Small dumb electric car is all I want, 4x4 preferred.
Please make a dumb car
541–550 of 671 posts
Re: Please make a dumb car
#542What I hate about "car discourse" like this is the apparent blindness to public transportation. Trains, bikes, buses, and street cars solve almost every problem that the author complains about. The only outstanding problem, however, is that American infrastructure has been deliberately designed solely around the car. Those who suggest alternative modes of public transportation are immediately written off as "impracti…
So we should redesign all streets and revitalize and redesign all public transportation systems before we can even talk about not making all cars operate like iPads (i.e. like they operated 10 years ago)? If I complain that beef from a small oligopoly of suppliers is contaminated with E. Coli, will you recommend that we talk about turning the entire world vegan first? edit: I do not own a car and have never had a dri…
Also people on HN do not know or turn a blind eye that millions of people drive cars in EU that has really good public transportation.
There are 292 million registered cars in the EU (2019 data).
Re: Please make a dumb car
#543Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I wonder how well my car will age when miscellaneous sensor all over the car start failing. I predict that 50 years from now there will be more functioning cars from the 1960s than from the 2020s. With the combination of quickly obsoleting technology that won't be fixable and overly interconnected electronics that become impossible to diagnose after a while, there's not much hope for current and future cars to be a…
It's really ashame that we'll never see versions of those mechanical cars combined with the manufacturing precision and quality control available today. Sure there are one-offs and some drop-ins available, but they'll never get dialed in the way cars do after a year or two of mass production.
> It's really ashame that we'll never see versions of those mechanical cars combined with the manufacturing precision and quality control available today.
The car that makes me cry a little every time on the what-could-have-been topic is the Honda CRX HF. 54 MPG in 1988. Most cars can't match that today over 30 years later.
If Honda was allowed to do a modern version with some use of carbon fiber for even more lightness and all the advances in fuel injection tuning and engine manufacturing, surely we could have a ~70+ MPG CRX by now.
Re: Please make a dumb car
#544What I hate about "car discourse" like this is the apparent blindness to public transportation. Trains, bikes, buses, and street cars solve almost every problem that the author complains about. The only outstanding problem, however, is that American infrastructure has been deliberately designed solely around the car. Those who suggest alternative modes of public transportation are immediately written off as "impracti…
Trains, bikes, buses, and street cars only solve urban problems. And I know urban environments are overall better for the environment, but they're not better for people's psyche. They're crime ridden. Theyre smog ridden. Theyre awful environments to live in during a pandemic. People were moving into cities until a pandemic struck and riots became commonplace. Then they started to leave with the speed in which they ar…
> They're crime ridden. Theyre smog ridden. ... riots became commonplace
Where do you live?
Re: Please make a dumb car
#545Earlier quoted context omitted.
> In many ways, fixing the infrastructure problem in the US means razing the whole continent and starting over. In some places, particularly cities designed around cars (i.e. the last 100 years). Other cities just need things to be upgraded . E.g. I recently moved to Pittsburgh. It's pretty dense in terms of housing and infrastructure--not suburban with big lawns. That's partly because it's hilly. Around here the inv…
One problem with implementing all of those upgrades is that they will be unaffordable for the City, unless they take tax revenues from other areas. But those other areas have their own crumbling infrastructure, so “upgrade” is not a solution that can be applied everywhere equally.
> Unaffordable for the City
Isn't this the city that gave a few hundred million away from it's earmarked infrastructure and maintenance budge to the police department over the past half decade?
Re: Please make a dumb car
#546Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m having a hard time understanding how “I forgot to change gears and then hit the gas” can be classed a UX problem. Sounds like PEBKAC.
"I’m having a hard time understanding how “I forgot to change gears and then hit the gas” can be classed a UX problem. Sounds like PEBKAC." On the one hand, it is easy to point to this as user error and you're not wrong. But older cars have a significant tactile difference in operating different systems in the car. Shifting a gear is very, very different physically than pushing the button for your hazards. Your body…
> I believe that different subsystems in the car - especially life safety / critical driving systems - should have vastly different controls that force different physical interactions.
Absolutely.
For example, in a manual VW/Audi, you have to push the stick down, then way over into R.
It's one of the nicest feeling gestures, makes your intent extremely clear, and is impossible to do by accident.
Re: Please make a dumb car
#547Needed to be said. I will not buy a post-2012 car because of the invasion of nanny features and telemetry. Current rides: 2003 Tacoma truck, 2005 Subaru wagon.
Re: Please make a dumb car
#548What I hate about "car discourse" like this is the apparent blindness to public transportation. Trains, bikes, buses, and street cars solve almost every problem that the author complains about. The only outstanding problem, however, is that American infrastructure has been deliberately designed solely around the car. Those who suggest alternative modes of public transportation are immediately written off as "impracti…
Trains, bikes, buses, and street cars only solve urban problems. And I know urban environments are overall better for the environment, but they're not better for people's psyche. They're crime ridden. Theyre smog ridden. Theyre awful environments to live in during a pandemic. People were moving into cities until a pandemic struck and riots became commonplace. Then they started to leave with the speed in which they ar…
I don't know about which city or urban environment, but my downtown area (largest city in our state), isn't crime ridden, has no smog, sure there's likely more pollution, but with the layout of our highways and the location of traffic, that's all further from houses and offices than led to believe.
The 'riots' you're thinking of took place in a rather racially segregated and historically significant part of my city that isn't downtown... Urban environments have existed for centuries, even millennia. Ancient cities were dense and had many a people within their walls.
Re: Please make a dumb car
#549Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think they can also solve quite a few suburban problems. There are many examples of other countries whose suburbs are connected via public transit. And many trips can be done via bike instead of car.
Yes, but American suburbs aren't like other countries' suburbs. British suburbs, for example, are much denser and usually very walkable.
There are a few American suburbs that are well-walkable and still support automobile transport. They're just not engineered to _only_ support automotive transport. We've had them, then destroyed them.
Re: Please make a dumb car
#550What I hate about "car discourse" like this is the apparent blindness to public transportation. Trains, bikes, buses, and street cars solve almost every problem that the author complains about. The only outstanding problem, however, is that American infrastructure has been deliberately designed solely around the car. Those who suggest alternative modes of public transportation are immediately written off as "impracti…
I would absolutely love to ride a bike or say, roller skate to work, but as i live in a stroad infested car dependent mess of a town, that is sadly impractical at best and outright deadly at worst.
Agree not safe to ride bikes...