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I feel like Tesla would have been significantly more competitive with the non-EV market if they had gone in a completely opposite direction with regard to fancy

I feel like Tesla would have been significantly more competitive with the non-EV market if they had gone in a completely opposite direction with regard to fancy technology. Give me a boring ass 90s control layout with the electric drive train and I'm much more interested. Make the car kind of ugly too. On purpose. I don't need a GPU farm inside my car. I'm not running a robotic taxi company. I just want to go get some groceries. I've worked on cars long enough to realize I don't want a chip using a leading edge semiconductor node in my vehicle somewhere. I live in a pretty nasty climate. A car sitting in a Texas parking lot in July will get to temperatures that the engineers probably didn't think possible. There's always something that starts to break once you cross into that 150F temperature level. I want semiconductors that were engineered to run in the basement of hell 24/7/365. 28nm and thicker sizes. I don't want 3nm gates in my car. There's no way these chips would last 10 years.

zozbot234 1y ago
> A car sitting in a Texas parking lot in July will get to temperatures that the engineers probably didn't think possible. AIUI, the car can run its cooling/AC system to keep itself cool, even when powered off. I'd imagine that this is actually a bigger concern for the battery's health and safety, not the chips. You're not supposed to let a battery get that hot.
- bob1029 1y ago
  If a cooling system needs to be built just to keep the car from dying when no one is using it, then I would argue we have jumped the complexity shark and need to go back to the drawing board. I can walk away from my vehicle without worrying about it turning back into a pumpkin. Most consumers are looking for an experience approximating this.
  - philistine 1y ago
    If you're talking about a gas engine, you're missing the complexities because they've been with us for a century. If you don't change the oil regularly, the car breaks down. If you leave old gas in the tank for a year, the car won't start. If you don't change the filters, the car eventually breaks down. If you don't change the belt after its admittedly long life, the car breaks down. You swap all that for the need to keep the car's battery somewhat full to maintain a constant temperature in the battery bay. You don't do that, the car does it on its own. Just plug the car to recharge the battery somewhat frequently, dependent on your weather.
- bluGill 1y ago
  A car in stop and go traffic in Texas at the same time will need even more cooling, the car needs to be kept comfortable for the humans as well as what the batteries need, plus because the car is moving it has extra heat from turning motors. As the others have pointed out all the major manufactures know the problems here, and ensure there isn't a problem.
hypeatei 1y ago
> Give me a boring ass 90s control layout with the electric drive train Exactly. The minimalist interior is super unappealing to me. I want something that's not all based on one screen. It's not just bad from a usability perspective but also seems risky if there are any issues with the screen (climate controls are very important for visibility certain times of the year)
- insane_dreamer 1y ago
  Except that the single-screen approach is cheaper to build than a bunch of buttons and dials. Not to mention much easier to keep updated OTA.
  - hypeatei 1y ago
    > Not to mention much easier to keep updated OTA. I think I'd prefer not to have easier over-the-air updates. As we saw with Jeep recently, the chance of turning your car into a brick are non-zero with these updates. > cheaper to build than a bunch of buttons and dials Tesla's are already quite expensive, how much more would some buttons and dials add to the price?
cheschire 1y ago
Making the car kind of ugly does not get the sales though. Many people that buy new cars cannot afford them. They need the car to be sexy looking in order to boost their pride so they can convince themselves they "deserve" this 8 year financial obligation. I would absolutely go for a 2002 electric Acura Integra though...
- estimator7292 1y ago
  I don't think there's more than like five people on the planet who think the cybertruck is sexy
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - bluGill 1y ago
    I wouldn't either except that I personally know 5 people who think it is sexy, and I can't believe that my very small circle of acquaintances could possibly cover everyone, so there must be a lot more than five.
- seanmcdirmid 1y ago
  In 2022, I had the ILX and upgraded to a BMW I4 EV. An electric Acura Integra, I would have been all over that in a heartbeat...but they just had an Acura SUV EV that was a GM Blazer knockoff. Honda has really been slipping in EVs, unfortunately.
__MatrixMan__ 1y ago
Back when those decisions were made, I bet they thought full automation was right around the corner and robotic taxis would make more sense than individual vehicle ownership. I think they're caught flat footed because here we are a decade later and the consumer's opinion still matters.
- bluGill 1y ago
  I have long thought the idea of robotic taxis didn't make any sense for most people. Where people already get a taxi of course it makes sense. There are a few people who don't drive much who it also makes sense for. However for the vast majority owning a car will always make more sense. Most people are traveling during rush hour - there isn't much opportunity to share cars with them, and where there is it means cars traveling empty from the city to the suburbs in the morning. (and the opposite at 5pm). When you own your own car you can "leave your golf clubs in the trunk in case a chance to play a round happens in the middle of the day". You can run errands over lunch. You store other things in the car that you don't need everyday. None of these are a big deal (many people take transit and thus cannot do that), but it is enough that when the economics are not a clear win you will want to own a car.
  - __MatrixMan__ 1y ago
    I think they make sense because most personally owned vehicles spend 98% of their time parked. If instead they rarely parked we could have far fewer of them, pay less for parking, have better saturation of modern safety features into the vehicle pool (since they'd wear out at a more uniform rate), and have better incentive alignment re: maintenance (since the mechanic and the designer work for the same company). The golf club problem is real, but I think we'll eventually find a way to solve it independently because the wastes associated with an ever growing percentage of the population owning a personal vehicle will eventually cross a tipping point.
    - bluGill 1y ago
      > If instead they rarely parked we could have far fewer of them Except that they would still spend most of their time parked. Almost nobody is driving at 3am - they will nearly all be parked every night. There are vastly more cars needed during rush hour than mid day, and then there is a smaller peak at lunch time. Most cars will still be parked 95% of the time as we don't need them that often. > If instead they rarely parked we could have far fewer of them, At the expense of putting even more of them on the road unoccupied going to their next pickup. Or a parking spot in a cheap area: pay less for parking is a motivation though I expect even self owned cars will do that. This is an environmental disaster - unless you have a 100% renewable power source. > have better saturation of modern safety features into the vehicle pool (since they'd wear out at a more uniform rate), and have better incentive alignment re: maintenance People whoes self image is wrapped up in a new car will not put up with older cars. People who want cheap will ask for older cars. As such I expect either the taxi will have different categories of costs, or more likely they will sell their used cars (with 30k miles) to someone else - if this actually develops, which again I mostly expect it won't (but it might in some areas where we will see these patterns). > because the wastes associated with an ever growing percentage of the population owning a personal vehicle will eventually cross a tipping point. If that is your concern you should be asking for good public transportation. In places where it is good a lot of people don't own cars. I wouldn't be surprised if you have never been to such a place (people who live in such places are rarely native English speakers, though is a common English second language for some) Still that is a much better focus on your efforts - we have the technology today, is scales much better than cars ever can, and is cheaper!
LeifCarrotson 1y ago
Check out Slate: https://www.slate.auto/en https://www.slate.auto/en https://images.ctfassets.net/20dhmw20vttc/3FXvexNHHbtaijk1UrXKHg/cbaba49adfff21f12c8537f5884aa3fe/homepage-carousel-refreshingly-uncluttered.jpg https://images.ctfassets.net/20dhmw20vttc/3FXvexNHHbtaijk1Ur... Worried about infotainment and AI processors? It doesn't even have a radio. See those things on the door cards by your knees? They interface with an advanced window regulator and associated torque-sensing motion control system that uses evaporative liquid cooling to prevent failure due to overheating. You could buy three for the price of a Tesla.
- rocmcd 1y ago
  > You could buy three for the price of a Tesla. Except you could actually buy a Tesla today, which is not something you can do for a Slate. Also they don't even have expected delivery dates or official pricing yet, so who knows when they will be available or what the actual price will be. I would love for Slate to become a thing, but at this point it looks like vaporware.
- vscode-rest 1y ago
  They won’t be able to sell in USA without a backup camera, curious what their plan is there.
  - philistine 1y ago
    It's in the rearview mirror. They're starting only with the US market.
    - vscode-rest 1y ago
      Ah cool. My FJ is the same. Great system.
- yakz 1y ago
  You can't buy it at all, yet. Also, with the way these kinds of things have gone in the past: - It's not certain that you'll ever be able to buy it. - If you can buy it, it'll probably be closer to $40k than $25k with no add-ons. - It's not certain that you'll ever actually be able to buy it with no add-ons. - Orders that include all of the most expensive add-ons will be heavily prioritized, so even if you can order it without add-ons, the queue could be months or years long. - The ones that you can actually get in a reasonable amount of time will be closer to $50k than $25k.
bickfordb 1y ago
The problem was they needed to pretend be a technology company (with FSD, and now robots) to juice the stock price/earnings multiple. If they were simply a car maker with EV motors, the stock would have a much lower multiple.
- padjo 1y ago
  I don’t think they _needed_ to do that. They chose to do that. It’s been fairly successful in the short to medium term but the jury is still out on what happens if/when the market acknowledges that they are in fact just a car company.
constantcrying 1y ago
The one reason which made Teslas growth possible was that it was seen as a technologically superior car company. Great software is part of that. There were actually many companies which tried small basic "urban" electric vehicles. You never heard of them. Customers will not care about the cars people on here want. Customers want highly integrated software. Law makers are also demanding increasing software complexity. >A car sitting in a Texas parking lot in July will get to temperatures that the engineers probably didn't think possible. Toyota, Ford and VW have proving grounds in Arizona, because engineers know that cars get very hot. This is part of standard vehicles testing.
bluGill 1y ago
People say that, but then they look at their real options and discover they could buy the bare bones model - or for a similar price they can get a several year old model with all the luxury items. They rarely buy those basic models because even though they don't need the luxury they want at least one and so the used car with everything is what they buy. It isn't hard to make crank cars, but it will cost you a million dollars (likely 10, but lets go with 1 million) to build all the needed jigs to make them, so if there are only 1000 people who buy crank windows that means the cost of cranks is $1000/car. You can skip the jigs, but now the cost to manually make the cranks is $400/car, meanwhile because everyone else wants electric windows the cost per car is about $100. Those costs are why an option-free car would have to cost more than a luxury model.
stetrain 1y ago
People get the cause and effect of fancy EVs backwards. To build an EV you have to spend $10-$20k on the battery pack that goes into it. They're getting cheaper, but that is a gradual process. So your Toyota Camry / Honda Accord EV competitor is going to need to be priced starting at $40k to have a chance of breaking even. How do you get people to stomach $40k for a base Honda Accord but Electric? You add things that cost very little but make the car feel more premium. Power seats, big screens, LED interior lights, glass roof, a processor that can play video games, cameras and autonomy features, etc. don't cost that much in the big scheme of things. Some of them, like screens instead of physical controls, might even save money in production and assembly costs. So you add ~$3k worth of "premium" features to the car, price it at $45k, and now the buyer feels like they are getting something worth the money.
seanmcdirmid 1y ago
> Give me a boring ass 90s control layout with the electric drive train and I'm much more interested. Make the car kind of ugly too. On purpose. I don't need a GPU farm inside my car. I'm not running a robotic taxi company. I just want to go get some groceries. People say there is a huge market for this, but I really doubt it. Yes, there is a market for old school, but it is a pretty small niche where investments in more expensive analog tech (compared to digital anyways) just isn't worth it.

zozbot234 1y ago

> A car sitting in a Texas parking lot in July will get to temperatures that the engineers probably didn't think possible. AIUI, the car can run its cooling/AC system to keep itself cool, even when powered off. I'd imagine that this is actually a bigger concern for the battery's health and safety, not the chips. You're not supposed to let a battery get that hot.

bob1029 1y ago
If a cooling system needs to be built just to keep the car from dying when no one is using it, then I would argue we have jumped the complexity shark and need to go back to the drawing board. I can walk away from my vehicle without worrying about it turning back into a pumpkin. Most consumers are looking for an experience approximating this.
- philistine 1y ago
  If you're talking about a gas engine, you're missing the complexities because they've been with us for a century. If you don't change the oil regularly, the car breaks down. If you leave old gas in the tank for a year, the car won't start. If you don't change the filters, the car eventually breaks down. If you don't change the belt after its admittedly long life, the car breaks down. You swap all that for the need to keep the car's battery somewhat full to maintain a constant temperature in the battery bay. You don't do that, the car does it on its own. Just plug the car to recharge the battery somewhat frequently, dependent on your weather.
bluGill 1y ago
A car in stop and go traffic in Texas at the same time will need even more cooling, the car needs to be kept comfortable for the humans as well as what the batteries need, plus because the car is moving it has extra heat from turning motors. As the others have pointed out all the major manufactures know the problems here, and ensure there isn't a problem.

hypeatei 1y ago

> Give me a boring ass 90s control layout with the electric drive train Exactly. The minimalist interior is super unappealing to me. I want something that's not all based on one screen. It's not just bad from a usability perspective but also seems risky if there are any issues with the screen (climate controls are very important for visibility certain times of the year)

insane_dreamer 1y ago
Except that the single-screen approach is cheaper to build than a bunch of buttons and dials. Not to mention much easier to keep updated OTA.
- hypeatei 1y ago
  > Not to mention much easier to keep updated OTA. I think I'd prefer not to have easier over-the-air updates. As we saw with Jeep recently, the chance of turning your car into a brick are non-zero with these updates. > cheaper to build than a bunch of buttons and dials Tesla's are already quite expensive, how much more would some buttons and dials add to the price?

cheschire 1y ago

Making the car kind of ugly does not get the sales though. Many people that buy new cars cannot afford them. They need the car to be sexy looking in order to boost their pride so they can convince themselves they "deserve" this 8 year financial obligation. I would absolutely go for a 2002 electric Acura Integra though...

estimator7292 1y ago
I don't think there's more than like five people on the planet who think the cybertruck is sexy
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- bluGill 1y ago
  I wouldn't either except that I personally know 5 people who think it is sexy, and I can't believe that my very small circle of acquaintances could possibly cover everyone, so there must be a lot more than five.
seanmcdirmid 1y ago
In 2022, I had the ILX and upgraded to a BMW I4 EV. An electric Acura Integra, I would have been all over that in a heartbeat...but they just had an Acura SUV EV that was a GM Blazer knockoff. Honda has really been slipping in EVs, unfortunately.

__MatrixMan__ 1y ago

Back when those decisions were made, I bet they thought full automation was right around the corner and robotic taxis would make more sense than individual vehicle ownership. I think they're caught flat footed because here we are a decade later and the consumer's opinion still matters.

bluGill 1y ago
I have long thought the idea of robotic taxis didn't make any sense for most people. Where people already get a taxi of course it makes sense. There are a few people who don't drive much who it also makes sense for. However for the vast majority owning a car will always make more sense. Most people are traveling during rush hour - there isn't much opportunity to share cars with them, and where there is it means cars traveling empty from the city to the suburbs in the morning. (and the opposite at 5pm). When you own your own car you can "leave your golf clubs in the trunk in case a chance to play a round happens in the middle of the day". You can run errands over lunch. You store other things in the car that you don't need everyday. None of these are a big deal (many people take transit and thus cannot do that), but it is enough that when the economics are not a clear win you will want to own a car.
- __MatrixMan__ 1y ago
  I think they make sense because most personally owned vehicles spend 98% of their time parked. If instead they rarely parked we could have far fewer of them, pay less for parking, have better saturation of modern safety features into the vehicle pool (since they'd wear out at a more uniform rate), and have better incentive alignment re: maintenance (since the mechanic and the designer work for the same company). The golf club problem is real, but I think we'll eventually find a way to solve it independently because the wastes associated with an ever growing percentage of the population owning a personal vehicle will eventually cross a tipping point.
  - bluGill 1y ago
    > If instead they rarely parked we could have far fewer of them Except that they would still spend most of their time parked. Almost nobody is driving at 3am - they will nearly all be parked every night. There are vastly more cars needed during rush hour than mid day, and then there is a smaller peak at lunch time. Most cars will still be parked 95% of the time as we don't need them that often. > If instead they rarely parked we could have far fewer of them, At the expense of putting even more of them on the road unoccupied going to their next pickup. Or a parking spot in a cheap area: pay less for parking is a motivation though I expect even self owned cars will do that. This is an environmental disaster - unless you have a 100% renewable power source. > have better saturation of modern safety features into the vehicle pool (since they'd wear out at a more uniform rate), and have better incentive alignment re: maintenance People whoes self image is wrapped up in a new car will not put up with older cars. People who want cheap will ask for older cars. As such I expect either the taxi will have different categories of costs, or more likely they will sell their used cars (with 30k miles) to someone else - if this actually develops, which again I mostly expect it won't (but it might in some areas where we will see these patterns). > because the wastes associated with an ever growing percentage of the population owning a personal vehicle will eventually cross a tipping point. If that is your concern you should be asking for good public transportation. In places where it is good a lot of people don't own cars. I wouldn't be surprised if you have never been to such a place (people who live in such places are rarely native English speakers, though is a common English second language for some) Still that is a much better focus on your efforts - we have the technology today, is scales much better than cars ever can, and is cheaper!

LeifCarrotson 1y ago

Check out Slate: https://www.slate.auto/en https://www.slate.auto/en https://images.ctfassets.net/20dhmw20vttc/3FXvexNHHbtaijk1UrXKHg/cbaba49adfff21f12c8537f5884aa3fe/homepage-carousel-refreshingly-uncluttered.jpg https://images.ctfassets.net/20dhmw20vttc/3FXvexNHHbtaijk1Ur... Worried about infotainment and AI processors? It doesn't even have a radio. See those things on the door cards by your knees? They interface with an advanced window regulator and associated torque-sensing motion control system that uses evaporative liquid cooling to prevent failure due to overheating. You could buy three for the price of a Tesla.

rocmcd 1y ago
> You could buy three for the price of a Tesla. Except you could actually buy a Tesla today, which is not something you can do for a Slate. Also they don't even have expected delivery dates or official pricing yet, so who knows when they will be available or what the actual price will be. I would love for Slate to become a thing, but at this point it looks like vaporware.
vscode-rest 1y ago
They won’t be able to sell in USA without a backup camera, curious what their plan is there.
- philistine 1y ago
  It's in the rearview mirror. They're starting only with the US market.
  - vscode-rest 1y ago
    Ah cool. My FJ is the same. Great system.
yakz 1y ago
You can't buy it at all, yet. Also, with the way these kinds of things have gone in the past: - It's not certain that you'll ever be able to buy it. - If you can buy it, it'll probably be closer to $40k than $25k with no add-ons. - It's not certain that you'll ever actually be able to buy it with no add-ons. - Orders that include all of the most expensive add-ons will be heavily prioritized, so even if you can order it without add-ons, the queue could be months or years long. - The ones that you can actually get in a reasonable amount of time will be closer to $50k than $25k.

bickfordb 1y ago

The problem was they needed to pretend be a technology company (with FSD, and now robots) to juice the stock price/earnings multiple. If they were simply a car maker with EV motors, the stock would have a much lower multiple.

padjo 1y ago
I don’t think they _needed_ to do that. They chose to do that. It’s been fairly successful in the short to medium term but the jury is still out on what happens if/when the market acknowledges that they are in fact just a car company.

constantcrying 1y ago

The one reason which made Teslas growth possible was that it was seen as a technologically superior car company. Great software is part of that. There were actually many companies which tried small basic "urban" electric vehicles. You never heard of them. Customers will not care about the cars people on here want. Customers want highly integrated software. Law makers are also demanding increasing software complexity. >A car sitting in a Texas parking lot in July will get to temperatures that the engineers probably didn't think possible. Toyota, Ford and VW have proving grounds in Arizona, because engineers know that cars get very hot. This is part of standard vehicles testing.

bluGill 1y ago

People say that, but then they look at their real options and discover they could buy the bare bones model - or for a similar price they can get a several year old model with all the luxury items. They rarely buy those basic models because even though they don't need the luxury they want at least one and so the used car with everything is what they buy. It isn't hard to make crank cars, but it will cost you a million dollars (likely 10, but lets go with 1 million) to build all the needed jigs to make them, so if there are only 1000 people who buy crank windows that means the cost of cranks is $1000/car. You can skip the jigs, but now the cost to manually make the cranks is $400/car, meanwhile because everyone else wants electric windows the cost per car is about $100. Those costs are why an option-free car would have to cost more than a luxury model.

stetrain 1y ago

People get the cause and effect of fancy EVs backwards. To build an EV you have to spend $10-$20k on the battery pack that goes into it. They're getting cheaper, but that is a gradual process. So your Toyota Camry / Honda Accord EV competitor is going to need to be priced starting at $40k to have a chance of breaking even. How do you get people to stomach $40k for a base Honda Accord but Electric? You add things that cost very little but make the car feel more premium. Power seats, big screens, LED interior lights, glass roof, a processor that can play video games, cameras and autonomy features, etc. don't cost that much in the big scheme of things. Some of them, like screens instead of physical controls, might even save money in production and assembly costs. So you add ~$3k worth of "premium" features to the car, price it at $45k, and now the buyer feels like they are getting something worth the money.

seanmcdirmid 1y ago

> Give me a boring ass 90s control layout with the electric drive train and I'm much more interested. Make the car kind of ugly too. On purpose. I don't need a GPU farm inside my car. I'm not running a robotic taxi company. I just want to go get some groceries. People say there is a huge market for this, but I really doubt it. Yes, there is a market for old school, but it is a pretty small niche where investments in more expensive analog tech (compared to digital anyways) just isn't worth it.