Nissan accused of dumping its electric car pioneers | Hacker News Reader

Nissan accused of dumping its electric car pioneers

bbc.co.uk

13 pointsmonkey_monkey16 comments

This is going to happen to every connected car feature eventually.

I honestly never understood the desire for an app that can control your car. Sure its convenient I guess, but is the ability to turn on the AC before you get in the car really worth both the security risk and eventual sunsetting of an app and mobile network with direct access to your vehicle?

Much can be said about car features, but the reality is the buyers of cars are usually not the last owners; if you buy a new car every five/ten years, you don’t care about issues in the fifteenth year.

Think sunroof leaks, broken power windows, etc. So many luxury features that are more fragile than the simple equivalent, but the buyers don’t care because those problems only affect very used cars.

The connected stuff will be the same.

My worry is actually that we're building cars that won't be on the road at all in 10 or 15 years.

The cost of all the connected features, automatic braking systems, etc add up fast. Insurance costs have increased so much in the last decade partly because a simple fender bender can now cost thousands by the time sensors are all replaced.

It honestly feels like another situation where good intentions of optimizing new vehicles for energy efficiency, safety, etc end up doing more harm then good if we're concerned with environmental impact. The cost of producing and delivering a new vehicle is huge, if they can't stay on the road for more than say 15 years we're just committing to an endless loop of replacing every car on the road more quickly.

> if they can't stay on the road for more than say 15 years we're just committing to an endless loop of replacing every car on the road more quickly

Of course that is the desired outcome by EV manufacturers - it's the dream scenario - along with locked down, non-replaceable and impossible to buy batteries [0] (or seemingly possible to buy - just prohibitively expensive)

Unfortunately people with their "after me, the deluge" attitude (as already displayed in this thread) are are unable to prevent this scenario from becoming reality.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/leaf/comments/16es7gn/can_someone_s...

> but is the ability to turn on the AC before you get in the car really worth both the security risk and eventual sunsetting of an app and mobile network with direct access to your vehicle?

Yes. I’ll never own a car more than 10 years, so I am not concerned about long term IoT longevity, vs convenience today.

(Tesla has also swapped out old M2M cellular boards when older protocols are deprecated [1], and while they’re not obligated to continue to do so, LTE and 5G will likely stick around for the next decade at least)

[1] https://olegkutkov.me/2021/06/10/tesla-model-3-us-lte-modem-...

Are you concerned about climate issues, and if so how so you align the two knowing that you'd likely be helping promote car production with a short life cycle?

Genuine question here in case it doesn't read well in text. This is one of those topics that has always seemed contradictory to me but just isn't talked about enough for me to know if I'm just missing something obvious.

The car will still function if the IoT capability dies, it will be someone else's problem (and there is likely a market for those vehicles for people who need some wheels vs no wheels). I think it is highly unlikely though, as the vehicles use connectivity for navigating to fast DC charging stations (and access to station health and availability is a core value prop of an EV with in vehicle navigation, for determining charging waypoints along a route based on vehicle state of charge, station availability/congestion, etc), so it is my opinion IoT support won't be abandoned (I can't prove this, wild speculation on my part, only time will tell). Assuming it won't be abandoned for this core platform need, that also leads me to assume convenience features won't disappear (again, wild speculation), because it is trivial to support this capability over the existing interface.

Nissan's CEO once said the battery packs are outlasting the rest of the vehicle, so the final disposition of all EVs eventually will having the battery packs shucked (either for pack reuse in stationary storage, or recycling of the pack into raw materials for new batteries a la Redwood Materials), it's really just a matter of "what is a reasonable service life before the car falls apart but the battery is ready for it's next job." You can't look at this through the lens of combustion vehicle service life due to the improved optionality.

In the specific case of the Nissan Leaf, the powertrain tech is old, and doesn't support fast DC charging (max is ~62.5kw). They are golf carts waiting to be recycled.

https://electrek.co/2019/05/24/nissan-leaf-batteries-outlast... ("Nissan says its Leaf batteries will outlast the car by 10-12 years, looks for reuse solutions")

https://electrek.co/2021/02/24/tesla-co-founder-jb-straubel-... ("Tesla cofounder JB Straubel will recycle Nissan Leaf batteries at Redwood Materials")

https://cleantechnica.com/2022/09/21/surprise-nissan-leaf-ba... ("In fact, many EV batteries may outlast the vehicles they are installed in, then enjoy a second life in a stationary storage application before finally being recycled, according to EVANNEX. “At the end of the vehicle’s life — 15 or 20 years down the road — you take the battery out of the car and it’s still healthy with perhaps 60 or 70% of usable charge,” Thomas said.")

Preconditioning is useful if you live in very cold climates. You just tell your app to start warming up your car, and you get out there it is nice. I guess being an EV is also useful since it doesn’t create fumes or make your car a target for theft.

When it's 110F outside, being able to turn on your AC 10 minutes before you need to go outside is hugely beneficial!

Oh I know that benefit well! I live in the southeastern US where its hot and humid all summer.

It definitely is nice to jump into a car that's already cooled, I guess its just never been worth the security and fragility concerns when I can just walk out a few minutes early and crank the car up.

Also who prevents end of life harassment? Like one last update setting the screen brightness high with half dead Akkus to deprecate a device.

How is this different from other connected car features that relied on the 2G network? Does the leaf do anything meaningfully different with its network connectivity? Old Chevy cars have their 2G on star sunsetted after 10 years… and all it really means is that you can’t remotely lock/unlock/run AC/show location. Not a huge deal, it’s not like it stops working.

The app was awful anyway. I installed https://www.openvehicles.com/ and it's much better, with MQTT metrics and control as well.

In the US they had a module replacement that upgraded the cellular modem to 3G, I believe. Wonder why they aren't doing that in the UK as well?

3G networks in Europe are already being retired, in the UK the last provider will switch off in 2025 acording to Ofcom.

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-telecoms-and-internet/advice...

I'm shocked the car doesn't refuse to work if it doesn't have a network connection - one positive there!

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