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Comment by yazzku | Hacker News Reader

Software in cars and OTA is the stupidest thing in recent years. Like the damn laptop riddled with mediocre software wasn't already frustrating enough, let's fuck up cars too.

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To be fair cars as currently designed are a pretty stupid idea to begin with. Let’s just waste energy carrying around 5000lbs of car at ridiculous speeds to move around a 200lb person.

In this case it's even what, 7000 or 8500lbs car? Which is even crazier when you consider road wear scales on the 3rd or 4th power of weight.

(Edit: 4th power, damn) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_power_law

So a 8500 car does 64x as much road wear as my small sedan.

Wrong

https://twitter.com/ajisuzu1/status/1681123111364620294?s=46

TLDR; From a road wear perspective there is no real difference between a heavy EV and a lightweight smaller ICE.

Edit: Not sure why I get downvoted so heavily. It is just a fact that the weight difference between an EV and comparable ICE has no measurable difference to road wear.

People like the above poster just like to touch on the fourth power law but not how the calculations actually work.

ESAL is part of that calculation. A 5 axel semi has a ESAL of 2.35, a dumptruck ~4, a 3.5ton vehicle .004, a 3ton vehicle .002. When we are talking about the difference in hundreds of pounds between EV and ICE, there is no wear difference.

No one can read that thread.

TLDR paved roads are generally designed to handle large trucks and construction equipment. On such roads passenger vehicles (even heavy electric vehicles) have a negligible impact on pavement life.

The difference in road wear between a 2k lbs. vehicle and an 8k lbs vehicle is too small to matter.

Okay that makes sense, basically amdahl's law.

I guess it'll be interesting when we are trying to support electric medium duty or heavier trucks, like WA is trying to do. Guess they'll be subject to Class 7 & 8 weight anyways, because if you try to make a currently-medium-duty truck into an EV it's way over the limit.

I mostly just have doubts about our current revenue model scaling for it (since it's heavily reliant upon gas tax and the truck weight $$ amounts don't match up), and the general lack of lighter EVs in the US. Something will have to change there

I'd be totally happy in the city with a 2-2500 lbs BYD Seagull or whatever. But that vehicle doesn't exist in the US.

A vehicle the size of a Seagull is practically a non-starter in the US in terms of mass-market appeal. Most US consumers think of the Chevy Bolt as too small of a car, and that's like 20" longer than a Seagull.

Which is really a shame :/

I want a $10k small car for just intracity trips. Easier to park, small battery charges fast enough at home even on 120V 20A. Cheaper to insure.

This is a terrible argument against cars. You could say the same for a train, let's waste energy carrying around 1,500,000 pounds of train to move around 120,000 pounds of passengers.

You need lot more lbs of cars to move 120k lbs of passengers, that's the argument in favor of trains.

Yeah about twice as much. But it's still a bad argument because pounds don't really matter.

Yes, infrastructure is more more important, and railway infrastructure is much more sustainable to maintain in long term.

Unrelated gibberish

If you live at a place with decent public transport, you'll ditch cars first thing. That's the biggest argument against cars.

I agree there are better arguments. My point was that the specific argument I was replying to was bad.

Except your example makes it clear that a train is a way better deal

No because it's not a problem for things to be heavy.

Scooters and motorcycles are much more efficient in this regard, but uptake has been very limited in Western countries when compared to the pervasive use in Southeast Asia.

Same things with phones. A phone should just make calls, it doesn't need software.

After the deluge of spam calls I receive daily I'm somewhat inclined to opt for the opposite direction. No more phonecalls and just using apps for communication.

That's so much better. I only communicate with people who have the rich man's apps. No unintended negative side-effects can possibly be found there!

At this point I would like to be there. Telecom companies don't seem to care about spam calls much.

Phone has become much more than a caller. It's become a cybernetic extension of our self, and are even used to validate our identity.

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