Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Honda quits F1, invests in carbon-free tech instead

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 403 posts

Re: Honda quits F1, invests in carbon-free tech instead

#371

Post by gabereiser »

toyg wrote: post #111
smcl wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even more crazy is that when they had very their own team they disbanded it ... only for Ross Brawn to lead an MBO, create a "new" team and win both the Constructors Championship and the Drivers Championship THE VERY NEXT SEASON season before it was bought by Mercedes, who went on to do rather well. Honda were on the cusp of dominating F1 and decided "nahhh". I wonder if it's actually not that good for business - oth…

> I wonder if it's actually not that good for business It's actually pretty bad for business. Like European football, it's basically a money pit that generates good indirect returns only to the very top teams. That's why it struggles to keep 10 teams on the grid every year (of whom 3 are effectively "B-teams", one is half-owned by another's boss, one is driven by pilots managed by that same boss...). That's why manuf…

Yeah, it’s economics. Mercedes and McLaren have wads of cash to throw at finding the peak performance for their cars. Honda is interested but doesn’t have the investment capital these “premiere” brands do. It’s the equivalent of new money at the yacht club. To belong is going to cost you more than just a membership.

Re: Honda quits F1, invests in carbon-free tech instead

#372

Post by btian »

hvidgaard wrote: post #198
btian wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No niche manufacturer will be able to make a competitive V10 PU. If F1 is serious about reducing costs, they have to at least standardize PU, like they did to ECU.

Engines is the least of concerns. Mercedes win, not because they also produce the engine, but because they pour nearly half a billion euros into the car, with engines being a vanishingly small amount of that. They have a car with superior aerodynamics and mechanical grip. Making the engine standardized will not change that.

Ferrari and Red Bull also spend half a billion euros a year. But neither has a shot at the championship because of their engine situation.

Re: Honda quits F1, invests in carbon-free tech instead

#373

Post by burtonator »

F1 is just obsolete. The tech is just so mind-breaking and insanely fast that you can't actually get faster without killing people.

They've already had to modify tracks as it causes physical damage to spine cords and vertebrae.

What we need is something else which isn't tone death about economic inequality and climate change.

The thing is that it has to be a SPORT so people watch it and it gets as much funding as F1

Re: Honda quits F1, invests in carbon-free tech instead

#374

Post by farisjarrah »

NLMichel wrote: post #303
gonzo41 wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shouldn't F1 cars be about finding the peak of a X engineering problem. For electiric's it's not as much about speed but battery. Maybe having hyper-miler distance races that aren't speed oriented is the sort of pivot F1 should be doing? I know it's not sexy like a fast car moving nimbly among the pack but if car companies can get their tech focused on getting the most distance from a battery then there's the cross o…

What about full electric F1 cars, but where they switch out batteries four times during the race during pit stops. High speed racing without the need to carry a heavy battery pack.

Switching out batteries in Formula E has been problematic up until this point from a technological point of view, so much so that in Formula E they simply have 2 cars and when the drivers pit they hop out of the first car and into the second car. Batteries are extremely heavy and need to be protected so that in the event of an accident they don't explode or kill the driver. Thus far the battery has been more or less part of the chassis. Its not clear that battery technology is advanced enough to provide the energy density required to propel the cars at racing speeds while also being portable enough to be swapped out mid-race.

Re: Honda quits F1, invests in carbon-free tech instead

#375

Post by anjc »

davewritescode wrote: post #321

I just want to point out that this headline is wrong and out of date already. After pulling out of F1, Honda has announced that they're going to be an engine supplier for Indycar. Technically, it's a different division of Honda (Honda USA) but this greenwashing of why they left F1 leaves a bad taste in my mouth. They're leaving because they're not successful and they're dumping a bunch of money in the sport. Edit: I…

F1 isn't Indycar. The headline doesn't mentioned Indycar.

Re: Honda quits F1, invests in carbon-free tech instead

#376

Post by exDM69 »

TheCondor wrote: post #354
exDM69 wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Try Adrian Newey's ghost written memoir "How to Build a Car". It's not a deep dive into technological tidbits, but has got some interesting details about the technology and the development of his cars. To those not familiar, Adrian Newey, currently at Red Bull Racing, is the most successful race car designer by almost any metric. His first championship winning cars were designed in the 1980s (for American racing seri…

How did you digest that book? I admire the heck out of his accomplishments but he seems like maybe not such a great person. Not sure he’d be an interesting dinner guest. All the anti-social stuff of a top sportsman but in a position where he simply doesn’t age out of it and have to be a normal person. Not a bad guy, per se, but not someone who’s life you want your to emulate. Very interesting read, especially about t…

I liked the book, but I'm pretty sure we wouldn't get along as friends and I definitely would not want to work for him.

I might be all wrong with this, but it's the impression I got from his book.

Re: Honda quits F1, invests in carbon-free tech instead

#377

Post by WorldMaker »

jacobr1 wrote: post #340
kube-system wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> After pulling out of F1, Honda has announced that they're going to be an engine supplier for Indycar. Honda has been a supplier for engines in Indycar for decades

Right, but it limits the virtue signaling of their stated reason for leaving F1. If leaving F1 was just about the environment, then they should limit their involvement with all ICE focused organizations. That said, Honda is a big conglomerate and it looks like this was the decision of one division and not the whole parent company. So I don't think they actually were being disingenuous in practice.

If anything it continues to show how out of touch Honda America is with its parent company and siblings. Comparing Honda America's website and Honda Corporate/JP/CN/EU websites shows increasingly divergent values and interests.

This is not something unique to Honda right now either: Nissan America also looks like an entirely different company to the rest of the Nissan Group. At one point Ghosn was trying to rebrand Nissan America as Datsun (again) and jettison the whole thing from the Nissan Group as a ticking time bomb of backwards detritus (deeply focused on a lucrative past of large energy inefficient vehicles with little brand recognition for energy efficiency). Obviously, that plan probably went out the window with Ghosn's whole weird situation, but Ghosn probably wasn't wrong in that Honda America and Nissan America at this point are liabilities/anchors weighing down their parent companies and where their parent companies now see the future of the industry. Unfortunately, Honda America and Nissan America currently still are profitable enough that they can afford to continue to ignore their parent companies and not start turning the ship in the right direction.

Re: Honda quits F1, invests in carbon-free tech instead

#378

Post by raindropm »

suryabeep wrote: post #126
alexb7c4 wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any suggestions of racing series more interesting than F1? I tried to watch Blancpain, Super GT, IMSA, Le Mans - all of them seem to have almost non-existent level of overtaking (even worse than in F1 imho)

Try MotoGP, it's got plenty of overtaking.

Also freaks accident that make it quite unpredictable. I clench my butt every time they group together, especially at the start of the race oh god

Re: Honda quits F1, invests in carbon-free tech instead

#379

Post by olyjohn »

davewritescode wrote: post #321

I just want to point out that this headline is wrong and out of date already. After pulling out of F1, Honda has announced that they're going to be an engine supplier for Indycar. Technically, it's a different division of Honda (Honda USA) but this greenwashing of why they left F1 leaves a bad taste in my mouth. They're leaving because they're not successful and they're dumping a bunch of money in the sport. Edit: I…

How are they not successful? Red Bull racing is #2 in the constructors points this season. Their reliability has been excellent. Both Honda teams are doing better than both Ferrari teams. Red Bull is doing better now than it did with Renault a few years ago.

Re: Honda quits F1, invests in carbon-free tech instead

#380

Post by olyjohn »

nihonde wrote: post #347
piva00 wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are reading too much into this, Honda is just not as big in Europe as they are in the US, investment in F1 is a major investment for any car company, even more manufacturing engines that won't translate to their future engineering advancements in consumer products so it's a matter of investment in technology vs brand awareness/exposure, which for Honda in Europe doesn't make sense. To extrapolate that to…

I think you’re right. Honda isn’t even very popular in Japan. Distant second place behind Toyota, I think. Their mindshare here seems even less. When I lived in America, Honda was much more of a trusted brand there. Detroit went after them hard via the Takata defect, so I’m not sure about now.

Most people haven't even taken their cars in for the recall, so I highly doubt this impacted anything. Seriously, the recall has something like a 30% completion rate. Not only that but the Takata defect wasn't just Honda, that affected almost every auto manufacturer. GM has a huge Takata recall in place as well, so I'm not sure what you mean by Detroit going after them...
Post reply on HN