21–30 of 91 posts
I didn't realize that Apple would be getting into the car rental business, I hadn't been paying attention. The Tesla model seems more palatable, where in theory you are allowed to "hack" your car because you own it.
I definitely don't want people to "hack" their cars and drive on the same road as me.
Since I'm a programmer I'd make the car-o-future modular. A kernel and different replaceable hardware and software modules. It bugs me how hard it is to customize a car now and the high cost of it.
the reason for this is obvious. Having a modular car with a high degree of customization would be a huge hassle in keeping cars safe.
the real issue would be making the thing actually reliable. matings and fittings off the production line aren't the same you can get post assembly on a workshop, and that will affect component durability big time
Every time I see someone say "all cars will be rentals in the future" I think if all the people I know who have stuff kicking around in the trunk that they use occasionally but rarely. The automotive version of "every-day carry". Some of it's basic car maintenance stuff. Some of it's not.
And then I also think about the people I know whose passenger or back seat is a giant pile of trash because there's no easy-to-empty integrated place for trash and it all just ends up on the floor...
Also to quote this incredibly relevant point from fartaspoobutt [dead]: [1]
The car I really want is a network of fast, affordable, widely available public transit.
I hate to be critical, but this really reminds me of a 1950s "visions of the future" piece more than a practical design choice.
For example, the skateboard is not a new concept [1], and there are reasons you don't see it. Modular design really only shines for low-volume production (or a large combinatorial space). When you are doing 10s of millions of units per year, as the auto industry does, modularity often gets thrown out in deference to volume/cost.
Also, distributed manufacturing is a huge pain, why would you ever want that? See Boeing's experience with the 737 supply chain. Just because you can doesn't mean you should.
> That will require a major overhaul of technologies like the above-mentioned CAN-bus that is four decades old and employed in every car (including, believe it or not, in a Tesla). I don't understand why the author keeps banging on about CAN bus being an old standard. So what? CAN bus is used in the automotive industry because of it reliability and low wire count. Why should it be changed?
The cynic in me believes that Apple is so bought-in to its own hype that they have a need to change it for change's sake alone. Just like their pathological desire for thinner laptops with no practical benefit, they'll rail on about how this unnecessary churn is progress.
I think the Apple Car will be a buggy, unreliable, unrepairable mess that the buyers won't ever truly own.
The third point is extremely close to how trucks have always been built. Body-on-frame construction has been prevalent in the automotive industry for a very long time. Ever see a crazy classic car body dropped on top of a truck frame, i.e. a 4x4 60s mustang on a bronco frame?
> On top of that, the upper body will take the shape and size depending on the need: a sports or family car equivalent, a commercial vehicle, etc.
body-on-frame is not a great design for a family vehicle, as it tends to decrease the interior space and increase the weight for a vehicle of a certain overall size. it's particularly unsuited for a sports car due to the weight penalty and the higher center of gravity. AFAIK, it only really makes sense for large vehicles and/or vehicles designed to have a large towing capacity.
I have to wonder if they meant something more like the volkswagen mqb platform [0] but expressed it poorly.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen_Group_MQB_platform
> That will require a major overhaul of technologies like the above-mentioned CAN-bus that is four decades old and employed in every car (including, believe it or not, in a Tesla). I don't understand why the author keeps banging on about CAN bus being an old standard. So what? CAN bus is used in the automotive industry because of it reliability and low wire count. Why should it be changed?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
CAN is great for real time control, and a huge number of embedded components support it. I don’t see it going away any time soon. That said, it does not have a lot of bandwidth. There will need to be something higher bandwidth to support modern info-tainment systems. A second, high-bandwidth network with less strict real-time requirements.
what high bandwith requirements do exist for an infotainment system that you would want in a car? Navigation and playing music? Both are done by other systems as CAN already.