7 ms·

Analog cars uber alles :)

smitty1e 6y ago
Serious question: I think there is a market for a dirt-simple, stripped down car like the original Jeep. If capitalism is so swift, why is the product I want to buy not on offer? Answer: the market is captured, and controlled via government regulation, by corporations that do not see individual owners wrenching on their cars as advantageous. Follow-up: how do we restore capitalism to our (nominally) free market?
- lb1lf 6y ago
  -Because you need volume to make car production economic. We're a small and, hence, neglected minority. The product you want already exists, though - it is commonly referred to as the 70 series Land Cruiser. :)
- AwaAwa 6y ago
  Crowd source a Build-Your-Own-Car model kit?
  - jagshsjddkdk 6y ago
    It's called wikispeed. Search for it.
- sollewitt 6y ago
  Alternative answer: because the market for what you want is too small relative to the cost of producing the thing you want.
  - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
    Except that the cost of producing that is not actually high. Individuals have built cars out of parts in their own garage. You don't think there is anyone willing to make millions of dollars by producing a thousand of them for the thousand people who want them? But not if the fixed regulatory overhead is equal to the margin on twenty thousand cars.
    - gruez 6y ago
      >Except that the cost of producing that is not actually high. Individuals have built cars out of parts in their own garage. "Individuals have built cars out of parts in their own garage" doesn't really prove that the costs for producing a car isn't high. They're most certainly enthusiasts, and they could have plowed tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of parts/labor into it.
      - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
        People are clearly willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars to buy a new car. That's how much they cost.
    - OJFord 6y ago
      I think the main thing is safety. On the face of it I'm with you, but then when it came down to it I'd be thinking well hang on this actually doesn't seem as safe (or at least not as thoroughly tested to determine if it is) as these other mass-produced things, and wouldn't end up buying it. If it was easy to make something as safe as a $modern_run_of_the_mill_family_car and that looked 'normal' (i.e. curvy, I suppose, not weird slabs of barely bent sheet metal) I think there'd be loads of Kickstarter campaigns 'basic'/'maintainable'/.. cars.
      - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
        Making the car safe and making the car comply with safety regulations are two different things. It's possible and even likely that we have rules which are unnecessary or not worth the cost for small production runs, but which apply to them anyway, because companies doing small production runs don't have lobbying clout and companies doing large production runs are amortizing the cost over hundreds of thousands of cars and don't want things to be easier for smaller competitors.
- Spooky23 6y ago
  There are dozens of car companies, so the market is working. Government regulation exists because your desire to buy a “simple” car impacts my ability to breathe. You can buy very simple vehicles for off road use. Fixing broken cars became a cultural thing because cars really sucked and you had to waste a fair portion of your life fixing them. Things like emission regulation brought metrics and standards to the industry and resulted in better cars. The typical lifespan of a car is 2x what is was in the 80s (200k miles or 12 years).
  - alexcabrera 6y ago
    > your desire to buy a “simple” car impacts my ability to breathe This kind of hyperbole is exactly why we have the president we do.
    - Spooky23 6y ago
      When I was growing up in NYC, first task of spring cleaning was washing the soot from cars off the side of the house. It’s not hyperbole. Clean air is something we have because of regulatory action.
- vibrolax 6y ago
  My guess is the product you want to buy is on offer, but not at the price you are willing to pay. Do It Yourself is the market solution for people who want something different than what is offered in the mass market. The internet has enabled truly insane levels of DIY capability. Capitalism is not a charity. Therefore people that want products that cannot be sold profitably in the mass market can make it themselves, or buy it from the hobbyist/enthusiast market.
  - smitty1e 6y ago
    If this product is on offer, then their word-of-mouth marketing isn't getting it done. The 70 Series Land Cruiser was mentioned above.
- rootusrootus 6y ago
  > why is the product I want to buy not on offer Because the folks that ask this type of question are few and far between, and rarely serious. Otherwise, at least one manufacturer would have brown diesel wagons with manual transmissions. ;-) Maybe 1 in 1000 people wrench on their own car. Manufacturers don't cater to that. They design cars to be appealing to the other 999, and they design the mechanical bits to be as cheap as possible to assemble in a factory.
  - smitty1e 6y ago
    Maybe 3rd printing can allow some sort of Renaissance.
- klyrs 6y ago
  You can frame it as regulatory capture, but to a large extent, it's more about environmental and consumer protections that the auto industry has spent decades fighting. As somebody who drives an ancient car, I'm keenly aware of its lack of safety features. The "american steel" argument falls flat; my car was made before the concept of crumple zones, much less airbags -- driving this boat, I'd be seriously injured or die in a head-on collison with a Yaris, where the other driver and passengers would probably walk away. Unless my gas tank explodes and engulfs us all, that is. If everybody was driving pre-1984 vehicles, the emissions would result in horrible smog, bringing most cities on par with Beijing. The world must bring carbon emissions down to prevent severe climate change. Maybe lax safety standards could contribute to that; but environmental regulations must not go. Follow up: the "free" market that you propose is not actually free, but ignorant of externalities that the modern market has limited facilities to account for.
  - asdff 6y ago
    Is throttle and steering by wire a safety feature? No. Its objectively worse than having the physical linkage, and manufacturers turn to it out of ease of design.
    - klyrs 6y ago
      Sorry, but I'm not sure what part of my comment that you're responding to. Maybe you're rebutting my parent? Because I've never heard of a regulation towards drive-by-wire, so I suspect this particular aspect of automotive design is a result of a free market.
      - Scoundreller 6y ago
        While I could see steer-by-wire driven by lowered production costs (easier to share parts between LHD and RHD models), I could also see it indirectly driven by weight savings to meet fuel economy regulations. No pinion shaft required. No pinion shaft cutout through the firewall means the body can be made with less steel. Belt-driven pumps are moving to electric-drive for efficiency, but when you're switching from hydraulic assist to motor-assist, making the whole thing 'by-wire' and motor driven reduces complexity.
- dehrmann 6y ago
  Some of this repeats what others have said; modern safety and efficiency requirements mean the car needs more electronics. When they fail, you're SOL, but modern cars are pretty reliable, making up for part of the desire for consumers to fix them.
- ericd 6y ago
  The other answer could be lack of scale. These aren’t artisan goods that someone can easily try offering on a whim, these magnificently complicated machines are only affordable because of economies of scale/mass manufacturing. You can probably find someone to custom build what you want, but it’s not going to be anywhere near cost competitive with a standard model. Maybe you can get close by using stock parts from other cars. Or maybe this is a market opportunity, and you should set up a manufacturing line for stripped down jeep-like vehicles. Probably won’t be road legal, though, because they’re horrifically unsafe in a collision compared to modern cars.
- 7952 6y ago
  Or the market is captured by customer hostile brand focused lifestyle companies that make money on after market spares.
- Nition 6y ago
  While we're doing this can we please also bring back small-screen smart phones and physical buttons and knobs on appliances?
- deadbunny 6y ago
  Please explain how this is in anyway due to the/a/any government.
fb03 6y ago
Jokes aside, cars have not been analog anymore for decades ;-( Most stuff (even stuff that looks analog like the speed gauge) now runs thru buses and OBD allows you to tap into almost every controllable aspect of the car if you know the 'right api' for the device.
- adriancr 6y ago
  As long as the control systems are properly air-gapped you should be fine. (doesn't work for jeep apparently due to cost savings... https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-highway/ https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-hig...) won't stop someone physically breaking in and connecting something to the bus but the alarm should sound in that case.
  - rjsw 6y ago
    There have been cars where the bus connection to the ABS system was accessable in the wheel well.
    - adriancr 6y ago
      Yeah, but you need physical access and unlocked car... you can cut the breaks too if you have that...
  - Scoundreller 6y ago
    Well, it's a 2-step process. It's hard to find a car without remote-unlock. From there, you have access to OBD. OBD port is +12, GND, TX and RX pin if you just want to connect to 1 bus. Shouldn't be too hard MITM that if you have physical access.
    - Dylan16807 6y ago
      > It's hard to find a car without remote-unlock. Unplug the antenna? And someone that's going to MITM your OBD could also MITM your ignition wire on an analog car.
    - 6y ago

Serious question: I think there is a market for a dirt-simple, stripped down car like the original Jeep. If capitalism is so swift, why is the product I want to buy not on offer? Answer: the market is captured, and controlled via government regulation, by corporations that do not see individual owners wrenching on their cars as advantageous. Follow-up: how do we restore capitalism to our (nominally) free market?

lb1lf 6y ago
-Because you need volume to make car production economic. We're a small and, hence, neglected minority. The product you want already exists, though - it is commonly referred to as the 70 series Land Cruiser. :)
AwaAwa 6y ago
Crowd source a Build-Your-Own-Car model kit?
- jagshsjddkdk 6y ago
  It's called wikispeed. Search for it.
sollewitt 6y ago
Alternative answer: because the market for what you want is too small relative to the cost of producing the thing you want.
- AnthonyMouse 6y ago
  Except that the cost of producing that is not actually high. Individuals have built cars out of parts in their own garage. You don't think there is anyone willing to make millions of dollars by producing a thousand of them for the thousand people who want them? But not if the fixed regulatory overhead is equal to the margin on twenty thousand cars.
  - gruez 6y ago
    >Except that the cost of producing that is not actually high. Individuals have built cars out of parts in their own garage. "Individuals have built cars out of parts in their own garage" doesn't really prove that the costs for producing a car isn't high. They're most certainly enthusiasts, and they could have plowed tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of parts/labor into it.
    - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
      People are clearly willing to pay tens of thousands of dollars to buy a new car. That's how much they cost.
  - OJFord 6y ago
    I think the main thing is safety. On the face of it I'm with you, but then when it came down to it I'd be thinking well hang on this actually doesn't seem as safe (or at least not as thoroughly tested to determine if it is) as these other mass-produced things, and wouldn't end up buying it. If it was easy to make something as safe as a $modern_run_of_the_mill_family_car and that looked 'normal' (i.e. curvy, I suppose, not weird slabs of barely bent sheet metal) I think there'd be loads of Kickstarter campaigns 'basic'/'maintainable'/.. cars.
    - AnthonyMouse 6y ago
      Making the car safe and making the car comply with safety regulations are two different things. It's possible and even likely that we have rules which are unnecessary or not worth the cost for small production runs, but which apply to them anyway, because companies doing small production runs don't have lobbying clout and companies doing large production runs are amortizing the cost over hundreds of thousands of cars and don't want things to be easier for smaller competitors.
Spooky23 6y ago
There are dozens of car companies, so the market is working. Government regulation exists because your desire to buy a “simple” car impacts my ability to breathe. You can buy very simple vehicles for off road use. Fixing broken cars became a cultural thing because cars really sucked and you had to waste a fair portion of your life fixing them. Things like emission regulation brought metrics and standards to the industry and resulted in better cars. The typical lifespan of a car is 2x what is was in the 80s (200k miles or 12 years).
- alexcabrera 6y ago
  > your desire to buy a “simple” car impacts my ability to breathe This kind of hyperbole is exactly why we have the president we do.
  - Spooky23 6y ago
    When I was growing up in NYC, first task of spring cleaning was washing the soot from cars off the side of the house. It’s not hyperbole. Clean air is something we have because of regulatory action.
vibrolax 6y ago
My guess is the product you want to buy is on offer, but not at the price you are willing to pay. Do It Yourself is the market solution for people who want something different than what is offered in the mass market. The internet has enabled truly insane levels of DIY capability. Capitalism is not a charity. Therefore people that want products that cannot be sold profitably in the mass market can make it themselves, or buy it from the hobbyist/enthusiast market.
- smitty1e 6y ago
  If this product is on offer, then their word-of-mouth marketing isn't getting it done. The 70 Series Land Cruiser was mentioned above.
rootusrootus 6y ago
> why is the product I want to buy not on offer Because the folks that ask this type of question are few and far between, and rarely serious. Otherwise, at least one manufacturer would have brown diesel wagons with manual transmissions. ;-) Maybe 1 in 1000 people wrench on their own car. Manufacturers don't cater to that. They design cars to be appealing to the other 999, and they design the mechanical bits to be as cheap as possible to assemble in a factory.
- smitty1e 6y ago
  Maybe 3rd printing can allow some sort of Renaissance.
klyrs 6y ago
You can frame it as regulatory capture, but to a large extent, it's more about environmental and consumer protections that the auto industry has spent decades fighting. As somebody who drives an ancient car, I'm keenly aware of its lack of safety features. The "american steel" argument falls flat; my car was made before the concept of crumple zones, much less airbags -- driving this boat, I'd be seriously injured or die in a head-on collison with a Yaris, where the other driver and passengers would probably walk away. Unless my gas tank explodes and engulfs us all, that is. If everybody was driving pre-1984 vehicles, the emissions would result in horrible smog, bringing most cities on par with Beijing. The world must bring carbon emissions down to prevent severe climate change. Maybe lax safety standards could contribute to that; but environmental regulations must not go. Follow up: the "free" market that you propose is not actually free, but ignorant of externalities that the modern market has limited facilities to account for.
- asdff 6y ago
  Is throttle and steering by wire a safety feature? No. Its objectively worse than having the physical linkage, and manufacturers turn to it out of ease of design.
  - klyrs 6y ago
    Sorry, but I'm not sure what part of my comment that you're responding to. Maybe you're rebutting my parent? Because I've never heard of a regulation towards drive-by-wire, so I suspect this particular aspect of automotive design is a result of a free market.
    - Scoundreller 6y ago
      While I could see steer-by-wire driven by lowered production costs (easier to share parts between LHD and RHD models), I could also see it indirectly driven by weight savings to meet fuel economy regulations. No pinion shaft required. No pinion shaft cutout through the firewall means the body can be made with less steel. Belt-driven pumps are moving to electric-drive for efficiency, but when you're switching from hydraulic assist to motor-assist, making the whole thing 'by-wire' and motor driven reduces complexity.
dehrmann 6y ago
Some of this repeats what others have said; modern safety and efficiency requirements mean the car needs more electronics. When they fail, you're SOL, but modern cars are pretty reliable, making up for part of the desire for consumers to fix them.
ericd 6y ago
The other answer could be lack of scale. These aren’t artisan goods that someone can easily try offering on a whim, these magnificently complicated machines are only affordable because of economies of scale/mass manufacturing. You can probably find someone to custom build what you want, but it’s not going to be anywhere near cost competitive with a standard model. Maybe you can get close by using stock parts from other cars. Or maybe this is a market opportunity, and you should set up a manufacturing line for stripped down jeep-like vehicles. Probably won’t be road legal, though, because they’re horrifically unsafe in a collision compared to modern cars.
7952 6y ago
Or the market is captured by customer hostile brand focused lifestyle companies that make money on after market spares.
Nition 6y ago
While we're doing this can we please also bring back small-screen smart phones and physical buttons and knobs on appliances?
deadbunny 6y ago
Please explain how this is in anyway due to the/a/any government.

fb03 6y ago

Jokes aside, cars have not been analog anymore for decades ;-( Most stuff (even stuff that looks analog like the speed gauge) now runs thru buses and OBD allows you to tap into almost every controllable aspect of the car if you know the 'right api' for the device.

adriancr 6y ago
As long as the control systems are properly air-gapped you should be fine. (doesn't work for jeep apparently due to cost savings... https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-highway/ https://www.wired.com/2015/07/hackers-remotely-kill-jeep-hig...) won't stop someone physically breaking in and connecting something to the bus but the alarm should sound in that case.
- rjsw 6y ago
  There have been cars where the bus connection to the ABS system was accessable in the wheel well.
  - adriancr 6y ago
    Yeah, but you need physical access and unlocked car... you can cut the breaks too if you have that...
- Scoundreller 6y ago
  Well, it's a 2-step process. It's hard to find a car without remote-unlock. From there, you have access to OBD. OBD port is +12, GND, TX and RX pin if you just want to connect to 1 bus. Shouldn't be too hard MITM that if you have physical access.
  - Dylan16807 6y ago
    > It's hard to find a car without remote-unlock. Unplug the antenna? And someone that's going to MITM your OBD could also MITM your ignition wire on an analog car.
  - 6y ago