241–250 of 570 posts
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Anecdotal, but I just drove my electric Ford from Sacramento to Seattle and back without any particular planning or problems. Just used the built-in nav to find chargers.
truck or car? loaded or empty?
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People like sitting higher up, or do not like being seated lower, or so much lower, than others. It might also be safer to be in a higher up car in the event of a collision. Pretty much all the families I know with young kids and toddlers has a full size SUV. Every time I ask why they did not get a minivan such as Odyssey or Sienna, every response is they like SUVs and do not want to sit lower in the minivan. Even th…
This "arms race" is piling up stacks and stacks of bodies.
It started out as a joke back in 2010, partially inspired by "A Nice Morning Drive" (http://www.2112.net/powerwindows/transcripts/19731100roadand...) from the 1972s. It is no longer very funny -- Ford killing its sedans a couple years back was a sad wakeupcall.
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Or at least outsourced the software engineering to companies that would do a proper job of it.
Which would probably still cost more than what they’re willing to pay, assuming that (cost) is indeed the problem.
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Atleast when a Dodge Charger is charging up from behind, I can hear the thing. Pedestrians can hear the thing. When the demographic that currently commits most reckless driving eventually adopts electric cars, it's going to be a blood bath.
That’s an interesting observation that I hadn’t considered. My enthusiasm for EVs has been pretty unmitigated previously. I still think climate is important enough that dealing with the safety stuff is probably tractable and also the lesser evil, but it’s good to have line of sight on it.
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A lot of automakers are chasing Tesla's one screen design -- they're so envious of the cost savings there. Except the Germans, they're still putting in lots of buttons and knobs -- my next car will likely be German because they seem to understand what people actually want.
Have you driven a Tesla much? The general UX intent is that you're not supposed to need to interact with the screen while driving. Wipers are automatic, lights are automatic (both can be pulsed with the stalks of course). Virtually everything responds to voice commands ("Play Stairway to Heaven", "Navigate to Albertsons", "Set temperature to 72", etc...). All this stuff works really well. I won't engage with "what pe…
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The idea with the touchscreen controls is that the driver shouldn't really be using the touchscreen at all while driving except as a quick reference to the map. You're not supposed to be using the screen to adjust your media while driving, there's steering wheel and voice controls. You're not supposed to be adjusting the climate controls while moving, auto climate should just handle it. Why would I want to be distrac…
If you’re distracted by adjusting the temperature you shouldn’t be driving at all.
The job of technology is to be extremely predictable and, ideally, multi-sensory.
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I completely agree with your conclusion, this is why I feel that European tech companies can't compete with US ones at all. They just refuse to pay enough to attract the best engineers.
What a strange comment. Ford is a us tech company. Most people in Europe don’t want to leave.
Sure, but most people aren't skilled white collar tech workers with in demand skills who could be earning 3x post-tax salary in the US.
Health insurance is essentially free or cheap at any good tech company. EU pensions are underfunded (just like US ones) and as a high paid tech worker you're better off with maxing your 401k anyways.
If you look at the nationalities in any top US MS/PhD/MBA program, you'll find it's about 40% European, far above what undergraduate programs look like. That shows quite a few skilled workers in Europe want to leave.
If you are an unskilled worker, Europe is better as long as they can continue to sustain their social programs by taxing high earners and having defense be subsidized by the US. If too many high earners leave or the US becomes unwilling to pay for bases all across Europe, the whole system collapses pretty quickly.
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I completely agree with your conclusion, this is why I feel that European tech companies can't compete with US ones at all. They just refuse to pay enough to attract the best engineers.
Are there any professions in European countries that are paid as well as US tech workers, for similar levels of skill and/or education? Moreover, if EU tech companies are not willing to pay the best software/hardware engineers what they're worth, where do they all go? Not everyone wants to live in the US or work remotely.
There’s two ways to look at this. The first way is the shallow way, the raw numbers. The other way is that Europeans have a better social ethics and don’t need the gaudy numbers. Americans do. We don’t have a real culture of social welfare. We value capitalism unlike any other country in the world.
With the performance of this and other EVs now beating the Raptor pickup, do you think we’ll start to see performance regulated for safety reasons? A massive pickup able to 0-60 in a few seconds is cool, but in the hands of the less responsible it sounds like a huge safety risk. We cap the performance of tiny scooters but multiton trucks are able to go as fast as humanly possible?
My Volt does 0-60 in about 7 seconds or so in sport mode but even better @ 0-30 and it feels so ridiculously torquey and instant to me and I can't even imagine needing anything beyond that ever. All the jockeying about 0-60 in 3 seconds or whatever on various Tesla machines just makes me shake my head. I really fear what that means in a large massive vehicle.