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Comment by ObsoleteNerd | Hacker News Reader

There's so much wrong with this car there's absolutely no way it goes to market.

It's a publicity stunt or a one off modified car for brand awareness. Not a production model.

It's an old car with some cheap eBay headlights stick on (I had those lights on a modified motorcycle I built up), cheap aftermarket wheels, dumped suspension so low the front wheels won't turn. It has the original mechanical door handles, front end fab work is atrocious and nothing lines up right.

Just like SEMA cars, this was just made to provide some pretty photos and spread some PR.

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If the car is affordable and reliable, why wouldn't it go to market? Mechanical door handles, sure they aren't pretty, but they can be maintained by anyone with basic tools.

Not every electric car needs to be shiny and expensive.

Soviet cars were "reliable" in the sense that yes, they broke down very often and in predictable ways, so that most people could fix them.

In a, perhaps hypocritical, way I would find this preferable to some of the Tesla stories where a buyer can't use their car for months on end while parts are sourced and the car is repaired by a "certified" shop.

I find it far preferable to the car manufacturer shutting you out of your car entirely via a remote call.

I have a Tesla, my dad had a Moskvitch.

I find a lot of people like to make dramatic comparisons (like you just did) when they don't even have the option of acting on their supposed preferences. I doubt you even understand what life would be like with the pile of shit that soviet cars were.

Not just Tesla, got a "Drive System Malfunction" error on my Audi. Been in the shop 4+ weeks now. After much testing, nothing wrong with the drive system, but a wire that is dropping voltage somewhere.

Stuff has just gotten way too complicated. It's more than right to repair, it's ability or ease of repair that counts more as a practical matter.

What about something in between like a Toyota Camry? Very reliable and easy to get repaired if needed?

That's not in between though, it's on the opposite end of 2 different axes.

WRT "easy to repair":

It seems Toyota has been adding proprietary electronic crap to their entry level cars just like every other manufacturer. Even their entry level models.

IMHO the days of easy repairs are going away :(

I also had the stuck accelerator thing recently. So no more Toyotas for me.

They broke down in predictable way because they did so little. If the Soviets had made really complex cars they would have failed in very unpredictable ways as well.

Another big advantage is that there were not very many models of car available, so everyone who know how to fix cars knew how to fix your car.

Good point.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-autoshow-china-electr... here it says that Chinese companies are producing cheap electric cars for their home market - maybe not as cool as Tesla, but way cheaper.

Definitely. Keep in mind they also recently unveiled this gem: https://taskandpurpose.com/kalashnikov-killer-robot-russia/

Publicity stunt for sure, and probably just trying to show they’re building something other than another slight mod on the AK-47 while flooded with oligarch lucre.

One thing's for sure, they definitely aren't trying to win any design awards.

Also, in the second photo here you can see what seems to be a drive shaft. An odd detail for an electric car.

https://imgur.com/a/RYS7h0i

Could be a single electric motor driving the 2 wheels through a differential.

This site has pictures of 2 motors that would fit in in the transmission tunnel, leading me to believe they would attach to a traditional drive shaft. http://www.nedra.com/build.html

Cursory search didn't bring up any undercarriage images to prove my theory.

This is a concept, I'm not sure the engineering for 4 motors to work in unison is as easy as using some conventional drivetrain stuff and just swapping the power plant 1:1.

Are those front tyres even on the right way, they look backwards?

Those look like symmetric tires to me, not directional tires.

I don't know. The Lada Niva is still going strong and outperforms many modern 4x4s and can be purchased new for under $10k USD. This might actually be a good strategy to get cheap reliable electric transportation to the people. Not everyone needs or can afford a self-crashing Tesla.

> can be purchased new for under $10k USD

Certainly not in the US. If I'm wrong in that assertion, please let me know, because I'd be very tempted to buy one.

No, but it's available in a few European countries. I'm living in Russia now and am tempted to buy one. The funny thing is, "new-rich" Russians try their hardest to make an impression and opt for less capable Mercedes and BMWs which the roads just eat alive.

>There's so much wrong with this car there's absolutely no way it goes to market.

You've obviously are not familiar with a long and proud history of communist-made vehicles just like that that served their "market" for decades (e.g. the Trabant)...

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