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Comment by mikestew | Hacker News Reader

"Sales are down, anyone have an explanation?"

"Well, sir, it seems young people today just aren't as enamored with cars as with previous generations."

"Is there anything to be done?"

"Privacy has been in the news a lot lately. What if...I'm just spitballin' here...but what if we made our products even less appealing? Have the CEO rattle off all the shit we know about customers, and then talk about how we're going to MON-OH-TIZE the shit out of those data? I mean, nothing else is working."

"Out-STANDING, Johnson. I see a promotion in your future!"

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> "Out-STANDING, Johnson. I see a promotion in your future!"

Love how Johnson is in this scenario XD . That guy seems to always find himself in the right place, at the right time I guess

Could that possibly have anything to do with the fact that cars today are only a shadow of what they were back then.

They are all the same roundish blob of mass, with no particular shape at all, no angles, HUGE and all around cheap and plasticky.

Back when, exactly? Because if you're complaining about size, I remember when a '70s Dodge Dart passed for "compact car". (For reference, youngin's, you could put multiple bodies in the trunk of a Dodge Dart.) And a shadow of what? Gas-guzzling V8s that put out a whopping 250bhp? 350bhp if you were lucky? With drum brakes to haul yer ass down to zero? My 72 year old mother drives a '16 Corvette that puts out 450bhp and gets 25mpg. It'll stop so fast you can feel your retinas loosening. I'd have to take it to a track to get it out of shape, I dare not test its handling limits on a public road. All for $50K. (EDIT: oh, and aesthetics? I loathed those swoopy, gaudy, plastic penismobiles. Until I saw the new ones and said, "I would now like to own a Corvette, for it is much hotness.") Other examples abound. If you're into cars, there is no better time than now.

No, I think it has more to do with the collective realization that maybe a car is less a ticket to freedom and more an albatross around the neck of its owner. Expensive, dirty, and in urban areas an increasingly annoying way to get around. I was thinking just yesterday, as the fuel light came on in our ICE car, "gawd, what a pain in the arse these things are. I'll be glad when all of the vehicles in our house are electric." And I'm old.

Or more simply, maybe we collectively figured out that automobiles make a poor substitute for a penis.

While I disagree about EVs (they are the devil's making. Gimme that sweet, sweet rumble of a V8 and the connection of a manual gearbox), I think your other point is, well...on point.

There's never been a better time if you're a "car guy/gal", except maybe the 90s. The ZR1, ZL1, Shelby GT350, 911 991.2, Demon, M2, Stinger, Q70, Golf, WRX, Focus RS, etc. Like, damn, that list of solid cars could just go on forever. Haven't even mentioned any supercars, yet.

And the technology in cars is incredible. It's almost standard now to have 6-piston Brembo discs up front on a performance car. Suspension is insane, too, these days.

As much as I love the rumble of an ICE (the Japanese straight-6 is my aural drug of choice), its days are numbered. We're closing in on a future where gasoline is too expensive due to rarity, too polluting or just too socially unacceptable to power cars with. As a pure mode of transport, EVs tick all the boxes, and they've even proven to be performant, too - even the best drag racer is going to struggle to match a machine with maximum torque available for 95% of its rev range, from zero.

Embrace the electric!

I'll drive my twin turbo straight six till it wont run any more!

That being said I welcome what i perceive to be the coming days of electric wrenching. Once someone make a an electric motor kit that works as a drop in replacement for an LS engine things I think will get really interesting. I'd love to build an all electric rat rod.

And if it's Japanese, it'll continue running for decades. Particularly the Toyota M and JZ series - just about indestructible.

Agreed, I would love to retrofit an electric power train in a mk2 Supra - attach the motor directly to the rear diff and fill it with batteries to the weight of the ICE/gearbox plus full fuel tank, and it could be a really potent sleeper.

Neverrrr! I will not succumb to the dark side. You can take away my V-Twin or supercharged V8 once I'm dead! I can't do it. I refuse to even own an automatic gearbox. I need my 3rd pedal, man

True, gasoline is an incredible pollutant. But, electricity has its environmental costs, too. Depending on our where your power comes from, e.g. coal, it could be very dirty indeed. As a whole, though, EVs are much greener.

As for racing, drag cars + EV = extremely fast. No doubt. The Telsa P100D in ludicrous mode can even beat a dodge demon. But, I'd say there'll be at least 15 years before a pure EV can match the consistent performance of, say, the Porsche 911 GT2 RS on the Nurburgring. Add another decade for any endurance style race e.g. Le Mans.

Right now, EVs struggle to come close to the top end speed of ICE supercars, despite their awesome torque figures.

True on all counts. For the most part, coal power is being phased out (the UK has closed many plants in the last couple of decades), although China is opening new ones about as fast as the rest of the world is closing theirs! No doubt, it's very difficult to wean ourselves off fossil fuels, but cars are a great start - even if they're ultimately powered by a coal plant, the energy efficiency of such a power station is drastically higher than individual engines (many go to great lengths to recover or make use of waste heat) and the potential for controlling emissions from one source is a lot easier than millions of tailpipes.

No doubt, however, the move to EVs will coincide with greater use of renewables or nuclear.

Hopefully there will be a breakthrough in battery technology in the next decade; if we can improve on the power density of lithium, we might finally be able to rival the energy stored in a tank of fuel.

The reason they all look sort of alike is due to energy efficiency and safety laws making cars indistinguishable due to a global optima.

Whilst I do agree, I don't see this as a problem so much as the increasing amounts of technology between the driver and the road. Car makers have borrowed styling cues off each other for decades (just look at Ford's definitely-not-Aston-Martin front grille), so the convergence was pretty inevitable. It's drive by consumer choice anyway; so long as people keep buying these designs, someone is going to think they're good and keep incrementing on them. Same reason every company is building SUVs, despite them being neither sporty or utilitarian; the design is popular, people keep buying it, and there's only so many designs you can cram on the market before things start to overlap.

Make no mistake, I love the aggressive angular styling of my 80s Supra and the non-threatening, friendly look of my Outback, my issue is with cars becoming computers on wheels and now having uplinks back to the manufacturer, able to collect data in real-time. This article only hints at the possibility Ford may be exploring, they haven't admitted they would do so, but the option is certainly there.

If cars are so crappy, why are people keeping them so much longer than they used to? https://wolfstreet.com/2018/08/21/average-age-of-cars-trucks...

We've got a 11 year old car. Not too long ago a car that age would be a broken down clunker and we'd be looking for an immediate replacement, now it's newer than average and running fine.

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