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Comment by gjem97 | Hacker News Reader

This is my new least favorite sport: speaking about concept vehicles in the present tense. "has sophisticated features ... has space for a sink ... includes an LCD projector" Oh wait. "The California XXL is still in the concept stage." Now there's correct usage of the present tense.

Concept cars come to market approximately 0% of the time. In the rare cases that they do actually make it to market (many many years later), they undergo significant changes through the product development pipeline.

Is this the effect of PR people setting the tone for these stories, or is it the authors/editors of the piece that want to trick people into believing it exists? The point about the "concept stage" was buried in the middle of the article.

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There’s a crazy amount of subliminal PR in this vaporware puff piece.

VW PR are trying to get you to think of VW as a nature loving, fun outdoorsy company that’s connected to the environment. Instead of that company who cared so little about pollution in the environment that they literally programmed their cars to lie about how much pollution they were spewing.

The car doesn’t need to ever exist, what exists is the manufactured image in your mind of VW and a “harmonious” place in nature.

Electro vehicles hysteria is much worse for the environment than some diesels spewing a bit more Nox than expected. Vw made a huge mistake because their engines are among the most fuel efficient on the market and now they got all the blame and punishment. Most cars have much worse emissions than the cheating Vw models

While you're right in that the extra nox might not be that bad in the scheme of things, what irks me is that they systematically lied and they also actively marketed AGAINST hybrids and other clean technologies based upon falsified data.

Is systemmatically hiding that most E Vehicles drive with Coal and/or Fukushima-fuel that much better. The whole debate of e-vehicles versus traditional vehicles is heavily warped.

Im actually for a easily visible sign wethr a vehicle drives with some nature friendly fuel- or the oppossite. Also, what has this debate to do with anything- this is a concept car- it could be e or tradfuel.

I understand what you're saying. At the same time, electric vehicles can be powered by electricity generated from any number of sources while ICE vehicles require carbon-based fuels. Even when the electricity is generated from carbon-based sources, those power plants can be located strategically (e.g., away from heavily populated areas), can be run more efficiently (e.g., at peak efficiency for power generation rather than at varying efficiencies in vehicles), and have better pollution controls.

Speak for yourself. I power my vehicle through my solar panels and so will most electric owners eventually.

I think this hits the nail right on the head. Agreed 100%.

“Concept cars come to market approximately 0% of the time.”

Depends, we really enjoyed our Isuzu Vehicross:

https://farm1.static.flickr.com/97/229602594_94651a28a3_b.jp...

Anyone could buy, they were not hard to come by, despite incredibly limited runs, a thousand a year for a model, tops, some models as low as 50:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isuzu_VehiCROSS#Production_d...

Very tough, well built, you can still see them on the road.

“Despite its West Coast name, the van isn't yet sold in the United States”

Consider that, AFAIK, they haven’t build a single production vehicle, yeah, I’m not surprised that I can’t head to my local Seattle-area VW dealer and order one.

The “why” of this piece? With with Daimler/Dodge Sprinters seemingly taking the lion’s share of the camper van market (at least in he U. S.), I assume it’s a puff piece to promote VW’s Sprinter-like chassis. That and with Daimler’s purchase of Westfalia, maybe some kind of FUD (“don’t buy a Sprinter! We’ll have something better RSN.”)

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