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> - Lack of a mobile app. Minimalist design is great, but I still want an app to manage charging and be alerted to any vehicle issues. Noooooooooo! No apps, pl

> - Lack of a mobile app. Minimalist design is great, but I still want an app to manage charging and be alerted to any vehicle issues. Noooooooooo! No apps, please! Finally a car not tethered to and dependent on your phone, and we already have our first request to app-ify it! EDIT: Ughhh, according to the video that another user posted, it looks like there's an app, and yes, "updates" go through it :( > - Lack of good charge management and battery conditioning. Either that, or a cheap and easy to replace battery pack. I'd really like both! Yes to a simple battery system! > - Comparable hauling and towing capacity to the 1998 Ford Ranger. Those numbers aren't exactly impressive, but I do use the truck as a truck, and I occasionally need the hauling capacity (weight). Yes! > - Bucket seats. I need a bench seat so I can take my wife and dog. Think weekend glamping trips. Picture 8 shows a bucket seat. It doesn't look like that would work. Yes, definitely. It being a 2 seater is kind of a deal breaker for families. You really want a bench seat to at least stick a small child between the driver and passenger. Back in the day, we'd stuff 3 kids between two adults, but these days the Safety People would have a heart attack just thinking about that. The article mentions an SUV upgrade kit that will bolt onto the back of the truck. Ugh, OK I guess. Sad that that's the way it will probably have to go. 1: https://youtu.be/cq1qEjwSYkw https://youtu.be/cq1qEjwSYkw

taylodl 2y ago
I'd want the mobile app to be an auxiliary, not a requirement for operating the truck. Keep the dashboard simple.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  I'd be worried that once an app got a foothold into the product, the company would be unable to resist the urge to spread the app's tentacles across the entire vehicle, adding connectivity and telemetry and DRM, integrating it into the other car's systems, adding remote-this and wireless-that, and then inevitably the product would end up just like the turd cars we have today.
  - oslem 2y ago
    100% agree. I would be fine if they had an estimated time-to-fully-charged displayed on the screen. I don’t need to know the status of my vehicle, personally. I would imagine a third party system could be implemented to achieve most of what one would need.
  - instaclay 2y ago
    I have a iron filter that works via app. All configs can be done with button presses on the valve but in a much more tedious process/workflow. It connects via bluetooth and not WiFi. If the company goes belly up, I'd just need the APK and an android phone to continue using the app to configure the valve and see/download water usage data. Fast forward 20 years when I can't install the APK on android v79, I'd need an older phone to run the APK.. but that seems to be pulling hairs. Apps would be great, it's how you handle the backend to it that's the gotcha. I also have a water softener with an app that no longer works that had it's backend shut down. It can still be configured via the valve head button presses, but none of the "smart" usage data is available. As an example of good design, this is a perfect dichotomy of one company doing it well and one company doing it un-well[sic].
    - ryandrake 2y ago
      Not only the backend, but what happens 40 years in the future, when our phones don't run the app anymore, or we're all on phones that are totally unlike the phones of today, or if we don't even have phones or apps? I would expect the car to still work after that long, and making it dependent on a technology that is specific to a particular decade risks premature obsolescence.
      - instaclay 2y ago
        I'll be ecstatic if my iron filter lasts 40 years. I saw in another post that a person said there's a difference between "device dependent" and "device augmented" that really resonated with me. There's diminishing returns on everything, and just throwing your hands up on any subject as bad/good might be a disservice. If I live through an era where phones are no longer a thing and APKs are a thing of the past.. then I either... A. Don't use the iron filter like that anymore. (manual programing now) B. Get a new iron filter. (ewwwww) C. Keep a legacy-device for the purposes of programming the iron filter. (doesn't need any internet connection or subscriptions) (C) would be my most liked solution.
- reginald78 2y ago
  Nice idea in theory. In practice, apps imply ongoing OTA connectivity, which means the truck will be updated to show ads or at the very least collect and sell all my driving information to any dirtbag that can rub two nickels together. Connected devices can alter the deal so they will, after all I've lost any leverage against them after I purchased the vehicle.
- Beijinger 2y ago
  You need an app. You could make steering to the left only available in a 50 USD per month subscription but steering right is free or something like it.
- organsnyder 2y ago
  If the vehicle had an open interface (maybe via CAN bus over the OBD2 port?), then DIY and aftermarket apps become possibilities.
- theamazing0 2y ago
  I think legally they would need to require using an app for their back view camera. All new cars in the United States after 2018 need one and I don't see how it would work without using the phone/tablet as a display.
  - mulmen 2y ago
    The article says the rear camera feed will be displayed on a screen behind the steering wheel which doubles as the speedometer and charge display.
    - ryandrake 2y ago
      That seems like a clever and reasonable compromise to comply with a particularly bad regulation.
      - mulmen 2y ago
        I don’t have a problem with the regulation. Slate is trying to build a safe, affordable, electric vehicle. Having one display for all information seems like a good way to save cost.
      - dlcarrier 2y ago
        The regulation did exactly what it was designed to do: take the base-model Nissan Versa off the market and prevent any low-cost vehicles from competing in the US market. (Remember when brand-new cars were available for under $10,000? Inflation adjusted, that was still less than $15,000) Sure, ultrasonic sensors have a better outcome than backup cameras in a cost-benefit analysis (https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/nhtsa-2006-25579-0002.pdf https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/nhtsa-2006-25579...) and allow you to simultaneously look out the windows and get feedback from the sensor, but allowing them would have allowed for the sale of cars too cheap to have infotainment systems, and that was not the goal of the regulators.
hylaride 2y ago
> Yes, definitely. It being a 2 seater is kind of a deal breaker for families. What you need is not a pickup truck. Catering to families means expensive bells and whistles, like entertainment systems, etc. > Back in the day, we'd stuff 3 kids between two adults, but these days the Safety People would have a heart attack just thinking about that. Rightfully so. Back in the day we did so many things we shouldn't have, and survivorship bias makes us default to thinking it was ok. As kids, we used to go barrelling down dirt roads in the back of pickups or played in the backs of station wagons. There's a reason automobile deaths have gone down.
- RandomBacon 2y ago
  > Catering to families means expensive bells and whistles, like entertainment systems, etc. It absolutely does NOT mean those things. Cars didn't have entertainment systems for nearly a century and families did just fine. <Get off my lawn> My entertainment system was the window. Observe the world, not just whatever AI-generated garbage some algorithm pushes to a small screen 8-10 inches away from your eyes. </Get off my lawn>
  - 0xdeadbeefbabe 2y ago
    The alphabet game still works if you teach them to read.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    And aside from a window, you know what's better than a car infotainment system? A physical holder for a personal pad device. The amount of not-invented-here, duplicate functionality that car companies execute poorly, when buyers already have devices that do that well, is ridiculous. The biggest benefit of aligning manufacturing costs for profit should be jettisoning the "post-sale" revenue streams that drive complicated built-in tech for current cars. And also, you-know, 100% A+ on getting back to "customize your own car, because it's cheap and supported"! Owners being afraid of doing what they want with their devices/vehicles has to stop.
    - 2y ago
potato3732842 2y ago
> - Bucket seats. I need a bench seat so I can take my wife and dog. Think weekend glamping trips. Picture 8 shows a bucket seat. It doesn't look like that would work. Take her car on those trips then. You wouldn't complain you can't take a Miata camping, why would you complain you can't take a 2-seat pickup? camping? The product isn't trying to do everything. It's trying to be the minimum viable truck and be good at it. And just like the purpose built roadster you give up unrelated stuff, like family hauling.
- 83 2y ago
  > You wouldn't complain you can't take a Miata camping, why would you complain you can't take a 2-seat pickup? camping? Because 2-seat pickups used to function this way. It's okay to pine for functionality that has been lost, particularly when a new product like this comes along and gets your hopes up.
tw04 2y ago
>Noooooooooo! No apps, please! Finally a car not tethered to and dependent on your phone, and we already have our first request to app-ify it! What car is tied to your phone? A mustang mach-e, for instance, does not require your phone at all. It has a FOB for opening the doors and starting it, you can program the charging times from the in-car screen. The app is optional, exactly as it should be. This car DESPERATELY is going to need an app when it comes to charging whether you know it or not. With no in-car screen you'll have absolutely no way to control charging which WILL come back to bite you. >Yes to a simple battery system! "simple" in this case will add cost. Nearly every EV has the battery as a part of the structural frame of the vehicle for a reason (there are some niche exceptions in China). Nothing is impossible, but I don't see them making the battery easily swappable, while also being structurally sound, and keeping the low price point.
- nancyminusone 2y ago
  > DESPERATELY is going to need an app when it comes to charging whether you know it or not I don't own an EV. What for? Do you really need more than a button or two and some leds?
  - tw04 2y ago
    Controlling your charging. You shouldn’t be charging more than 80% for daily driving unless you want to destroy your battery. You will almost assuredly also want to be able to precondition if you live in a cold climate.
    - tredre3 2y ago
      Again, why do you consider those things as better done via a smartphone and an app, versus using the already built-in screen (the one behind the wheel)?
      - tw04 2y ago
        As I’ve already stated, I consider it better done by both. I don’t think forcing one or the other is a good user experience. Every preview I’ve seen has stated that display is for the speedometer and backup camera, and that’s it. It’s not an input device.
burnerthrow008 2y ago
> Yes to a simple battery system! But you realize this will make cold-weather range suck and on-the-road charging suck, right? Preheating the battery and cabin on "shore power" is something EV buyers just expect at this point because that can consume 2-3kWh of energy (equivalent to 6-10 miles or 10-16 km). That's almost 10% of Slate's range (see below). Preheating the battery about 10-15 minutes before you arrive at a supercharger is another expected feature. It can increase charge acceptance rate by over 50% (reduce charge time by 1/3). The 150 mile range is extremely optimistic given the size of the battery and shape of the truck. With just 5% top and bottom buffers, you'd need to achieve over 3.1 miles/kWh... which is the consumption expected of a small aerodynamic sedan. I would bet real money that highway range (at 75 mph) for the small battery is less than 120 miles from 100% to 0.
- warble 2y ago
  Highway speeds are worst case scenario so maybe you're right but I doubt it. Your charge rate acceptance number is surprising to me, I've never seen anything like this in my years of experience designing EV batteries. Preconditioning helps extreme fast charging but isn't necessary for 1-2 C charges at all unless it's very cold out. There's some caveats to this depending on the exact chemistry but if anything the newer semi solid state NMC cells are even less dependent on this and can charge down to -20C.
EvanAnderson 2y ago
> Noooooooooo! No apps, please! I wish devices could have web servers and web-based UI rather than thick "apps" that end up rotting when device manufacturers arbitrarily decide that old software won't work anymore (cough, cough-- Apple-- cough, cough). I know we can't because "security", no end-to-end over the Internet anymore, etc. >sigh< It seems like we've engineered the networking and software ecosystem to promote disposable "smart" devices. It's almost like somebody profits from it. Hmm...
- nine_k 2y ago
  Why, we of course could if we cared. Let the car offer a wifi access point. WPA3 is secure enough, but you can of course have an extra layer of TLS inside it. For the extra paranoid, a car could have a USB socket that pretends to be a wired network interface, offering DHCP. Run a web server for car diagnostics and maintenance when connected to this interface. Do it from the comfort of your laptop, or anywhere anytime using your phone. Zero chance of remote exploits, if you set the things correctly on the car side. An ESP32-based system with $5 BOM would suffice to provide this.
  - andrewla 2y ago
    Not with off the shelf protocols. Yes WPA3 is plenty secure, but any AP advertising the same SSID with the same key would allow the device to connect. So how do you know that you're connected to your car, and not to the black hat AP next to it? From there, you can have as much TLS as you want, but that still won't give you server identity unless the server certificate is signed by someone you already trust. So a generic web browser would be screwed, because you either add SlateTruckCertificateAuthority to the globally trusted list, and then you still have to deal with revocations and certificate expiry, or you use some other CA that is willing to delegate. There's no good support for self-signed certificates or pinned certificates, and even if there were, the initial connection would be tough. Unfortunately this really isn't a well-solved problem. Bluetooth can get you part of the way there, but it only offers really good security in theory (in practice it is constantly having issues) and it is intrinsically limited.
nine_k 2y ago
> Yes to a simple battery system! Battery balancing and conditioning does not need to be fancy, and does not need a fancy screen; a couple of LEDs should suffice. But I'd like my batteries charged competently, recharged efficiently while braking, worn uniformly, and kept at reasonable temperature. It's not hard to do completely automatically and invisibly; a quality electric bike would have it.
Animats 2y ago
> - Lack of good charge management and battery conditioning. Why should it lack that? That's a tiny piece of software in the charge controller, which on this vehicle ought to be some tiny microcontroller.
- enslavedrobot 2y ago
  In car it requires liquid cooling and from conversations I've had with former Tesla engineers, exquisite control over power quality. Just ask a Nissan Leaf or Chevy Bolt owner.
  - justin66 2y ago
    > exquisite control over power quality So a... 16 bit microcontroller?
    - enslavedrobot 2y ago
      The electrochemical interface where lithium intercolates into the anode and cathode of the battery experiences microscopic electric field variations that, depending on the local surface geometry, lead to side reactions and battery degradation. The hardware that converts DC to DC and DC to AC must be designed to mitigate the voltage ripple and harmonics that exacerbate the localized electric field extremes that prematurely degrade electrode interfaces and battery electrolytes. State of the art BMS and rectifier components are much more difficult to build than you might think.
      - justin66 2y ago
        Correct me if I'm wrong but your comments do not suggest that the end result of this engineering cannot be very simple, elegant, and hopefully even inexpensive if built at scale. Instead, they suggest that the team who builds it needs to know what the heck they're doing. No argument here. What are we even talking about?
        2y ago
pedalpete 2y ago
I think you're assuming a mobile app would mean that the car is dependent on your phone. Just because an app can be connected to your car doesn't mean the app controls your car.
almosthere 2y ago
I absolutely agree with you on the NO APP thing. I too just want air conditioning knobs and that's it. A truck from 1980 that is an EV that can haul lumber to build a house.

taylodl 2y ago

I'd want the mobile app to be an auxiliary, not a requirement for operating the truck. Keep the dashboard simple.

ryandrake 2y ago
I'd be worried that once an app got a foothold into the product, the company would be unable to resist the urge to spread the app's tentacles across the entire vehicle, adding connectivity and telemetry and DRM, integrating it into the other car's systems, adding remote-this and wireless-that, and then inevitably the product would end up just like the turd cars we have today.
- oslem 2y ago
  100% agree. I would be fine if they had an estimated time-to-fully-charged displayed on the screen. I don’t need to know the status of my vehicle, personally. I would imagine a third party system could be implemented to achieve most of what one would need.
- instaclay 2y ago
  I have a iron filter that works via app. All configs can be done with button presses on the valve but in a much more tedious process/workflow. It connects via bluetooth and not WiFi. If the company goes belly up, I'd just need the APK and an android phone to continue using the app to configure the valve and see/download water usage data. Fast forward 20 years when I can't install the APK on android v79, I'd need an older phone to run the APK.. but that seems to be pulling hairs. Apps would be great, it's how you handle the backend to it that's the gotcha. I also have a water softener with an app that no longer works that had it's backend shut down. It can still be configured via the valve head button presses, but none of the "smart" usage data is available. As an example of good design, this is a perfect dichotomy of one company doing it well and one company doing it un-well[sic].
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    Not only the backend, but what happens 40 years in the future, when our phones don't run the app anymore, or we're all on phones that are totally unlike the phones of today, or if we don't even have phones or apps? I would expect the car to still work after that long, and making it dependent on a technology that is specific to a particular decade risks premature obsolescence.
    - instaclay 2y ago
      I'll be ecstatic if my iron filter lasts 40 years. I saw in another post that a person said there's a difference between "device dependent" and "device augmented" that really resonated with me. There's diminishing returns on everything, and just throwing your hands up on any subject as bad/good might be a disservice. If I live through an era where phones are no longer a thing and APKs are a thing of the past.. then I either... A. Don't use the iron filter like that anymore. (manual programing now) B. Get a new iron filter. (ewwwww) C. Keep a legacy-device for the purposes of programming the iron filter. (doesn't need any internet connection or subscriptions) (C) would be my most liked solution.
reginald78 2y ago
Nice idea in theory. In practice, apps imply ongoing OTA connectivity, which means the truck will be updated to show ads or at the very least collect and sell all my driving information to any dirtbag that can rub two nickels together. Connected devices can alter the deal so they will, after all I've lost any leverage against them after I purchased the vehicle.
Beijinger 2y ago
You need an app. You could make steering to the left only available in a 50 USD per month subscription but steering right is free or something like it.
organsnyder 2y ago
If the vehicle had an open interface (maybe via CAN bus over the OBD2 port?), then DIY and aftermarket apps become possibilities.
theamazing0 2y ago
I think legally they would need to require using an app for their back view camera. All new cars in the United States after 2018 need one and I don't see how it would work without using the phone/tablet as a display.
- mulmen 2y ago
  The article says the rear camera feed will be displayed on a screen behind the steering wheel which doubles as the speedometer and charge display.
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    That seems like a clever and reasonable compromise to comply with a particularly bad regulation.
    - mulmen 2y ago
      I don’t have a problem with the regulation. Slate is trying to build a safe, affordable, electric vehicle. Having one display for all information seems like a good way to save cost.
    - dlcarrier 2y ago
      The regulation did exactly what it was designed to do: take the base-model Nissan Versa off the market and prevent any low-cost vehicles from competing in the US market. (Remember when brand-new cars were available for under $10,000? Inflation adjusted, that was still less than $15,000) Sure, ultrasonic sensors have a better outcome than backup cameras in a cost-benefit analysis (https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/nhtsa-2006-25579-0002.pdf https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/nhtsa-2006-25579...) and allow you to simultaneously look out the windows and get feedback from the sensor, but allowing them would have allowed for the sale of cars too cheap to have infotainment systems, and that was not the goal of the regulators.

hylaride 2y ago

> Yes, definitely. It being a 2 seater is kind of a deal breaker for families. What you need is not a pickup truck. Catering to families means expensive bells and whistles, like entertainment systems, etc. > Back in the day, we'd stuff 3 kids between two adults, but these days the Safety People would have a heart attack just thinking about that. Rightfully so. Back in the day we did so many things we shouldn't have, and survivorship bias makes us default to thinking it was ok. As kids, we used to go barrelling down dirt roads in the back of pickups or played in the backs of station wagons. There's a reason automobile deaths have gone down.

RandomBacon 2y ago
> Catering to families means expensive bells and whistles, like entertainment systems, etc. It absolutely does NOT mean those things. Cars didn't have entertainment systems for nearly a century and families did just fine. <Get off my lawn> My entertainment system was the window. Observe the world, not just whatever AI-generated garbage some algorithm pushes to a small screen 8-10 inches away from your eyes. </Get off my lawn>
- 0xdeadbeefbabe 2y ago
  The alphabet game still works if you teach them to read.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  And aside from a window, you know what's better than a car infotainment system? A physical holder for a personal pad device. The amount of not-invented-here, duplicate functionality that car companies execute poorly, when buyers already have devices that do that well, is ridiculous. The biggest benefit of aligning manufacturing costs for profit should be jettisoning the "post-sale" revenue streams that drive complicated built-in tech for current cars. And also, you-know, 100% A+ on getting back to "customize your own car, because it's cheap and supported"! Owners being afraid of doing what they want with their devices/vehicles has to stop.
  - 2y ago

potato3732842 2y ago

> - Bucket seats. I need a bench seat so I can take my wife and dog. Think weekend glamping trips. Picture 8 shows a bucket seat. It doesn't look like that would work. Take her car on those trips then. You wouldn't complain you can't take a Miata camping, why would you complain you can't take a 2-seat pickup? camping? The product isn't trying to do everything. It's trying to be the minimum viable truck and be good at it. And just like the purpose built roadster you give up unrelated stuff, like family hauling.

83 2y ago
> You wouldn't complain you can't take a Miata camping, why would you complain you can't take a 2-seat pickup? camping? Because 2-seat pickups used to function this way. It's okay to pine for functionality that has been lost, particularly when a new product like this comes along and gets your hopes up.

tw04 2y ago

>Noooooooooo! No apps, please! Finally a car not tethered to and dependent on your phone, and we already have our first request to app-ify it! What car is tied to your phone? A mustang mach-e, for instance, does not require your phone at all. It has a FOB for opening the doors and starting it, you can program the charging times from the in-car screen. The app is optional, exactly as it should be. This car DESPERATELY is going to need an app when it comes to charging whether you know it or not. With no in-car screen you'll have absolutely no way to control charging which WILL come back to bite you. >Yes to a simple battery system! "simple" in this case will add cost. Nearly every EV has the battery as a part of the structural frame of the vehicle for a reason (there are some niche exceptions in China). Nothing is impossible, but I don't see them making the battery easily swappable, while also being structurally sound, and keeping the low price point.

nancyminusone 2y ago
> DESPERATELY is going to need an app when it comes to charging whether you know it or not I don't own an EV. What for? Do you really need more than a button or two and some leds?
- tw04 2y ago
  Controlling your charging. You shouldn’t be charging more than 80% for daily driving unless you want to destroy your battery. You will almost assuredly also want to be able to precondition if you live in a cold climate.
  - tredre3 2y ago
    Again, why do you consider those things as better done via a smartphone and an app, versus using the already built-in screen (the one behind the wheel)?
    - tw04 2y ago
      As I’ve already stated, I consider it better done by both. I don’t think forcing one or the other is a good user experience. Every preview I’ve seen has stated that display is for the speedometer and backup camera, and that’s it. It’s not an input device.

burnerthrow008 2y ago

> Yes to a simple battery system! But you realize this will make cold-weather range suck and on-the-road charging suck, right? Preheating the battery and cabin on "shore power" is something EV buyers just expect at this point because that can consume 2-3kWh of energy (equivalent to 6-10 miles or 10-16 km). That's almost 10% of Slate's range (see below). Preheating the battery about 10-15 minutes before you arrive at a supercharger is another expected feature. It can increase charge acceptance rate by over 50% (reduce charge time by 1/3). The 150 mile range is extremely optimistic given the size of the battery and shape of the truck. With just 5% top and bottom buffers, you'd need to achieve over 3.1 miles/kWh... which is the consumption expected of a small aerodynamic sedan. I would bet real money that highway range (at 75 mph) for the small battery is less than 120 miles from 100% to 0.

warble 2y ago
Highway speeds are worst case scenario so maybe you're right but I doubt it. Your charge rate acceptance number is surprising to me, I've never seen anything like this in my years of experience designing EV batteries. Preconditioning helps extreme fast charging but isn't necessary for 1-2 C charges at all unless it's very cold out. There's some caveats to this depending on the exact chemistry but if anything the newer semi solid state NMC cells are even less dependent on this and can charge down to -20C.

EvanAnderson 2y ago

> Noooooooooo! No apps, please! I wish devices could have web servers and web-based UI rather than thick "apps" that end up rotting when device manufacturers arbitrarily decide that old software won't work anymore (cough, cough-- Apple-- cough, cough). I know we can't because "security", no end-to-end over the Internet anymore, etc. >sigh< It seems like we've engineered the networking and software ecosystem to promote disposable "smart" devices. It's almost like somebody profits from it. Hmm...

nine_k 2y ago
Why, we of course could if we cared. Let the car offer a wifi access point. WPA3 is secure enough, but you can of course have an extra layer of TLS inside it. For the extra paranoid, a car could have a USB socket that pretends to be a wired network interface, offering DHCP. Run a web server for car diagnostics and maintenance when connected to this interface. Do it from the comfort of your laptop, or anywhere anytime using your phone. Zero chance of remote exploits, if you set the things correctly on the car side. An ESP32-based system with $5 BOM would suffice to provide this.
- andrewla 2y ago
  Not with off the shelf protocols. Yes WPA3 is plenty secure, but any AP advertising the same SSID with the same key would allow the device to connect. So how do you know that you're connected to your car, and not to the black hat AP next to it? From there, you can have as much TLS as you want, but that still won't give you server identity unless the server certificate is signed by someone you already trust. So a generic web browser would be screwed, because you either add SlateTruckCertificateAuthority to the globally trusted list, and then you still have to deal with revocations and certificate expiry, or you use some other CA that is willing to delegate. There's no good support for self-signed certificates or pinned certificates, and even if there were, the initial connection would be tough. Unfortunately this really isn't a well-solved problem. Bluetooth can get you part of the way there, but it only offers really good security in theory (in practice it is constantly having issues) and it is intrinsically limited.

nine_k 2y ago

> Yes to a simple battery system! Battery balancing and conditioning does not need to be fancy, and does not need a fancy screen; a couple of LEDs should suffice. But I'd like my batteries charged competently, recharged efficiently while braking, worn uniformly, and kept at reasonable temperature. It's not hard to do completely automatically and invisibly; a quality electric bike would have it.

Animats 2y ago

> - Lack of good charge management and battery conditioning. Why should it lack that? That's a tiny piece of software in the charge controller, which on this vehicle ought to be some tiny microcontroller.

enslavedrobot 2y ago
In car it requires liquid cooling and from conversations I've had with former Tesla engineers, exquisite control over power quality. Just ask a Nissan Leaf or Chevy Bolt owner.
- justin66 2y ago
  > exquisite control over power quality So a... 16 bit microcontroller?
  - enslavedrobot 2y ago
    The electrochemical interface where lithium intercolates into the anode and cathode of the battery experiences microscopic electric field variations that, depending on the local surface geometry, lead to side reactions and battery degradation. The hardware that converts DC to DC and DC to AC must be designed to mitigate the voltage ripple and harmonics that exacerbate the localized electric field extremes that prematurely degrade electrode interfaces and battery electrolytes. State of the art BMS and rectifier components are much more difficult to build than you might think.
    - justin66 2y ago
      Correct me if I'm wrong but your comments do not suggest that the end result of this engineering cannot be very simple, elegant, and hopefully even inexpensive if built at scale. Instead, they suggest that the team who builds it needs to know what the heck they're doing. No argument here. What are we even talking about?
      - 2y ago

pedalpete 2y ago

I think you're assuming a mobile app would mean that the car is dependent on your phone. Just because an app can be connected to your car doesn't mean the app controls your car.

almosthere 2y ago

I absolutely agree with you on the NO APP thing. I too just want air conditioning knobs and that's it. A truck from 1980 that is an EV that can haul lumber to build a house.