however you want and use it on any vehicle you have a license for (which all of ours come with)"? There should be third party forks of your entertainment system on github or you're doing it wrong.
nickik 7y ago
Well I think there are innovations there. Electric cars are a huge innovation and comfort improvement when driving. Cars could have way better entertainment systems. Better integration with your phones is generally a feature people like Advanced Automation like Autopilot are Super Cruise are popular and a useful technology Modern active safety features are a great technology Seems to its just that many automakers do a bad job on many of these things. Those that don't generally have less issues.
- ehnto 7y ago
  EV is definitely exciting, I am surprised it's not already become the dominant new car type. I feel like in car entertainment and phone integrations are a mismatch in industries, where cars should last 10-20 years or more, their software is going to be out of date in 5 years at best. It would take a system more like Tesla's to keep up, where they have constantly updating vehicle software. But you get that because you're a subscriber to their infrastructure, and you car is constantly internet connected.
  - nickik 7y ago
    > I am surprised it's not already become the dominant new car type Well, there is not the battery capacity and the company make no money from them so they don't sell them. > It would take a system more like Tesla's to keep up Pretty much all companies have started working on that. The big issues they usually put together tons and tons of vendor software. Another big issue is that some of their lower level parts are not upgradable at all, so even if you can upgrade your main computer that does not mean you can be quite as complete as Tesla can be.
chrismcb 7y ago
Well yes and no... This is coming from a person that just replaced a 25 year old car with a brand new one. In general a car is a car. Other than maintenance, a car from ages ago will get you around just fine. But there have been a ton of improvements both in safety and comfort. Today's car is much safer than one from twenty years ago. More fuel efficient, and more comfortable. In recent years navigation has become standard, that is probably the single biggest obvious difference in the last 20 years.
- ehnto 7y ago
  Safety is the big benefit in comparison for cars that old I think. But what does a car five years from now need to offer to have you replace your current car with it? Or are you going to keep the current one for 25 years as well?

by ehnto 7y ago

tonyedgecombe 7y ago

I wonder if the personal image of car ownership isn't being diminished. An upmarket car used to be an indication of your financial status, now it just shows you can put your signature on a loan application. The flashiest cars in my neighbourhood are parked outside the housing association properties.

grativo 7y ago

The website Asymco http://www.asymco.com/category/asymcar/ http://www.asymco.com/category/asymcar/ , run by Horace Dediu is a great resource for understanding the declining utility of cars. In many ways I feel like the automobile industry is linked with other industries, causing it to lag behind. As of now there is a slow pace towards newer technology, but the energy industry and automobile component manufactures do not seem to follow as enthusiastically.

manigandham 7y ago
The related podcast "Asymcar" by Horace and Jim Zellmer is great as well, although it ended in w018: http://5by5.tv/asymcar http://5by5.tv/asymcar

djaychela 7y ago

>Everyday consumer cars haven't offered anything interesting to the consumer for nearly 20 years (part time car dealer in the UK here) While I don't think that's completely true, I think it's pretty much right. Most cars just offer incremental improvements over the previous model, and styling changes. They're clearly better in most ways, but tend to be larger and heavier because of this. I have a 12 year old van (Renault trafic) as my daily transport (6 seater as my gf has 4 kids). Its got 230000 miles on it, drives perfectly and still does 40mpg. For work I sometimes hire a new equivalent (I play bass in the band of a 1970s rock star, and drive us to some UK gigs), and while it's a bit smoother and nicer to drive and had features like cruise control, to buy one would be about £25000... And the kicker? Worse on fuel than my own van! (I've hired several, across other manufacturers, none beat 35mpg,and that was on motorway runs). Cars have got to the same point Microsoft Word did in 97.

AnthonyMouse 7y ago

> Everyday consumer cars haven't offered anything interesting to the consumer for nearly 20 years, and I'm not sure what they could possibly offer. If you look back to the days when cars were less utilitarian and more sentimental, the key difference was that people would modify them. They'd put on bigger wheels and performance parts, cut them up and turn a truck into a camper or add aftermarket features to the interior. You ever see that show about Count's Customs? People used to do that at home. But basically every car on that show is 1980s or earlier for a reason. Modern cars are unibody, they don't have a separate frame so you can't put on a different one. Everything is not only done by computers but done by opaque undocumented non-standard computers. You can't so much as replace the entertainment system in your car because it's integrated with the climate controls and everything else. Some of that (like unibody) is for a reason, but most of it isn't. It doesn't have to be this way. And when it wasn't was when people actually cared about their cars. That's how you get people to pay you all of these maintenance dollars -- get them to push their cars hard on the track or off-roading or on cross-country road trips but then care enough about them to pay you the money to repair them when they wear out. Get people to love them because they have hundreds of hours into them and brand loyalty means something because all your spare parts and systems knowledge are for Chevys and not Hondas or vice versa. They all think they want to be Apple but more phones run Android and more servers run Linux and Tesla is already being Apple. Be something else. There are a lot of customers looking for something else and not a lot of competitors providing it.

nickik 7y ago
You really can't get around the Unibody when producing more then 50-80k cars. Trucks of course are the exception as you have to go with body-on-frame and in that case we do see a much larger modding community and a huge after market.
- AnthonyMouse 7y ago
  Right, but why aren't they publishing RFCs for the APIs their different computers use to talk to each other, and releasing most of their code under a license that says something like "modify or distribute this code however you want and use it on any vehicle you have a license for (which all of ours come with)"? There should be third party forks of your entertainment system on github or you're doing it wrong.

nickik 7y ago

Well I think there are innovations there. Electric cars are a huge innovation and comfort improvement when driving. Cars could have way better entertainment systems. Better integration with your phones is generally a feature people like Advanced Automation like Autopilot are Super Cruise are popular and a useful technology Modern active safety features are a great technology Seems to its just that many automakers do a bad job on many of these things. Those that don't generally have less issues.

ehnto 7y ago
EV is definitely exciting, I am surprised it's not already become the dominant new car type. I feel like in car entertainment and phone integrations are a mismatch in industries, where cars should last 10-20 years or more, their software is going to be out of date in 5 years at best. It would take a system more like Tesla's to keep up, where they have constantly updating vehicle software. But you get that because you're a subscriber to their infrastructure, and you car is constantly internet connected.
- nickik 7y ago
  > I am surprised it's not already become the dominant new car type Well, there is not the battery capacity and the company make no money from them so they don't sell them. > It would take a system more like Tesla's to keep up Pretty much all companies have started working on that. The big issues they usually put together tons and tons of vendor software. Another big issue is that some of their lower level parts are not upgradable at all, so even if you can upgrade your main computer that does not mean you can be quite as complete as Tesla can be.

chrismcb 7y ago

Well yes and no... This is coming from a person that just replaced a 25 year old car with a brand new one. In general a car is a car. Other than maintenance, a car from ages ago will get you around just fine. But there have been a ton of improvements both in safety and comfort. Today's car is much safer than one from twenty years ago. More fuel efficient, and more comfortable. In recent years navigation has become standard, that is probably the single biggest obvious difference in the last 20 years.

ehnto 7y ago
Safety is the big benefit in comparison for cars that old I think. But what does a car five years from now need to offer to have you replace your current car with it? Or are you going to keep the current one for 25 years as well?