Partly why I like my older truck--it's got no modem, no screens other than a little clock, and nobody in any large corporation knows exactly where I drive it every moment of the day.
I'm liking the trend of high-tech unchained lately, I'm seeing more instances of really great technology being supplied and built with consumer freedom and portability in mind.
I'm with you on demanding an account. However, if you have self-serve chargers that you want to be available 24/7 while also being unmanned, accepting cash can be troublesome. I hate trying to get cash to be accepted by automated machines, as they have to have the bill in the perfect condition or they just spit it back out at you. Also, an unmanned kiosk accepting cash is just asking for security issues. Yes, it's just a reverse ATM, but if you can avoid it by not storing cash then so much the better for them.
There s a difference in the bank knowing you charged a car and the Elon knowing who charged which car.
The first is necessary for making finance work, the second is necessary for getting more of your data into Elon's hands.
So, yes and your point is? thanks for playing
Also, glad that gas purchased by credit-card is that thing that exists. Use it myself once in a while, when I choose.
Here's the one and only part that is a problem --> requiring it. And by definition identity, time, date, location.
Vending machines do just fine.
If you are charging many, many EVs, you can buy your own capacity, and you don’t need to worry about a grid, maybe you can pay the LCoE, which is about $31/MWh for solar, so that charge costs $3 and is more like a cheap beer at a bar.
(At current US gas prices, that still makes the energy cost of an EV something like 1/3 that of a Prius and vastly cheaper than an average ICE car.)
While likely way more than I would ever pay for a vehicle, I appreciate the approach to design.
EDIT: If you've got a little time to kill. There are some videos on youtube that give a better idea of what these trucks look like.
No, not really.
The problem of the wealthy being inherently unequal in the US at least is a consequence of our corrupt government.
The law in the US needs to catch up to the computer age regarding privacy (or at least equal the GDPR).
It's not a societal tendency, it's a direct consequence of money having far too much influence in our governing institutions.
Could be that is the cost of an EV that doesn't spy on you or sell subscription features.
Most likely, that's the result of zero savings from the economies of scale that tesla and Ford have built up.
It's not even just the input materials that are helped by two-order-of-magnitude scale differences; assembly is also affected. Say you're considering a $100k robot to replace some assembly step that is currently done by a $10/hr human. At Bollinger-scale, that robot needs to save an hour of labor for each unit to pay for itself in a year. At Ford scale, it needs to save 36 seconds.
Past that, engineering is affected too. At Bollinger, a $100k/year engineer can pay their own salary by shaving $10 off the unit cost. At Ford, that same engineer pays their salary if they reduce the unit cost by $0.1.
Lastly, there are huge NRE's that are inherent to developing a car for sale (or any product, really) that scale very sublinearly with volume (think regulatory compliance and crash testing, prototyping, tooling etc), but that are amortized much more quickly at 1M EAU than 10K EAU.
Given all that, it's astonishing that they are (hopefully) bringing this design to market at only ~2x the street price of the mass-produced competition.
Thanks!
That can be either the little nubs of high performance cars, or something like Airtabs that are meant for big-rig trucks. And either way you don't get to increase the mileage by a whopping amount as there are still probably shape issues on the leading edge of the vehicle, plus sheer surface area. To do amazing streamlining the whole thing has to be a bubble, including the front edge of the vehicle.
The tonneau cover industry likes to quote a senior-thesis type paper from university engineering students that even one of those improves aerodynamics by 10%.
And modern trucks aren't as bad as they used to be.
Why do some webdevs think they need to re-invent scrolling?
It will be interesting to see how the larger issue of "ownership" is going to play out in an iCar (TM) world . Considering that you may still legally own the car but you're only licensing out your car manufacturer's software, it doesn't take much imagination of getting physically restrained by your cars' over the air capabilities:
- Missed an installment on your lease/financing plan? -> Grounded - Took your car in for service at an non-authorized shop? (think Apple disabling third party charging equipment) -> Grounded - (Some malicious actor injecting ransomware -> Grounded)
That said, Deere's made a business of it, so what do I know?
I think if market forces are allowed to decide fairly (they won't be) that consumers will choose a vehicle they own and have the right to repair over a Tesla that's licensed and can be bricked remotely at any time.
Similarly, I have more than a little trepidation at the quoted price point -- does that include the motor and the electronics and all the smarts to run both? Do I need their fancy dashboard from the concept? Is it included? etc. etc.
Disclaimer: I worked for Ford until the beginning of this year, so some of skepticism is likely sour grapes, but some of it is because I saw what difficulties there were in changing years and years of assumptions on a dime because you went from an ICE to a BEV.
Nope: https://performanceparts.ford.com/part/M-9000-MACHE
>Does NOT include: Traction inverter, Control system, Battery
I assume what you'd get with the crate motor is similar to what you'd get with any crate motor: You get the motor, the transmission (probably, since it's usually part of an EV motor package), the drive circuitry, and that's about it. ECU, HV battery, drive axles, etc are on your nickel.
Genuine interests.
Greetings
You can however retrofit your older truck with a more modern radio if you like. You can repair or upgrade a part of it (like a side panel) or just rip out the radio and install a new $200 dollar one that gets digital FM, Bluetooth and USB audio. Oh, that's another feature that doesn't exist in Teslas.
Most inland waterway inboards use marin-ized crate engines; often this is the Chevy line (v6, v8s), but the Ford Raptor V8 provided a nice alternative in ~2016.
281HP is also right in line with the market ~280-320hp.
*Though pontoons in the last 20 years have moved to planing.
Electric boats are more common in Europe, Correct Craft makes the 220e in its lineup this year.
It makes more sense in Europe where you already have 240v. But the marinas here just aren't set up for this.
Example: Minn Kota Pontoon Freshwater Electric-Steer Bow-Mount Trolling Motor with Digital Maximizer & PowerDrive Foot Control, 48" Shaft
Most folks don't use their boat all day each day so it can sit and charge for days between uses and often on a use you aren't going far, then you anchor and hang out.
Honest question.
You took off your license plate?
https://www.aclu.org/issues/privacy-technology/location-trac...
Sadly, I expect this to happen. People don't care for privacy and data-hoarding, regulators are slow and will not draw the hard line quickly in hope to satisfy corporations or political donors.
I just hope that conversion EV's will not be outlawed. I see a future in which the problems that we have with Apple's products (hard repairability, closed ecosystem) will slip into digitization in auto industry and SaaS will be everywhere.
I've a preorder for a cybertruck and I intend to refuse delivery if they can't build me one without radios.
They're surprisingly useful.
Payphones, nope. Still got a flip phone. Yep, can be used to track me, but I don't take it everywhere.
Also, your position seems to be something like, If you can't be perfectly private from every possible angle, any choice enhancing privacy imperfectly is silly. I don't agree with that.
at least having the option of taking the battery out while still taking it with you just in case you do need it is a bonus
That wasn't my position. I'm sorry it was easy to assume it was. I was saying that it is very impractical to drive without a smartphone and that it is tracking you in a more ubiquitous way.
Man, I remember driving in the 80s, we just wandered around lost for two decades. I live in West Undershirt, PA now because I just happened to end up there when I went out for pizza. One time, around 1998, I went to visit a friend in Houston. All I had were some sketchy instructions given over email, and I ended up a warlord ruling over the stretch of I-45 between Juan's Tacos and the Sherwin-Williams.
Dude, I think you should really question this. I've been smartphone free for over a year. It's... easy. In fact, easier than having a smartphone in many ways!
So strange how quickly our society became psychologically chained to these blipping bleeping distracting infernal machines.
A side benefit is that I get 2-3 days' life out of my battery and still have about 30% left when I plug it in.
As someone who has stuck with a flip phone all along, its extremely practical. We had no trouble getting around before smartphones, and its still no trouble.
So, no. My flipphone can't be tracked when the battery is taken out.
> please don’t sneer
As the HN guidelines (https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) say.
Sorry again, I shouldn't have been snarky in either case, I was just so darn ready to have that discussion.
edit: Turns out I was wrong about the parent's intent. For what it's worth, I do actually drive in silence a lot. There is something about a vehicle in transit that temporarily relieves you of responsibilities outside of the drive, and it's a great time to reflect. I could reflect on this comment thread, for example. Two times in the past few months I've been wrong about someone's intent on HN and met them with a little too much spice than was fair, that's worth reflecting on.
Updates are a good thing. Since you said "Teslas in particular" you are misinformed about them being auto updating. It is true that they do automatically download the updates, but the updates are opt in.
Also, Tesla allows opt out for data collection from the car.
In fact, it seems like you will be very surprised to learn, the default setting value is opt out.
They also do collect a lot of driving data that they do not associate with the VIN or any other identifier, in my understanding.
You could argue that when the driver opts in to anonymous data collection (again, no identification of the vehicle, etc.) it is still getting exterior pictures of their home and driveway. OK. But, opt in.
There are tradeoffs. You allow collection of some data, or not… up to you. That seems like a fair setup to me.
>invariably turn your vehicle into an always-connected, auto-updating tablet, with zero privacy.
"Invariably"… no. "Always connected"… no. Often connected, certainly. "Auto-updating"… no. "Zero privacy"… no. This seems like a really poorly informed take, when it's opt out by default. Yet you currently have the top comment in this article.
That's called opt-in.
To be more clear I should have said "the default setting value is opt out"… fixed; thank you.