Ask HN: What will be the future differentiator in electric vehicles?

I've had motorcycle engines with the following configurations (among many others): - 200cc single cylinder - 250cc single cylinder - 650cc single cylinder - 250cc two-stroke single - 500cc two-stroke single - 300cc parallel twin - 800cc parallel twin - 650cc v-twin - 1200cc opposed twin - 900cc inline triple - 650cc inline four - 1000c inline four

Every one is completely unique in how it feels, sounds, rides, and performs.

Add to that the almost innumerable number of other ancillary configurations to the above such as:

- balance shaft (or lack thereof...) - valve timing - firing order - cylinder bank angle - carbeurator vs fuel injection - diesel vs gas - naturally aspirated vs supercharger vs turbocharger - nonstandard engine types like rotary, V5, W configurations, V4 - compression ratio - two vs four cycle operation - low end torque, midrange power, top end power.

If the difference between electric motor personalities is a gap in the sidewalk, the difference between ICE engine personalities is the grand canyon.

I've never had a vehicle with more soul than a high power two stroke with a well tuned exhaust. You can't ever convince me that an exhaust with a resonant chamber tuned like a musical instrument to harness sound waves for forced induction has no soul. I've felt it. This [2] is a good animation of how the two-stroke works. No valves, powered by explosions, and a truly musical exhaust note. There's nothing else like it on the planet, and when put in a soulful body like a dirt bike it lets you know immediately.

While I disagree that the engine is the soul of he vehicle, it is definitely a huge part of it. Beigemobile econoboxes are intentionally designed to suppress the soul of the vehicle, despite how marketing likes to advertise them. Nobody's offroading or tracking their crossovers even though every commercial implies as much. The buyers of those vehicles are largely (and the commenters in this thread say as much) looking for the most generic and unsurprising vehicle possible. They are designed as much as possible to make you forget that you're in a vehicle. Even 'interesting' vehicles are being regulated into this generic future. See: Fake engine sounds being played through speakers [1].

The most different electric motors will still feel largely the same, while two mostly similar gas motors can feel completely different. Call it soul, personality, or anything else, but the future of vehicles is going to be much more bland, even if they go faster on paper.

You can't ride a motorcycle and say with a straight face that gas engines have no soul. They embrace it, they don't hide from it. There's still cars out there with souls, but they are forced to blend in for fear of losing theirs as well.

I don't really know where I'm going with this. I get that the metaphysical is frowned upon around these parts. But it definitely exists, even if we can't precisely define or measure it.

Electric is better in pretty much every metric that can be measured. And disastrous for the things that can't. Someone mentioned in this thread mentioned that vehicles are probably going to become white labeled from foxconn as electric gains traction, and I can't help but see that as the future myself. That's what it means to sell your soul.

[1] https://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/a7923/the-rise-of-the-...

[2] https://i.stack.imgur.com/Qk44Y.gif

So looking forward not to have to take the car to any kind of mechanic at all except for brakes and wiper fluid. Sure, anything else probably means swapping something out, but if you've ever had your gasoline engine out of your car, you'll know swapping out an electric motor is trivial by comparison.

Just for some frame of reference, lots and lots of people replace internal combustion engines in their cars, either to restore a vehicle, or to upgrade it. Spoiler - they often cost more than $3000 (before factoring in labor)!

[0] https://www.gmperformancemotor.com/category/SB.html